Osho – Rebellion is the fire, passing through which one gains freedom

(Osho with Vimalkirti)

Question : Often you have spoken about your rebellious childhood and how it gave you such freedom, how you insisted on discovering your own individuality. How did you know the need to rebel at this early age? What about those people who didn’t have the courage to rebel and who had a hampered childhood? Is a rebellious childhood necessary for enlightenment?
Osho : No, not necessary. A man can become enlightened without having a rebellious childhood; but nobody can become enlightened without becoming rebellious beforehand. If one is fortunate enough to be rebellious in his childhood, enlightenment will be coming sooner. I became enlightened when I was twenty-one. Gautam Buddha became enlightened when he was forty-two, because up to his twenty-ninth year he had never rebelled against his father’s wishes.
At the age of twenty-nine, he had to rebel. He could see that these twenty-nine years had gone just without any meaning. The astrologers had said to his father that he should not be allowed to see a dead body, a sick man, an old man, a sannyasin. He was the only son of his father, born in his very old age, so the whole kingdom belonged to Gautam Buddha. And the father was very much afraid because the astrologers had said, “If you don’t manage rightly there is every possibility that he may renounce the world and become a seeker of truth. If he remains in the world and becomes the king, then there is a possibility that he may even become the king of the whole world, he has such great potential. Either he will become the great conqueror of the world — in Sanskrit it is called chakravartin — or he will become an enlightened one. It is between these two.
“And we cannot say right now what will happen, but if you can manage to keep these few things from his knowledge, he will never renounce the world. Bring the most beautiful girls of the kingdom. Keep him surrounded with the girls, with music, with dance, with wine, with good food. Make beautiful palaces for him for different seasons in different locations. In summer he should be in a cold region, in winter he should be in a warmer place. So make three palaces.”
India has three very clear — cut seasons: summer, winter, rains. And the father was so rich he managed three beautiful palaces. The gardeners were told that he should not see even a pale leaf or a dead leaf No idea should get into his mind that things get old or things die. For twenty-nine years he lived almost a prisoner in utter luxury.
The rebellion came because he was going to open the annual ceremony of the entire kingdom, some kind of Olympic games for youth. On the way in his golden chariot, he saw an old man for the first time in his life. He asked the charioteer, “What has happened to this man?” The charioteer said, “I cannot tell you a lie. What has happened to this man happens to everybody; he has become old.” Immediately Gautam Buddha asked, “That means it is going to happen to me also?” He was at his prime of youth, a beautiful young man.
The charioteer said, “I would like that it should not happen to you, but nature cannot be changed. It is just the law of nature. One who is born will become old, it cannot be prevented.”
And then came a dead man’s body being carried to the crematorium. And Buddha said, “What is happening?” The charioteer said, “This happens after old age. This is the last stage. After this nothing happens. This man is dead.” Buddha had not even heard the word death.
And then he saw a sannyasin who was just following the dead man’s body. And he said, “This man looks strange. Shaven head, orange clothes, with a begging bowl in his hand. I have never seen such a type. What is his profession?” The charioteer said, “He has renounced all professions. He is a sannyasin. He is a seeker of truth. Realizing that life one day becomes death, he wants to know, ‘Is there something within us which does not die? Or does everything die?’ He is on a immense journey, a search for himself, his eternity.”
Buddha said to him, “Return the chariot back to my palace. I am not going to open, inaugurate the function, because I have already become old. I am already feeling as if I am dying and suffocating. You just take me back home. I have been deceived.” And this was the first time a great rebellion was born in his mind. That very night he escaped from the palace. But twenty-nine years were lost. He could have become enlightened long before.
But one thing is certain: whether one is rebellious in his childhood or not, nobody becomes enlightened without a rebellious approach, because he will have to fight against the conditionings of the society. He will have to rebel against the beliefs of the society. He will have to rebel against his own ego, against his own ambitions.
Rebellion is certainly a necessary part. It cuts you from the ordinary social world and makes you an individual. Rebellion is the fire, passing through which one gains freedom, individuality, integrity. And only after that can one relax and be oneself, be simple, be innocent. It is a new birth. And then enlightenment is not far away. Hindrances removed, enlightenment is always there. It is your birthright.
Source : Osho Book “The Last Testament, Vol 3″

Osho – I have only my own experience of rebellion to share

Question : Beloved Osho, Do you think your teaching is a radical one?
Osho : Giulia, I do not have any teaching. My life is that of a rebel. I do not have a doctrine, a philosophy, a theology to teach you. I have only my own experience of rebellion to share, to infect you with rebelliousness. And when you are a rebel you will not be a copy of me; you will be an unique phenomenon in yourself.
All Buddhists are trying to be carbon copies of Gautam Buddha. He has a teaching: If you follow this certain discipline, you will become just like me. All Christians are carbon copies — the original is Jesus Christ.
I don’t have any teaching, any doctrine, any discipline to give to you. My whole effort is to wake you up. It is not a teaching — it is just cold water thrown into your eyes. And when you wake up you will not find that you are like me — a carbon copy of me. You will be just yourself — neither Christian, nor Hindu, nor Mohammedan… an unique flower. There are not two persons alike — how can there be so many Christians? How can there be so many Buddhists? And the whole of history is a proof of what I am saying.
For twenty-five centuries, millions of people in the East have tried the discipline and the teaching of Gautam Buddha — but not a single one has been able to become a Gautam Buddha. Nature does not allow two persons to be the same. Nature is not an assembly line where cars are produced… so you can see hundreds and thousands of Fords coming off the assembly line — the same, exactly the same. Nature is very creative, very innovative. It always creates a new man. It has created millions and millions of people, but never two people the same. You cannot find even two leaves on a tree just exactly the same, or two pebbles on the seashore just exactly the same. Each has his own individuality.
I don’t have a teaching; but whatever I have experienced, it is a living phenomenon I share with you — not words, not theories, not hypotheses. I can give you as much closeness as you need; just as when you bring an unlit candle close to a candle which is burning there is a point where suddenly the fire jumps from the lit candle to the unlit candle. The lit candle loses nothing, and there has not been a transfer of any teaching, but a transfer of fire.
Giulia, I would like to say that I don’t have any teaching, but I have great fire in my heart, and whoever comes close to me becomes aflame. These people here are not my followers. They are just friends who are sharing in an experience which can burn all that is false in them, and can purify that which is their essential individuality, their authentic potential. This is an alchemical school, a school of mystery. I am not a teacher; I don’t have any ideas, concepts… but I have a life to share, I have a love to share, and to those who are ready, I am ready to give all that I have — and in no way will they be enslaved.
The closer they come to me, the more they understand me, the more they will be themselves: that is the miracle.
I don’t believe that walking on water is a miracle — it is sheer stupidity. The real miracle is to wake you up, to bring the message of freedom to you — freedom from all fetters. And I do not replace your imprisonment with new fetters and new chains; I simply leave you in the open sky. I fly with you a little while so that you can gather courage: there is no need to be afraid — you also have wings, just like I have wings. You have not used them; you have never been told that you have wings.
So this is a place where I make every effort that you become aware of your wings, encourage you, push you into the infinite sky which belongs to you. This is a totally different place — it is not a church, it is not a temple, not a synagogue. I am not your savior, and I am not the messenger of any God. A messenger is just a postman and nothing else.
I don’t have a message to give to you, but I have a fire to impart to you. And if this fire is not radical, then nothing else can be radical in the whole world.
Source – Osho Book “The Rebellious Spirit”

Osho on Revolution and Rebellion, Revolution means a rebellion organized

Osho : ALL REVOLUTIONS have failed. And when I’say all`, I mean all. The very concept of revolution proved absolutely futile, a mirage. Revolution means a rebellion organized. But you cannot organize a rebellion — that’s impossible — because in the very organization, the rebellion dies.
Organization is against rebellion; so all revolutions fail because they try to succeed. To be successful they have to be organized. The moment they are organized they become another establishment. They may be anti-establishment but still, they have their own establishment. They cannot be non-establishment — that is impossible. Organize a revolution and you have killed it. An organized revolution is aborted already.
Rebellion is unorganized, rebellion is individual. It comes out of the authenticity of a single being; it comes out of the authenticity of a single being’s heart. Revolution is political, rebellion is religious. Revolution means a social phenomenon; rebellion is meditative. This has to be understood, this distinction. It is very significant. And if you miss it, you will miss the very meaning of the life of Jesus, because he is a rebel — he is not a revolutionary. Neither is Buddha a revolutionary, nor Lao Tzu. Manu is revolutionary, Marx is revolutionary, Mao is revolutionary, but not Jesus, not Krishna, not Buddha. They are rebels.
A revolution is a planning. A revolution thinks of the future; a rebellion is herenow. Revolution is utopian — a dream, somewhere in the future, the golden age, the utopia, the paradise. Rebellion is to live it here and now. To be rebellious means to be transformed totally.
In revolution, and in the ideology of revolution, you try to change the others, you try to change the scene. In rebellion, you change yourself and the scene changes by itself, of its own accord, because your vision is different. You have different eyes to look with.
Rebellion is spontaneous. It has nothing to do with any ideology. Rebellion is non-ideological. Rebellion is like love; you don’t think about it; you cannot think about it. Either you live it or you don’t live it; either it is there or it is not there. Rebellion is a happening. If you are ready, you start living a totally different life: the life of authenticity, the life of innerness, the life of God, or whatsoever you would like to call it.
Jesus is a rebel, but even his followers misunderstood him — they thought he was a revolutionary; they organized. Then Christ disappeared, and Christianity was left behind. Christianity is the corpse, the corpse of Christ.
Christianity is again the same establishment against whom Jesus was rebellious. Christianity belongs to the same priests who crucified Jesus. Now the temple has moved. It is not in Jerusalem, it is in the Vatican; but it is the same temple. The money-changers have changed, but the money-changing is the same. The establishment is now owned by other people, by other names, in other names, but the establishment is the same. If Jesus comes back, and goes to the Vatican, he will again do the same thing. He was a rebel. A rebel simply lives out of his spontaneity; he has no idea what it should be. He acts out of his understanding; he responds to a situation, and something starts happening.
Source – Osho Book “Come Follow To You, Vol 3″

Osho on Total Acceptance and Rebellion – The rebellion is against the dead past

Question – Beloved Master, What is the line of distinction for a rebel, between the attitude of total acceptance of existence and a non-conforming attitude towards the world at large?
Osho – Gyan Asanga, the difference, the “distinction for a rebel, between the attitude of total acceptance of existence and a non-conforming attitude towards the world at large”… just a little change is needed in your question. Because rebellion is not against the world at large. The rebellion is against the dead past: all the traditions, all the religions, all the civilizations, all the cultures, all the nations, all political ideologies — the rebellion is against this junk.
The world is beautiful. It is the mind of the society that goes on carrying the past, it is dominated by the dead. And you cannot live a life of freedom and love if you are dominated by the dead. Perhaps you have never thought about it in this way. All your religions are dead — dead institutions.
A survey in Greece has reported that more than ninety percent of the people are orthodox Christians, but only four percent of them ever go to church. Do you call this religion living? And who are these four percent? I was in Greece, and the archbishop of Greece had threatened the government that if I was not thrown out of Greece — and I was only there for four weeks — then their whole morality, their religion, their ancient traditions would be corrupted; I would corrupt the minds of the youth. So if the government was not going to take action, he was going to take action by his own hands.
This is the head of the Orthodox Church of Greece, and this is the oldest Christian church in the world. And what was he going to do? He made it clear that he was going to dynamite the house I was staying in with my twenty-five followers, and he was going to burn these followers with me, alive.
I inquired of my Greek sannyasins how many people he had in his congregation. They laughed. I said, “What is the matter, why are you laughing?”
They said, “In his congregation there are only six old women, who have nothing else to do and who are not needed by anybody anywhere else. Only they go to the church.”
When I am saying that an authentic man has to be a rebel, he is not going to be a rebel against the stars or against the trees or against the ocean or against the mountains. He is going to be a rebel against the dead and the past — which are still dominating the mind of the society. In other words, rebellion is against society, and acceptance — total acceptance — is for existence. The stars and the ocean and the mountains and the flowers and the birds — this whole vast expanse of life in its immense variety and beauty. The distinction is very clear, so there need not be any confusion.
The authentic man has to fight against the chains of the past and make himself free to live in the present and to live in the future. Those who live in the past are almost living posthumously, they are dead. Those who are dominated and dictated by the dead belong to the dead. They may be eating and walking and talking, but really they belong in graveyards.
I want you to belong to the present so that you can live each moment fresh, young, alive, with a great adventure for the coming moment. Unless your life becomes an ecstasy, you have not lived it. You have missed the very point, the bull’s eye.
A celebrated judge and an almost equally celebrated bishop were engaged in a friendly argument as to which of them had more power over their fellow men.
“After all old man,” the bishop explained, “you can only say to a man, `You be hanged.’ I can go very much further, I can say to a man, `You be damned.’”
“Ah, yes,” nodded the judge. “But the difference is that when I say to a man, `You be hanged,’ he is hanged.”
And that is a great difference! — because the bishop is just living in fictions. His heaven, his hell, his God, are all fictitious. He has no evidence for them and he has not even the courage to doubt their existence. He is just a coward.
The judge was right when he said, “When I say `You be hanged,’ he is hanged.” It takes a reality, an actuality, and whatever you go on saying…”You be damned, you go to hell,” that is all just hot air, soap bubbles.
The difference and distinction between acceptance of the universe and rejecting the past of man is very clear. The universe is here, now; the past is no more. And why should you allow the dead to give you commandments? Why should you be so self-disrespectful as to even listen to somebody who lived five thousand years before? Can’t you use your own intelligence to find the way? Don’t you have your own consciousness to make your path and create a ray of light in the darkness of life?
And those dead people have not helped anybody; they are hanging around your necks and their weight goes on becoming bigger and bigger because their number goes on increasing. More and more people are dying — the dead in the world are ten times more than the living people. So at least ten dead people are hanging around your neck. Beware of these fellows, just put them back in their graves — however great they may have been in their time. They cannot advise you because they know nothing about your times, your situations. Only you know what you are encountering.
And if you become free from the dead, as a corollary you will never hang around your children’s necks. You will allow them freedom from the very beginning to find their way in life, to commit mistakes and learn, and stop committing mistakes. To fall and get up — this is the only way to become stronger, this is the only way to learn and be wise: “And one thing is certain, you will not be living in the same situations in which we are living, so our advices are of no use.”
A Zen story: There were two temples, ancient temples, enemy temples, and the enmity had gone on for centuries. Both the old priests of those temples hated each other so much that they would not look at each other. If one was passing on the road the other would move into a bypass. But they had two small boys — just to do small things for the old people — and both priests were insisting to them, “Remember, never speak to the boy of the other temple.” But boys are boys. In fact, this became a temptation. They might not have bothered, but because the insistence was so much they became intrigued.
And one day, they met on the road going towards the market to fetch some vegetables. One boy said, “Hello, where are you going?”
And the other boy had a little of a philosophical bent. He said, “Wherever the wind takes me.” The first boy could not believe such an answer, he had never expected it. And he thought that perhaps the old man was right not to talk to these people.
He felt defeated, and he came back to the temple. He said to the old priest, “Forgive me, but I could not resist saying `hello’ to the boy. And they are really nasty people, you are right. I asked the boy a simple question, `Where are you going?’ And I knew where he was going and where I was going, the road goes to the market. And the boy said, `Wherever the wind takes me.’”
The old man said, “This is not right to be defeated. Our temple has never been defeated by those people. We have argued for centuries. Tomorrow, ask again, `Where are you going?’ and when he says, `Wherever the wind takes me,’ ask him, `If the wind is not blowing, then?’”
The boy was very happy, he was waiting far ahead on the road for the other boy to come. The other boy came, and he was going on as if he had not even seen the waiting boy.
The boy said, “Hello, where are you going?” And he was prepared, but that boy was strange.
He said, “Wherever my legs take me.” Now the answer that he had prepared was irrelevant, the situation had changed.
He felt very bad, very much hurt. He went directly to the priest, with tears in his eyes, and said, “They are really nasty, they don’t stick to their ideology. Yesterday he said, `Wherever the wind takes me,’ today he said, `Wherever my legs take me.’ I was dumfounded because I could not give the prepared answer that I had taken from you. Now you have to give me another answer.”
The old man said, “I had told you beforehand, don’t start this. Ask again, `Where are you going,’ and when he says, `Wherever my legs take me,’ ask him, `Suppose you had no legs?’”
Very happy, the next day he was again waiting and he asked, “Where are you going?”
The boy said, “Just to fetch a few vegetables from the market.”
Utterly defeated, he went back and he said to the old man, “What to do? These people are so inconsistent, today he has changed again. He said, `I am going to fetch a few vegetables.’”
But life is such… today it is one thing, tomorrow it is another, the day after tomorrow nobody knows what it will be. Your memorized answers, your borrowed knowledge from others never fits with life, because life goes on changing and your scriptures remain the same.
So are the VEDAS, so is the KORAN, so is the GITA; but people are allowing the old to show them the way, and life has changed its course. It is changing every moment, that’s why it remains fresh. It goes on dropping the old leaves and bringing fresh, new leaves. It goes on dropping the old people. If life was so much interested, then Manu and Moses and Mohammed would have all been alive; but those have proved old leaves, they have fallen. We will be gone in the same way, giving place to the new leaves to come and to dance in the sun, in the moon.
Don’t burden your children with your ideologies and don’t be burdened by your ancient people with their ideologies. Everybody has to be a light unto himself. This is, to me, the essential rebellion. And only through this rebellion can the new man be born and a new humanity arise.
Source – Osho Book “The Rebel”

Osho – Violence can never be a part of the rebellious spirit

Question – Beloved Master, Can you please say something about violence as the expression of rebellion?
Osho – Milarepa, violence can never be a part of the rebellious spirit for the simple reason that violence is the whole past of humanity — and the rebel wants to discontinue with the past. Violence has been the way of life for millennia. Directly or indirectly we have lived under violence. Our armies, our police, our jails, our judges, our wars, our so-called great religions, all have lived in violence. And violence, reduced to its essentials, is irreverent towards life.
To me the religious man, the religious consciousness, is nothing but a deep reverence for life itself, because there is no God beyond life, there is no paradise beyond consciousness. Violence is a violation of both life and consciousness — it is destructive.
The rebel is a creator; his whole philosophy is that of creativity. We have lived in destructiveness far too long, and what is the achievement? That’s why I have made a clear-cut distinction between the rebel and the reactionary. I have also made a distinction between the rebel and the revolutionary.
The reactionary is the lowest category. He can never disconnect himself from the past. The past is his orientation, he reacts against it. But whether you are for it or against it, it remains your reference, your context. The revolutionary is a little higher than the reactionary. He does not only react, he also has dreams of the future, he has his utopias. But as far as violence is concerned, the revolutionary down the ages has thought that right ends can be attained through wrong means.
I refute that contention. Right ends can be achieved only through right means. Through violence you cannot achieve a peaceful, silent, loving humanity. The violence will be in the roots, it will poison your whole superstructure. The rebel has to be nonviolent out of sheer necessity. Unless he is nonviolent, he cannot be the vehicle of a peaceful, warless, classless humanity.
If you sow the seeds of violence, you cannot expect and hope that the flowers will not be affected by violence. Those flowers will come out of the seeds you have sown. So each violent revolution has created another violent society, another violent culture. It is disgraceful to see that we still need armies, that we still need nuclear weapons. It is undignified to see that we need the policeman, the court and the jail. A better humanity, a more conscious man, will get rid of all this nonsense that surrounds us and pollutes our whole being.
The rebel cannot be half-hearted. He cannot be a chooser; he cannot choose a few things from the past, and not choose a few other things. Past as a whole has to be completely denied. Only then can we get rid of barbariousness in humanity — cruelty, violence and a deep-rooted disrespect for life and existence.
My approach is that of reverence for life. The rebel will be ready to die, but he will not be ready to kill. It is the pride of man to die for a cause; it is animalistic to kill someone, however great the cause may be. By killing, you have spoiled it completely. And looking practically, the rebel is an individual against the whole world; even if he chooses to be violent, he will be crushed. The enemy — the past — has much more violent powers in its hands.
The rebel has to trust in love, has to trust in meditativeness, has to be aware of his immortality — that even if his body is crucified he remains untouched. Here I am not talking only about political rebellion. I am talking about the individual rebel — a spiritual phenomenon, not a political entity. And no spirituality can accept violence as a means to attain the end.
Violence is simply out of the question as far as my rebellion, my rebel, is concerned. He cannot destroy, we have destroyed enough. He cannot kill, we have killed enough. It is time to stop this whole idiotic way of life. We have to come out of this darkness into the light. Even if it costs you your life it is perfectly good… because my rebel will be basically a meditator.
I am not conceiving of my rebel without meditation — that is his essential experience. And once you understand that you are immortal, who is worried about being killed? And if millions of meditators are ready to open their chests before the guns of the old and the rotten past, there is a possibility: perhaps it may also bring a change of heart in those people who have these destructive weapons in their hands.
Rebellion has not been tried on a vast scale. Just with the effort of millions of people meditating, loving silence and peace, and destroying all kinds of discriminations which create violence, we will be making the space, the gap, the discontinuity that can save man and life on this planet.
Source – Osho Book “The Rebel”

Osho – Spiritual rebelliousness can only come out of compassion and meditation in Osho on Rebellious Spirit

Question – Beloved Master, What is compassion for a rebellious man?
Osho – Raso, rebellion itself is the compassion. It is not a reactionary approach towards life. It is out of compassion that a man of understanding becomes a rebel.
You are asking, “What is compassion for a rebellious man?” Rebellion itself is his compassion. It is out of compassion that he has become rebellious, otherwise there was no need for him.
What is the need for me to be a rebel? I could have lived silently in the Himalayas, without unnecessarily being bothered by all kinds of idiots. What am I going to gain by my rebelliousness and by my teachings about rebellion, except condemnation from all quarters, from all over the world? But there is no need for me to gain anything. What life could give to me it has given — it has given more than one could ask for. It is just out of love, out of compassion, that I will welcome any crucifixion, but I will continue till my last breath to raise people’s consciousness, to instill their beings with the dreams of a beautiful future. And I will go on convincing them that the past has been ugly and nightmarish — that if you go on living according to the past, you don’t have any more future.
It is not my personal problem. My past is finished. I don’t have any future — I am not going to be reborn again. I could have remained completely indifferent to the problems of the world, to the problems of people; they are not my problems. I have struggled and come out of the jungle of all those problems. I am not going to be caught again in the net of a body.
But with this enlightenment, this liberation, comes a tremendous compassion for all those who are struggling for the same aim. I would like that the world becomes more helpful to everybody to become awakened. Right now it is helpful only to keep you as much asleep as possible.
Karl Marx was right when he said that religions have functioned like opium to the people. I may not agree with all his opinions, but about this small statement I agree one hundred percent. All the religions have been narcotics. They are the real drug dealers. They have kept humanity asleep, and they have taken away all the opportunities and possibilities of people becoming enlightened, of people becoming individuals, of people becoming free.
It is out of my love and compassion that I would like to go on sowing the seeds of rebellion in as many hearts as possible. Perhaps existence wants me to be a vehicle to save man from committing suicide; and not only to save man, but at the same time transform him also. Because this kind of man, as has existed in the past, is out of date, he cannot continue — either he has to die or he has to transform. Rebellion, to me, is the only saving device, and it is out of compassion — for no other reason.
Hymie Goldberg was striding happily along the street on his way to work, when his old friend, Mr. Cohen, caught up with him.
“You are pretty happy this morning,” said Mr. Cohen.
“That’s right,” smiled Hymie, “I have finally cured my wife of her habit of yelling at me all the time.”
“And how did you do that?” asked Mr. Cohen.
“Well,” laughed Hymie, “I have convinced her that yelling at me was making a nervous wreck of the dog.”
This is the situation of the present man. The wife is willing to stop yelling at poor Hymie Goldberg if she is convinced that her yelling will drive the dog insane. But if her yelling can drive the dog insane, what is it doing to poor Goldberg? That is not a consideration at all.
Man has lost compassion for man. He may be compassionate towards animals, he may be compassionate towards trees. In the Himalayas, there has been a movement going on for almost ten years — a very new concept. The people who live in the Himalayas love the trees and their trees are being cut, brutally, thousands every day. Just ten years ago an uneducated man started a movement, and it spread like wildfire all over the Himalayas. In the Himalayas, it is called “Chipko Andolan.” It means, “cling to the tree movement.” When people come to cut the tree, you simply cling, hug the tree, and be ready to die with the tree — but don’t allow the tree to be cut.
So thousands of people are clinging to the trees, and the government contractors come and they are standing there… what to do? They cannot use their electric saws and cut the people with the trees. The movement is immensely successful, although the government is jailing, punishing those people who are preventing the trees from being cut. But the moment they are out of jail, they go back again. It seems they have slowed the process, and it is also possible that they may have succeeded.
These people — who are so compassionate to the trees that they are ready to die for them — murder human beings. With human beings their relationships are of cruelty, barbarousness. And they are primitive people; a few tribes even sacrifice men to their god, and then they eat the flesh of men. It is very strange that they are so compassionate towards the trees — to protect them they are ready to die; they risk imprisonment because they are preventing government work.
But towards man they don’t seem to have any compassion, any love. They beat their wives, they beat their children; they don’t have any respect for their children, they don’t have any respect for their women. In fact Hindu scriptures say that unless you beat your wife once in a while, you will lose control over her. It is absolutely according to religious scriptures, it is not a sin or a crime to beat your wife once in a while — that keeps peace in the house.
It would have been perfectly right if they had said that the wife is also allowed, once in while, to beat the husband; then it would have kept more peace in the house. If peace is the goal, then both should be given the opportunity to create it. And the people who have written such things are thought to be great saints! And if I say anything against them immediately somebody’s religious feelings are hurt, immediately the government sends an unbailable arrest warrant. This has been going on my whole life.
Man has lost compassion completely — at least about other men. And I would like my people… their first duty is towards man, everything else comes next. If you are not loving and compassionate towards man, all your compassion for animals, dogs, is just stupid. One man in Bombay has a trust… and we have been fighting a trust case for years. The government is not willing to accept this institution as a charitable trust, because to them teaching meditation is not charity. Teaching compassion is not charity. Teaching charity is not charity.
So I had told my people to look around and see what kind of charitable trusts are acceptable to the government. They found a trust in Bombay which is tax-exempt, and the man who has that trust is a retired government officer; he collects many donations for stray dogs.
Every day in his beautiful car he goes around the slums of Bombay, where you will find stray dogs — and worse than that, stray human beings. Children with big bellies and shrunken bodies, standing by the side of the dogs just in the hope that they can get something to eat from the dog food. And that man, sitting in his car, is feeding the dogs; and those children are standing by the side waiting, so that if something is left they can eat it.
This is charity. And this man must be pocketing all the donations that are coming to him, because dogs cannot complain. They cannot say whether he comes every day or not, what kind of food is being given to them, whether it is edible or not, how much is being given, to how many dogs it is being given — dogs cannot report. It all depends on the man keeping the register: that he is feeding five hundred dogs, or one thousand dogs, and how much money is being spent per dog…. And he goes on collecting donations, and the government allows him to be a tax-exempt, charitable trust.
This world certainly needs to be completely renewed. All old values have to be said good-bye to, and new values have to be established. This is possible only by a religious rebelliousness, not ordinary rebelliousness. Never before has a concept like religious or spiritual rebelliousness ever existed.
I am giving you a totally new philosophy, absolutely fresh. Political rebels have existed, but spiritual rebelliousness can only come out of compassion and meditation. And unless it comes out of meditation and compassion it is not worth anything. But I hope… in spite of the darkness all around, I still hope that when the darkness is too much, the dawn will be very close.
Source – Osho Book “The Rebel”

Osho – All my sannyasins are rebels; no other kind of people can be my sannyasins

Question – BELOVED MASTER,
ARE YOUR SANNYASINS ALL REBELS?
IS IT TRUE THAT A REBEL IS BORN AND NOT MADE?
OR ARE WE BORN REBELS BUT TAMED AND CONDITIONED BY OUR SOCIETIES?

Osho – Jivan Mary, one who is not a rebel will not come close to me. The very fact that he comes close to me, becomes an initiate, is proof enough that he is a rebel. All my sannyasins are rebels; no other kind of people can be my sannyasins. Those who are not rebels are going to be against me, because whatever I am saying goes against the whole past of mankind — all its traditions, cultures, civilizations, religions.
Unless one is ready to disconnect himself from the past and the shadows of the dead, he cannot become a sannyasin; because my sannyas has no past, it has only future. It has no connections with the past, it is discontinuous with all that is old and dead. Its only concern is for the future growth of your being, your consciousness, your whole individuality.
That’s exactly the meaning of being a rebel: to live according to your own light, howsoever small, and find your way in the unknown future. Give all the opportunities, accept all the challenges of the unknown fearlessly, as if you are the first people on the earth.
The past is a burden, and if you are attached to the past you cannot move a single inch. You are burdened with a mountain, your potentiality is going to be crushed. That has been happening for centuries — people are living so burdened, so conditioned, that there is no possibility for them to be themselves. They are Christians, they are Hindus, they are Mohammedans, but they are not themselves.
My sannyasin does not belong to any ideology, to any philosophy, to any theology. He is pure of all that is rotten, he is pure of all that has passed; his eyes are fixed on the future. And he is seeking and searching his own growth without any fear of the crowd, the masses — which don’t have any individuality of their own. They are sheep, a crowd of sheep. My sannyasin is a rebel. He comes out of the crowd, stands alone like a lion, finds himself — his path, his dignity, his freedom.
You are also asking, “Is it true that a rebel is born, not made, or are we born rebels but tamed and conditioned by our societies?”
Jivan Mary, a rebel is born, not made. In fact, nothing that is significant in human life is manufactured, is made. It is all intrinsic, inborn — you bring it with your life into the world. But you are born in a society, in a crowd; and that becomes a calamity, because the people you are born among and the people you will be growing with have no respect for individuals, particularly for children. They think that their children are their possessions, and their whole effort is to fulfill their own incomplete ambitions through their children.
They are frustrated; they have been running after shadows, they have not been able to attain any fulfillment. Now their only desire is that what they have not been able to do, their children will do. At least there will be some satisfaction because their children are part of them, their blood — through their children they will live.
And this idea of living through children is immensely dangerous. It means you will not allow the child to be himself — he has to be somebody that you want him to be. And you cannot have any idea… there is no way to find out what the child was going to be if he were given freedom and support just to be himself. You help the child but you help the child with a condition, spoken or unspoken, that “You have to be the fulfillment of our desires, the representative of our longings, the completion of our ambitions.”
That’s why nobody is what he was meant by nature to be — he is somebody else. And you cannot be happy with being somebody other than yourself. You can pretend, but you are only playing a role imposed upon you; you are not being authentic and original. If you are a Catholic, can you think that if you had been left alone by your parents and the society, without any imposition to be a Catholic, you would have been a Catholic? Then the whole sky is open to you, to choose.
If you choose according to your own inclination, according to your own intuition… it is very strong in children but, slowly slowly, becomes weaker. The voices of the parents and the teachers, the society and the priest, become louder and louder. Now if you want to find out what is your voice, you will have to pass through a crowd of noises.
It is a tremendously beautiful experiment for meditators just to watch inside — whose voice is this? Sometimes it is your father, sometimes it is your mother, sometimes it is your grandfather, sometimes it is your teacher; and those voices are all different. Just one thing you will not be able to find easily — your own voice; it has been always suppressed. You have been told to listen to your elders, to listen to the priest, to listen to the teachers. You have never been told to listen to your own heart.
You are carrying a still, small voice of your own, unheard, and in the crowd of voices that have been imposed upon you, it is almost impossible to find it. First you will have to get rid of all those noises, attain a certain quality of silence, peace, serenity. Only then will it come, as a surprise, that you also have your own voice. It was always there like an undercurrent.
Unless you have found your natural inclination your life is going to be a long, long tragedy, from the cradle to the grave. The only people who have been blissful in the world are the people who have lived according to their own intuition and have rebelled against any effort by others to impose their ideas. Howsoever valuable those ideas may be, they are useless because they are not yours. The only significant idea is that which arises in you, grows in you, blossoms in you.
Jivan Mary, everybody is born a rebel because everybody is born to be an individual in his own right. Everybody is born not to be a part in a drama but to live an authentic life, not to be a mask but to be his original face. But no society till now has allowed people to be themselves. Once in a while a person has escaped — a Gautam Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Chuang Tzu, a Kabir. These people suffered all the condemnation of the society, but they found the joy of being themselves. All the condemnation of the society was nothing in comparison to the joy that they found. They suffered laughingly….
When al-Hillaj Mansoor was killed by the orthodox, the traditionalists, because he was saying things which were rebellious, almost a million people gathered to see this ugliest possible murder. The crucifixion of Jesus seems far more cultured, because al-Hillaj Mansoor was cut into pieces: his legs were cut off, his hands were cut off, his eyes were taken out — piece by piece. This was a torture perhaps no other man has ever gone through, but there was a smile on his face. Under all this inhumanity, barbarousness…
One of the men who was cutting off his hands could not resist the temptation to ask, “Why are you smiling? Even I am feeling immensely miserable, sad and guilty. But this is my duty, this is my job. Why are you smiling?”
And what Mansoor said is something to be remembered. He said, “I am smiling because you are killing somebody else; you are not killing me — that is beyond your capacity. I know my self, which no fire can burn and no sword can kill. You can cut the body… I am just smiling at the foolishness of you, and the emperor who has ordered this stupid act.”
Everybody is born a rebel, that’s why it is so easy to transform anybody who is still alive. Just a little understanding, a little encouragement, and he can be helped to drop his whole past and be reborn. Everybody can become a rebel.
A female gorilla was turning down all her male suitors. The zoo desperately needed some baby gorillas and the zookeeper was at a loss as to what to do about it. While driving home that evening, the keeper notices a hairy Italian man walking about without a shirt on, and pulls his car up alongside him.
“Hey,” he calls, “I will pay you five hundred dollars if you will come to the zoo tomorrow morning and make love to our female gorilla.”
“Vai a fanculo buddy,” says the offended Italian, “you have some nerve!” And he storms off.
At home that night he relates the incident to his wife, who throws up her hands and cries, “Mamma mia! We are so poor, we need-a the money. So tomorrow you-a go and make love-a to this gorilla, or don’t-a come home to-a mamma.”
The next morning, at the zoo, the Italian is about to climb into the gorilla’s cage when he turns to the zookeeper and says, “Look, I will make-a love to this-a gorilla on three conditions: First-a, I don’t-a have to kiss it. Second-a, I do it once. And third-a, when the kids are born you raise them as-a Catholics.”
Source – Osho Book “The Rebel”

Osho on Rebellion and Revolution – Rebellion is individual, nonviolent, peaceful

Question – Beloved Master, What is Rebellion? and What is the difference between reaction and the action of the rebellious man?
Osho – The first thing to be understood is the difference between rebellion and revolution. Revolution is an organized effort to change the society forcibly, violently. But the trouble is, you cannot change the society through violence, because it is violence that is the very life current of the society. That’s why all the revolutions have failed. And there is no possibility of any revolution succeeding, ever.
Rebellion is individual, nonviolent, peaceful. It is out of love. Rebellion is not against something, but for something. Revolution is against something, but not for something. Revolution is so much engaged in being against, it forgets for what all this fuss is being made. It is anger. But anger cannot create a better society. Rebellion is not oriented against the society, but is oriented towards a new man, a new humanity.
Revolution is fighting with the past.
Rebellion is meditating for the future.
I said rebellion is out of love, silence, understanding, compassion — all the qualities that make man divine. Revolution is based on all the qualities that make man again an animal. Because rebellion is individual, there is no need of any struggle, of any fight. The society will not even be bothered by one individual being different than others. But even single individuals meditating, loving, hoping for a new sunrise, can create the possibility of a new society. Their very presence will be enough to transform others. Their love cannot fail — love never fails. Their understanding, their intelligence, their compassion are bound to succeed.
But rebellion has not been tried. Revolution seems to be easier, because against such a big society you need a big organization. But the moment you become organized you become the same type of society. You become just a reflection of what you are opposing. You stand before a mirror: the reflection in the mirror is your reflection, although it is opposed to you.
So just being opposed does not mean that you are really different; the methods are the same. The old society depends on violence; the revolutionaries depend on violence. The old society depends on enslaving people; the revolutionaries depend on the same. The old society depends on beliefs; revolutionaries also depend on belief. It makes no difference whether your belief is in THE HOLY BIBLE or in DAS KAPITAL.
And one thing very significant to remember: if the revolutionaries are going to win they have to be more violent than the old society, more cunning, more clever, more political, more cruel; otherwise they cannot win. So, in fact, in the name of revolution more violence is becoming victorious, more cruelty is becoming victorious; more slavery, more submissiveness is demanded by the revolutionary party. You can see it happen in all the revolutions.
The Russian revolution has been the greatest revolution. The czars who ruled Russia were cruel, were violent — the very idea of ruling over somebody is violent. The communists dethroned the czar, but they could manage to do it only because they proved more violent. Nineteen members of the czar’s family were simply butchered, and one of the members, the youngest, was only a six-month-old child. He had not done any crime against anybody — for what was he being punished? Just because he belonged to the royal family? Was that his responsibility? They wanted to destroy the whole family so there would be no possibility of any royal blood of the czars in the future. But the people who did it certainly showed a heartlessness.
Joseph Stalin became the leader of the revolutionaries. Stalin was not his real name, “Stalin” was given to him by the people. It means “man of steel.” And certainly he proved to be a man of steel, with no heart. He killed almost one million people after the revolution. Just suspicion was enough; there was no need for any trial, for any investigation. The communist party suspects that somebody is against the revolution — there is no proof, but the man has to be immediately destroyed.
The Russian revolution has proved one thing absolutely: that czars were never so violent; they had never killed one million people. And the society was not so deeply enslaved — that’s why the communist revolution was possible. Now in Russia no revolution is possible, people are completely enslaved. Even to think against the status quo today is betraying the religion of communism. People are even afraid if they dream anything against the government. They don’t tell the dream to their wives, to their children, because nobody knows…. The system that came into force after the revolution is such that husbands are spying on their wives, wives are spying on their husbands, children are spying on their parents. Almost everybody is spying on everybody else. And these people are rewarded. If a child comes to the communist party office and informs that his parents have been saying something against the government, he is rewarded. He is sent to a better school, given a better scholarship. Of course, his parents disappear.
Now there is no possibility to revolt against the communist regime in Soviet Russia. No freedom of expression, no freedom of getting together, no freedom of thinking — is this revolution? It is going backwards. Rebellion is a spiritual phenomenon.
It is not against the society as such; it is simply the intelligence that shows that this society is dead, that this society is incapable of giving birth to a new human being, that it is spent, that it is almost on the verge of global suicide. It needs compassion; it does not need anger.
The rebel can do only one thing…. He is not going to organize, because the moment you organize you have to follow the same patterns as the society you are going to oppose; and you have to follow the same language, the same patterns, structures, that the society has practiced for so long.
There is an ancient Chinese saying: “To have a bad friend is not as bad as to have a bad enemy.” Looks strange, but it has great meaning in it — because if you have an enemy, then sooner or later you will have to follow his tactics and strategies to fight with him; there is no other way. If you want to be victorious you have to be far ahead of him in his own methods. Hence, I always say, friends you can choose without much consideration, but enemies have to be chosen with great consideration, because they are going to change your character.
The rebel has no enemy. He simply has a vision that the old is finished. It need not be fought against, it is dying itself. Fighting with it is to give it life. Just ignore it. It is already on the deathbed; it will die of its own accord. Don’t give it energy by fighting.
The rebel can do only one thing: he can transform himself into the new man, he can become his own vision. That is the only proof that his vision is not a dream. The rebel starts transforming his vision into a reality.
I want you all to be rebellious.
That’s why I don’t believe in organization. I don’t want you to be another religion, another ideology, because that will be simply a repetition of the old patterns. You can be together without any conditions, without any bondage, just out of sheer friendship; no ideology dominating you, but just pure love — because you are on the same path, discovering yourself, finding out whether the vision of a new man can become a reality or not. You can help each other, you can support each other, you can encourage each other.
There are moments when encouragement is needed, because to change — and to change totally — is not an easy job. Many times the mind wants to fall back into its old patterns, old habits; therefore, the commune. The commune is not an alternative society. It is not another organization: it is something totally new. It is a loving togetherness of fellow travelers who are all working on themselves. But five thousand people all working on themselves creates an atmosphere of great encouragement — you are not alone. And if five thousand people are trying, there is hope. You can see people ahead of you, you can see people behind you — on all the rungs of the ladder. That makes it clear that human beings just like you are carving the way, changing themselves. It becomes an individual challenge for you not to be a coward and fall back into old habits. You cannot fall back into old habits, because five thousand people are watching you and they are very optimistic about you. They have great hopes for you, they see that the sunrise is not far away.
Yes, it is very dark right now, but to find the light you need not go back. To find light you have to go forward. The darker the night, the closer is the morning; and a few have reached the morning. You can see the sunlight in their eyes, you can see the flowers of their being blossoming. You can feel the fragrance that is released. So it is only a question of a little more patience, a little more courage.
But rebellion remains individual. Rebels can live together; they can create an atmosphere, a milieu, a buddhafield where awakening becomes easier. But they are not organized, they are not bound to any belief. They are free individuals; out of their free choice they have joined these seekers of the sunrise.
You ask me, “What is the difference between reaction and action as far as the rebellious person is concerned?”
The rebellious person has no reaction; he has only action. The revolutionary has only reaction; he does not have any action. The difference is significant.
Just a few days ago I received a letter from an old woman who is the president of the Atheists’ Association of America. She must be the oldest atheist in the whole world, because I used to know in India one man, Gora, who was her follower, and he was old himself. She has opened, in many countries, associations for atheists.
On some television she must have listened to my words — that there is no God — and she was immensely happy. She wrote the letter to say, “You are certainly a man of great courage. Although I am very old, I would like to come and see you, meet you, talk to you.”
I told Hasya to write to her that she is welcome, but she must understand that I am not an atheist: “If she is coming here thinking that I am an atheist because I have declared there is no God, then she will be disillusioned. It is better to make it clear.”
To me, atheism is reaction, reaction against theism. There are people who believe in God, millions of people; a few people react to it, and they start disbelieving in God. This is a reaction. You can check it very easily by a simple method. If all the theists disappear, if there is no theism at all in the world, can atheists exist? They were secondary, they were simply a reaction. When there are no religions and nobody is saying there is God, what is the point of disbelieving in God? You will look a little silly. With the death of theism, atheism will die automatically. That means it was only a shadow, it was not a reality in itself. A reaction is a shadow.
When I say there is no God, I am not saying that I disbelieve in God; even for disbelief, God has to be. Whether you believe or disbelieve, that is your approach, but for both God is needed. For the theist he is needed, for the atheist he is needed. I am simply saying there is no God, has never been. All theists and all atheists are wrong. Those who believe are wrong, and those who disbelieve are wrong.
I don’t think that old woman will come. I would love her to come, because in her whole life she may not have met a man who is neither theist nor atheist. Because there is no God, there is no point in being either one. I think it is simply stupid: if there is no God, then a person wasting his whole life establishing atheist associations all over the world — this is sheer wastage of one’s life. If there is no God, then why bother? But no, this has become her whole life. But just denying, just disbelief cannot make anybody blissful.
And my statement that there is no God is an action, not a reaction. I am not speaking against anybody; I am simply giving expression to my own experience. I have searched for him within myself, and I have not found him.
I have found, instead, godliness.
I have found eternal consciousness.
I have found immortality.
I have found eternal light — but no God.
I don’t think this woman has ever thought of looking inwards. She is simply fighting with the theists. Those theists are idiots; in fighting with them you are bound to become an idiot. Reaction cannot take you farther than those you are reacting against.
The revolutionary is reactionary. He is against the society; he is against its economic structure, he is against its political way. He is against so many things — his whole life is negative. It depends on being against this, against that, against thousands of things — there are so many no’s in his life. But you cannot live a life of benediction, bliss, out of thousands of no’s.
A single yes is far more powerful than a thousand no’s. The no is empty. It shows your anger, it shows your violence, it shows your destructiveness, but it does not show that you have anything creative that you are going to contribute to life and existence.
Action means, something not related to anything but coming out of your own silence, out of your own spontaneity. The rebel knows no reaction, he knows action. Action means yes. The rebel creates; he gives birth to himself. He becomes a new man, he heralds a new age. He opens himself to all possibilities, he allows himself unknown dimensions. Not against anybody — it is simply a growth, just like a rosebush is growing. Do you think it is growing against the rocks? Do you think it is growing against anybody? It is growing, not as a reaction; it is growing because growth is its nature. It is growing to blossom, to bring its potential to actuality. It is a process of actualization.
Action means the process of actualization. Reaction is simply hate, anger, jealousy, violence, destructiveness. Those are not the qualities to be valued. So, in my vision, the revolutionary has no value, only the rebel. And you can see…. Socrates is not a revolutionary, he is a rebel. Gautam Buddha is not a revolutionary, he is a rebel. Heraclitus is not a revolutionary, he is a rebel. And these are the greatest heights humanity has reached.
Revolutionaries are on the same ground as those whom they are opposing. They have to be on the same ground to fight with them. The rebel is not fighting against anybody. The rebel is making himself free so that he can grow, grow to his own destiny. The rebel has a beauty; the revolutionary is a political, social criminal. The rebel is the only holy man, he is sacred.
But the moment you start organizing rebellion you change its character, it becomes revolution. It is no longer the same thing. That’s why I had to insist again and again…. The tendency to organize is very deep rooted, because it is millions of years old. And to be alone needs guts.
To be alone… but you can be together with people who are also trying to be alone. Your togetherness is just a friendship of two fellow travelers. There are no conditions. It does not make you a Christian, a Hindu, a Buddhist. You remain yourself, the other remains himself.
And this is the only respect expected of sannyasins: do not destroy the dignity of the other person. He is as valuable in existence as you are. There is no need to impose your ideas on anybody. Who are you? What authority have you got to impose your ideas on others? You can share, you can tell, you can expose your heart. And if the other feels that something falls in tune with him, and chooses it, it is his decision, not your imposition.
Revolutionaries are trying to impose their ideas on others. They are doing the same thing as the old religions have been doing. That’s why I categorize communism as one of the religions; there is no difference. It does not matter that communism does not believe in God, because there are older religions which do not believe in God: Buddhism does not believe in God, Jainism does not believe in God. So that is not a problem. A religion is something that you try to impose on others. It is an effort to convert people, it is always missionary.
A rebel is never a missionary, he is always a friend. He can invite you to his innermost being and, if you see something that suits you, that is helpful to you, that is going to nourish you, make your search easier, you can choose it. But it is out of your freedom — nobody is converting you.
That’s how it should be in the commune. Whatever I say to you, you need not believe it. You have just to be available to it, so that you can decide. The decision has to be yours. And if it suits you, suddenly if it rings a bell in your heart, then I am no longer responsible for it: the bell is ringing in your heart. But if it doesn’t suit you, my love for you remains the same, because it is not based on converting you.
And, in fact, each individual has to be unique. That is the prerogative of human beings — to be unique. And all the religions, all the political ideologies, they have all tried to destroy that privilege. I want to encourage your privilege. On no account should your individuality be interfered with. Your freedom is absolute, and the highest value.
Source – Osho Book “From Bondage to Freedom”

Osho – What is peace for the rebellious man?

Question – Beloved Master, What is peace for the rebellious man?
Osho – Raso, peace is, for the rebellious man, his very light. It is his very aroma, his fragrance, the harmony of his heart, his at-oneness with existence. All conflicts of the mind are just memories of the past. The mind is no longer divided, split or schizophrenic. The mind has become an organic unity.
The ordinary man who has not tasted rebellion or religion — which to me are equivalent — is a house divided against himself. He is continuously fighting within and without. He is fighting for money, for power, for prestige, for respectability. His outside life is nothing but power politics. It is a continuous, ongoing warfare that ceases only when he stops breathing.
The inner scene is not much different either, because the outer and the inner cannot be much different. They are part of one individual — the outside and the inside. Inside he is struggling against nature — his own nature, his own instincts, which some so-called wise men have condemned. He is blindly following their condemnation without any understanding of his own. Fighting with his own nature, he becomes crippled.
The man who is fighting against his instincts — that is his body — is bound to fight against his intuition, which is his very soul. The man who cannot find peace with his body cannot hope to find peace with his soul, because to find peace with the body is simple; to find peace with the soul is more subtle, more invisible.
Man is fighting with his full force against every inclination that existence has given to him — against his love, against his longing for truth — because the traditions go on teaching him, “You need not search for truth; it has already been found. You simply believe in it.”
From your side, any search is a sign of revolt. You simply have faith — faith in Jesus Christ, faith in Mahavira, faith in Gautam Buddha — but never faith in yourself. All the religions are agreed on one point: that you should not trust yourself. You should be constantly conscious and alert against yourself. They have made you an enemy of yourself; hence, every moment a subtle underground struggle and conflict goes on within you. There is neither peace inside, nor is there peace outside.
Yes, sometimes you say, “I am living peacefully,” and sometimes you say, “I am feeling very upset.” But the difference between your peace and your being upset is not of quality but only of quantity, of degrees. What you call peace is a cold war. You are tired, exhausted; there is a limit to everything. You need a little rest to be ready to start the old game again. So sometimes you are in a state of cold war within and without, and sometimes you are in a hot war within and without. But the war continues; whether it is cold or hot makes no difference.
You are never at peace, you cannot be. You have not prepared the ground for the flowers of peace to blossom. You don’t deserve it. Although you have the potential, although you could be worthy, you are not worthy — and remember the difference. It is within your hands, it is within your reach, but you have not even looked at it. You are looking away from it, at everything that disturbs it.
Diogenes, one of the most peaceful men the world has known, had asked Alexander the Great, who had come to see him, “Where are you going? What is your goal? What do you really want? For months I have seen all these armies passing by, and I go on wondering what could be the purpose of it all.” And Alexander said, “I want to conquer the world.”
Diogenes said, “Agreed, so then you have conquered the world, it is accepted — then what?”
Alexander felt a little embarrassed. Nobody has asked such a question in such a manner. But still he said politely, “Then I will relax.”
Diogenes laughed a belly laugh; the whole valley resounded with his laughter in the early morning. He looked at his dog — he had only one companion, a dog; they used to live together, they lived their whole life together. He looked at the dog and said, “Have you listened? Do you understand?” And Alexander could not believe that the dog nodded his head showing, “Yes, I understand.”
Alexander said, “I am amazed. What does he mean by nodding his head that he understands?”
Diogenes said, “The whole existence understands that if you really want to relax, who is preventing you? Why waste time in conquering the world? You are talking as if to relax — to be peaceful, to be meditative, to be silent, to enjoy the morning sun and the cool breeze — one first needs to conquer the whole world. Then peace will be very difficult. What about us poor people who have not conquered a single thing, who do not possess a single thing? But I am already relaxed, I am at peace; I am enjoying this moment to its fullest. And we have enough space” — there was the whole bank of a river, a wild river.
He said, “You can take any place… you choose. Here there is no question of conquering or invading. If you want this place where I am lying down, I can move a little, you can take it. If you want my dog’s place he can move, he is very understanding; he is no ordinary dog, he is a dog who has come to experience peace. That’s our bondage, our friendship, our love, our brotherliness. I don’t like to be in crowds of men because they don’t understand a thing. I like my dog, he is so understanding.” And the dog really moved away, wagging his tail and welcoming Alexander, “You can take this place.”
Alexander was never in such a difficult position. How to get out from there? — because the logic of Diogenes was absolutely clear. If you want peace, relaxation, serenity, start now! Conquering the whole world is not a necessary condition for it… not even an unnecessary condition.
We are doing everything to disturb ourselves by our greed, our lust, our desire for more and more, our non-ending ambition to be at the top. Then what will you do at the top? What did Edmund Hillary do on Everest? He just looked stupid and embarrassed, standing alone on that peak for no reason at all. He had risked his life, knowing well hundreds of people had died before in the same effort; and all knew perfectly well there was nothing to be found — it is just eternal snow. But strange are the ways of man, strange is his craziness.
Just watch your desires, your longings, your ambitions and you will be able to see who is creating disturbances; otherwise peace is your nature… for nine months in the mother’s womb you were in eternal peace. Peace is the stuff the whole existence is made of. It is only the stupidity of man that has disturbed everything around him, within him. And now he is looking for peace.
You are asking me, Raso, “What is peace for the rebellious man?”
Peace has only one taste, utterly delicious — the ultimate taste of existence itself. You just have to drop all that is disturbing, all that creates turmoil, all that creates tension, anxiety, anguish; you don’t have to achieve peace — remember.
Peace is already there deep inside you. Peace is what you are made of. It is your very consciousness, your very being. But such is the utter insanity of men that they even start making peace their ambition, they start desiring peace. And this is the greatest dilemma for every man who is in search of himself. He has to understand the contradiction. You cannot desire peace, because desire is the disturbance. What you desire does not matter. You may desire peace or you may desire power, you may desire money or you may desire meditation, it doesn’t matter — because the nature of desire is always the same. It is a tension, its goal is in the future, and peace is in the present.
Peace is not a tension. Peace is a non-tense, relaxed state of let go. There is not even the ambition of peace. There is no desire, no ambition, because one has understood the simple arithmetic — that every desire creates conflict, every ambition takes you away from yourself. The moment you drop all your desires and all your ambitions, you suddenly find you are sitting in peace within the temple of your being.
To describe our situation I will tell you a few stories: No matter which girl he brings home, Tom finds disapproval from his mother. He asks his friend for advice. “Find a girl just like your mother, then she is bound to like her,” advises his friend.
So, after much searching, Tom finally finds the girl. “Just like you said,” he tells his friend. “She talks, dresses, and even looks like my mother, and just like you said, my mother liked her.”
“So,” asks his friend, “what’s happening?”
“Nothing,” says Tom, “my father hates her!”
How to find peace? If you find a woman just like your mother, it is absolutely certain your father will hate her, and he will veto your marriage.
“Will my husband be permitted to stay with me during the delivery?” Mary asked the doctor in the maternity ward.
“Ah, yes,” replied the doctor, “I also believe the father of the child should be present at its birth.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” said Mary, “he and my husband don’t get along too well together.”
Life is such a ridiculous drama. It will be simply a miracle if you can find anywhere something even resembling a faraway echo of peace.
Several members of the Golden Age Club were being asked, “Why do you think God has permitted you to reach the age of ninety-five?”
Without hesitation one wealthy old lady said, “To test the patience of my relatives.”
All old people are doing that everywhere in every family, just testing the peace of their relatives.
Hymie Goldberg looked very sad; his wife was sick, so he called the doctor. After examining Mrs. Goldberg, the doctor said to Hymie, “I am afraid it is bad news: your wife has only a few hours to live. I hope you understand there is nothing more to be done. Don’t let yourself suffer.”
“It is all right, doc,” said Goldberg, “I have suffered for forty years, I can suffer a few more hours. It is not a big problem.”
People who are living together are suffering together. People are in love with each other or in hate with each other. The findings of psychologists are that couples are nothing but intimate enemies. They both are sabotaging each other’s lives, pulling at each other’s legs, not allowing a single moment of peace. They are bringing up a thousand and one questions, and each question finally becomes a fight.
The woman has a totally different kind of argumentation. She does not follow Aristotle; nobody knows whom she follows, what kind of logic she has, at what point she will suddenly start crying and weeping and tears will be coming. The man thinks, “My God, who would have thought?… I have simply given a rational answer, now what to do?”
He has been reading books and consulting libraries about how to have a good married life, and he knows every argument. But one knows not what kind of logic this woman follows. Suddenly she starts shouting, throwing things — which is not at all logical. No book of logic suggests that you break plates and cups and saucers. But logic or not, seeing that the whole house is in an earthquake, it is better to accept defeat.
It is not a question of logical victory; victory is always for the woman. You can have logic, she will have victory. This is a simple division. So the poor husband has the logic. Every morning with his umbrella by his side, keeping his logic, he goes to the office… just wondering if perhaps poets are right, that nobody understands the nature of women. In fact, there is nothing to understand. It is so simple: she does not know logic — nothing else! So she creates a nuisance. If you cannot bring a sensible argument, the best way is to shout and create a nuisance — as much as you can.
One of my professors… he was a professor of law and a very famous professor. I had nothing to do with his classes, but once in a while he used to invite me. He loved to argue, and I used to say to him, “Listen, I don’t know law at all. I can argue because I know logic, but my logic will not be in legal jargon. I don’t know legal jargon.”
He said, “Still, you come. Without you I don’t enjoy.”
Once a week he used to have a discussion class, and one day he said, “I shall tell you the secret of the great legal experts of the world. If you have the law in your favor, be very polite to the judge, be very polite to the court, just put your case in simple legal form. The law is in your favor — there is no need to do anything else.
“But if you are suspicious, you don’t know whether the law is in your favor or not and you are sitting on the fence — the camel can sit on either side — then don’t go alone. Let your secretary and your assistant carry big books of law — as big as possible.
“Make a great impression in the court, `Here comes a great expert;’ and quote so fast that even the judge cannot catch what you are talking about. Talking fast and not giving a chance to anybody else, and quoting… and don’t be worried whether you are quoting from right books or wrong books, or whether you are just quoting from the page you are opening before you. Nothing matters! You simply create the impression of a great expert, on the tip of whose tongue all the books are just ready.
“You need not even look at the book to find the page. Quote pages, quote paragraphs; say `on the seventeenth line, on the ninety-seventh page,’ but don’t give anybody a chance to see — you go on ahead. Before they can see the ninety-seventh page, you have moved so fast that they have to look at other pages. By the time they are looking at other pages, you have gone far ahead. Create such a cyclone of words that the judge is overwhelmed and completely forgets what the case is.
“And if you are certain that you are going to be defeated, that the law is absolutely and clearly against you, don’t be worried! Go with dignity, and shout as loudly as you can. And as you are shouting, and the whole court is resounding with your shouts, go on hitting the table, throwing the books. You are going to be defeated anyway, so create as much nuisance as possible, because sense is not in your favor — only nonsense can be in your favor!
“Make the judge afraid; throw books in such a way that they simply pass by the side of the judge. Don’t be worried about contempt of the court or anything, don’t listen. Victory is going to be yours — victory at all costs.
“Just watch the situation. If the law is favorable, then be logical. If the law is fifty-fifty, then create as much jargon and scholarship as possible. If the law is one hundred percent against you and defeat is absolutely certain, you have nothing to lose; then jump and shout and make the court almost a wrestling ground. Make the judge feel that somehow the case has to be finished. No more hearings, no postponement, today it has to be fixed because this man can hit, he is throwing books this way and that way… at the most, contempt of court — who cares?
“In contempt of court, if you are taken out of the court — go shouting! And when you are brought in, come in shouting. Even if you are taken out by the armed guards three times in a single day for contempt of court, go out shouting, come in shouting. But make the judge feel that you are not the person to accept defeat. Murder may happen, but defeat is not possible. You may commit suicide then and there, but defeat cannot be accepted.”
The poets who have been saying that nobody understands the nature of women are just idiots, nothing else. Women don’t know logic, but they know one thing — that the essential thing is not logic, the essential thing is victory. So the man goes on insisting on logical argument, and the woman goes on insisting on being victorious. She does not care about your logical arguments. But a man who is trying to be logical and sensible is bound to be afraid of many things — what will the neighbors think, what if the children wake up? So he is trying to calm the woman down, but she will calm down only if victory is hers; otherwise she will put everything at stake. But the man has to think about his prestige in the neighborhood, about his job.
(A WOMAN WHO IS PRESENT AT THE DISCOURSE STARTS LAUGHING — A VERY GUTSY LAUGHTER.)
Now listen to this woman… why does she laugh? She must have remembered similar incidents. Every woman knows, more or less, but she must have seen a great drama!
A rebellious man first tries to understand the causes that are not allowing his natural flowering. This basic thing has to be remembered: peace is not a goal, peace is your intrinsic nature. So whatever is preventing your natural growth, that has to be dropped. If it is anger, jealousy, greed, ambition, desiring, then they are not worth anything. You are wasting a tremendous opportunity of finding an inexhaustible treasure of blessings, for stupid things which don’t have any significance. Drop them! It is not renunciation, it is simply understanding. It is not becoming a monk or an ascetic. It is simply becoming a more conscious man.
The more conscious you are, the more peace will arise within the silences of your own heart. It has always been there, there was just no bridge between you and it. And you were running all around, all over the world, searching for it everywhere — except in your own house.
Source – Osho Book “The Rebel”

Osho on Bakunin Philosophy of Anarchism

Mikhail Bakunin

Question – Beloved Master, What is the difference between the individual anarchism of bakunin and the rebel of your vision?
Osho – Azima, I love Bakunin and his philosophy of anarchism, but he too, is an impractical, unpragmatic philosopher. He simply goes on praising the beauties of anarchism: no government, no armies, no police, no courts. And I absolutely agree with him. But he had no idea and no plan for how this dream could be made into a reality.
Looking at man, you will need the government; looking at man, you will need the police. Otherwise there will be a multiplication of murders, rapes, thefts… life will be a chaos. Anarchism would not come, only a chaos. People would start making gangs, those gangs would exploit the weaker people and life would not become better, it would become worse.
Bakunin’s anarchism is a utopia, a great dream. I don’t talk about anarchism. My own understanding is if we can transform man, if we can bring more and more people to meditation, if we can make more and more people unrepressed, living an authentic, natural life, sharing their love, having a great compassion for everything living, a reverence for life itself….
These individual revolutionaries, these individual rebels are not just political rebels, they are also rebelling against all the past conditionings. Mostly they are religious rebels; they are finding their own center of being. There are more and more people who are becoming individuals who can rejoice, and who are not going to betray the earth; who are not in favor of any unnatural way of life preached by all the religions. If these individuals spread around the world like a wildfire, then anarchism will be a by-product, not the goal.
For Bakunin it is the goal. He hates governments so much — and he is perfectly right in his hate, because governments have been doing so much harm to the individuality of people. He is against all laws, courts and judges, because these are not to protect justice, not to protect the weak, not to protect the victim — they are there to protect the power, the establishment, the rich. Behind the name of justice, they are enacting a tremendous conspiracy against man.
And Bakunin has no idea why men become rapists, he is not a psychologist. He is a great philosopher of anarchism. The future will owe tremendous respect to people like Bakunin, Bukharin, Tolstoy, Camus, because although they were not very scientific thinkers at least they created the idea. Without providing the foundation, they started talking about the temple.
My whole effort is not to bother about the temple but to make a great foundation; then, to raise the temple is not difficult. Anarchism will be a by-product of a society which is free from religions and religious superstitions; which is psychologically healthy, non-repressive, which is spiritually healthy, not schizophrenic, which knows the beauties of the outside world and also the inner treasures of consciousness, awareness. Unless these people exist first, anarchism is not possible; it can come only as a by-product.
In America, they are so afraid of the anarchist that when they interviewed me for my immigration into America, this was also a question, that I should commit, in writing, that I am not an anarchist. I said to the man who was doing the interview, “I am not an anarchist of the category of Bakunin, Bukharin and Tolstoy, but I have my own anarchism. And you need not be afraid about it, because anarchism is not my goal; my goal is to create individual rebels.”
The idea of rebellion is not new, but the idea of rebellion combined with enlightenment is absolutely new — it is my contribution. And if we can make the majority of humanity more conscious, more aware, with a few individuals reaching to the highest peak of enlightenment, then their rebellion will bring anarchism just like a shadow, following on its own accord.
Source – Osho Book “The Rebel”

Osho on Rebellion and Revolution – Religion is rebellion, and if it is not rebellion, then it is not religion.

Osho – Deva means divine, vidroha means rebellion – divine rebellion. Religion is rebellion, and if it is not rebellion, then it is not religion. It is never conformity, it is never convention. Christ is religious because he is a rebel. Christianity is not religion because it is nothing but conformity. Buddha is a rebel, but Buddhism is not.
And only a person can be a rebel, only the individual has the capacity to attain to that. The collectivity, the mob, the crowd, can never be rebellious. The very nature, the very psychology of the mob is to conform, to compromise. To the peaks of rebellion only individuals can rise and soar. Whenever the mob goes into rebellion, it is not rebellion but revolution.
Revolution means changing one slavery for another, changing one kind of structure for another structure, moving from one conditioning to another conditioning – from a capitalist society to a communist society, or from a communist society to a fascist society. But the structure that comes in is only different in the name – just the formal and the superficial differs; the innermost core of structure remains the same.
A Christian can be a Hindu, a Hindu can be a Buddhist, a Buddhist can become a Communist, but it makes no difference. Only labels are changed – the content remains the same: conformity. The mob can never be rebellious, only the individual.
Revolution is nothing compared to rebellion. Rebellion means: one simply sees the point, that by conforming one is losing one’s soul. One gets out of it, with no grudge. It is not a reaction. If it is a reaction then you are still dominated by it. If you hate it, you are not rebellious, because hate dominates as much as love. If somebody hates this society, then he is bound to become a revolutionary but not a rebel. He will start thinking in terms of a contrary society, of another order, of another structure, of another kind of morality.
A rebel is one who does not react against the society, who understands the whole game of it and simply slips out of it. It becomes irrelevant to him. He is not against it. And that is the beauty of rebellion: it is freedom. The revolutionary is not free. He is constantly fighting with something – how can he be free? He is constantly reacting against something – how can there be freedom in reaction?
Freedom means understanding. One has understood the game, and seeing that this is the way that the soul is prevented from growing, the way one is not allowed to be oneself, one simply gets out of it with no scar on the soul. One forgives and forgets and remains without any clinging to the society in the name of love or in the name of hate. Society has simply disappeared for the rebel. He may live in the world or he may go out of the world but he belongs to it no more; he is an outsider.
And I am not saying that he will not follow the ordinary formalities of the society. Walking on the road he will keep to the left, but he knows it is just a game, and he knows that to live with so many people, a few rules have to be followed, but it has no ultimacy to it. He has great understanding. The revolutionary has no understanding at all. He is angry. Remember: in anger understanding is not possible. The rebel, rebellion, rebelliousness, grow out of great understanding, not out of anger. And that is the very core of religion.
From this moment think more of yourself as an individual rather than as a Christian, Hindu, German, Japanese, Catholic, Protestant. Think as an individual, not belonging to any collectivity, not belonging to any mob, not belonging to any crowd. Then one starts living on one’s own, and life takes on a different dimension. Then you can soar as high as you want.
With the crowd you have to move with the crowd, and it is very slow. It takes thousands of years to move a single inch. It is such a gradual process, and the crowd moves with such resistance that the very joy of movement is destroyed. The individual is free to go deep into himself, to go deep into beauty, to go deep into love. There is nobody holding him back. Think of yourself as alone, and in aloneness there is great benediction.
Source – Osho Book “Don’t Look Before You Leap”

Osho – It is possible to be a rebel without being enlightened

Question – Beloved Master, What is the difference between the rebel and the enlightened one? Is it possible to be a real rebel without being enlightened?
Osho – Anand Rupen, it is possible to be a rebel without being enlightened. It is also possible to be enlightened without being a rebel. But both will be half-hearted; something will be missing, something which is very essential. It will be almost like a corpse – the soul is missing. A rebel who is not enlightened is living in blindness, unconsciousness, darkness. He does not know what is right and what is not right – he has no clarity of vision. He cannot open up other people’s hearts for the birth of a new humanity – he himself is not born yet. His rebelliousness is nothing but a kind of thinking in his mind.
He is a revolutionary thinker, he is a philosopher, but he does not know exactly what will end this night, and how we are going to bring the dawn; how the sun will rise, how the birds will sing again and the flowers will open. But he can dream, he can think. In the past there have been many philosophers who have been accepted as rebels, great rebels, but nothing has come out of them except some beautiful fragments of thoughts – unconnected, unscientific, non-pragmatic, impossible to be transformed into reality.
You must have heard the definition of a philosopher: a blind man, on a dark night, in an unlit house, searching for a black cat which is not there. But the trouble does not end here – there are many who have found it! They gave descriptions of the black cat, and because nobody else has seen it, you cannot refute them either. They don’t have any evidence – but neither have you! So whatever these blind philosophers go on saying is accepted without being refuted.
It is not refuted on other accounts either – because the establishment is not worried about these rebels and their rebellious thinking. They know perfectly well that their thoughts are nothing but soap bubbles; in their deep sleep, they have been chattering.
Mick and Joe are returning home from a tour of some vineyards in Italy, where they have been generously entertained by their hosts. ”Mick, are we near the city yet?” asks Joe.
”Yes,” answers Mick, ”we must be. We are knocking down more people.”
”Drive slower, then,” says Joe.
”What do you mean, drive slower?” says Mick. ”You are driving.”
A rebel who is not enlightened is a rebel who is blind – not only blind, but also drunk – and his rebelliousness is a kind of reaction. That is the original meaning of the word ‘rebel’ – fighting against something, fighting back. He can see that something is wrong, something has to be destroyed. His life is not free, so there must be chains on his feet, handcuffs on his hands, and they must be broken; he has to free himself. But these are all assumptions.
One thing is certain: he knows misery, he knows suffering. He knows that his humanity has been reduced to almost the same level as animals; that his pride has been destroyed, his dignity has been completely erased. He is aware at least of what has been taken away from him and he starts fighting against it. His rebelliousness is a reaction, negative. It is fighting against something, not fighting for something.
I would like to add to the meaning of ‘rebel’ a positive side too, which is not there in the dictionaries. The dictionaries are all, without exception, giving only one meaning: fighting back, fighting against. But what is the use of fighting back and fighting against, if you don’t have a clear perception – for what? If you don’t have a vision of the future, and a better future with more rejoicing, then there is no point in unnecessarily fighting. But the rebel who is not enlightened will remain negative in his approach; hence he will remain half.
The enlightened man who is not a rebel is, in the same way, also half. He knows what has to be achieved, he knows the potential of man, he knows the faraway distant glories possible to humanity. But he is not ready to fight against the existing society, the existing slavery, all the obstacles and hindrances that are between the future and the present, between the old man and the new man. This kind of enlightened man has existed, and he was worshipped – worshipped by the old people, traditional and orthodox, conventional and rooted in the ancient heritage.
This enlightened man has a vision of a better future, of a better man. But he has not the guts to fight for it – to fight against the traditional, conventional structure of society and the old mind, which is conditioned and rotten – because he lives on their charity, he lives on their respect, honor and worship. He is not courageous enough to renounce all the respectability that they are bestowing upon him; to forget being called a saint and a sage by the rotten old past. He cannot just be a nobody, condemned, perhaps crucified, but fighting against what is wrong, fighting for that which is right and will be a blessing to all.
So both have been there: the unenlightened rebel and the wise man, enlightened but not rebellious. I want you to understand it very clearly that unless a man is both enlightened and rebellious simultaneously, he is not whole. He is incomplete, he is not entire; something is missing. He is not rich, not as rich as he could have been if there were nothing missing in him.
My conception of the enlightened man is that of a rebellious, totally rebellious man. To me rebelliousness and enlightenment have become almost a simultaneous phenomenon, a harmonious unity, an organic whole. Hence I say unto you that I am bringing into the world a new man – a new rebel and a new enlightened being both together in a single person, in each individual. This synthesis has become absolutely necessary.
The past has seen a Gautam Buddha, utterly enlightened but not rebellious. That’s why he was not crucified but worshipped, even by kings, emperors, learned people of his century. There was no fear in the establishment of those days that Gautam Buddha was a danger to them.
I have talked about Bakunin, Bukharin, Camus. All these are rebellious thinkers, but unenlightened. The society has not crucified them either. Society knows that their words are impotent, that they cannot ignite a wildfire in the hearts of humanity. People will read their books as entertainment; more than that is not possible as far as their writings are concerned. Hence, the society has not only tolerated them but respected them, rewarded them with great prizes.
My rebel will be not only a philosopher, he will be an experienced, awakened being. His very presence will threaten all the establishments of the world. His presence will be a challenge to all that enslaves man and destroys his spirit. His presence will become a great fear in all those who are immensely powerful, but know perfectly well that their power depends on the exploitation of men, on keeping man retarded, on destroying man’s intelligence, on not allowing man to have his own individuality, his own original face. Just a few rebellious enlightened people around the world and all
the thrones of power will start shaking.
I can see not only one Jesus on the cross, I can see thousands of Jesuses on the cross. But their death will be the resurrection of a new humanity, a new consciousness all over the world. Their life will be a tremendous contribution to beautify this world, and their death will also be an even greater contribution: to give man back his dignity, his humanity, his spirituality. We need thousands of crosses, and thousands of Jesuses hanging on those crosses. Only then the sleeping humanity may perhaps feel that it is time to get up and do something.
Source – Osho Book “The Rebel”