Once a professor became a soldier and he was a man of great intelligence. So, when he was ordered ’Right turn!’ he stood wherever he was standing. And then the general asked ’Why are you standing there when I have said ”right turn” and everybody has turned?’
He said ’Sooner or later you will say ”left turn”, so what is the point? They will come to the same position again, and this is going to happen for three, four hours why bother?’
Why this continuous ’left turn, right turn’? There is a trick in it: it is a conditioning; you are not allowed to think. ’Left turn’ means ’left turn’ – you have to do it. Go on doing something, obeying something, by and by you lose your intelligence. Then you don’t think, then some day you are ordered to kill the enemy and you kill. It is just like ’right turn, left turn’. You don’t think, you don’t ponder over the fact ’What has this man done to me? Why should I kill him?’ The ’why’ never arises – you simply do it. You become a robot, a mechanical thing; you are no more a man.
In India, the Sikhs, the Punjabis are the best army people, the best soldiers, and naturally the whole country thinks they are the most stupid. These two things go together. If a race is very perfect as far as war is concerned, then the race becomes less intelligent. It is bound to happen – both thingscannot go together. An intelligent person will have to think before he acts. The soldier has to act before he thinks. That is the whole process: he should act before thinking. And then what is the point in thinking when you have acted already? Then there is no need. Any outer discipline, whether it be of a soldier or of a saint, kills your sensitivity.
Story told by Osho
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