NATURE OF VIOLENCE

Violence is a thing given to man by nature but it is not the nature of man. It is animal’s nature, it is the nature of beasts. Man has passed-travelled-through this nature and so has carried all the experiences – impressions of that animal life with him. Violence is like this: suppose a man is passing on a road and is covered with particles of dust and when he enters a palace, he refuses to remove those particles of dust saying they have come with me, they are a part of me. Those dust-particles are those things which have stuck on man’s soul while passing through an animal life.

They have become fixed but they are not the nature of man. Violence is natural far beasts, it is their nature because they have no choice in this matter. Violence is not natural for man because he has a choice in this matter. In fact, manhood to be human – begins with this choice. Manhood begins with this decision. Manhood begins with this resolve. Man is standing at the cross roads. All beasts are on a unidimensional road. They can therefore have no choice.

Man can become violent or nonviolent as he wishes. This is man’s freedom. Beasts haven’t got it. It is the helplessness of a beast. That is why there is no difference between the nature of beasts and the fact of being beasts. There is no distance between the future and the past of a beast. There is no difference in being a beast and in the possibility of what it can be. The beast is what it can be. That which is possible, is actual. There is no distinction between the actuality and possibility of beasts. The whole matter is different in the case of man. 

Man can be different from what he is The actuality of man is not his possibility. He can be something else tomorrow from what he is really today. So we can’t tell any dog that you are something less of a dog, but we can tell a man, you appear to be something less of a man. To tell any dog that you are something less of a dog is completely an absurd statement. It doesn’t have any meaning. All dogs are complete dogs. There may be weak dogs, there may be strong ones also but there is no difference in their doghood. But there is a difference of degrees in manhood. We cannot tell any Krishna that there is no difference in manhood – gentlemanliness – between you and Hitler. We cannot tell any Buddha that there is no difference between you and Ravana. It so happens at times, That we have to say about someone, there is hardly any gentlemanliness in him, and we have to say about some other person that there is not much of humanity in him that he can be called divine-god. 

Whenever we use the word God for some person, it means that there is so much humanity in them that it is found insufficient to call him man. What a man is, is not everything; much more can happen to him. There is a very great potentiality in him. His past is linked with his journey – through beasthood, that condition is that of

violence. And what he can be is his nonviolence.

The nature of man is that which it will be when it will evolve itself fully. The reality about man is what he has accumulated in his journey uptil now. That is why I say violence is acquired, nonviolence is the nature. So violence can be given up; but nonviolence can only be achieved, it cannot be given up. It is very necessary to understand this difference.

Every sinner has a future and every sinner has an opportunity to be a saint in future. We can tell every sinner honestly that he is a saint of the future. Every saint has a past and in every saint’s past is the past of a sinner. We can tell every saint honestly that you were a sinner in the past, but then the saint has no further future. The saint means one who has achieved his entire nature, he has now become what he could have become. The flower has bloomed fully. A bud has a future. If a bud wishes to be a flower, it can become a flower. So when we tell a bud that it is your nature to be a flower, it doesn’t mean we are talking of a fact, we simply talk of potentiality. When we tell a bud it is your nature to be a flower, it means, if you wish to be a flower, you can be a flower. Thus if man says violence is my nature, he is talking like the mistaken bud, which thinks that it can be a bud for ever. Violence is not the nature of man; it is the acquisition of his past, it is the impression of

his past. Violence is man’s conditioning which was unavoidable through the process of his evolution from beastly life. Beast is to be pardoned because violence is unavoidable in its life. Man cannot be pardoned, because violence is his choice; it is not inevitable when he chooses violence. 

Violence is inevitable for beasts, it is a responsibility for man. It is a fact for beasts, for man it is merely a historical memory. It is the present for beasts, it is past for man. We have the choice in front of us. Man can take a decision to be nonviolent; he can take a decision to be violent also.

That is why when a certain person takes a decision to be violent, no beast can compete with him. Really, no beast can be as violent as a man can be, because a beast is violent by nature while man becomes violent by planning. So, even after a through search among beasts, we cannot get such violent beasts as Chengez Khan, or Taimur, or Nadir, or Hitler. If we consult the history of beasts and ask them if they had parallel examples they would reply, ’We are very poor in that, we do not have any memory – any record – in this matter.’ It is very interesting to know that no animal except man becomes atrocious towards its own fellow-members. No animal kills another animal of its class, does not commit violence towards it. This distinguishing feature is also there in the violence of animals.

Man is the only animal who kills other men. It is interesting to know that if an Indian wolf is left near a Pakistani wolf, it will not harm the other, but to keep an Indian near a Pakistani is full of danger. Language experts say this is perhaps due to difference in language. The opinion of the linguists seems to be true. They say, as both the wolves do not speak any language, the Pakistani wolf does not speak Urdu and the Indian wolf does not speak Hindi, so they do not know they are foreigners.

But man from one province becomes a foreigner in another province. Gujaratis are foreigners in Marathi province, the Hindi speaking people are foreigners to those speaking Tamil. If what the linguists say is correct and I feel there is truth in it, we shall be compelled one day to make man speechless – silent – so as to make him a human being. Perhaps it would be difficult to create humanity without being speechless in the world.

Man is rational only in the sense that he rationalizes his follies, he is not rational in any other sense. Aristotle definitely said Man is a rational animal but the history of man uptil now does not prove it. History has disproved Aristotle. Man seems intelligent only in one thing and it is this, he is trying to rationalize his follies. Even when he kills someone he rationalizes his action. He says I shall have to kill him because he is a Mohammedan; he is a Hindu, he is not an Indian, he is a Pakistani etc. As if it is a sufficient cause for being killed to be a Pakistani or enough to kill a person if he is a Mohammedan.

Man finds out a cause to kill, such as this man is rich, he should be killed, this man is a communist, he should be killed. When old causes become worthless, new ones are being found out. New causes prove that old ones have become useless, they are not to be used now. Let us find out new ones. Uptil now we have killed many Hindus and Muslims, let us now make Hindus and Jains quarrel. If we do not succeed in Hindu-Jain quarrels, let us start dividing them into the rich and the poor. Let us have a class-war. Thus when man wants to commit violence, to kill, he conveniently finds out causes.

Animals never kill without a cause. I am telling you this that if we understand violence of man we shall see that man becomes violent without any cause. So violence is his choice and that is why no animal can become as cruel and violent as man can be. To be violent is simply the nature of animals, it is not its choice, that is why there can be a Nadirshah and there can be a Mahavira among mankind. Nonviolence is not the choice of animals. But man has to make a choice of nonviolence.

OSHO, LOVE,

VIOLENCE- ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

One observes throughout the world there are two fundamental issues, violence and sorrow. That violence and sorrow is not limited to the Orient nor the Occident, to the West nor the East; it is part of the human psychological structure. Violence we have accepted as a way of life - in wars, in our business, in our outward social structure; competition and all the things we know of - how we dislike, hate, get angry, violent. We are familiar with that and have accepted it as a way of life.

Either we accept the way of life as it is, with violence and all the rest of it; or we say there must be a different way which human intelligence can find, where violence doesn't exist. That's all. And we say this violence will exist so long as comparison, suppression, conformity, the disciplining of oneself according to a pattern is the way of life. In this there is conflict and therefore violence.


So can you see the fact of violence—the fact not only outside of you but also inside you—and not have any time interval between listening and acting? This means by the very act of listening you are free from violence. You are totally free from violence because you have not admitted time, an ideology through which you can get rid of violence. This requires very deep meditation, not just a verbal agreement or disagreement. We never listen to anything; our minds, our brain cells are so conditioned to an ideology about violence that we never look at the fact of violence. We look at the fact of violence through an ideology, and the looking at violence through an ideology creates a time interval. And when you admit time, there is no end to violence; you go on showing violence, preaching non-violence.

Do not think by merely wishing for peace, you will have peace, when in your daily life of relationship you are aggressive, acquisitive, seeking psychological security here or in the hereafter. You have to understand the central cause of conflict and sorrow and then dissolve it and not merely look to the outside for peace.

With complete attention, what takes place? When you give complete attention to anything—your learning of history or mathematics, looking at your wife or your husband—what takes place? I do not know if you have gone into it—probably most of us have never given complete attention to anything—but when you do, what takes place?

Formally I have condemned violence, I have escaped from it, I have justified it, I have said it is natural. All these things are inattention. But when I give attention to what I have called violence—and in that attention there is care, affection, love—where is there space for violence?

Violence is not merely killing another. It is violence when we use a sharp word, when we make a gesture to brush away a person, when we obey because there is fear. So violence isn’t merely organized butchery in the name of God, in the name of society or country. Violence is much more subtle, much deeper, and we are inquiring into the very depths of violence. When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent.

There are so many different kinds of violence. Shall we go into each kind of violence or shall we take the whole structure of violence? Can we look at the whole spectrum of violence, not just at one part of it?…The source of violence is the “me”, the ego, the self, which expresses itself in so many ways—in division, in trying to become or be somebody—which divides itself as the “me” and the “not me”, as the unconscious and the conscious; the “me” that identifies with the family or not with the family, with the community or not with the community and so on. It is like a stone dropped in a lake; the waves spread and spread, at the centre is the “me”. As long as the “me” survives in any form, very subtly or grossly, there must be violence.

Man is all the time trying to become non-violent. So there is conflict between “what is”, which is violence, and “what should be”, which is non-violence. There is conflict between the two. That is the very essence of wastage of energy. As long there is duality between “what is” and “what should be”—man trying to become something else, making an effort to achieve “what should be”—that conflict is waste of energy. As long as there is conflict between the opposite, man has not enough energy to change. Why should I have the opposite at all, as non-violence, as the ideal?

If there was no ideal at all, you would be left with “what is”. Would that make one complacent? Or would you then have the energy, the interest, the vitality to solve ‘what is’? Is not the ideal of non-violence an escape from the fact of violence? When the mind is not escaping, but is confronted with the fact of violence—that it is violent, not condemning it, not judging it—then surely such a mind has an entirely different quality and there is no longer violence.

Now, suppose I am violent. How do I observe that violence, because I want to understand the nature of that violence. I want to go, explore, discover the extraordinary factors that contribute to violence. So how do I observe? First, is violence - please listen to this - is violence different from me? Right? You understand my question? I am asking, is that violence which I see when I say I am violent, is that violence different from me or I am that violence? When you are angry, you are angry. It is not you are different from anger. You are different from anger only when you want to control it, only when you say I must suppress it, but are you actually different, separate from violence. Please, we must go into this very carefully because most people say I am different from that object which I call violence. Is that so? Is the word 'violence' separated - you understand?

When there are two dogmatic beliefs, and each trying to convert the other, oppose each other, it is a form of violence. So are we aware of this factor in our life? And when you become aware of it what are you going to do? Do you say, 'Yes, I am aware of it' but carry on with violence? Therefore it becomes a very serious matter. If one is really to be free of violence, to look at it, to live with it, to understand it, to go into it and see all the multiple forms of violence, totally be acquainted with it - and when you are acquainted with something it flowers and then withers away, you don't have to fight it.

Sir, look: I am violent. I observe it. Because I don't run away from it, I don't suppress it, I don't transform it into something else as non -violence, which is absurd - the transformation of violence into non -violence is stupidity, it has no meaning. So as I am violent, I let it come out - not in action. Let it flower, let it grow, as you watch it, it grows and dies. Haven't you done all this? That is, sir, when you are angry, at that moment of anger you are not aware, you are full out. Then a second later you say, 'I have been angry'. Right? So you have divided yourself as not being angry and that you have been angry. So there is a division between the observer who says, 'I have been angry, and I must not be angry'. Right? So the division brings about conflict, saying, 'I mustn't be angry, how am I to get rid of my anger' - and so on and so on, so on. Whereas if you are aware of anger as it arises and let it come out non-verbally (laughs), non-actively, not say, 'I am going to hit you' - let it flower, let it come out, and you will see it disappears very quickly and withers away. And if you do it properly you are never angry again,

 Jiddu Krishnamurti, LOVE,

A MESSAGE TO HUMANITY ON THIS NEW YEAR'S DAY

Question:- what is your message to humanity on this new year’s day? 

Osho  -My message for new year, is simple. My message is a new man, homo novus. The old concept of man was of either/or; materialist or spiritualist, moral or immoral, sinner or saint. It was based on division, split. It created a schizophrenic humanity. The whole past of humanity has been sick, unhealthy, insane. In three thousand years, five thousand wars have been fought. This is just utterly mad; it is unbelievable. It is stupid, unintelligent, inhuman.

Once you divide man in two, you create misery and hell for him. He can never be healthy and can never be whole, the other half that has been denied will go on taking revenge. It will go on finding ways and means to overcome the part that you have imposed upon yourself. You will become a battle-ground, a civil war. That’s what has been the case in the past.


In the past we were not able to create real human beings, but humanoids. A humanoid is one who looks like a human being but is utterly crippled, paralysed. He has not been allowed to bloom in his totality. He is half, and because he is half he is always in anguish and tension; he cannot celebrate.

Only a whole man can celebrate. Celebration is the fragrance of being whole.
Only a tree that has lived wholly will flower. Man has not flowered yet.

The past has been very dark and dismal. It has been a dark night of the soul. And because it was repressive, it was bound to become aggressive. If something is repressed, man becomes aggressive, he loses all soft qualities. It was always so up to now. We have come to a point where the old has to be dropped and the new has to be heralded.

The NEWMAN will not be either/or; he will be both/and. The new man will be earthy and divine, worldly and other-worldly. The new man will accept his totality and he will live it without any inner division, he will not be split. His god will not be opposed to the devil, his morality will not be opposed to immorality; he will know no opposition. He will transcend duality, he will not be schizophrenic.

With the new man there will come a new world, because the new man will perceive in a qualitatively different way and he will live a totally different life which has not been lived yet. He will be a mystic, a poet, a scientist, all together. He w ill not choose: he will be choicelessly himself.

That’s what I teach: homo novus, a new man, not a humanoid. The humanoid is not a natural phenomenon. The humanoid is created by the society – by the priest, the politician, the pedagogue.

The humanoid is created, it is manufactured. Each child comes as a human being: total, whole, alive, without any split. Immediately the society starts suffocating him, stifling him, cutting him into fragments, telling him what to do and what not to do, what to be and what not to be. His wholeness is soon lost. He becomes guilty about his whole being. He denies much that is natural, and in that very denial he becomes uncreative. Now he will be only a fragment, and a fragment cannot dance, a fragment cannot sing, and a fragment is always suicidal because the fragment cannot know what life is. The humanoid cannot will on his own. Others have been willing for him – his parents, the teachers, the leaders, the priests; they have taken all his willing. They will, they order; he simply follows. The humanoid is a slave.

I teach freedom. Now man has to destroy all kinds of bondages and he has to come out of all prisons – no more slavery. Man has to become individual. He has to become rebellious. And whenever a man has become rebellious.... Once in a while a few people have escaped from the tyranny of the past, but only once in a while – a Jesus here and there, a Buddha here and there. They are exceptions. And even these people, Buddha and Jesus, could not live totally. They tried, but the whole society was against it.

This new year, for newman,
My concept of the new man is that he will be Zorba the Greek and he will also be Gautam the Buddha: the new man will be Zorba the Buddha. He will be sensuous and spiritual, physical, utterly physical, in the body, in the senses, enjoying the body and all that the body makes possible, and still a great consciousness, a great witnessing will be there. He will be Christ and Epicurus together.

The old man’s ideal was renunciation; the new man’s ideal will be rejoicing. And this new man is coming every day, he is arriving every day. People have not yet become aware of him. In fact he has already dawned. The old is dying, the old is on its death-bed. I don’t mourn for it and I say please don’t mourn for it. It is good that it dies, because out of its death the new will assert. The death of the old will be the beginning of the new. The new can come only when the old has died utterly.

Help the old to die and help the new to be born! And remember, the old has all the respectability, the whole past will be in his support; and the new will be a very strange phenomenon. The new will be so new that he will not be respected. Every effort will be made to destroy the new. The new cannot be respectable, but with the new is the future of the whole of humanity. The new has to be brought in. My work consists in creating a Buddhafield, an energy-field, where the new can be born. I am only a midwife helping the new to come into a world which will not be accepting of it. The new will need much support from those who understand, from those who want some revolution to happen. Andthe time is ripe, it has never been so ripe. The time is right, it has never been so right. The new can assert itself, the break-through has become possible.

The old is so rotten that even with all support it cannot survive; it is doomed! We can delay, we can go on worshipping the old; that will be just delaying the process. The new has to come: at the most, we can help it to come sooner, or we can hinder it and delay its coming. It is good to help it. If it comes sooner, humanity can still have a future, and a great future: a future of freedom, a future of love, a future of joy.

I teach a new religion. This religion will not be Christianity and will not be Judaism and will not be Hinduism. This religion will not have any adjective to it. This religion will be purely a religious quality of being whole.

My sannyasins have to become the first rays of the sun that is going to come on the horizon. It is a tremendous task, it is an almost impossible task, but because it is impossible it is going to seduce all those who have any soul left in them. It is going to create a great longing in all those people who have some adventure hidden in their beings, who are courageous, brave, because it is really going to create a brave new world.

I talk of Buddha, I talk of Christ, I talk of Krishna, I talk of Zarathustra, so that all that is best and all that is good in the past can be preserved. But these are only a few exceptions. The whole humanity has lived in great slavery, chained, split, insane.

I say my message in NEW YEAR is simple, but it will be very hard, difficult, to make it happen. But the harder, the more impossible, it is, the greater is the challenge. And the time is right because religion has failed. science has failed. The time is right because the East has failed, the West has failed. Something of a higher synthesis is needed in which East and West can have a meeting, in which religion and science can have a meeting.

Religion failed because it was other-worldly and it neglected this world. And you cannot neglect this world; to neglect this world is to neglect your own roots. Science has failed because it neglected the other world, the inner, and you cannot neglect the flowers. Once you neglect the flowers, the innermost core of being, life loses all meaning. The tree needs roots, so man needs roots, and the roots can only be in the earth. The tree needs an open sky to grow, to come to a great foliage and to have thousands of flowers. Then only is the tree fulfilled, then only does the tree feel significance and meaning and life becomes relevant.

Man is a tree. Religion has failed because it is talking only of the flowers. Those flowers remain philosophical, abstract; they never materialise. They could not materialise because they were not supported by the earth. And science has failed because it cares only about the roots. The roots are ugly and there seems to be no flowering.

The West is suffering from too much science; the East has suffered from too much religion. Now we need a new humanity in which religion and science become two aspects of one man. And the bridge is going to be art. That’s why I say that the new man will be a mystic, a poet and a scientist.

Between science and religion only art can be the bridge – poetry, music, sculpture. Once we have brought this new man into existence, the earth can become for the first time what it is meant to become. It can become a paradise: this very body the Buddha, this very earth the paradise!

Suvira means courageous. Courage is the only bridge from darkness to light, from death to life. Courage is the only possible bridge that can take you to the unknown; and the unknown is god. By courage I mean the courage to drop the familiar. That is the greatest courage. It is very tempting to remain clinging to the familiar: it is so protective, so cosy, so warm, and you have known it all along. You seem to belong to it, you are identified with it. To drop it means to go through a death; but death is the beginning of a new life. Courage is the greatest religious quality.


Osho

Only a person who has enjoyed his life becomes capable of enjoying his death

You think about death and you become disturbed by small things: a headache, an ant crawling on your body. You become distracted by such small things; small discomforts—and you talk about death. Maybe you don’t know what death is; maybe you have only heard the name.  and you have seen people dying, but you yourself have never seen death. In fact, when a person dies you see him lying in repose—silent, relaxed, with no discomfort. You think death is not a discomfort? You are seeing only a dead person; you have not seen his inner misery, you have not seen his inner conflict. You have not seen his inner struggle with death. You have not seen his inner anguish and turmoil. You just see the dead body—painted, dressed well, washed, cleaned.

At the moment of death all your knowledge of the world will be lost into thin air. Only one thing will go with you, and that one thing is being constantly ignored- that is your self-knowledge, your self-realization. In fact, this is the only ignorance- ignoring yourself. It is always death that comes before your desires are fulfilled. Even if you live for a thousand years your desires are not going to be fulfilled.

Only a person who has enjoyed his life becomes capable of enjoying his death. And if you are capable of enjoying your death, you have defeated death. Then there is no more birth for you and no more death for you--- you have learnt the lesson.

Live deeply, live totally, live wholly, so when death comes and knocks at your door you are ready—ready like a ripe fruit to drop. Just a small breeze comes and the fruit drops; sometimes even without the breeze the fruit drops from its own weight and ripeness. Death should be like that. And the readiness has to come through living.

The secret is, start living more fully, more totally. Be more alert so that you can find within yourself something that is unreachable by death. That is the only shelter, the only security, the only safety. And if you want to help your friends and family, let them become aware of this secret.