Osho,
In response to Anando’s question the other evening about your place in history, you told us to forget history and historians, to simply let them do their thing. But so much of value is contained in your books which is being made available to contemporary people, and which could be part of a record of a whole different dimension from that which is conventionally regarded as history.
A new record could be compiled of the real history: the evolution of man’s consciousness beginning with primeval man and the first hints of man’s awareness of himself, taking in all those who have become awakened, all mystical scriptures and documents, and culminating in you and your work.
Of all the masters, you have the most eclectic and comprehensive record of your own evolution in consciousness – from those days immediately following your enlightenment, your days of traveling around India, to Bombay, Pune, Oregon, and now, the World Tour.
In addition, the questions you provoke in us, your disciples, outline the process of our growing consciousness, and are, in themselves, another unique aspect of your work.
Osho, we have already forgiven you for not allowing us to forget you. We, your editors, just want to ensure that your words and the fragrance that you are haunt people for generations to come and drive them totally sane!

That is your problem.

Next question.

Osho,
There is a story of a disciple who comes to see his master and asks him whether man is free.
The master tells his disciple to stand up and to lift one of his feet off the ground. The disciple, standing on one leg – and the other one in the air – understands less than before.
Now the master asks him to also lift the other foot off the ground.
Osho, can you speak on the difference between freedom for and freedom from?

Freedom from is ordinary, mundane. Man has always tried to be free from things. It is not creative. It is the negative aspect of freedom.

Freedom for is creativity. You have a certain vision that you would like to materialize and you want freedom for it.

Freedom from is always from the past, and freedom for is always for the future.

Freedom for is a spiritual dimension because you are moving into the unknown and perhaps, one day, into the unknowable. It will give you wings.

Freedom from, at the most, can take away your handcuffs. It is not necessarily beneficial – and the whole of history is a proof of it. People have never thought of the second freedom that I am insisting on; they have only thought of the first – because they don’t have the insight to see the second. The first is visible: chains on their feet, handcuffs on their hands. They want to be free from them, but then what? What are you going to do with your hands? You may even repent that you asked for freedom from.

It happened in the castle of the Bastille – I have told you – in the French Revolution it was the most famous French prison, it was reserved only for those who were sentenced to live in jail for their whole lives. So one entered the Bastille alive but never came out alive – only the dead bodies came out.

And when they put on the handcuffs, the chains, they locked them and threw the keys in a well which was inside the Bastille – because they were not needed. Those locks would not be opened again so what would be their use?

There were more than five thousand people. What is the use of keeping five thousand peoples’ keys and maintaining them unnecessarily?

Once they have entered their dark cells, they have entered them forever.