Man of freedom

THE ENLIGHTENED MAN ENJOYS PERFECT FREEDOM IN ACTIVE LIFE.

He is not a slave to any tradition, to any culture, to any civilization. He lives according to his own  spontaneity, according to his own awareness. And that is one of the troubles: the enlightened person is bound to be misunderstood, because the whole world is full of slaves. They cannot understand the language of freedom. It is almost like selling eyeglasses to a world of blind people. Even if they have the glasses, they are of no use -- they cannot see, they don't have the eyes. A man went to one eye specialist and asked him, "Check my eyes. Do you think I will be able to read if you prescribe glasses?"

The eye specialist said, "Of course you will be able to read." He wrote the prescription and the glasses were made. But the man said, "By the way, I must inform you that I don't know how to read." The specialist said, "You are strange! You should have said this before, because even with glasses, if you don't know how to read, you are not going to read." 

People are carrying scriptures which describe freedom, which even talk about freedom from scriptures. People are worshipping statues of persons like Gautam Buddha whose last words were, "Remember these are my last words, my last wish: my statues should not be made." Ten thousand sannyasins were listening, and as it happened, there are now more statues of Gautam Buddha in the world than of anyone else. A single temple in China even has ten thousand Buddhas. The whole mountain, miles long, has been carved into Buddha statues. It is strange blindness. It is strange misunderstanding.... And a man of freedom is bound to be condemned by slaves because the slaves cannot accept the idea that they are slaves. So anybody who is enlightened and becomes a man of freedom, becomes a danger to millions of egos. His freedom to fly across the sky with open wings is bound to be condemned by all those who are crippled, who are caught in cages. The cages may be of gold -- very precious, cozy, a good shelter -- but the joy of being on your own wings in the sky, unlimited, with no barriers, no boundaries, is much more valuable than any golden cage.

Osho