You will not believe me, but I went through circumcision at the age of twenty-seven, after I was already enlightened, just to enter a Mohammedan Sufi order where they would not allow anybody in, who had not been circumcised. I said, “Okay, then do it! This body is going to be destroyed anyway, and you are only cutting off just a little piece of skin. Cut it, but I want to enter the school.”
Even they were unable to believe me. I said, “Believe me, I am ready.” And when I started arguing they said, “You were so willing to be circumcised and yet you are so unwilling to accept anything we say at all?”
I said, “That’s my way. About the non-essential I am always ready to say yes; about the essential, I am absolutely adamant, nobody can force me to say yes.”
Of course, they had to expel me from their so-called Sufi order, but I told them, “Expelling me, you are simply declaring to the world that you are pseudo-Sufis. The only real Sufi is being expelled. In fact, I expel you all.”
Bewildered, they looked at each other. But that’s the truth. I had gone to their order, not to know the truth; I knew that already. Then why had I entered? Just to have good company to argue with. Argument has been my joy from my very childhood. I will do anything just to have a good argument; but how rare it is to find a really good milieu for argument. I entered the Sufi order – this I am confessing for the first time – and even allowed those fools to circumcise me; and they did it by such primitive methods that I had to suffer for at least six months. But I didn’t care about that; my whole concern was to know Sufism from within. Alas! I could not find a real Sufi in my life. But that is true not only about the Sufis, I have not found a real Christian either, or a real Hassid.
-Osho
From Glimpses of a Golden Childhood, Chapter #9
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