Exploite

 

 

First: to know oneself is the most difficult thing. It should not be so; it should be just the opposite, the simplest thing. But for many reasons it is not. It has become so complicated and you have invested so much in self-ignorance that it seems almost impossible to turn back, to return to the source, to encounter oneself.

 

Your whole life, as approved by society, state, church, is based on self-ignorance. You live without knowing yourself because society doesn’t want you to know yourself. It is dangerous for society. A man who knows himself is bound to be rebellious.

 

Knowledge is the greatest rebellion – I mean self-knowledge, not knowledge gathered through scriptures. Not the knowledge found in the universities, but knowledge that happens when you encounter your own being; when you come to yourself in your total nudity, naked; when you see yourself as God sees you, not as society would like to see you; when you see your natural being in its total wild bloom – not a civilized phenomenon, conditioned, cultured, polished.

 

Society is concerned with making a robot out of you because it is helpful ? not a revolutionary. It is easy to dominate a robot; it is almost impossible to dominate a man of self-knowledge. How can you dominate a Jesus? How can you dominate a Buddha or a Heraclitus? He will not yield, he will not follow dictates. He will move through his own being. He will be like the wind, like the clouds; he will move like the rivers. He will be wild – of course beautiful, natural, but dangerous to the false society. He will not fit. Unless we create a natural society in the world, a Buddha is always going to remain a misfit, a Jesus is bound to be crucified.

 

Society wants to dominate; the privileged classes want to dominate, to oppress, to exploit. They would like you to remain completely unaware of yourself. This is the first difficulty. And one has to be born in a society. Parents, teachers, priests are all part of society. Society is everywhere, all around you. How to escape? It seems really impossible. How to find a door back to nature? You are enclosed from every side.

 

The second difficulty comes from your own self because you would also like to oppress, to dominate; you would also like to possess, to be powerful. A man of self-knowledge cannot be made a slave, and he cannot make a slave of anyone else either. You cannot oppress a man of knowledge, and a man of knowledge cannot oppress anyone. He cannot be dominated and he will not dominate. Domination simply disappears from that dimension. You cannot possess him and he will not possess anyone. He will be free and will help others to be free. This is an even deeper difficulty than the first. You can avoid society, but how to avoid your own ego? You are afraid. A man of knowledge simply doesn’t think in terms of possession, domination, power. He is innocent like a child. He would like to live totally free, and he would also like others to live totally free.

 

This man will be a freedom here in your world of slavery. Wouldn’t you not like to be exploited? You will say, “Yes,” you wouldn’t like to be exploited. Wouldn’t you not like to be made a prisoner? You will say “Yes,” you wouldn’t like to be made a prisoner. But would you like the other thing: not to make a prisoner of anyone else, not to dominate, not to oppress and exploit? Not to kill the spirit, or make a person a thing? That is difficult. And remember, if you want to dominate, you will be dominated. If you want to exploit, you will be exploited. If you want someone else to be a slave for you, you will be enslaved. They are both aspects of the same coin. This is the difficulty in self-knowledge; otherwise, self-knowledge should be the simplest thing, the easiest. There shouldn’t be any need to make any effort.

 

Effort is needed for these two things; they are the barriers. Just watch and see these two barriers, and start by dropping your own. First stop dominating, possessing, exploiting, and suddenly you will become capable of getting out of the trap of society.

 

The ego is the problem; that’s why you cannot know yourself. The ego gives you certain false images of yourself, and if you carry those images for a long time, you become afraid. The fear is that if your image falls, your identity will be broken. You create a false face and become afraid; if this false face falls, who will you be? You will go mad. You have invested too much in it. Everyone thinks about himself in such lofty terms, in such false terms; nobody agrees with him, nobody approves, but then your ego thinks that everyone is wrong.

 

-Osho, “The Hidden Harmony, #1”