Ideals 

 

 

Question 5

Osho,

What chance is there for your ideal society in the face of the politicians and the priests and the vested interests of capital?

 

 

First, I am not interested in any ideal society. For that matter, I am not even interested in any ideal individual. The word ideal is a dirty word to me. I have no ideals. Ideals have driven you mad. It is ideals that have made this whole earth a big madhouse.

 

The ideal means you are not that which you should be. It creates tension, anxiety, anguish. It divides you, it makes you schizophrenic. And the ideal is in the future and you are here. And how can you live unless you are the ideal? First be the ideal, then start living -- and that never happens. That cannot happen in the very nature of things. Ideals are impossible; that's why they are ideals. They drive you crazy and make you insane. And condemnation arises, because you always fall short of the ideal. Guilt is created. In fact, that is what the priests and the politicians have been doing -- they want to create guilt in you. To create guilt they use ideals; that is the simple mechanism. First give an ideal, then guilt comes automatically.

 

If I say to you that two eyes are not enough, you need three eyes; open your third eye! Read Lobsang Rampa -- open your third eye! And now you try hard, this way and that, and you stand on your head, and you do a mantra -- and the third eye does not open. Now you start feeling guilty -- something is missing... you are not the right person. You become depressed. You rub the third eye hard, and it doesn't open.

 

Beware of all this nonsense. These two eyes are beautiful. And if you have only one eye, that is perfect. ... Because Jesus says, "When two eyes become one, then the whole body is full of light." But I'm not saying that you should try to make one eye out of two. You just accept yourself as you are. God has made you perfect, he has not left anything incomplete in you. And if you feel incompletion is there, then that is part of perfection. You are perfectly imperfect. God knows better: that only in imperfection is there growth, only in imperfection is there flow, only in imperfection is something possible. If you were just perfect you would be dead like a rock. Then there would be nothing happening, then nothing could happen. If you understand me, I would like to tell you: God is also perfectly imperfect; otherwise he would have been dead long ago. He would not have waited for Friedrich Nietzsche to declare that God is dead.

 

What would this God be doing if he were perfect? Then he could not do anything, then he could not have any freedom to do. He could not grow; there is nowhere to go. He would be simply stuck there. He could not even commit suicide, because when you are perfect you don't do things like that.

 

Accept yourself as you are.

 

I am not interested in any ideal society, not at all. I am not interested even in ideal individuals. I am not interested in idealism at all!

 

And to me the society does not exist, there are only individuals. The society is just a functioning structure, utilitarian. You cannot come across society. Have you ever come across society? Have you ever come across humanity? Have you ever come across Hinduism, Islam? No, you always come across the individual, the concrete, the solid individual.

 

But people have been thinking how to improve society, how to make an ideal society. And these people have proved calamities. They have been a great mischief. Because of their ideal society they have destroyed people's respect for themselves, and they have created guilt in everybody. Everybody is guilty, nobody seems to be happy the way he is. And you can create guilt for anything -- and once guilt is created, you become powerful. The person who creates guilt in you becomes powerful over you -- remember this strategy -- because then only he can redeem you of guilt. Then you have to go to him. The priest first creates guilt, then you have to go to the church. Then you have to go and confess, "I have committed this sin," and he forgives you in the name of God. First in the name of God he created guilt, then he forgives you in the name of God. [....]

 

I am not interested in any ideal society. Please drop that dream; it has created great nightmares in the world. Remember, nothing can happen now politically. Politics is dead. Whatever you vote, right or left, do it without illusions. It is necessary to renounce the idea that any system can be a savior. No system can be a savior -- communism, fascism, Gandhism. No society can save you, and no society can be an ideal society. And there is no savior -- Christ, Krishna or Rama. You have just to drop that nonsense that you are carrying about guilt and your being a sinner.

 

Put your whole energy into dancing, celebrating. And then you are ideal, here and now -- not that you have to become ideal.

 

Ideology, as such, has lost its truth. In fact it was never there in the first place. And the power to persuade also is gone. Few serious minds believe any longer that one can set down blueprints, and through social engineering bring about a new utopia of social harmony. We are living in the age of utter freedom. We have come of age. Humanity is no longer childish, it is more mature. We are living in a very Socratic period, because people are asking all the important questions of life. Don't start hankering and longing for some future ideal, idea, perfection. Drop all ideals and live here-now.

 

My commune is not going to be an ideal society. My commune is going to be a herenow commune.

 

-Osho, "The Heart Sutra, #6, Q5“