Osho on Nisargadatta Maharaj

Osho - There was a man in Bombay, Nisargadatta Maharaj. Nobody knew this big name; he was known to the masses as "Beedie Baba" because he was continuously smoking beedies. You can find in every village such kinds of beedie babas. I think India has seven hundred thousand villages and each village must have at least one; more is possible. And Amrito wrote a few days ago to me, because another young Dutchman became very much involved with Beedie Baba... The man seems to be very sincere, but the trouble is that the people who come from the West have a very childlike heart, very trusting, and they are unaware that in India spirituality is just a routine.

Everybody talks about great things and their lives are as ugly as possible. When Beedie Baba said that he would speak only to this young Dutchman, naturally his ego must have felt tremendously vast. The crowd that surrounded Beedie Baba was also of the same quality... rickshaw wallahs waiting for their passengers, sitting by the side of Beedie Baba. And when he said he would not speak to anybody unless it was this Dutchman... So he spoke to the Dutchman, who has now compiled books on Beedie Baba.

Now in India it is almost parrot-like, but to the Westerner it seems to be a tremendous revelation -- when Beedie Baba said, "Aham brahmasmi; I am God, I am that" the young Dutchman immediately wrote a book: I AM THAT! Because for the West, spirituality is a foreign affair, just as for the East, science is a foreign affair.

I have heard: In a factory in Bombay, they installed a very costly mechanism. Two days it worked, and then it stopped. It worked for two days because the expert was present, and the moment the expert was gone the mechanism stopped. They phoned the expert -- "What to do?" He said, "I will have to come and it will cost a lot of money, ten thousand dollars."

But to keep the factory closed was even more costly, so they had to allow the man to come. And the man came and just hit the machine and it started working! The industrialist asked him, "Just for this hitting you are costing me ten thousand dollars?"
He said, "It is not for the hitting. For hitting it is only one dollar, but to know where to hit it costs money."

When Amrito's letter came to me about this Dutchman, saying that "Many sannyasins are going to him, and I am also going to him," I talked about it. He heard it, and he took the tape to the man. The man heard it, and he was very grateful but baffled also, because he was gathering a big crowd of disciples. But because he felt baffled and he was grateful that I had talked about him... I would like Amrito, when he goes back, either to bring the man to me or send him to me. Because I know where to hit!