A nice story - 4

[NITIN BHATIA]

A story by OSHO


It happened once with me, many years ago. I used to get up at 3 a.m. and go for a walk. It was a lovely night and the roadside was thickly covered by clusters of bamboo groves. There was a slight opening at one point, otherwise it was covered all the way along. I used to run straight from one end to the other of that stretch one way and then run facing backwards the other way. In an hour—from 3 a.m. to 4 a.m.—I would do my exercise there. One day a weird thing happened. While I was running backwards and still under the bamboo-shaded area, a man—a milkman—was approaching me with all his empty containers on his way to collect milk from some dairy. Then suddenly as I emerged from the shaded area—it was a moonlit night—he could see me all of a sudden. A moment before I was not visible, so all of a sudden…and running backwards! Only ghosts are known to run backwards!

That milkman threw the empty containers away and ran off. There was something odd about the way he ran off. I had no idea he had become so scared of me, so I ran after him to help. Now he ran for his life! The faster I ran after him, out of concern, calling him to stop, the more speed he was gaining. I had never before seen anyone run like that! Then I had an inkling that perhaps I was the only other person around here and he had become scared of me.

Hearing the noise of the falling containers and running feet, a man in the nearby hotel woke up. I went to him and asked him if he knew what had happened. He said, "If you are asking me, I know that you run backwards here every day, but still I get scared sometimes. That man must have been new on this road."
I said, "Keep these containers with you, maybe the man will return in the morning." He has not returned even now! Whenever I have passed by that hotel again, I have inquired if that man has ever returned. He never came back.

Now there is no way of telling that man that what he had seen was 'almost false'. There was no ghost there, but he managed to see it! For him the ghost was a complete reality, otherwise he would not have disappeared for that long a time. That man must have had some past experience that he imposed on the scene.

What really is is not what we are seeing; we are seeing what our eyes are showing us. Our mind is imposing things each moment and we are seeing who knows what, and it certainly is not out there in the world.

This whole world is the extension of our mind. What we see is projected by us. First we project and then we see. First we project a snake in a rope, then we see it and run away. This whole world is like that.

--
Nitin Bhatia
Ph.D. Scholar
Electrical Deptt.
IIT Bombay
08268450175