Dropout
Remember always, rebelliousness is the very substance of religion. And there is no other beauty in the world, no greater ecstasy than to be a rebel. You have to understand the word. I don't mean that by being a rebel you have to be a revolutionary, no.
A revolutionary is again in the same trap. He is trying to change the society. He is concerned with the society and the stale. A revolutionary may be against this society, but he is not against society as such. A revolutionary is against this society and wants to create another society of his own imagination -- his own utopia -- but he is not against society.
A rebel is a dropout. He does not bother about this society or any other society. He knows all societies will be imprisonments. At the most, they can be tolerated -- that's all.
There is no possibility of any society which will be really free. The society cannot be free. No revolution is going to succeed; all revolutions have failed. And those who know -- they know that revolution as such is not possible.
To change the crowd is not possible because the crowd doesn't have any heart. To change the structure is not possible because people cling to structure. They can change it if you give them another structure. They can change this structure for another.
A capitalist society can become a socialist society. A socialist society can become a communist society. A communist society can become a fascist society. They can change structure, they can change their presence, they can change their slavery. But they cannot be free. A crowd is afraid to be free. It clings. It wants to belong.
The inner emptiness forces everybody to belong to somebody, to something -- to some dogma, to some party, to some nation, to some philosophy, to some church. Then one feels: 'I am not alone.'
Freedom is the capacity to be alone. And when you are infinitely alone, a purity, an innocence is achieved. That purity is religiousness.
A rebel is one who has dropped all hope of social revolution. A rebel is one who knows that society will always remain the same. Revolution will change the outer form but deep down it will remain the same.
Only the individual can change, only the individual can become a Buddha. The society can never become enlightened. All societies will remain barbarous, crude, primitive. Only individuals can reach to that height -- the peakest peak -- of being totally alone, totally silent, totally one with existence.
Be rebellious. And don't mistake revolution for rebellion. Revolution is the game of society. Rebellion is the insight that the society is going to follow its own rotten, beaten path.
You drop out -- I am not saying that you escape from it. That dropping out is an inward phenomenon. You remain in it, but you are no more of it. You don't belong to it. On the surface you go on.
You go to the market, you go to the office, to the factory. You fulfill things, but deep down, you are no more part of it. You become a lotus flower; the water of the society does not touch you. This is what I mean by a dropout.
I don't mean a hippie, because the hippie will come back sooner or later. He will have to come back. That's why there are not old hippies -- only young people. By the time they reach thirty, they are going back to the establishment; then they become afraid. By the time they reach thirty, they get married, they have children. Now, what to do? They move back to the establishment. Now their children will become hippies, but they themselves become squares.
Even when hippies or others drop out of the society, they create their own society. Then they start belonging to THAT society.
If you are a hippie and you don't have long hair, you will be a stranger among hippies. If you are a hippie and you are not dirty. and you wash your face, and you take a shower every day, you will not fit.
They have their own rules; they have their own alternate society. It is small, but they have their own rules, forms, manners, language, ways of relating, and they are as traditional as anybody else. They have their own tradition. Maybe it is a tradition against tradition, but it is a tradition. They have their own conformity.
A real dropout is one who has dropped out from within. On the surface he goes on moving, lives in the society because there is nowhere else to go -- but deep down he has moved. He closes his eyes and he is no more a part of the society. When he comes home, he forgets the factory, the market, the office -- everything. The society remains an outer thing; he doesn't allow it to enter inwards. That's what I mean when I say a dropout.
A dropout is a drop-in!I Drop in, and you will be a real dropout.
-Osho, “The True Sage, #7, Q4”