Everybody in the beginning follows others; that comes easy. You yourself don't know where to go, what to do, how to do it. You start asking the experts. And the problem is that in the spiritual inquiry there are no experts -- there cannot be, because each individual is so unique that expertise is not possible.

 

Expertise is possible if there is no individuality. About matter you can come to conclusions -- matter is predictable -- but about man you cannot come to conclusions in the same way.

 

Something about man remains unpredictable, and that unpredictable quality is his very essence. That's what makes him man; that is his freedom. He is not bound to the law of cause and effect; he functions under a totally different kind of law. He can behave in such a way that it would have been inconceivable for you, seeing the situation, given the situation, to imagine. If you had predicted it, your prediction would have seemed like an absurdity. But man can function outside the law of cause and effect.

 

Then how to help man? -- how is a master supposed to help others? He helps not by giving detailed information, instructions; he helps only by indicating. He hints, he does not guide. That is one of the most essential things to be understood about Buddha: he is not a guide. He does not give you the whole map of the journey but only an indication, a vague, subtle hint. You need not follow him in all details. You can understand him and then you will have to work out your own life-style.

 

And I perfectly agree with him. He learned it the hard way; I have also learned it the hard way.

 

Listen to me -- listen with an open heart. Try to understand what is being conveyed to you, but don't follow it mechanically. Let it first become an understanding in you, then follow your understanding, not my instructions. My instruction can only help you to raise your eyes towards the sky. It cannot give you a fixed pattern of life; it cannot give you a discipline but it can give you the direction. And the difference is great: a direction is a totally different phenomenon; a description, a detailed description, makes you a slave.

 

Just an opening... fingers pointing to the moon are of immense help. You need not cling to the fingers, you need not worship the fingers. In fact, when you start looking at the moon you have to forget all about the fingers. You will feel grateful, but you will not be an imitator. You will be an individual in your own right. You will be a free consciousness. That is Buddha's fundamental message.

 

-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 7, #9“

 

 

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If you are just functioning mechanically as a human machine, there is every danger that you will be replaced by a humanlike machine, and you can never be at ease, because whatever you can do can be done more efficiently by a mechanical device.

 

Society does not need individuality, it needs efficiency. So the more human a person becomes the less useful he is to society – and the more dangerous. The whole pattern of our civilization and, in fact, of all the civilizations that have existed in the world, is to turn the human being into an automaton. Then he is obedient, efficient and not dangerous. Otherwise a mind that is inventive, inquiring, seeking and searching for the new and always trying to give birth to something unknown, is bound to create disturbances. The establishment cannot be at ease with him.

 

Society begins to kill individuality as soon as a child is born. Before he is seven, his individuality is killed completely. Only if by chance the establishment is not successful in doing this can a person become an individual. But this is rare.

 

Every type of social institution is a means of killing the individual and converting him into a machine. All our universities are factories to kill the spontaneous, to kill the spark, to kill the spirit and change man into a machine. Then the society feels at ease with him. He can be relied upon. The society knows what he can do, what he will do – he can be predicted. We can predict a husband, a wife, a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist. We know who they are and how they will react; we can be at ease with them. But it is impossible to be at ease with a person who is alive, spontaneous, because we don’t know what he will do – he is unpredictable.

 

Unpredictability is always a source of insecurity. A wife cannot be at ease with a husband who is unpredictable. The moment he is unpredictable, he is unmanageable; he cannot be manipulated. No one is at ease with an unpredictable person – not even a father with an unpredictable son.

 

But only the unpredictable man can feel happiness, can feel like no one else. Life itself is unpredictable, unmanageable. Life as such always moves from moment to moment toward the unknown. It is an opening into the unknown – nothing more, nothing less.

 

If you are open, just like life itself, then you necessarily live in each of your dimensions: the physical, the intellectual, the emotional, the spiritual. Then you live totally; then there is no bifurcation, no division. Your energy flows as if from one room to another and then to another. There is no barrier to your energy; it is not pulled in any one direction, it is like a flowing river. Then you are always fresh and relaxed. Whenever you return to your particular field of work you approach it with a newness, a freshness that only comes from having relaxed in the opposite dimension.

 

The problem, as I see it, is not excessive intellectual work but too little or no work in the other dimensions, particularly the emotional. Reason is balanced by emotion. If you can do an exercise in logic but cannot weep, then you are bound to be in trouble. If you can only argue and not laugh, you are inviting trouble.

 

But whenever a person appears whose life is like a flowing river it is difficult to understand him, because he cannot be categorized.

 

-Osho, "The Great Challenge, #5“