Efficiency

 

 

Energy fidgets, energy is alive. A really alive child cannot sit silently for long. He is alive; he is not dead. He would like to jump and run and do millions of things. He is overflowing. And we force him to sit.

 

What happens? He is almost paralyzed by the time he comes out of the university. For twenty years continuously forced to concentrate – and to that concentration the whole society gives so much significance. Then there are examinations. If he fails, he is condemned. If he succeeds, he is appreciated. Now we are playing the ego game. We are teaching him how to be egoistic. We are teaching him an ugly competition – to be inimical with everybody else. And we are teaching him that the only value in this society is to be more efficient, not to be aware.

 

Now comes the point to be understood. If you want to be more efficient, less awareness is good, because a mechanism is more efficient than a man. A mechanism simply repeats. It never errs, it never goes wrong. So the mind should become like a machine: you push the button and here comes the answer. You just push the button and here flows efficiency.

 

The whole effort of the society is to reduce you to efficient mechanisms. And vast amounts of money are wasted in order to cripple you, to destroy you, to paralyze you. Then suddenly one day you find you are missing everything. You haven’t tasted life yet. You have lived and yet you cannot say that you have lived. You have loved and yet you cannot say that love has happened to you. You have been alive and yet you cannot say what the taste of being alive is, what the fragrance of being alive is.

 

Whatsoever has been called education up to now is the greatest calamity that has happened to humanity. And the day this whole structure of education is dropped and a totally new education, based not on efficiency.... Because what does it matter if people are a little less efficient? What does it matter, if they are more alive and a little less efficient? It doesn’t matter at all.

 

Once we base education on awareness then people may not be so efficient in killing, in war; may not be so efficient as clerks, may not be so efficient as government officers – but it is good. Because if people are inefficient in killing, perfectly good! – less people will be killed. If the man who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima was less efficient and had dropped it somewhere in a forest, what would have been wrong? It would have been perfectly good. It would have been fortunate.

 

If German people were less efficient then Hitler would not have been such a great calamity to mankind. If they had been a little lazy, less disciplined, less skilled, less robot-like, Hitler would have failed. But he had chosen a right country to be born in. These people are always very clever. They always choose the right countries to be born in. And then he managed to make the whole country a war camp.

 

Less efficiency is not a problem. More awareness is needed. And when I say less efficient, I don't mean that necessarily it is going to be so. If you try anything... for example, walking. If you walk alert and aware, you will feel that you cannot walk as efficiently as before. If you drive a car with awareness, you will feel that you cannot drive the car as efficiently as before. But this will be just in the beginning. After a few days you will see -- efficiency is coming back, and not at the cost of awareness. When efficiency comes with awareness, it is perfectly good, it is to be welcomed. Otherwise you will live a life almost dead.

 

-Osho, “Nirvana: The Last Nightmare, #9”