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Freedom : The Courage to Be Yourself- My vision of freedom is to yourself -
"Don't call it uncertainty - call it wonder. Don't call it insecurity - call it freedom." - Osho, "A Sudden Clash of Thunder, #6"
The meaning of freedom
Truth does not force itself upon you. You have the freedom to refuse the truth birth after birth, life after life. This is the glory of man and this is the misfortune of man as well. The glory is because of the freedom – the freedom to choose. The misfortune is that we choose the wrong. But the choice of the wrong is included in that freedom.
It cannot be called freedom, a freedom which can choose only the right and not the wrong; then that is not freedom. The meaning of freedom is that you have the right to go astray, to go on the wrong path. The meaning of freedom is that you have the freedom to sin. The meaning of freedom is that you have the freedom to refuse godliness.
-Osho, "The Great Transcendence, #5"
I am here to give you freedom
And you ask: Who are you without your disciples?
I am. I am. Whether disciples are there or not -- that is irrelevant; I am not dependent on you. And my whole effort here is that you can also become independent of me.
I am here to give you freedom. I don't want to impose anything on you, I don't want to cripple you in any way; I want you just to be yourselves. And the day it happens that you are independent of me, you will be able to really love me -- not before it.
-Osho, "The Tantra Vision, Vol 2, #2, Q1"
I am here to give you freedom, so by surrender I don't mean that you are going to become a follower -- no! Even that word is not good. With me, anyone who falls in love becomes a companion -- he is not a follower. Because I don't say to imitate me and I don't say to be like me. I don't give you any ideal to follow and I don't give you any ideology. I simply make you free of all ideologies and free of all ideals... free of all conditionings.
You surrender the ego, and I give you back your freedom.
-Osho, "The Buddha Disease, #21"
I give you total freedom because my trust is that a totally free person is capable of a loyal heart; only a totally free person is capable of having a loyal heart. Then that loyalty comes from his own innermost core, it is not imposed. It enhances his being, it makes him graceful, beautiful. He is capable of saying no, but because of love he says yes. His capacity to say no is not destroyed, it is there; if needed he can say no. But he says yes out of his own inner choice, out of his own decision.
-Osho, "Just the Tip of the Iceberg, #21"
I am going to continue hammering your psychological slavery. I am not concerned about facts, I am concerned with your freedom. You have to be freed from all that is not your experience.
-Osho, "From the False to the Truth, #15, Q1"
Gautama the Buddha's whole religioncan be reduced to a single word.That word is freedom.
Gautama the Buddha's whole religion can be reduced to a single word. That word is freedom. That is his essential message, his very fragrance. Nobody else has raised freedom so high. It is the ultimate value in Buddha's vision, the SUMMUM BONUM; there is nothing higher than that.
And it seems very fundamental to understand why Buddha emphasizes freedom so much. Neither God is emphasized nor heaven is emphasized nor love is emphasized, but only freedom. There is a reason for it: all that is valuable becomes possible only in the climate of freedom. Love also grows only in the soil of freedom; without freedom, love cannot grow. Without freedom, what grows in the name of love is nothing but lust. Without freedom there is no God. Without freedom what you think to be God is only your imagination, your fear, your greed. There is no heaven without freedom: freedom is heaven. And if you think there is some heaven without freedom, then that heaven has no worth, no reality. It is your fancy, it is your dream.
All great values of life grow in the climate of freedom; hence freedom is the most fundamental value and also the highest pinnacle. If you want to understand Buddha you will have to taste something of the freedom he is talking about.
His freedom is not of the outside. It is not social, it is not political, it is not economic. His freedom is spiritual. By "freedom" he means a state of consciousness unhindered by any desire, unchained to any desire, unimprisoned by any greed, by any lust for more. By "freedom" he means a consciousness without mind, a state of no-mind. It is utterly empty, because if there is something, that will hinder freedom; hence its utter emptiness.
This word 'emptiness' -- SHUNYATA -- has been very much misunderstood by people, because the word has a connotation of negativity. Whenever we hear the word 'empty' we think of something negative. In Buddha's language, emptiness is not negative; emptiness is absolutely positive, more positive than your so-called fullness, because emptiness is full of freedom; everything else has been removed. It is spacious; all boundaries have been dropped. It is unbounded -- and only in an unbounded space, freedom is possible. His emptiness is not ordinary emptiness; it is not only absence of something, it is a presence of something invisible.
For example, when you empty your room: as you remove the furniture and the paintings and the things inside, the room becomes empty on the one hand because there is no more any furniture, no more paintings, no more things, nothing is left inside; but on the other hand, something invisible starts filling it. That invisibleness is "roominess," spaciousness; the room becomes bigger. As you remove the things, the room is becoming bigger and bigger. When everything is removed, even the walls, then the room is as big as the whole sky.
That's the whole process of meditation: removing everything; removing yourself so totally that nothing is left behind -- not even you. In that utter silence is freedom. In this utter stillness grows the one-thousand-petaled lotus of freedom. And great fragrance is released: the fragrance of peace, compassion, love, bliss. Or if you want to choose the word 'God' you can choose it. It is not Buddha's word, but there is no harm in choosing it.
Buddha teaches you freedom as the ultimate goal
The most fundamental message of Gautama the Buddha is not God, is not soul... it is freedom: freedom absolute, total, unconditional. He does not want to give you an ideology, because every ideology creates its own slavery. He does not want to give you a religion, because religion binds you. That's exactly the meaning of the English word 'religion' - that which binds you together. Religion is a bondage, very subtle, so subtle that unless you are very aware you will not be able to see it. He does not want to give you a philosophy of life, because any philosophy given by somebody else is going to fetter you. You have to live according to your own light, not according to somebody else's light.
The whole world is full of slaves for the simple reason that everybody is living according to somebody else. Somebody is living according to Jesus, somebody is living according to Mahavira, somebody is living according to Krishna, somebody is living even according to Buddha.
Buddha says: Be a light unto yourself. Unless you create a light within your own being you will remain a slave, you will be dominated. And there are crafty priests, cunning, very clever, very worldly; and they know, they are very experienced in creating new bondages for you. If you escape from one prison, they immediately create another. They are very clever with words. They go on interpreting words in such subtle ways that you will never be able to understand how these words of the buddhas are being manipulated, distorted. Words that were meant to give you freedom have been made into chains.
But man is very unaware; hence he goes on remaining a victim - a victim of all kinds of psychological exploitation.
Buddha teaches you freedom as the ultimate goal, the SUMMUM BONUM, the highest good. There is nothing higher than freedom. Every other value is a by-product of freedom; they follow freedom as a consequence.
Jesus says: First seek ye the kingdom of God, then all else shall be added unto you.
Buddha will not say that. He will say: First seek ye total and absolute freedom, and then all else shall be added unto you. If you seek God you are again seeking a new prison, maybe better than the old, maybe made of gold, very precious - but a prison is a prison all the same. Whether your chains are made of iron or gold, it makes no difference at all.
In fact, if the chains are made of gold it will be more difficult to come out of them because you will become attached. You will think those chains are not chains but ornaments. You will protect them, you will guard them - somebody may steal them away from you!
Freedom is the fragrance of Buddha's whole message. No other enlightened person has emphasized freedom so much. Why did Buddha emphasize freedom so much? - for the simple reason that he had seen all other ideals being changed into imprisonments. He had seen all beautiful philosophies poisoned by the priests. Beware of the priests!
Buddha is not a priest, neither is Jesus, nor is Mahavira. No enlightened person is a priest. The priest lives on the words of the enlightened people and goes on exploiting the unenlightened. He certainly is clever but not wise, knowledgeable but not enlightened. He succeeds in manipulating you because you are unconscious.
Hence, the second thing Buddha emphasizes is meditation, awareness. Freedom can come only through being more and more aware. By freedom he does not mean any social phenomenon or any political change. There are people... I have come across books written by communists, Marxists, socialists, who try to prove that Buddha's freedom means communism, socialism, that his freedom means a social revolution, a political revolution. That is utter nonsense! Buddha has nothing to do with the outside world; his concern is your interiority. He wants to change your unconsciousness into consciousness, he wants to change your darkness into light, he wants to change your death into deathlessness.
He is really doing the work of the seers of the Upanishads who have been praying to God, "ASATO MA SADGAMAYA. O God, O Lord, take us away from the false, from the untrue, to the truth. TAMASO MA JYOTIRGAMAYA. O God, O Lord, take us away from darkness into light. MRITYOR MA AMRITAMGAMAYA. O God, O Lord, take us away from death to eternal life." But they were praying to God.
Buddha says: No prayer is going to help. Unless YOU do something, your prayer is impotent. There is no need to pray, but there is great need to meditate. His religion is not a religion of prayer. His religion is very scientific in the sense that he does not presuppose any belief. You need not believe in God, you need not believe in afterlife.
He says when you can experience, then why believe? All beliefs ultimately reduce you to slaves.
Buddha is against all kinds of beliefs AND disbeliefs. He is an agnostic. He says remain open; if you believe you become closed. The Hindu is closed, the Mohammedan is closed, the Christian is closed: they have already concluded. They have already accepted a certain belief as true without experiencing it. This is dishonesty! And these people are thought to be religious people. They are not even authentic, they are not even honest - what to say about their religiousness? From the very beginning they are dishonest; belief makes you dishonest.
The very process of belief is believing in something that you have not experienced on your own. How can you believe if you are sincere? If your search for truth is authentic you cannot believe; you cannot disbelieve either. You cannot say God is, you cannot say God is not. You can only say, "I don't know and I am searching and I am seeking and I am experimenting and I am trying to experience."
That is the way of meditation.
Prayer requires belief as a presupposition; without belief there is no possibility of prayer. To whom will you pray? To whom will you address your prayers? - to some God which you have accepted because it has been told to you from your very childhood, you have been hypnotized.
Every belief is nothing but hypnosis. One is hypnotized as being a Hindu, another is hypnotized as being a Mohammedan; both are living in a kind of deep sleep. Hypnosis means sleep; the very word means sleep. You have been given so much poison, slowly slowly, through belief that you have fallen asleep. You are no longer aware what you are doing, why you are doing. Why are you going to the temple? Why are you bowing down to a stone statue? Why are you reciting something meaningless? Why are you going to Kaaba or Kashi or Girnar? For what? There IS something a priori. You already believe that is what religion is, without experiencing, without inquiring.
This is the way of the coward, this is the way of the zombie.
Meditation requires courage. It requires the basic integrity, sincerity, respect towards your own being. At least don't deceive yourself.
Buddha says: Let your own experience decide. If this is understood you are bound to move towards meditation instead of prayer. Then meditation will bring a prayer of its own - a prayerfulness, rather. You will not be praying but you will be in prayer, because more and more you will become silent, more and more you will become still.
More and more you will experience the presence, the mysterious presence that overwhelms everything, penetrates everything. You may like to call it God, you may not like to call it God; it doesn't matter what you call it. You may not like to call it anything; you may be silent about it, because that is the most appropriate thing to do. It cannot be put into any words; no words are adequate enough to express it.
But Buddha has not been listened to. Humanity has remained in its old, zombielike, sleepy way. It has remained hypnotized, unconscious.
[....]
You don't know who you are, you don't know what you are doing, you don't know WHY you are doing it in the first place. You don't know, even if you succeed, what is the point of it all. But still you go on doing something. It keeps you engaged and keeps you unaware of your unawareness.
All your occupations are basically nothing but an effort to remain unaware of your unawareness - because it hurts. It hurts to know that "I am a zombie," it hurts to know that "I am a slave." So you go on bragging about your slavery as if it is something very precious and valuable. You go on bragging about your being Indian or Pakistani or Israeli or German or American. You go on bragging about your being Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Jaina - and you don't know you are bragging about your prisons!
It is as if two prisoners are talking: "My prison is better than your prison. Look at the flag! My prison has the best flag in the world, the highest pole. And never say a word against my prison; otherwise you will suffer for it, you will have to pay for it."
MY nation, MY country, MY church, MY religion is higher than your religion, is higher than your church, is greater than your nation - and we are bragging about our prisons.
This is utterly stupid. But why do we go on doing it? - because that is the only way to save our faces.
If we try to see the point, that all these are prisons, how can we avoid knowing that we are a prisoner - not of one prison but of many prisons, prisons within prisons? And that will destroy our ego. It helps our egos very much that "We are a great nation," that "Our history is full of bravery," that "We have created the greatest warriors"... or greatest saints, or whatsoever it is. "We have created the most religious society in the world," or the most democratic society or the most communist society. This helps us to protect our egos. We find in every way methods and means, devices and strategies so that our ego remains intact.
And the ego is the most false phenomenon in existence; there is nothing more false than the ego. It has no substance. It is a balloon full of hot air - or maybe there is no balloon, only hot air! But we are living according to the dictates of this false god, the ego. And there are priests who go on helping us, who go on giving us new strategies, new interpretations. As times change, priests are ready to give us new interpretations.
[....]
Buddha is not a priest, he is not a prophet either; he is a totally different kind of person.
He is an awakened being, he has come to know himself. He is not an incarnation of God - he has no claims like that. He is not a special messenger of God; he has no ego like that. He does not claim that "I am the only begotten Son." All this looks absurd if you think of Buddha. He is very simple and yet his message is the most practical, most scientific, most penetrating.
He says, "I was as unconscious as you are; now I have become conscious and all my fears and sorrows have disappeared. One day I was like you, one day you can be like me; there is no qualitative difference between us. I am awakened, you are asleep; that is the only difference. I am not extraordinary, I am just as ordinary as you are. The only thing that has happened to me is that I have opened my eyes and you are still keeping them closed. Open them and see for yourself!"
- Osho, "The Dhammapada - The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10, #3"
My vision of freedom is to be yourself.
Question 1
The freedom from something is not true freedom. The freedom to do anything you want to do is also not the freedom I am talking about.
My vision of freedom is to be yourself.
It is not a question of getting freedom from something. That freedom will not be freedom, because it is still given to you; there is a cause to it. The thing that you were feeling dependent on is still there in your freedom. You are obliged to it. Without it you would not have been free.
The freedom to do anything you want is not freedom either, because wanting, desiring to do something, arises out of the mind -- and mind is your bondage.
The true freedom certainly comes after choiceless awareness, but after choiceless awareness the freedom is neither dependent on things nor dependent on doing something. The freedom that follows choiceless awareness is the freedom just to be yourself. And you are yourself already, you are born with it; hence it is not dependent on anything else. Nobody can give it to you and nobody can take it from you. A sword can cut your head but it cannot cut your freedom, your being.
It is another way of saying that you are centered, rooted in your natural, existential self. It has nothing to do with outside.
Freedom from things is dependent on the outside. Freedom to do something is also dependent on the outside. Freedom to be ultimately pure has not to be dependent on anything outside you.
You are born as freedom. It is just that you have been conditioned to forget it.
Layers upon layers of conditionings have made you a puppet. The strings are in somebody else's hands.
If you are a Christian, you are a puppet. Your strings are in the hand of a God which does not exist, so just to give you the sense that God exists there are prophets, messiahs, representing God. They represent nobody. They are just egoistic people -- and even ego wants to reduce you to a puppet.
If you can get rid of all conditionings, if you can think that you are neither a communist nor a fascist, that you are neither a Christian nor a Mohammedan.... You were not born a Christian or Mohammedan; you were born just pure, innocent consciousness.
To be again in that purity, in that innocence, in that consciousness, is what I mean be freedom.
Freedom is the ultimate experience of life. There is nothing higher than that. And out of freedom many flowers blossom in you. Love is the flowering of your freedom. Compassion, another flowering of your freedom. All that is valuable in life flowers in the innocent, natural state of your being.
So don't connect freedom with independence. Independence is naturally from something, from somebody. Don't connect freedom with doing things that you want to do, because that is your mind, not you. Wanting to do something, desiring to do something, you are in the bondage of your wanting and your desiring. But the freedom I have been talking about you simply are -- in utter silence, serenity, beauty, bliss.
-Osho, "From Death to Deathlessness, #23, Q1"
To be totally free one needs to be totally aware
To be totally free one needs to be totally aware, because our bondage is rooted in our unconsciousness; it does not come from the outside. Nobody can make you unfree. You can be destroyed but your freedom cannot be taken away... unless you give it away. In the ultimate analysis it is always your desire to be unfree that makes you unfree. It is your desire to be dependent, your desire to drop the responsibility of being yourself, that makes you unfree.
The moment one takes responsibility for oneself.... And remember it is not all roses, there are thorns in it; and it is not all sweet, there are many bitter moments in it. The sweet is always balanced by the bitter, they always come in the same proportion. The roses are balanced by the thorns, the days by the nights, the summer by the winters. Life keeps a balance between the polar opposites, so one who is ready to accept the responsibility of being oneself with all its beauties, bitternesses, its joys and agonies, can be free. Only he can be free...
Live it in all its agony and all its ecstasy -- both are yours. And always remember: ecstasy cannot live without exist without death, and joy cannot exist without sadness. That's how things are -- nothing can be done about it. That's the very nature, the very tao of things.
Accept the responsibility of being yourself as you are, with all that is good and with all that is bad, with all that is beautiful and that which is not beautiful. In that acceptance a transcendence happens and one becomes free.
Freedom means transcendence, going above the duality. Then you are neither ecstasy or agony; you are just a witness to all that happens to you. That transcendence is real freedom and that makes one enlightened, liberated. [....]
The greatest courage in the world is to not imitate others, to live one's own life as authentically as possible, whatsoever the cost. Even if life is lost in living your own life it is worth it, because that is how the soul is born. When one is ready to die for something, in that very agony -- the word "agony" comes from agon; it means struggle -- in that very struggle one is born. It is a birth pain. It takes courage, it takes guts.
Live your life without being bothered by the moralists, puritans, priests, stupid people who go on advising. Live your life. Even if you live in error, then too it is better to live your own life than to be right according to somebody else, because the man who is right according to somebody else is false, and the man who is wrong according to his own decision is going to learn from his error sooner or later. He will grow out of it, he will be benefited by it.
The only person who learns is the person who is ready to commit errors, and the best way to commit errors is not to listen to others -- just go on doing your thing!
Sandip means a lamp, a light. The last words of Buddha to his disciples were: Be a lamp unto thyself.
People search in scriptures, but in vain; and people go searching for guides, but they will be disappointed because the real guide is within you, the real light is within you. Your own consciousness has to become a light unto itself....
Never be an imitator. Listen to the enlightened ones just to find your own light. Don't become a parrot, don't repeat them. That's what has been done down the ages by millions of people. They have become Christians, Mohammedans and Hindus and Buddhists, but they have not become enlightened. Their life goes on remaining in the same dark state, in the same hell.
Remember it: I am here to help you to be yourself. I don't give you a character, I don't give you any discipline. I don't give you any clear-cut indications of what to do and what not to do. I only give you vague hints, indications, fingers pointing to the moon, the moon that is within you.
-Osho, "Scriptures in Silence and Sermons in Stones, #19"
Freedom has nothing to do with the outside
Question 6 Osho, For forty-five years i lived in prison, mostly made by myself. now i know it is possible to become more and more free. but what to do, when you feel you need a safe place, a good climate to grow? another prison? how to be free anywhere, any time? i feel sorrow and rebellion in me about that.
Freedom has nothing to do with the outside; one can be free even in an actual prison. Freedom is something inner; it is of the consciousness. You can be free anywhere -- chained, in a jail, you can be free -- and you can be unfree outside the jail, in your own home, visibly absolutely free, but you will be a prisoner if your consciousness is not free.
You are confusing outer freedom with inner freedom. As far as the outside is concerned you can never be absolutely free -- let it be clear once and forever. As far as outside is concerned you are not alone, so how can you be absolutely free? There are millions of people around you. On the outside, life has to be a compromise. If you were alone on the earth you would have been absolutely free, but you are not alone.
On the road you have to keep to the left. And Yvonne will feel this is a great bondage: "Why? Why should I be forced to be on the left? I am a free man. If I want to walk on the right I will walk on the right. If I want to walk in the middle of the road I will walk in the middle of the road." In India you can do it -- India is a free country, remember! It is the greatest democracy in the world, so right, left, middle, anywhere you can walk!
But one man's freedom becomes so many people's problem. You are free to be yourself, but you should not be an interference in other people's lives.
A man of understanding will respect his freedom as much as he will respect others' freedom, because if nobody respects your freedom, your freedom will be destroyed. It is a mutual understanding: "I respect your freedom, you respect my freedom, then we both can be free." But it is a compromise. I have not to interfere with your being, I am not free to trespass on you.
You want to sing loudly in the middle of the night. Of course you are a free person, and if you cannot sing loudly in your own house, what kind of freedom is this? But the neighbors have to sleep too; then there has to be a compromise.
On the outside we are interdependent. Nobody can be absolutely independent. Life is an interdependence. Not only with people are you interdependent, you are interdependent with everything. If you cut all the trees you will die because they are constantly supplying you with oxygen. You are dependent on them -- and they are dependent on you because you are constantly giving them carbon dioxide. We take oxygen in and exhale carbon dioxide; the trees do just the opposite, they exhale oxygen and inhale carbon dioxide.
So when people like Mahendra are smoking, trees must be feeling tremendously happy because more carbon dioxide is being created for them! Listening to me these trees will be feeling very sad that I am telling you to go to the root cause of it and then smoking will disappear. That means trees won't get as much carbon dioxide as they were getting before!
We are interdependent, not only with the trees -- with the sun, with the moon, with the stars. Everything is an interdependence. [....]
Now life is so interdependent... the sun is so far away. It takes ten minutes for the rays of the sun to reach to the earth, and rays move with tremendous speed -- one hundred eighty-six thousand miles per second. But we are related to other suns and other solar systems too. Everything in existence is interdependent, so you cannot be absolutely free on the outside -- and there is no need either.
Enjoy this interdependence. Don't call it bondage. It is not dependence, it is INTERdependence. You are dependent on others, others are dependent on you. It is a brotherhood, it is relatedness. Even the smallest grass leaf is related to the greatest star.
But in the inner world, in the inner kingdom, you can be absolutely free. So the whole question is of the inner. And then, Yvonne, you will not feel sad and rebellious; there is no need. Understand that the outer interdependence is a must, it is inevitable; nothing can be done about it. It is part of how things are. Accept it. When nothing can be done about it, acceptance is the only way. And accept it JOYOUSLY, not as a resignation. Accept it! This is our universe; we are part of it. We are not islands, we are part of the whole continent. We are not egos.
Yvonne, your idea of freedom is rooted somewhere in the idea of the ego. We are not egos. The ego is a false entity -- because we are not separate, how can we have egos? It is good as far as language is concerned; it is utilitarian to use the word 'I', but it has no substance in it. It is pure shadow, utterly empty. A useful word, utilitarian, but not real.
But inner freedom IS possible. It happens as you go deeper and deeper into awareness. Watch your body, watch your thought processes.
Just the other day Buddha was saying: Watch, witness the whole process of your thoughts. And slowly slowly, you will see you are neither anger nor greed, neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian, neither Catholic nor communist. Slowly slowly, you will be aware that you are not any thought -- you are not mind at all. You are a pure witness. The experience of pure witnessing is the experience of total freedom, but it is an inward phenomenon. And a man who is inwardly totally free has no hankering to be outwardly free. He is capable of accepting nature as it is.
Yvonne, create inner freedom through witnessing. Sannyas is only for the inner freedom. And live out of inner freedom and then you will be able to see the interdependence on the outside. It is beautiful and it is a blessing. There is no need to rebel against it. Relax into it, surrender to it. And remember: only a person who is really free can surrender.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 9, #4, Q6"
Three kinds of freedom.
There are three kinds of freedom. One is 'freedom from'; that is a negative freedom: freedom from the father, freedom from the mother, freedom from the church, freedom from the society. That is a negative kind of freedom -- freedom from -- good in the beginning, but that can't be the goal. Once you are free from your parents, what are you going to do? Once you are free from your society then you will be at loss. You will lose all meaning and significance because your whole life had meaning in saying no. Now whom to say no to?
[....]
The second kind of freedom is 'freedom for'; that is positive freedom. Your interest is not in denying something, rather you want to create something. For example, you want to be a poet, and just because you want to be a poet you have to say no to your parents. But your basic orientation is that you want to be a poet and your parents would like you to be a plumber. "Better be a plumber! That is far more paying, far more economical, far more respectable too. Poet?! People will think you are crazy! And how are you going to live? And how are you going to support your wife and your children? Poetry can't pay!"
But if you are for poetry, ready to risk all, this is a higher freedom, better than the first. It is positive freedom -- 'freedom for'. Even if you have to live a life of poverty you will be happy, you will be cheerful. Even if you have to chop wood to remain a poet you will be utterly blissful, fulfilled, because you are doing what you wanted to do, you are doing your own thing. This is positive freedom.
And then there is a third freedom, the highest; in the East we have called it MOKSHA -- the ultimate freedom, which goes beyond both the negative and the positive. First learn saying no, then learn saying yes, and then just forget both, just be. The third freedom is not freedom against something, not for something, but just freedom. One is simply free -- no question of going against, no question of going for. 'Freedom from' is political, hence all political revolutions fail -- when they succeed. If they don't succeed they can go on hoping, but the moment they succeed they fail, because then they don't know what to do. That happened in the French Revolution, that happened in the Russian Revolution...that happens to every revolution. A political revolution is 'freedom from'. Once the Czar is gone, then you are at a loss: What to do now? Your whole life was devoted to fighting the Czar; you know only one thing, how to fight the Czar. Once the Czar is gone you are at a loss; your whole skill is useless. You will find yourself very empty. 'Freedom for' is artistic, creative, scientific. And 'just freedom' is religious.
Nitin, before I can teach you MOKSHA -- just freedom, neither for nor against, NETI NETI, neither this nor that, but pure freedom, just the fragrance of freedom -- before I can teach it to you, you will have to know the positive one: 'freedom for'.
Hence the commune. It is a creative commune; we are going to be creative in a thousand and one ways. In every possible way we are going to be creative, so that you can learn how to say yes to life. When the yes has destroyed your no, both can be thrown away. That is the ultimate in joy, in freedom, in realization.
-Osho, "Be Still and Know, #5, Q1"
What Do I Mean when I Say just Freedom?
Freedom can be of three types, and those three types have to be understood well. The first is freedom from, the second is freedom for, and the third is just freedom -- neither from nor for. The first, freedom from, is a reaction. It is past-oriented; you are fighting against the past, you want to get rid of it, you are obsessed with it.
All political reforms are reactions -- and when you react you are never free. This has to be understood. It only gives you an appearance of freedom, but it is never true freedom. Out of reaction, total freedom is not possible. Out of reaction, true freedom is not possible. And only total freedom is true freedom.
The second idea is freedom for; it is future-oriented. The first is political, the second is more poetic, visionary, utopian. Many people have tried that too, but that too is not possible, because future-oriented you can’t live in the present – and you have to live in the present. You don’t live in the past, you don’t live in the future, you have to live in the present.
Visionaries only imagine. Beautiful utopias they have imagined, but those utopias never become reality, cannot become reality.
If you react to the past, you are determined by the past. If you forget the past and look at the future, you are still driven by the past, you are just not aware of it. Looking at the future you dream beautiful dreams, but they can’t change reality. The reality remains the same; dreams are very ineffective, impotent.
The first, freedom from, is a reaction. The second, freedom for, is revolution. The third, just freedom, is rebellion. It is present-oriented. The first is political, the second is poetic, the third is mystic, religious.
What do I mean when I say just freedom? Neither for nor against, no past, no future, just being herenow, just living moment to moment with no ideology, with no utopia.
The real sannyasin, the real mystic, is not against the past, is not for the future. He is so utterly absorbed by the present that he has no time, no energy, for the past and the future. This is how the rebel is born.
The rebel is the most beautiful phenomenon in the world. Buddha is a rebel, so is Jesus; Atisha is a rebel, so is Kabir. These are rebels. You will misunderstand them if you think of them as if they were revolutionaries; they were not. Neither were they reactionaries. Their orientation is totally different, their orientation is now, here. They don’t live for any ideal, and they don’t live against any ideal. They don’t have any ideas; no ideology exists in their consciousness.
The sheer purity of this moment – they live it, they enjoy it, they sing it, they dance it. And when the next moment comes, they live the next moment with the same joy, with the same cheerfulness. They move moment to moment, they don’t plan ahead.
-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, Talk #25"
Freedom Has Two Sides
Question Osho, Enjoying your meditations has given me the sense of freedom of not belonging to any particular place, country or even nationality. It’s really great. I’ve felt able to move about without much fear and to be committed without feeling imprisoned. Why then, after nine years, do I feel a bitter sadness mixed with this sense of freedom?
Freedom has two sides and if you have only one side of it, a single side, you will feel freedom mixed with sadness. So you have to understand the whole psychology of freedom.
The first side is freedom from: from nationality, from a certain church, from a certain race, from a certain political ideology. This is the first part of freedom, the foundation of freedom. It is always from something. Once you have attained this freedom, you will feel very light and very good and very happy. And for the first time you will start rejoicing in your own individuality, because your individuality was covered with all those things that you have become free of.
But this is only one half and then there will come sadness, because the other half is missing. Freedom from is fulfilled, but freedom for what? Freedom in itself has no meaning, unless it is freedom for something, something creative – freedom to sculpt, freedom to dance, freedom to create music, poetry, painting. Unless your freedom turns into a creative realization, you will feel sad. Because you will see that you are free: your chains are broken, you no longer have any handcuffs, you no longer have any chains, you don’t have any prison, you are standing under the starry night, completely free, but where to go? Then comes a sudden sadness. What path to choose? Up to now there was no question of going anywhere – you were imprisoned. Your whole consciousness was concentrated on how to get free, your only anxiety was how to get free. Now that you are free, a new kind of problem has to be encountered. What to do now that you are free?
Just freedom in itself does not mean anything, unless you choose a creative path. Either you go deeper into meditation for self-realization – that’s what I was talking about: unless you become like Premda, pregnant – or if you have a certain kind of talent that has not been allowed to develop because of your fetters – you could not compose music because your hands were in chains, you could not dance because your feet were in chains. If you have a talent to be a dancer, then be a dancer. Then your freedom is complete, then the circle is complete.
Freedom from and freedom for – this is not something new that you are facing. It is being faced by every person who struggles first for freedom and then suddenly finds, ‘Now that I am free, what am I going to do?’ Up to now, he was so occupied, so engaged, so very busy. Even in his dreams he was thinking only of freedom. And he has never thought about what he is going to do when he will get freedom.
What has happened is beautiful. But something more is needed. You have to become a creator. You have to find some creativity that fulfills your freedom, otherwise the freedom is empty. You need either to create something or to discover something. Either bring your potential to actuality or go inwards to find yourself, but do something with your freedom.
Freedom is only an opportunity for you. It is not in itself the goal. It simply gives you the whole opportunity to do whatever you want to do. Now you are free and you are feeling sad, because you have not used this opportunity yet. Meditation will do, music will do, sculpture will do, dancing will do, love will do. But do something with your freedom. Just don’t sit with your freedom, otherwise you will become sad.
Freedom has to be a creative force in your life, not just a negative kind of freedom. The first part is negative: it is simply getting rid of the prison, it is getting rid of the chains. That you have done: now you are standing underneath the sky, completely lost.
-Osho, "Sat-Chit-Anand: Truth-Consciousness-Bliss, Talk #14"
In the name of securitywe create a bondage around ourselves
Man lives in bondage, and the bondage is not imposed by others, it is self-created. It is created because we are afraid of the insecure. In the name of security we create a bondage around ourselves. Yes, it gives a feeling of cosiness, warmth, safety, but it is all false because sooner or later death will take it all away.
Because of this we never explore, we never go beyond the boundaries of the familiar. The familiar is very small and we go on moving in the familiar, in circles. Our life knows no growth, because growth can only happen if we move not in circles but in a line. If we are linear then there is growth. If we go around in circles we go on repeating the same thing again and again.
Freedom is possible because we have made our own prison. We can get out of it any moment that we decide to. It is only a question of decision, of courage, of guts.
Freedom is the ultimate value in life. Nothing is more important than that, because out of it comes everything else that is valuable. Love arises as a fragrance, joy arises, meaning arises; for the first time life becomes significant, tremendously significant. And one is constantly moving beyond the known, going into the unknown. Life becomes a thrill, an adventure. But we have made life just a dragging affair. It seems safe, it appears secure, but there is no security, no safety anywhere. They are impossible.
Life in its intrinsicalness is insecure. Only death is secure. You cannot take anything away from a dead man — or can you? even death cannot do any harm to him, he is already dead. In his grave he is so absolutely secure. Because we are so obsessed with security we have made our houses our graves. We don’t live in them, we only die in them slowly slowly; it is a gradual kind of suicide.
Sannyas means freedom, freedom from all self-created securities, safeties. In the beginning one feels afraid, scared, that is natural, but once you become attuned to the insecure and you know the joy of insecurity then you never look back to those old toys that you used to think were keeping you life secure. And they were not securities, they were simply prisons, chains around your being.
One need not be a Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Catholic or communist — these are all self-created prisons. One need not live in an ideology. One should be free from all ideologies, all dogmas, creeds, scriptures. Only then is life an exploration, because when you don’t have any conclusion you can explore. We are brought up in such a way that we are reduced to slaves. And the slavery is so subtle that very rarely do we become aware of it. We go on living life as a slave thinking that this is all that there is to live. This is not all, this is nothing. This is not even the beginning.
Life begins only when you become free from all kinds of bondages: the bondage of nation, the bondage of race, the bondage of church — ideological, social, political, religious. When you become free from all these imprisonments, when you simply drop all that you have been told is important, when you simply drop all that you have been told to believe in; when you neither believe nor disbelieve a great freedom arises in your being. That freedom is sannyas; and that freedom then takes you higher and higher towards the ultimate.
Only a free person can know what truth is, and only a free person can know what god is, what love is. Freedom is very essential because it is the foundation of all that is beautiful and great.
- Osho, “If You Choose To Be With Me, You Must Risk Finding Yourself”
Awareness brings freedom.In freedom there is no need for control,because there is no possibility for licence
Awareness is the key. If you become aware, everything follows.
Don't try to become anything -- patient, loving, non-violent, peaceful. Don't try. If you try, you will force yourself and you will become a hypocrite. That's how the whole religion has turned into hypocrisy. Inside you are different; on the outside painted. You smile, and inside you would have liked to kill. Inside you car;y on all rubbish and on the outside you go on sprinkling perfume. Inside you stink; on the outside you create an illusion as if you are a roseflower.
Never repress. Repression is the greatest calamity that has happened to man. And it has happened for very beautiful reasons. You look at a buddha or a muso -- so silent, undisturbed. A greed arises: you would also like to be like them. What to do? You start trying to be a stone statue. Whenever there is a situation and you can be disturbed, you hold yourself. You control yourself.
Control is a dirty word. It has not four letters in it, but it is a four-letter word.
Freedom.... And when I say freedom I don't mean licence. You may understand... when I say freedom you may understand licence, because that's how things go. A controlled mind, whenever it hears about freedom immediately understands it as licence. Licence is the opposite pole of control. Freedom is just in between, just exactly in the middle, where there is no control and no licence.
Freedom has its own discipline, but it is not forced by any authority. It comes out of your awareness, out of authenticity. Freedom should never be misunderstood as licence, otherwise you will again miss.
Awareness brings freedom. In freedom there is no need for control, because there is no possibility for licence. It is because of licence that you have been forced to control, and if you remain licentious the society will go on controlling you.
It is because of your licentiousness that the policeman exists and the judge and the politician and the courts, and they go on forcing you to control yourself. And in controlling yourself you miss the whole point of being alive, because you miss celebration. How can you celebrate if you are too controlled?
[....]
All controlled people are in that state -- bubbling inside to explode into licentiousness.
Go and see your monks in the monasteries. In India we have that type of neurosis very much. They are all neurotics. This is something to be understood -- either you become erotic or you become neurotic. If you repress your eros, eroticness, you become neurotic. If you drop your neurosis, you become erotic.
And both are sorts of madnesses. One should be simply oneself -- neither neurotic nor erotic, available to all situations, ready to face whatsoever life brings, ready to accept and live -- but always alert, conscious, aware, mindful.
So the only thing to be constantly remembered is selfremembrance. You should not forget yourself. And always move from the innermost core of your being. Let actions flow from there, from your very center of being, and whatsoever you do will be virtuous.
Virtue is a function of awareness.
-Osho, "Nirvana: The Last Nightmare, #4, Q2"
Freedom brings responsibility.
Everybody wants freedom as far as talking is concerned, but nobody really is free and nobody really wants to be free, because freedom brings responsibility. It does not come alone. And to be dependent is simple: the responsibility is not on you, the responsibility is on the person you are dependent on.
So people have made a schizophrenic way of life. They talk about truth, they talk about freedom, and they live in lies, they live in slavery -- slavery of many kinds, because each slavery frees you from some responsibility. A man who really wants to be free has to accept immense responsibilities. He cannot dump his responsibilities on anybody else. Whatever he does, whatever he is, he is responsible.
And from the very beginning, you are not made ready for responsibility. That is the strategy of the society. They only talk about freedom; they want you to have freedom, but you are not prepared for responsibilities. That is a real trick, because freedom comes only with responsibility. And they have trained you that it is better to live a life where somebody else is responsible, so you are not caught; you are never in a problem. You simply follow the order.
You never go against obedience, which is a good name for slavery. You follow the order of the elders, which is another name for slavery. But it helps you that all the responsibility is on them. And they go on talking about freedom.
This whole society is hypocritical -- about each and every thing. If you want to be a real, authentic human being, you will have to be an outsider; you cannot be an insider. You have to be a foreigner everywhere. You have to be a stranger. Nobody will trust you, nobody will be friendly to you; you will be left alone in this big world.
-Osho, "The Path of the Mystic, #16, Q2"
Nobody should in any way interfere in anybody else’s life
Question : Osho, I know I should be unattached. Now I judge myself for having bought beautiful orange material rather than having the courage to run around like some do in some dirty rag.
Now at least have the courage to wear those beautiful orange things. I’m not against beauty and I’m not for rags – but I’m not against rags either. If you enjoy rags it is for you to decide, if you enjoy beautiful things it is for you to decide – one should be left totally free about it.
For these small things also society does not allow you freedom. If I were to decide, I would give you total freedom – if you want to move naked you should. If I had the decision in my hand I would make only one rule – you should not interfere in anybody else’s freedom. That’s all. When you interfere in anybody’s freedom, then only do you commit a crime. If you are doing a thing by your own self and it is nobody else’s business, you should be completely free.
The state should only be there to guarantee everybody his own freedom – freedom to do his own thing. The state should not be a positive phenomenon, it should be just a negative phenomenon – negative in the sense that you should enjoy your life but there are others also and they have to enjoy their life. You should not interfere in their life and they should not interfere in your life. That’s all the state is meant to do. It is not to create order, it is only to create a situation in which the disorder is to be prevented. That’s all.
So if somebody is enjoying rags, and rags are beautiful for him, nobody should interfere. And if you enjoy beautiful clothes, why not? Why do you feel afraid to enjoy beautiful clothes? It is for you to decide. Be courageous. There is only one courage I support and that is the courage to be oneself. Be courageous, have the courage to be oneself; and don’t bother about anybody else unless you are interfering in their life and freedom – only then prevent yourself.
Now, if you are wearing beautiful clothes you are not interfering in anybody’s life. It is for you to decide. But the mind has become such a conditioned phenomenon that it always looks at society, at what others are doing. If you live in the world of the establishment, the square world you have to follow certain rules.
In fact nobody ever tells you to follow them but you follow, just because of tradition, a certain conformity. You have to use a certain type of dress, you have to cut your hair in a certain way, you have to use this and that. You follow a pattern. Then if you become a hippy, again the mind starts following another pattern. Now you have to have long hair. If you don’t, people will laugh, they will say you are a square. Then you have to wear rags. If you don’t, they will say: What are you doing here? You belong to us no more, you are an outsider, an intruder.
So there are two types of conformity: the conformity of the establishment and the conformity of the rebel – but both are conformities. Some have short hair, some have long hair but both are the same, not a bit of difference exists.
If you live in a hippy world and don’t smell like hell you are not a hippy, not a true hippy. You will be rejected. You have to be dirty, you have to be unclean, otherwise you are not rebellious. If you move in the established world, the establishment, then you have to use perfume and shaving lotion and this and that. If you go there unclean you will not be accepted.
The mind is a conformist. So I know of only one rebellion and that is the rebellion of a meditative mind, the rebellion in which you drop the mind and move on your own. But always remember that you should not interfere in anybody else’s life.
For example, if you want to be dirty then go to the Himalayas, because to be dirty can interfere in other people’s life. When you are dirty and smelling bad you may not be attacking with your hands but you are attacking with your smell, it is aggression. If the other feels that this is a disturbance to him, then you are aggressive. If you want to be dirty – and nothing is wrong in being dirty – then you move to the Himalayas, to the farthest end, so nobody comes in contact with you. Then you can enjoy your bad odor, and enjoy it blissfully. You have no right to throw your smell and dirt on others, no, that’s not good.
Nobody should in any way interfere in anybody else’s life and nobody should allow anybody else to interfere in his life. This is how a man should be: not trying to enslave others and not allowing anybody to enslave him. One should live a life of freedom and one should allow others to live freely. Don’t be afraid, if you love beautiful orange material, use it, it is good. Whatsoever you love is good. There is only one condition: if it doesn’t interfere it is beautiful, it is moral.
- Osho, “Tao The Three Treasures Vol 2”
Nobody need interfere in your life.
My own understanding is, that it was somewhat of a perversion of compassion. You should not be so insistent; you should make available whatever you have. If somebody choses it, it is his freedom; if somebody does not, it is his freedom. You cannot impose your ideas upon others.
Even though the ideas were about freedom, the difficulty was that he was talking about freedom, but he wanted you to agree with his ideas about freedom. He could not see that even this is forcing slavery, a psychological slavery, on people.
You can simply share your vision of freedom, and that's all. It is up to the people. If something rings a bell in their hearts, good; if nothing rings into their hearts, what can you do? You cannot force somebody to freedom. And what kind of freedom will it be, which is forced? -- that you are free, under machine guns! You can simply give the idea, and forget all about it.
- Osho, "Hyakujo: The Everest of Zen, with Basho's Haikus, #3"
Freedom does not mean chaos. Freedom means more responsibility, so much responsibility that nobody need interfere in your life. That you can be left alone, that the government need not interfere with you, that the police need not interfere with you, that the law has nothing to do with you - you are simply outside of their world.
This is my approach if you really want to transform humanity: each individual should start growing on his own. And in fact a crowd is not needed for growth. Growth is something like a child growing in a mother's womb: no crowd is needed; the mother has just to be careful. A new man has to be born in you. You have to become the womb of a new man.
-Osho, “Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, #13, Q1“
Never follow anybody else's idea
Never follow anybody else`s idea -- that is very dangerous because you will become imitative. Always follow your own nature, self-nature; only then will you attain to freedom. It is better to die following one`s nature than to live following somebody`s else`s nature, because that will be a pseudo life. To die following one`s nature is beautiful, because that death too will be authentic.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada, Vol 4, #10, Q4“
You have asked about both the individual and the collective. For the collective there is no need. Only all the individuals should be free, and the collective will be free. The collective has no soul, the collective has no mind, the collective has no body even: it is only a name. It is just a word. But we are very much impressed by words, so much so that we forget that words are not substantial. The collective, the society, the community, the religion, the church -- they are all words. There is nothing real behind them.
-Osho, "The Path of the Mystic, #1, Q3“
The search for truth is the only search that makes you authentically human. Otherwise there is no difference between you and the animals -- and the crowd remains at the level of the animals. Never belong to a crowd; never belong to a nation; never belong to a religion; never belong to a race. Belong to the whole existence. Why limit yourself to small things? When the whole is available, only stupid people will cling to small things. Be oceanic. Only then will you have the taste of what true life is. And a great gratitude arises,
-Osho, “Om Mani Padme Hum, #26“
“Authority is totally different. Authoritarianism is connected with the society, with the church; authority is something which is concerned with the individual realization. [....] Authority belongs to experience. Authoritarianism belongs to somebody else, not to you; hence it creates slavery, not freedom. And to me freedom is the ultimate value, because only in freedom can you blossom, and can you blossom to your fullest possibility.”
-Osho, "Socrates Poisoned Again After 25 Centuries, #13, Q2"
Freedom is risky
Question 1 Osho, I heard you say once that the misuse of freedom is harmful. How can freedom be misused?
The philosophers have always believed that essence precedes existence, that man is born with what he is going to be already determined. Just like a seed he contains the whole program; now the question is only of unfoldment. There is no freedom.
That has been the attitude of all the philosophers of the past: that man has a certain fate, a destiny. One is going to become a certain entity; that is fixed, the script is already written. You are not aware of it -- that's another matter -- but whatsoever you are doing, you are not doing it, it is being done through you by natural, unconscious forces, or by God.
This is the attitude of the determinist, the fatalist. The whole of humanity has suffered from it immensely, because this kind of approach means there is no possibility of any radical change. Nothing can be done at all about man's transformation; everything is going to happen the way it is going to happen.
It is because of this attitude that the East has suffered most. When nothing can be done, then one starts accepting everything -- slavery, poverty, ugliness; one has to accept. It is not understanding, it is not awareness; it is not what Gautam the Buddha calls suchness, TATHATA. It is just despair, hopelessness hiding itself in beautiful words. But the consequence is going to be disastrous.
You can see it in India in its most developed form: the poverty, the beggars, the illness, the crippled people, the blind people. And nobody takes any note of it because this is how life is, this is how life has always been this is how life is always going to be. A kind of lethargy seeps into the very soul.
But the whole approach is basically false. It is a consolation, not a discovery. It is somehow to hide one's wounds -- it is a rationalization. And whenever rationalizations start hiding your reality you are bound to fall into darker and darker realms.
I would like to say to you that essence does not precede existence; on the contrary, existence precedes essence. Man is the only being on the earth who has freedom. A dog is born a dog, will live like a dog, will die like a dog; there is no freedom. A rose will remain a rose; there is no possibility of any transformation -- it cannot become a lotus. There is no question of choice, there is no freedom at all. This is where man is totally different. This is the dignity of man, his specialness in existence, his uniqueness.
That's why I say Charles Darwin is not right, because he starts categorizing man with other animals; the basic difference he has not even taken note of. The basic difference is: all animals are born with a program, only man is born without a program. Man is born as a TABULA RASA, a clean slate; nothing is written on it. You have to write everything that you want to write on it; it is going to be your creation.
Man is not only free -- I would like to say man is freedom. That is his essential core, that's his very soul. The moment you deny freedom to man you have denied him his most precious treasure, his very kingdom. Then he is a beggar and in a far more ugly situation than other animals, because at least they have a certain program. Then man is simply lost.
Once this is understood, that man is born AS freedom, then all the dimensions to grow open up. Then it is up to you what to become, what not to become. It is going to be your own creation. Then life becomes an adventure -- not an unfoldment but an adventure, an exploration, a discovery. The truth is not already given to you, you have to create it. In a way, each moment you are creating yourself.
If you accept the theory of fate, that is also an act of deciding about your life. By accepting fatalism you have chosen the life of a slave -- it is your choice! You have chosen to enter into a prison, you have chosen to be chained, but it is still your choice. You can come out of the prison.
That's what sannyas is all about: accepting your freedom. Of course people are afraid to be free, because freedom is risky. One never knows what one is doing, where one is going, what the ultimate result of it all is going to be. If you are not ready-made then the whole responsibility is yours. You cannot throw the responsibility on somebody else's shoulders. Ultimately you will be standing before existence totally responsible for yourself, whatsoever you are, whosoever you are. You cannot shirk it, you cannot escape from it. This is the fear. Out of this fear people have chosen all kinds of determinist attitudes.
And it is a strange thing: the religious and the irreligious are agreed only on one point, that there is no freedom. On every other point they disagree, but on one point their agreement is strange. The communists say they are atheists, irreligious, but they say that man is determined by the social, economic, political situations. Man is not free; man's consciousness is determined by outside forces. It is the same logic! You can call the outside force the economic structure; Hegel calls it History -- with a capital H, remember -- and the religious people call it God; again the word is with a capital G. God, history, economics, politics, society -- all outside forces. But they are all agreed upon one thing: that you are not free.
This is where a really authentically religious person differs.
Prem Tara, I say to you, you are absolutely free, unconditionally free. Don't avoid the responsibility; avoiding is not going to help. The sooner you accept it, the better, because immediately you can start creating yourself. And the moment you create yourself great joy arises, and when you have completed yourself, the way YOU wanted it, there is immense contentment -- just as when a painter finishes his painting, the last touch, and a great contentment arises in his heart. A job well done brings great peace. One feels that one has participated with God.
God is the creator and the only prayer is to be creative, because it is only through creativity that you participate in God; there is no other way to participate. God has not to be thought about, you have to participate in some way. You cannot be an observer, you can only be a participant; only then will you taste the mystery of it. Creating a painting is nothing, creating a poem is nothing, creating music is nothing compared to creating yourself, creating your consciousness, creating your very being.
But people have been afraid, and there are reasons to be afraid. The first is: it is risky, because only you are responsible. Secondly: the freedom can be misused, because you can choose the wrong thing to be. Freedom means you can choose the right or the wrong; if you are only free to choose the right, it is not freedom.
Then it will be like when Ford made his first cars -- they were all black. And he would take his customers into the showroom and tell them, "You can choose any color, provided it is black!"
But what kind of freedom is this? -- PROVIDED it is right, PROVIDED it follows the ten commandments, PROVIDED it is according to the Gita or the Koran, PROVIDED it is according to Buddha, Mahavira, Zarathustra. Then it is not freedom at all Freedom basically means, intrinsically means that you are capable of both: either choosing the right or the wrong.
And the danger is -- and hence the fear -- that the wrong is always easier to do. The wrong is a downhill task and the right is an uphill task. Going uphill is difficult, arduous; and the higher you go, the more arduous it becomes. But going downhill is very easy; you need not do anything, gravitation does everything for you. You can just roll like a rock from the hilltop and the rock will reach to the very bottom; nothing has to be done. But if you want to rise in consciousness, if you want to rise in the world of beauty, truth, bliss, then you are longing for the highest peaks possible and that certainly is difficult.
Secondly, the higher you reach, the more there is a danger of falling, because the path becomes narrow and you are surrounded on all sides by dark valleys. A single wrong step and you will simply be gone into the abyss, you will disappear. It is more comfortable, convenient to walk on the plain ground, not to bother about the heights.
Freedom gives you the opportunity either to fall below the animals or to rise above the angels. Freedom is a ladder: one side of the ladder reaches hell, the other side touches heaven. It is the SAME ladder; the choice is yours, the direction has to be chosen by you.
To me, if you are not free you cannot misuse your unfreedom; unfreedom cannot be misused. The prisoner cannot misuse his situation -- he is chained, he is not free to do anything. And that is the situation of all other animals except man: they are NOT free. They are born to be certain kinds of animal -- and they will fulfill it. In fact, nature fulfills it; they are NOT required to do anything. There is no challenge in their life. It is only man who has to face the challenge, the great challenge. And very few people have chosen to risk, to go to the heights, to discover their ultimate peaks. Only a few -- the Buddha, the Christ -- only very few; they can be counted on the fingers.
Why hasn't the whole of humanity chosen to reach the same state of bliss as Buddha, the same state of love as Christ, the same state of celebration as Krishna? Why? -- for the simple reason that it is dangerous even to aspire to those heights; it is better not to think about it. And the best way not to think about it is to accept that there is no freedom -- you are already determined beforehand; there is a certain script handed over to you before your birth and you have just to fulfill it.
Prem Tara, you ask: HOW CAN FREEDOM BE MISUSED?
Only freedom can be misused, slavery cannot be misused. That's why you see so much chaos in the world today. It has never been there before for the simple reason that man was not so free. You see more chaos in America than in Russia for the simple reason that in Russia people are not free to choose. In America they are enjoying the greatest freedom that has ever been enjoyed anywhere in the world at any time in history. Whenever there is freedom chaos erupts, but that chaos is worth it because only out of that chaos are stars born.
My sannyasins will be hated all over the world, will be condemned all over the world, for the simple reason that they have chosen to live a life of freedom. And I am not giving you any discipline, because every discipline is a subtle kind of slavery. I am not giving you any commandments, because any commandments given by anybody else coming from the outside are going to imprison you, to enslave you.
I am only teaching you how to be free and then leaving you to yourself to do what you want to do with your freedom. If you want to fall below the animals that is your decision and you are perfectly allowed to do it, because it is your life. If you decide it that way then it is your prerogative. But if you understand freedom and its value you will not start falling; you will not go below the animals, you will start rising above the angels.
Man is not an entity, he is a bridge -- a bridge between two eternities: the animal and the God, the unconscious and the conscious. Grow in consciousness, grow in freedom, take each step out of your own choice: create yourself. A sannyasin is one who creates himself and takes the whole responsibility for it.
-Osho, "Philosophia Ultima, #2"
When I say 'freedom', I mean be responsible.- Freedom is maturity; licence is very childish. -
Question 5 On the one hand you are giving ultimate freedom to do whatsoever we want to do, and on the other hand you are giving responsibility. with responsibility, i cannot use the word 'freedom' as i want, hence i have to wait for the right meaning of freedom. the moment i get it, i get it with responsibility. osho, when i understand i feel'thank you'. otherwise, i would like to use, and i have already used it as a licence.
IT is one of the perennial questions of humanity: the question of freedom and responsibility. If you are free, you interpret it as if now there is no responsibility. Just a hundred years ago Friedrich Nietzsche declared, "God is dead, and man is free." And the next sentence he wrote is, "Now you can do whatsoever you want to do. There is no responsibility. God is dead, man is free, and there is no responsibility." There he was absolutely wrong; when there is no God, there is TREMENDOUS responsibility on your shoulders. If there is a God, he can share your responsibility. You can throw your responsibility on Him: you can say, "It is YOU who have made the world; it is YOU who have made me in this way; it is YOU who is finally, ultimately, responsible, not me. How can I be ultimately responsible? I am just a creature, and you are the creator. Why have you put seeds of corruption in me and seeds of sin in me from the beginning? You are responsible. I am free." In fact, if there is no God, then man is ABSOLUTELY responsible for his acts, because there is no way to throw responsibility on anybody else.
When I say to you that you are free, I mean that you are responsible. You cannot throw responsibility on anybody else, you are alone. And whatsoever you do, it is your doing. You cannot say that somebody else forced you to do it -- because you are free; nobody can force you! Because you are free, it is your decision to do something or not to do something. With freedom comes responsibility. Freedom IS responsibility. But the mind is very cunning, the mind interprets in its own way: it always goes on listening to that which it wants to listen to. It goes on interpreting things in its own way. The mind never tries to understand what really is the truth. It has taken that decision already.
[....]
People go on talking about freedom, but they don't want freedom exactly, they want irresponsibility. They ask for freedom, but deep down, unconsciously, they ask for irresponsibility, licence.
Freedom is maturity; licence is very childish. Freedom is possible only when you are so integrated that you can take the responsibility of being free. The world is not free because people are not mature. Revolutionaries have been doing many things down through the centuries, but everything fails. Utopians have been continuously thinking of how to make man free, but nobody bothers -- because man cannot be free unless he is integrated. Only a Buddha can be free, a Mahavira can be free, a Christ, a Mohammed can be free, a Zarathustra can be free, because freedom means the man now is aware. If you are not aware then the state is needed, the government is needed, the police is needed, the court is needed. Then freedom has to be cut from everywhere. Then freedom exists only in name; in fact it doesn't exist. How can freedom exist when governments exist? -- it is impossible. But what to do?
If governments disappear, there will simply be anarchy. Freedom will not come in if governments disappear, there will simply be anarchy. It will be a worse state than it is now. It will be sheer madness. The police are needed because you are not alert. Otherwise, what is the point of having a policeman standing on the crossroad? If people are alert, the policeman can be removed, will have to be removed, because it is unnecessary. But people are not conscious.
So when I say 'freedom', I mean be responsible. The more responsible you become, the more free you become; or, the more free you become, the more responsibility comes on you. Then you have to be very alert to what you are doing, what you are saying. Even about your small unconscious gestures you have to be very alert -- because there is nobody else to control you, it is only you. When I say to you that you are free, I mean that you are a God. It is not licence, it is tremendous discipline.
-Osho, "The Beloved, Vol 2, #10"
Freedom is the highest value
Nobody loves anything more than freedom. Even love is secondary to freedom; freedom is the highest value. Love can be sacrificed for freedom, but freedom cannot be sacrificed for love. And that's what we have been doing for centuries: sacrificing freedom for love. Then there is antagonism, conflict, and every opportunity is used to hurt each other.
-Osho, "Come, Come, Yet Again Come, #9, Q1“
You have to remember that freedom is the highest value and if love is not giving you freedom then it is not love. Freedom is a criterion: Anything that gives you freedom is right, and anything that destroys your freedom is wrong. If you can remember this small criterion your life, slowly, will start settling on the right path about everything: your relationships, your meditations, your creativity, whatever you are.
-Osho, "Sermons in Stones, #13, Q2“
Your freedom is a supreme value. Nothing is higher than that. But your freedom is possible only if you are not encaged in your habits, unconscious patterns of living. Change your gestalt from unconsciousness to consciousness.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10, #8, Q1“
Meditation is the key to liberation, to freedom
Create inner freedom through witnessing. Sannyas is only for the inner freedom. And live out of inner freedom and then you will be able to see the interdependence on the outside. It is beautiful and it is a blessing. There is no need to rebel against it. Relax into it, surrender to it. And remember: only a person who is really free can surrender.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 9, #4, Q6“
Remember: there is no other revolution except consciousness. It cuts the desires from the very roots and it brings freedom to you.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 9, #9“
Desire is our imprisonment. The man who wants nothing, who is absolutely contented as he is, is free of all bondage. He has attained to ultimate freedom, nirvana -- and that is the goal of life. And it is only by attaining that freedom that you will know the significance of being, the song of being, the celebration of being. Your life will become a continuous bliss, and not only that YOU will be blissful, you will be able to bless others too. The whole existence will be blessed by you, by your very presence.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 10, #3“
Buddha says: Meditation brings two things. It brings wisdom, it brings freedom. These two flowers grow out of meditation. When you become silent, utterly silent, beyond the mind, two flowers bloom in you. One is of wisdom: you know what is and what is not. And the other is of freedom: you know now there are no more any limitations on you, either of time or of space. You become liberated. Meditation is the key to liberation, to freedom, to wisdom.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 9, #8“
Freedom from dreams
Beware of dreams! And watch your dreams day in, day out, because they are continuously there. You can watch them, and by watching them you will become unidentified with them, you will become a mirror reflecting them. And this brings great freedom. Freedom from dreams is freedom from the world.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 5, #9“
"Freedom" means freedom from the mind. Then you are simply in a silence, and in that silence you melt, you merge with the whole. And to melt and merge with the whole is to be holy. Not by fasting, not by torturing, but by becoming one with the whole, one becomes holy.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 4, #9“
Truth liberates. Truth is freedom
Remember, until you become a buddha you have wasted your life. Buddhahood is your flowering, your fragrance. A tree is fulfilled when it blooms, and a man is fulfilled when he releases the fragrance of buddhahood, when he becomes luminous; then he comes to know who he is. In knowing that, all is known. In knowing that, God is known. In knowing that, truth is achieved -- you become the truth, and truth liberates. Truth is freedom.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 7, #1“
Freedom from pain and pleasure
Hell means nothing but misery; it is a psychological state of misery, a state of negativity, a state of darkness, of utter loneliness. And heaven is joy, happiness, health, light. But there is a third word, moksha. Moksha means freedom, freedom from both heaven and hell, freedom from pain and pleasure -- because pain binds you as much as pleasure binds you. Pain may be an ugly chain and pleasure may be a beautiful chain, decorated, maybe made of gold, but it chains you. Hell may be a poor place and heaven may be a very rich place but poverty and riches are two aspects of the same coin. One has to be free of both.
When you are free of both, you are free of mind, because mind lives in the duality of heaven and hell, of darkness and light, of misery and happiness, of day and night, of life and death. When you have transcended both and reached to the third which is beyond, which is transcendental, it is moksha. Moksha means nirvana; it is cessation of the ego, and meeting and merging into the universal. That has been the goal of the Eastern mystic.
-Osho, "The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 9, #3“
Let your life flow out of your freedom.Whatsoever you decide is up to you.
Question 3 It seems that nothing ever really drops away. suddenly it is gone, but just as suddenly it is back again. it all seems like a magic trick.
... A very meaningful question, with tremendous implications for understanding. Let us move into it very slowly.
Yes, this is so: nothing ever really drops away. Nothing ever really drops away; suddenly it is gone, and as suddenly as it left, in the same way, at any moment, suddenly it is back again. Why is it so? -- because you have never tried to understand the nature of human consciousness. The nature of human consciousness is absolute freedom. When I say absolute freedom, I mean you are free at any moment to be whatsoever you decide. Nothing holds itself against you. You may have been a saint up to now. You may have lived in celibacy up to now. This very moment you can change: you can throw away your celibacy i you can fall in love with a woman or a man. Because you have been celibate in the past does not, CANNOT become a bondage. You remain free. If you want to be celibate in this moment also, you can be. But remember that it is not because of the past, it is again a fresh decision. You have to go on making your decision again and again and again, reviving it again and again and again. At any moment you can drop it.
Existentialists are true. They say: existence precedes essence. It is a very pregnant sentence. Let me repeat it: existence precedes essence.
A man is born; he is pure freedom. He has no essence, only existence. Then he will choose his essence, whom he is going to be -- and it will be his choice. He can be a saint, he can be a sinner; he can be a criminal, he can be a murderer, or he can ke a martyr. He brings pure existence into the world -- a blank sheet, a pure canvas. What colors he is going to use, and what sort of painting he is going to make of his life, is totally up to him. He does not bring a character. He simply brings a potentiality, pure potentiality. And this pure potentiality always remains pure; you cannot corrupt it. You become a saint: that means you decide that to be a saint is going to be your essence. But this is your decision, and if you want to keep it up to the very end of your life, every morning, in fact, every minute of your existence, you will have to decide again and again and vote for it. Any moment you stop deciding, any moment you say,'Enough is enough, now I want to change,' nobody is barring the path. You can cancel your whole past in a single moment, because that past was your decision, nobody else's. It is not like a destiny forced from above, from outside. It is your own inner decision. You can change it.
That's why nothing ever disappears. You can become a sinner, but tomorrow you may again change. You can again take the vow of a Catholic priest and become a priest again, become celibate. Try to understand this.. This has tremendous implications for your life.
Don't throw the responsibility on anybody else. Nobody else is a deciding factor, neither your mother nor your father. Whatsoever the psychoanalysts say is really irrelevant to your being. It is for you to decide. Even the people who are mad are mad because of their own decision. Somehow they found it to be convenient. Somehow they decided; they voted for it. Nobody has forced them. Nobody can force anybody because the innermost quality of being is freedom. It is not something accidental; it is your very nature.
You have been smoking up to now. For thirty years you may have been a chain smoker and you come to me and you ask,'What to do? How to stop?' You are asking a wrong question. In fact, you don't want to stop. Go deep into your own mind: you don't want to stop; you are playing a game. You don't want to stop but you want to;show people that you want to stop. Or, this very idea that you want to stop gives you a very, very good image about yourself. Then you go on saying,'What can I do? It has become such a long habit; I cannot stop, though I want to stop.' This is simple, sheer foolishness and stupidity. You are not deceiving anybody except yourself. If you really want to Stop, there is no need to do anything about it. The very decision that you want to stop is enough: the half-smoked cigarette in your hand will drop of its own accord. But you remain free. That does not mean that again tomorrow you cannot take it up. You remain free; nobody can bind you. Again tomorrow you can take it up. Then please, don't start saying that it is because of old habit:'I tried my best, and I had stopped, and for twenty-four hours I didn't smoke. But because of a thirty-year-old habit, I am again taking it up. The urge is too much.'
Do not try to befool anybody. There is nothing like that; you are again deciding. If you are deciding, then it is okay. You can find a thousand and one ways to decide again. But remember always, it is your decision, yours and nobody else's; and you remain free. That's why it happens that nothing seems to disappear forever. It comes again and again -- because you again invoke it to come, you again call it to come. I have heard: Mulla Nasrudin had once decided that he would never touch any alcoholic thing again in his life any intoxicant. And he was a drunkard. So just to test his own will-power, he walked on the path where the pub was. Just in front of the pub, he looked at the pub in avery proud way and said to himself,'I have decided that nothing can attract me and nothing can force me to g astray'; and he heartily walked a hundred feet away. Then he patted his own back and he said,'Nasrudin, you are great. Now I will treat you, come to the pub.' And on that day he drank twice.
Don't play games with yourself. It is your freedom, but freedom is very dangerous because it does not leave any corner for you to hide in. You cannot throw responsibility on anybody else. Simply and absolutely, you are responsible. Just watch and see the fact of it, and truth liberates.
If you can see this, then whether you decide to smoke or drink does not matter. Whether you decide to drop it does not matter. The only thing that matters is to be always mindful of your freedom. If you are not aware of that then this will happen: you will feel that nothing ever really drops away. It comes again and again, and of course it comes worse than ever. It comes with a vengeance.
But don't think of yourself as a victim; you are not. Try what I am saying, just watch what I am saying. Smoking... let there be a decision that you are not going to smoke. Let the cigarette drop from your fingers, and then watch. Just go on observing. Whenever you again want to smoke, don't say that it is because of old habit.,It is again a fresh decision, not an old habit. You go on throwing the responsibility on the old habit to save your own face. Please don't do that. Say that,'Now I have decided to smoke again.' Nobody is barring you; it is your decision. You can cancel, or you can vote for it again. But always insist that it is a fresh decision, and you will never be in the grip of so-called habits, so-called mechanical habits. You will feel a free man. Smoking or not smoking is immaterial; to feel a free man is very significant. Nothing is more significant than that. And I am here to make you aware of your freedom. If you go to the so-called saints, they will make you aware of your mechanicalness: that is the difference. They will make you aware of your mechanicalness, and they will create a new mechanicalness in you. They will say,'You have been smoking for thirty years? Now take a vow that you will never smoke again.' Old habit is there; now they are telling you to create a greater habit in order to destroy the old habit. Then non-smoking will become a habit, but the freedom is nowhere there. Whether you smoke or don't smoke, you remain a victim.
[....]
My whole emphasis is that you should become aware of your freedom. Let your life flow out of your freedom. Whatsoever you decide is up to you. Who am I to tell you to smoke or not to smoke, to drink or not to drink? I am not worried about such foolishnesses; this is for you to decide. You are your own master. These are trivia; they are not significant. All that matters is that you remain alert, remain centered in your freedom. Never do anything which goes against your freedom. Do -- everything is allowed if it is done out of freedom. To act out of freedom is to be virtuous, to act out of bondage is to sin.
-Osho, "Come Follow To You, Vol 4, #6"
I am neither teaching licentiousness nor repressiveness
Question 3 Osho, Do you profess licentiousness in life?
I don’t profess anything. I simply clarify things to you, I don’t profess. I am not giving you any ideology; I am only giving you insight. Take note of the difference. An ideology has to be professed; an insight has to be imparted. I simply make things clear to you, I simply help you to clarify things. I am not giving you a dogma. I am not giving you a theory that will solve all your problems – there is none. I am simply telling you: Open your eyes, become more aware. And that awareness will help you in every kind of difficulty, in every kind of problem. That awareness will be like a light in the dark night. And wherever you go that light will remain with you, you will be able to see. I don’t give you a theory. You have depended too much on theories. Theories are cheap because they don’t require any transformation on your part. Dogmas are very easy to accept. Then you have an idea which you go on trying to fit everywhere in your life, and you start depending on the idea.
That dependence on the idea makes you more and more blind. If you are a Christian, you are blind, if you are a Hindu you are blind, if you believe in any dogma you are blind. Because only blind people believe.
A blind man believes in light. But a man who has eyes, he does not believe in light, there is no need.
He knows light – why should he believe? You don’t believe in light, you don’t believe in the sun, you don’t believe in these trees, you know. But a blind man, he believes that trees are green, that the rainbow has seven colors, that the sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening, that there are colors in the world. A deaf man believes in sounds; you don’t believe. Belief is an ugly word.
I help you to see. That’s what Buddha says: ‘Ihi passika – Come and see.’ You see the difference? Jesus says ‘Come and follow me.’ Buddha says ‘Come and see.’ Both are enlightened – but Jesus must be talking to a very low level of consciousness, he has to say ‘Come and follow me.’ ‘Follow me’ means believe. Buddha must be talking to highly evolved conscious people, he says ‘Come and see.’ There is no question of following anything, there is no question of believing in anything. He just says ‘I have seen – come and see through my eyes. Just come close to me and see through my window. Maybe that will give you an insight and you can open your own window.’
I also say to you: Ihi passika – Come and see. Seeing is a totally different matter. I don’t teach anything; I am not a teacher. In fact I destroy teachings. I don’t help you to learn anything, in fact I help you to unlearn. You have already learned too much.
But the question is relevant. Many people interpret me in that way, they think I am professing licentiousness. I am neither professing licentiousness nor am I professing repression I am simply helping you to see a saner way of life. Licentiousness is insane, as much insane as repressiveness. Christianity created a very repressive atmosphere in the West. That has created licentiousness. For your sinners, your saints are responsible. The world will never be without sinners unless it decides to be without saints. The saint creates the sinner, the saint cannot exist without the sinner. They are partners, they are together.
The Vatican has some deep support for the playboy. If you are repressive, you will create pornography. If you are repressive, people will start finding ways and means to go to the other extreme. Because normality is not allowed. Life has been forced to be either white or black – either be a saint or be a sinner. The priests have not allowed you the possibility that there is something else too. Life really is grey. It is neither black nor white. Black and white are two extremes of grey, but life remains grey.
I am neither teaching licentiousness nor repressiveness. I am simply helping you to become sane.
It is your life; it is nobody else’s life. And you have to be sane about it, otherwise you will miss the great opportunity, the great blessing, the great gift of God. Don’t be repressive, otherwise one day, in this life or in some other life, you will become licentious. And don’t be licentious, otherwise in this life or in some life you will become repressive. The pendulum goes that way. The pendulum has to stop in the middle. And have you watched? If the pendulum stops in the middle, the clock stops. When the mind stops in the middle, time stops. When the mind stops in the middle, the world stops. And in that silence, one knows God.
But listening to me – and you are all carrying a thousand and one repressions – you listen through the screen of your repressions, and you interpret that it is licentiousness. Your unconscious is too full of repressions. I am not teaching anything like that, I am simply saying to be a man is enough. You need not be a saint and then you will not need to be a sinner. Be natural. Don’t interfere with your nature, don’t mold it into pattern. Don’t be ideological and don’t be always hankering to be somebody else. Don’t hanker for betterment, just be natural and relax into your being. And whatsoever is natural is good.
This is the meaning of Tao, this is the meaning of Zen. But you have your repressed unconscious.
And when you hear me, naturally you hear from the repressed unconscious. That repressed unconscious immediately gives colors, changes meanings, interprets.[....]
When you hear, it depends on you what color you will give it to it. You are already too full of repressions, you are ready to become licentious – so when you hear me you interpret it as licentiousness. It is nothing of the sort. Be very careful with me. [....]
That ‘what’ . . . You already have an idea, and the interpretation follows. Listen to me directly, just put your mind aside.
That’s why so many therapy groups are being run here. Just to help you to put your mind aside. Just to help you to see your unconscious, to help you to cathart your unconscious, to vomit it. So that you can become more and more empty and can listen to me through your emptiness. Otherwise, you are carrying so much rubbish, rubbish of the ages. You have been going through so many ideals, ideologies, you have accumulated so much nonsense. And when you hear me, that nonsense comes in-between.
I am neither for repression nor for licence, they are both aspects of the same coin. The whole coin has to be thrown into the Ganges. You have to become natural, you have to accept all that you are.
In that acceptance is flowering. All is good that God has given to you. How can it be otherwise? – it is a gift from God.
So listen to me, not through your thoughts, your prejudices. Listen to me without your prejudices, just put the mind aside. While listening to me don’t go on interpreting, while listening to me get en rapport with me. Don’t be in a hurry to conclude; that hurry is harmful. You are in such a hurry to conclude, you want to achieve some results so fast, that’s why you go on missing many things. There is no hurry and there is no need to conclude right now. While listening to me, first listen totally.
And then later on you can think about it. If you have listened rightly then your thoughts will not be able to distort the meaning, they will not be able to distract you. Once you have listened rightly, without any interpretation, without any thinking about it, then later on you can bring your whole mind to it. There will be no problem, you will have followed what I have said to you. Otherwise, while listening to me you are continuously thinking by the side. While you are listening to me you are thinking – many thoughts are going, rushing in and out. They are very, very dangerous. Then whatsoever conclusion you arrive at through them will be your conclusion, will not be mine.
But it feels good to throw the responsibility on me. You have become so disrespectful towards yourself that you always throw the responsibility on somebody else. You have forgotten that you are responsible to yourself. Only you. All that happens to you and all that is going to happen to you is going to happen through you. You are wholly and solely responsible for your life. Nobody else is the savior.
And you cannot throw your responsibilities on me. If you want to be licentious be licentious. I am nobody to interfere – who am I? If you want to be repressive, be repressive. But don’t impose meanings on what I say.
- Osho, "This Very Body the Buddha, Discourse #9, Q3"
Freedom means that each personhas the freedom to be what he wishes to be
If a person wants to know truth, he does not set out by himself to discover it; he goes and falls at the feet of a guru saying, "You are my everything. Give me the knowledge of truth. How can I, a sinner, do anything?" He little knows that all his sins are his own doing. A lot of toil and effort is required to become a sinner. He admits his ability to commit sins by saying he is a sinner. At the same time he says, "How can a sinner do anything to gain knowledge of the truth?" Actually, he is begging to be saved from his freedom. He is requesting this guru to become his jailer so that if tomorrow, he finds himself in hell, he can put the responsibility on the Guru. And if he attains heaven, he can always claim the credit for having chosen this guru. Thus, man clings to the shastras, and to gurus.
People like Hitler, Mao and Stalin are not born accidentally. They are born only when a whole country desires to be enslaved. Each person eagerly wishes for a man who can stand up and say, "I know what is right, Follow me!" -- so that they can follow him. They want to be told clearly what to do and what not to do. This is why we pursue politicians and sadhus and mahatmas. And these whom we ask, -- they too have asked others. They have no direct knowledge of their own; they too do not know what is right and what is wrong. The fact is, when there are people to inquire, teachers become available.
We are eager to place our burden on others. Freedom seems too heavy for our shoulders. It should actually be the other way around: freedom should give us wings to fly in the sky.
Freedom seems very cumbersome, because we do not know what to do with it. There was a Zen fakir by the name of Nanin. One day he stayed late at his guru's ashram. He asked his guru to give him a lamp since it was too dark and he had far to go. The guru gave him a lamp but as soon as he began to go down the steps, the guru blew out the flame and extinguished it. Nanin was surprised. "What kind of a joke is this?" he asked.
The guru replied, "It never pays to find your path with another's light. Your own darkness is much better than someone else's light. Go, seek in your own darkness, so that the lamp within you may become lightened. The more you seek, the more you shall be cleansed. You will fall, you will dash against things, your limbs may break, but you will discover your soul in the bargain. Therefore, I have extinguished the lamp."
Nanin has written in his memoirs that he was never able to forget this man who had snatched the lamp from his hands and snuffed it out. He was the one who pushed him into darkness and made provisions for the lamp within to burn. "Today," he says, "when I see the flame burning within, my head bows down in reverence and gratefulness to this man who caused it to be lit."
This is freedom. It is very easy for God to place a light in your hands, but you can only live like worms with the help of such light. You will never fall, never go astray. There will be no hell; you will go straight to heaven. But the heaven that is obtained with the help of another is worse than hell, because such a heaven is a bondage. The good fortune that is not entirely one's own, that has not been sought and attained and experienced by one's own effort is worse than misfortune. Therefore Lao Tzu says: "Tao creates everything but controls nothing. It gives no instructions. It has given us the strength and the means to walk but it does not say, "Walk like this." The power to walk belongs to Tao; the space, the path, the darkness, the light, the very person who walks is Tao; and yet, Tao does not command: "go to the right, go to the left."
Tao gives us life, but it makes freedom the very basis of life. This freedom can become the agony of life or the benevolence of life; the choice is entirely ours. This freedom can cause that which lies hidden within to be revealed. This freedom can also be utilised to create our own darkness, our own nether world where we can rot and decay and be destroyed. One thing is certain however: that there is perfect freedom in the world. This perfect freedom is the unacclaimed declaration of the existence of God. This is His silent declaration of "I am".
But we are totally unaware of this freedom. We are afraid, because freedom means responsibility. It means that I am the only person responsible for all my actions. If I find myself in hell, I have no one to blame but myself.
This responsibility perplexes and confuses us, so we try to shove it on to each other. The husband puts the responsibility on the wife, the wife on the husband, and thus both absolve themselves, taking the other to be accountable. They are not at all conscious of the game they play.
Eric Berne has written a book The Games the People Play. In this book he describes almost all the games that human beings play with each other. This act of throwing responsibility on each other is also a game. The funny part is that the one on whom we place the responsibility, places the same responsibility on us. He who cannot be responsible for himself how can he be expected to shoulder the responsibility of others?
Unfortunately, neither he nor you are aware of the fact that you have placed your responsibility on each other. And so, we blame each other throughout life, without knowing that we both are beggars who are holding our begging bowls before each other. Each begs of the other, and neither can give!
Freedom is frightening, so we try to look for some kind of slavery. Our so-called God [not the Tao that Lao Tzu speaks of] is also a bondage. We place the onus on Him. We say, "We are in your hands. Take care of us!" Therefore, when a man is happy, he never thinks of God; but when he is unhappy, he always thinks of God. He does not want to bear the responsibility for his own unhappiness. He is only prepared to be responsible for his good fortune. He likes to feel and believe it was entirely because of him. But when bad days befall him, he looks up to heaven and cries, "How can I suffer so when you are there? Of what use is your being if I suffer so? Either banish my woes and give me proof of you existence or I shall not believe in you.“
[....]
Your value, your meaningfulness, depends upon the extent to which you make creative use of your freedom. Your value depends upon the right use you make of your freedom. The very meaning of Sadhana is this: The creative use of your freedom.
Sadhana means the creative use of your freedom. The worldly man is one who uses his freedom destructively. He is leading to his own destruction. He makes his freedom the obstruction to his own elan vital and is instrumental in creating his own gallows.
We do not remember God in happiness, but we remember Him in our unhappiness because then we want to shove off the responsibility from our shoulders. Russell has written, "I will only believe that God really is when there is no sorrow on earth." Russell is right as far as theism goes. Our theism will fade if there is no sorrow on earth. Think a while: Will anyone remember God if there is no sorrow on earth? Will the temple bells ring? will candles burn in churches then? Will the call of the muezzin fill the morning air? These prayers, these calls, this worship, these oblations of fire -- through all these, our sorrow cries. And the absurdity of it all is that neither temples nor mosques can eradicate our sorrows, because it is we who create them and we alone can destroy them. Sorrow is the misuse we make of our freedom. But it is this freedom that we want to save ourselves from.
Really, would the thought of God ever have entered our mind if there was no sorrow on earth? How could it arise? God is like medicine for an illness. If there is no illness, who but a madman would think of taking medicine? God is like a medicine to us. We use Him to cure our ills. When there is sorrow, we think the medicine of His name; when there is happiness, we throw the bottle of this medicine in the dustbin.
We think of Him in sorrow only, because we want to place the responsibility for our ills on His shoulders. But you cannot place any responsibility on God's shoulders because God does not bind you. You are free, independent. No one is there in this world who is a greater advocate of freedom than God.
The freedom He confers on His creation is so profound that we see so much dissimilarity around us.
The socialist and the communist, who always criticize God always put forth this argument: that if there is a God, then why all this inequality? Their argument appears to be correct on the face of it because they do not take the trouble to think. Remember, however, that freedom and equality are opposite conditions. If you desire equality, you cannot have freedom; if you desire freedom you cannot have equality. All people can be made equal, but then all will have to be slaves. Equality can only exist in prison. Even in a prison, if there is some laxity, inequality creeps in. Utmost strictness is required to maintain equality.
Complete equality is possible only in complete subservience. Therefore, if communism succeeds, the whole world will be one big prison. If communism does not succeed completely, it cannot be communism.
Freedom means that each person has the freedom to be what he wishes to be. Then, inequality is bound to be there. Then inequality is inevitable. If equality is to be maintained, each man will have to be forcibly made to conform to the accepted level of equality.
Another interesting development that follows such equality is that the level of consciousness falls according to the degree of equality in a society. The greater the equality, the lower will be the plane of consciousness. Supposing there is a class of thirty pupils. The boy who is the thirteenth in the class cannot be made to attain the first grade; but in order to maintain equality, the first boy can be forcibly constrained to go down to the level of the thirteenth. Actual equality can only be maintained at the level because the lowest can never be pulled up to the highest point, whereas the highest can be obstructed and made to go down. Likewise, it is not easy to bring all the patients in a hospital back to good health, but it is very easy to make healthy people sick. To pull back is always easier; to rise up is always difficult. Therefore, the greater the equality, the lower will be the plane of intelligence; and the greater the freedom, the greater the possibility of intelligence touching the peaks of consciousness.
Remember, freedom means that he who wants to reach the peak will reach, and he who does not want to reach will not reach. He is free to remain where he was if he so wishes, and he is free to undertake the long journey -- again, if he so wishes. So to people like Marx who deny the presence of God on the grounds of inequality, I say that this is one of the many proofs of the existence of God: that there in so much inequality and disparity in the world because of the complete freedom He has granted us.
People invariably invoice equality and freedom in one breath. Not only this, in France they went a step further and shouted the slogan: "Justice, Freedom, Equality!" This is complete insanity, but we are not aware of it because we are so enchanted by the trickery of words. We never try to investigate deeply, but are simply carried away by the magic of words. If there is equality, there cannot be freedom; and if there is freedom, equality is impossible. And if you want justice, you shall have to choose between the two.
Then also, if you opt for freedom, your justice will be entirely different; and if you opt for equality, your justice will be entirely different. If you choose equality, then an attempt to be different will be termed a crime. If you choose freedom, this very attempt would be deemed a just and rightful act. If you choose equality, it will be lawful to keep each man limited; and if you choose freedom it will be considered lawful to encourage a person to be different. It will be unjust and unlawful to hinder or obstruct a person from becoming unusual and different.
All this is very difficult to deal with. Freedom and equality are very important problems.
So, Marx denied God. He had very little to do with God. Rather, he had no use for Him. But one thing was clear to him: If God exists, freedom cannot be destroyed. Then inequality is bound to remain. So if inequality is to be destroyed, we shall have to destroy the very philosophy of the existence of God. Thus it is not without reason that Communism is atheistic. A person cannot be a communist and still believe in God. He has to be an atheist, because the very meaning of God is freedom -- no control.
What Lao Tzu said dates back 2500 years before Marx. Independence and freedom can only be in absence of control. Only where there is freedom is there the possibility of development. But then, the responsibility rests with us. If we wish to avoid it, we will have to find some means of bondage and slavery. If we do not make God or guru our master, we shall make the state our master. It makes no difference. Let he who wills, throw the reins round our necks. We are ready to follow. We are incapable of walking ourselves; we need someone to prod us, to goad us on. Then we are assured and feel confident. We feel there is no need for anxiety; we cannot go wrong. But remember, this is the biggest mistake Whatever we do after surrendering our freedom is an error, a sin, a crime.
-Osho, “The Way of Tao, Volume 2, #4”
Freedom opens the door of responsibility.Fear takes away all responsibilities- you are just a slave.
Question 3: Osho, You say that fear and freedom, like ambition and love, cannot co-exist. but it is existence that brings into being fear and love of freedom, together. please comment.
It is true that it is existence itself which brings fear and love of freedom together - and I have been telling you they cannot exist together. They cannot.
Existence gives you an alternative: to choose, so that your freedom is not interfered with. You can choose fear, or you can choose freedom. Freedom is not being imposed by nature on you, neither is fear imposed. Nature gives you alternatives. Now it is your own choice, out of your own intelligence that you have to choose.
You cannot choose both together - that is what I mean when I say they cannot exist together.
Existence makes them both available, but you have to choose one. Most people have chosen fear.
Out of fear they have created all kinds of gods, theologies, religions; out of fear they are being dominated by stupid politicians; out of fear they have been exploited for thousands of years; out of fear comes their whole spiritual slavery. But there must be some reason why they choose fear and why they don't choose freedom. Very few people have chosen freedom.
There is something which has to be understood: freedom brings responsibility. The moment you choose to be free, you are responsible for every one of your acts. You are responsible for your whole life; you are responsible for your misery or your blissfulness; you are responsible for remaining asleep or becoming awake.
Freedom opens the door of responsibility. Fear takes away all responsibilities - you are just a slave.
The responsibility is in the hands of somebody else, who dominates you. He will provide you with food, he will provide you with clothes, he will provide you with a shelter - you need not worry about it. If he wants a slave, he has to provide all these things.
Fear is a kind of security, safety - somebody else has taken the responsibility and the burden of responsibility - and this is the reason why millions of people have chosen fear. But the moment they choose fear, they also lose many things: not only responsibility - they lose their very souls. They are no longer themselves. They lose all possibility of growth - they are in the hands of somebody else. If your growth is going to be beneficial to those hands, the growth will be allowed; but if your growth, your intelligence, is going to be a disturbance, then your roots will be cut. [....]
The moment you allow somebody else to take responsibility for you, he starts cutting your roots - because a slave has to remain weak, has to remain retarded in the mind; otherwise he will be dangerous. If he is strong, intelligent, he may revolt. To avoid revolt, to avoid any kind of revolution, the slave has to be kept at the minimum of his growth, not at the maximum.
So they don't allow you to grow upwards as an individual; they don't allow you to become intelligent. [....]
Existence always gives alternatives in every dimension, because existence does not want anything to be imposed on its children. You have to choose. [....]
Existence gives you fear; existence gives you freedom. You cannot have both together.
Freedom will create in you an authentic individual, with great challenges and responsibilities, dangers, risks. But a life without dangers and without risks is not life; then the safest place is the grave, where no disease happens - no hepatitis, no AIDS, no homosexuality, no crime, no rape, no murder - nothing happens. You are absolutely secure... and you cannot even die. One death is enough; after that there is no question of death. But do you want to choose a grave? Those who have chosen fear have chosen a psychological grave.
My effort here is to bring you out of all kinds of graves. Jesus has brought only one man out of the grave, and that was Lazarus. I am trying to bring thousands of people out of greater graves - which are psychological - and give them the opportunity to be free, and to be responsible; to take the risk, to accept the adventure. Climbing in the mountains is dangerous, but unless you accept the danger, you will never reach to the peaks of your being.
Freedom brings you to the highest peaks of enlightenment.
-Osho, "The Rebellious Spirit, #10, Q3"
I will not allow any relationship
Your whole life is surrounded by many kinds of relationships. I don't want any kind of relationship. Relationship as such, real or imaginary, is a very subtle kind of psychological slavery. Either you enslave the other, or you become a slave yourself.
Another point to be noted is that you cannot enslave somebody without becoming a slave yourself. Slavery is a double-edged sword. One may be stronger, one may be weaker, but in every relationship you become the jailer and the other becomes the prisoner. From his side, he is the jailer and you are the prisoner. And this is one of the fundamental causes of humanity living in such sadness, in such a sorrowful state.
You have heard me rightly: I don't want any part of any relationship, "... certainly not our hate, but not even our love." From my side, I will not allow any relationship; I will not nourish any relationship. But you are free to suffer -- that is your birthright. [....]
Relationship is part of the business world. Just a slight change in the situation, and it evaporates. It has no solidity.
-Osho, "The Hidden Splendor, #23, Q1"
The society needs slaves
It is in the society's interest that nobody should be his own self, because that type of person is dangerous; they are rebellious people. They cannot be easily manipulated; they are not easily obedient. They are not conformist, they are not orthodox; they live according to their own conscience. If something is right they will obey it. If something is not right they would rather die but they would not like to obey it.
And the society needs slaves, psychological slaves, spiritual slaves. Political slavery has disappeared from the world, but psychological slavery has not disappeared; in fact it has become more deeply rooted. Man is a slave inside. His freedom is only on the outside, on the periphery. You are given enough rope to feel that you are free, that's all, but you are tethered, in a bondage.
That bondage is so psychological and so subtle that one never becomes aware of it. It can be reduced to a single principle: the society teaches you to be imitative. It creates a false self in you. It says 'Be like Jesus, be like Buddha'; it never says to you 'Be yourself.' It always gives you an ideal to follow, and whenever you follow an ideal you are going against yourself. You are imposing something like a mask. You are creating a personality.
Slowly slowly the personality becomes a hard crust and the individuality is lost. And that individuality is your real soul. That is nijo, your own self, and it is suffocated. It wants to get out of the personality. Personality is a cage, an imprisonment. And hence there is misery, because the soul is imprisoned. The bird in the cage cannot be happy even if the cage is made of gold. What does it matter to the bird whether the cage is made of gold and studded with diamonds and is very precious? It may matter to the person to whom the cage belongs, but to the bud it is just his death. He cannot open his wings again in the sky, he cannot move. He is free no more.
This is the situation of every human being: the personality is a golden cage -- the Christian personality, the Hindu personality, the Buddhist personality. These are cages, beautiful cages, very decorated, down the ages polished, decorated. They have become immensely valuable, but the one who is inside is constantly suffering and dying.
Sannyas means a declaration of freedom, a declaration that 'I will be only my own self, whatsoever it is. I will seek and search my own reality -- I will not become an imitator.' This declaration is sannyas, because only through this can one arrive at freedom, can one attain to the skies. And it is possible, because that psychological cage is maintained by yourself: you are the prisoner and you are the gaoler and you are the cage. The whole drama is played by you, hence it is not difficult to come out. If there were somebody else who had the keys then it: would not be so easy to come out.
You are your own prisoner and your own gaoler. Once you understand this, the personality can simply be dropped as one drops one's clothes. And to be nakedly individual, to be nakedly one's own self, is utter bliss!
-Osho, "The Sacred Yes, #19"
Unconscious, you don’t have any will.Unconscious, you don’t have any freedom.
Question 4 : How to see what is My will and God’s will?
There is a Chinese saying: Man is a puppet when he acts, a poet when he describes. All that you think is your freedom is nothing but your poetry. An unconscious man cannot be free, cannot have any freedom. Freedom comes as a consequence of consciousness, freedom is the function of consciousness. An unconscious man exists like a machine, like a robot. You may not know, but you are continuously functioning as a robot.
Somebody abuses you and anger arises. It is almost like when you push the button and the fan starts moving. Somebody pushes the button and you become angry. What kind of freedom is this? You don’t have any choice, to be angry or not to be angry. If the choice is not there there is no freedom. Freedom means freedom to choose — you can decide whether to be angry or not, then you are free. But can you decide? At the most you can decide to show your anger or not — that is another thing. But to be angry or not to be angry, have you got any decision about it, any choice about it?
The moment somebody pushes your button you are angry INSTANTLY, not a single moment is lost. You may not show it, that is another thing. You may control, repress, that is another thing. But anger has flashed in your being. And about that you have no choice. You function like a machine.
A parable: Once upon a time there was a magnet, and in its close neighbourhood lived some steel filings. One day two or three little filings felt a sudden desire to go and visit the magnet, and they began to talk of what a pleasant thing it would be to do. Other filings nearby heard their conversation, and they too became infected with the same desire. Still others joined them, till at last all the filings began to discuss the matter, and more and more their vague desire grew into an impulse.
‘Why not go today?’ said one of them; but others were of the opinion that it would be better to wait till tomorrow. Meanwhile, without their having noticed it, they had been involuntarily moving nearer to the magnet, which lay there quite still, apparently taking no heed of them. And so they went on discussing, all the time insensibly drawing nearer to their neighbour. And the more they talked, the more they felt the impulse growing stronger, till the more impatient ones declared that they would go that day, whatever the rest did. Some were heard to say it was their duty to visit the magnet, and that they ought to have gone long ago.
And while they talked they moved always nearer and nearer, without realizing that they had moved. Then at last the impatient ones prevailed, and with one irresistible impulse the whole body cried out ‘There is no use waiting. We will go today. We will go now. We will go at once. ‘ And then in one unanimous mass they swept along, and in another moment were clinging fast to the magnet on every side. Then the magnet smiled — for the steel filings had no doubt at all but that they were paying that visit of their own free will.
Unconscious, you don’t have any will. Unconscious, you don’t have any freedom. So don’t think about it. You ask, HOW TO SEE WHAT IS MY WILL AND GOD’S WILL? YOU have none. God is the magnet and you are the filings.
But you go on believing that you have your will, you go on believing that this is your choice. That you have chosen this woman to be your wife. Think about it again, remember this parable. Have you chosen this woman? Or was it just an accident? Have you chosen? Was there really any choice in it? Or had you been a victim of a certain impulse called love? Was it possible for you not to choose? Was it your decision? Then you will see that it has not been so. Whatsoever has happened in your life has happened more or less accidentally. And don’t laugh at those iron filings — that is the situation of humanity.
But you can rise out of your unconsciousness. Then you will have will. But you will not be there, you will disappear. Because in consciousness you cannot remain, you can remain only in unconsciousness. Now let me make it clear: When you are, you have no will. In unconsciousness the ego exists but there is no will. In consciousness the will exists but the ego disappears. Then there is no point of asking ‘…my WILL AND GOD’S WILL?’ Then there is no distinction between you and God. You are God and God is you.
The whole problem can be reduced to a simple thing To be conscious or not to be conscious. The unconscious man exists without any will. He only dreams that he has will. With consciousness ego starts disappearing on one hand, on another hand will arises. But it will not be your will, it will be always God’s will. Then what is the difference between the unconscious man and the conscious man? The difference is, it is always God’s will — the unconscious man thinks ‘It is my will’ and the conscious man knows ‘I am not, only God is.’
- Osho, “This Very Body the Buddha, #10, Q4"
Free will is not there, and neither is slavery.Dependence and independence are both false words.
Question 4 : Please explain man’s free will and its relation to being and non-doing.
There is nothing like that, like free will. It is just an ego concept, there cannot be anything like that.
I am not saying the opposite, that you are dependent and slaves. Mind moves into opposites very easily. It creates dichotomies: either you are a free agent (free will), or you are a slave. Both are untrue, both are false concepts, because YOU are not, so you cannot be a slave, and you cannot be a free agent, because for both, YOU will be needed.
Life is a vast interdependence. You are just an organic part of the whole, you are not separate, so how can you be free But I am not saying that you are not free, remember that, because how can you be not free, or free? You are NOT, you don't exist at all. It is a vast interdependence, and this interdependence is the totality, the God. But the ego goes on finding its ways....
I have heard, once it happened, a great elephant was passing across a bridge. The bridge was very old, and it shook tremendously, and a fly was sitting on the head of the elephant, just near his ears, and when they had passed -- they had almost destroyed the bridge, ALMOST I say -- when they had passed the fly said to the elephant: Boy! Did we shake that thing! But the elephant didn't hear. So the fly said: What is the matter? Are you stupid or something! Can't you hear me? But the elephant didn't hear.
The whole is VAST. We are not even flies. The proportion is very very, TREMENDOUSLY great. It is hot the proportion of a fly to an elephant -- that's nothing. We are almost nothing, and the whole is so VAST.
But you go on trying, insisting that the bridge is shaking because of you.
The fly was very considerate in a way; she said: Boy! We did shake that bridge! WE -- that is much consideration.
If the fly had the mind of a man, ordinarily she would have said I. Flies are mote considerate. She at least included the elephant. But man says FREE WILL, he does not even include the whole, it is completely discarded. He says I.
So two philosophies have existed in the world -- one which says FREE WILL. But because this whole notion is wrong, absolutely false, it can be argued against, it HAS been argued against, so there is another side which says: Nobody is free. We are just puppets, and the threads are in some unknown hands, and whatsoever HE determines, happens. We are just slaves, nothing else.
Both parties are wrong. You are neither slaves nor free agents. This is a little difficult to understand: it is because YOU are not that you are part of the whole. But if you THINK yourself separate you will feel like a slave. If you understand yourself as part of the whole you become the master but you become master with the whole not against the whole. If you are against the whole, you become the slave. If you flow with the river, you become the master. You become the river! If you try to go upstream you become the slave.
Free will is not there, and neither is slavery. Dependence and independence are both false words. They should be dropped completely, they should not be used. It is interdependence. I exist in you, you exist in me. That is the way life is: we exist into each other, we PEOPLE each other. The breath that was in me just a moment before has now moved and has gone into you. Just a moment before I could have said: This is my breath -- but where is it now? Somebody else's heart is beating through it.
In your body the blood is flowing; just a few days before it was flowing as juice in a tree; it became a fruit, now it is flowing in your body. Again you will fall to the earth -- dust unto dust, and again a tree will arise; you will become fertilizers; and again a tree will become alive, and a fruit will come, and your children's children will eat it. You have eaten your grandparents -- you ARE eating them.
And this goes on and on! The whole past is eaten by the present. And the whole present will be eaten by the future. Life is inter related, deeply inter-related. It is just like a net. You are just the crossing point of two threads, you are NOT, you are just a tie between two passing threads. When you understand that -- you laugh, you really laugh! And you have been carrying so much burden!
That's why Jesus says, Come follow me, my burden is light. Your burden is very heavy. Your burden is YOU. Jesus says, My burden is light, it is weightless -- because when you are not, there is no weight, the gravitation doesn't function then. You start to levitate. Wings grow out of you. You can FLY.
Drop dichotomies: independence, dependence; they are inter-related. If you try to be independent, you will feel you are dependent, if you try to be independent you will fail and you will be frustrated and you will feel that you are dependent. And both are wrong.
Just look within: you are NOT; just cosmic rays passing, creating a web, a pattern... A few days you are here and then you disappear; and then again you will be here -- and disappear. Where do you come from? Where do you go again? Into the whole! You disappear to rest. Then again you are here.
Spring comes, and trees start blooming, and birds start singing -- a new life; and then it has gone, and everything is restful. Again it will come. Many many times you have been here, many many times you will be here; but once you understand that YOU ARE NOT, that the whole goes on playing through you, once you understand -- then there is no need to be thrown again and again back into the body, there is no need, you have become alert, conscious. Now there is no need for any manifestation; you rest in the whole -- this we have called MOKSHA, NIRVANA. This we have called the ultimate freedom.
In the West it is very difficult to understand this because whenever you talk about freedom you think of free will, and whenever the East talks about freedom it talks of being free of all free will. Freedom means to be free from you. In the West it means freedom from every barrier, limitation, but YOU remain, it is YOUR freedom.
In the East when we talk about freedom YOU don't remain in it -- you are part and parcel of the bondage, you go with the bondage. Freedom remains, not YOU; that is MOKSHA. It is not that YOU become free, on the contrary you become free of yourself. There is no self.
Self simply disappears -- it was a false concept, an arbitrary concept. Useful, but not true.
- Osho, "Tao: The Three Treasures, Vol 3, #4"
Don't be afraid about anythingThere is nothing to Fear.
Knowing that you are not, there is nothing to fear. Knowing that you are the whole, there is nothing to lose.
-Osho, "The Zen Manifesto: Freedom From Oneself, #8, Q1"
Open your wings, there is nothing to fear, nothing to lose. Just be open to the sun, the stars....
Don't be afraid. I am always in favor of danger, and this is dangerous because you are on the very verge of consciousness. This is the time you want to stop, but this is the time I want you to go on, because danger is beautiful, you cannot have too much.
-Osho, "Notes of a Madman, #1, Session3"
It is dangerous but don't be afraid, I am awake. Don't be cowardly, that is the only hindrance for knowing the truth. One needs to dare to know; one needs to go into danger. You get afraid. You feel that I am going beyond the limits. But don't be afraid, I am already beyond limits.
Danger is beautiful. I have known it in many ways. In almost fifty years I have lived five hundred years, because I have dared in many, many directions. Each danger was beautiful, an experience.
What is danger? Do you think you know? I do not mean the dictionary sense of the word. Danger is when you are close to death, very close, so close that just a step more and you are finished... but only then you are.
When death is so close being comes to its absolute flowering.
I can talk of life and death because they are one, and one can only talk of life if one knows death. A woman is never afraid. When a woman becomes afraid she becomes a lady. I hate ladies; they stink! Especially English ladies, they are the ladiest of all ladies. But who cares at moments of beatitude.... Ashu, never be a lady.
I am close to death -- that's the only way to bring me to myself, because death is where life goes on. Danger is beautiful, it is very beautiful. It is right on the heights; one wrong step and you are finished. That's why I love this chair: there are no steps. One can just relax. Death is so close you can touch it... it is tangible, touchable... like a beautiful woman, you would like to touch. Only then you know what is, what is- ness is. That is-ness is called God. It would have been better not to call it God, because the word god has become dirty. Is-ness is better.
-Osho, "Notes of a Madman, #1, Session4"
There is a constant fear in everybody, in almost everybody, of Really getting high. The fear comes because the moment you get high you cannot remain in your ego. When you get high you cannot remain in your finite, limited world; it starts being shattered. When you invite the infinite and it starts coming -- and it comes like a torrent, a flood, you start feeling 'I will be washed away' -- then you start clinging to the past and stop doors opening.
It is the fear of the infinite, it is the fear of god himself -- but the fear will continue unless you look directly into its face. If you want to remain the way you are, then it's okay. Nobody is trying to change you; why should anybody try to change you? If you feel happy the way you are, then this is the way you have to be. If you don't feel happy, take courage. Then you will have to jump, you will have to take the risk... and the risk has to be taken.
So just see that these two possibilities are there. You can remain the same; then there is no risk, it is safer. But you remain the same: you are not happy so you remain unhappy, you are miserable so you remain miserable. But there is no risk in it. This alternative has one thing good in it: it is very convenient: no risk, no change, no drastic change of your life style. You are very protected in this way. You have nothing to protect but you are very much protected. You have nothing to live for but life is secure.
The other alternative has great potentiality in it, but that potentiality starts with risk. One has to be a gambler and one has to risk all. You cannot just risk partially; it doesn't work. Then you remain in two boats, always ready to jump back whenever things become too much. The old boat has to sink so that there is nowhere to jump. The old bridge has to be broken so that you cannot turn back. It is risky, a gambler's risk. It needs courage, needs youth, a young mind, needs to go into danger, insecurity... but once you start moving, there is great joy, there is great celebration.
So these are the two alternatives: with one there is no risk. There is security, but no joy. With the other there is great joy, great possibilities of celebration, but there is risk.
Ordinarily we would like to have all the joy with all the security -- and that doesn't happen. That's not the way of life, and nothing can be done about it. That's what we want: we want the impossible. We want security, safety, control, and we want joy, celebration and great adventure. Both things cannot happen together, you cannot have both: they don't come in the same package.
This has to be deeply understood... and then one has to choose! And don't go on wavering: if you choose to remain the same, be the same. Then forget all meditations, all groups. If you don't want to be the same, if you are fed up with your misery, then take the jump! And I cannot take the jump for you; you will have to take the jump. I can show you the way but you will have to travel. So make it very clear!
Things are very clear really, but how do things continue? Things continue because we go on hoping for the impossible, we go on hoping against all hope. We think there must be some way that we can remain secure and can also enjoy new pastures of life.
It has never happened! It is not going to happen because it cannot happen; in the very nature of things it is not possible. Seeing this, one takes a decision... and decision is always good. This indecisiveness is bad, because indecisiveness by and by makes you lousy. You lose sharpness, you lose keenness, you lose clarity, you become more and more cloudy. Much smoke comes around your flame and the flame cannot be seen.
Decisiveness brings light. Even if you decide to remain the same, even that will bring light to you; things will be clear. Even if you decide wrongly, then too decision is good. If you decide rightly it is a great blessing, but if you decide wrongly, then too it is better than the indecisive state of mind.
Decisiveness is always good; man is born through decisiveness. Remaining wavering, doing things half-heartedly, doing and not doing, just going so far and then turning back, is a sheer wastage of energy. And if you remain This way too long, it becomes your habit. Then it becomes a deep rut in your mind: again and again you do the same thing and the rut goes deeper and deeper and deeper. Stop it! [....]
Don't be afraid about anything; there is nothing to fear.
-Osho, "The Further Shore, #15"
Trust is life. Trust is God. I don't say to people to trust in God. I simply say 'trust', because trust is God.
There is nothing to fear because we don't have anything to lose. Nobody can rob us, and all that can be robbed is not worth-while, so why fear, why suspect, why doubt? These are the real robbers -- doubt, suspicion, fear. They destroy your very possibility of celebration.
So while on earth, celebrate the earth. While this moment lasts, enjoy it to the very core. Take all the juice that it can give to you and is ready to give to you.
Because of fear you miss many things. Because of fear we cannot love, or even if we love it is always half-hearted, it is always so-so. It is always up to a certain extent and not beyond that. We always come to a point beyond which we are afraid, so we are stuck there. We cannot move deep in friendship because of fear. We cannot do prayer because of fear.
There are people who go on saying that people do prayer because of fear. That's true; many people pray because of fear. But there is an even greater truth than that and it is that many people don't go the whole way in prayer because of fear. They may start in fear but then they don't go very far. They just remain on the formal, the cliche level. They say some formal prayer to God but they really are not moved, thrilled by it. It is not an ecstasy. They are not mad with it. They don't go headlong. They move very cautiously -- and all caution is based on fear.
-Osho, "A Rose is a Rose is a Rose, #1"
There will be apprehension and a little fear, but when you go and see that there is nothing to fear and that you can face the world without losing any growth that has happened to you, but on the contrary, the more you face the world, the more growth and maturity comes to you, it will be a centring experience. So it is always good to come and go, come and go. Make it a rhythm so that you don't become attached too much to being here.
Otherwise even beneficial things can become harmful. One can become attached too much to a sort of shelter, protection, but that will not give you strength. Strength always comes when you face situations which are hard, are against one, distracting.
In the old days people used to move to monasteries and to the Himalayas and to the far away caves and they attained to a certain peace there, but that peace was very very cheap, because whenever they would come back to the plains, in the world, that peace would immediately be shattered. It was too fragile, and they would become afraid of the world. So that is a sort of escape, not growth.
My whole insistence is to learn to be alone, but never to get too much attached to your aloneness, so you remain capable of being, relating with others. Learn to meditate but don't move to the extreme so that you become incapable of love. Be silent, peaceful, still, but don't get obsessed by it, otherwise you will not be able to face the world, the marketplace.
-Osho, "A Rose is a Rose is a Rose, #28"
Certainly freedom will make you afraid of many things. Be alert. Look deeply into anything that makes you afraid. And you will be surprised that if you look deeply into anything that makes you afraid, it will disappear. There is nothing to fear in the world. Then you can rejoice in freedom and the responsibility it brings. Responsibility makes you grow up. You become more and more responsible for every action, for every thought, for every feeling. It makes you crystallized. It takes away all the chains that have been binding you and your psychology. [....]
You have exaggerated your fears. Just look at them, and just by your looking at them they will start becoming smaller. You have never looked at them, you have been escaping from them. You have been creating protections against them, rather than looking directly into the eyes of your fear.
There is nothing to fear at all; all that is needed is a little more awareness. So whatever your fear is, catch hold of it, look at it minutely, the way a scientist looks at a thing. And you will be surprised, it starts melting like an ice flake. By the time you have looked into its totality, it is gone.
And when freedom is there without any fear, it brings such benediction that there are no words to express it.
-Osho, "From Bondage to Freedom, #23, Q4"
Drop control -- learn uncontrol. Uncontrol means to be natural, to be spontaneous. Uncontrol means to remain unafraid. There is nothing to fear! It is god's world and he is everywhere. We are part of him; there is no need to be afraid. We are like fish in the ocean of god; there is no need to be afraid. But fear has been taught, fear has been given; almost from the first day that a child is born the system is being poisoned. Out of fear arises control.
When you control yourself, naturally you will be controlled by others too. You become a slave; then you hanker for somebody to control you. If you find a situation where nobody is to control you, you will be at a loss. That's why the society teaches control: if you start controlling yourself, sooner or later you will be controlled by many people. The politician, the priest, the parent -- a thousand and one bosses are there who will control you. There is a great hierarchy, bosses upon bosses, and they will all control you.
Once you learn the trick, you will be controlled your whole life. Then your wife will control you, your children, even your children, will control you. Once you are in a rut you know only one way of being, and that is being controlled. And whenever you are free, you will be at a loss; you will not know what to do now, where to go. You will always need somebody to direct you, somebody to tell you to do this, to go there. This is a great slavery -- and sannyas is a rebellion against all kinds of slaveries.
-Osho, "The No Book (No Buddha, No Teaching, No Discipline), #7"
In fact then you know that whatsoever you have been calling life was not life. Compared to that your old life looks like death, your old light looks like darkness, your old riches look like poverty. But we have been brought up not to be vulnerable, not to be open, to remain closed-fisted. We are brought up in fear, and fear is the only thing that prevents love; fear is the direct opposite of love. To live in fear is to live a loveless life, and a loveless life cannot taste god.
So drop all fears. There is nothing to fear because nothing can be taken away from you. Remember one fundamental law: that which you have really got cannot be taken away, so only the non-essential can be taken away; the essential cannot be taken away. It is part of your innermost existence, it is inseparably one with you. There is no possibility of creating a division between the essential and you. The essential means you -- the essence. That is your real richness, and nobody can rob you of it, not even god; it is impossible to lose it. And that to which you are clinging is bound to be taken away -- if not today then tomorrow, is not tomorrow then the day after tomorrow. And sooner it is taken, the better, because if it is not taken soon then you will be worrying about it; once it is taken the worry is finished. Then there is no more worry because all is gone, so why bother? One can have a good sleep, can rest and relax. God always comes as a death to the ego.
-Osho, "Is the Grass Really Greener...?, #22"
It is only by going deep into fear that fear disappears; that's the only way. If you are afraid of the dark night, go into it. That's the only way: encounter it. If you are afraid of the cemetery, go to the cemetery in the night and sit there and let all the ghosts torture you! And by the morning you will come home laughing because there are no ghosts -- nothing! But if you never go to the cemetery you will never come to know the fact: there is nothing to fear.
Fear is utterly absurd, but people fear. They fear because they don't go into it. And that's what has happened: you were alone and you had to face it. When she is there you remain occupied with her and you go on repressing your fear. It has always been there, it is there in everybody's being, because our whole upbringing is wrong.
We are brought up as afraid human beings. From the very beginning we are conditioned to feel fear. This society knows only one way of teaching children and that is punishment and reward, fear and greed; that is its way. If you are doing things as you are told to do you will be rewarded; if you are not doing things as you are told you will be punished. So from the very beginning your life is continuously surrounded by fear. If you don't do this you are afraid to be punished; if you don't do that you are afraid to lose the reward. And finally this whole thing is projected as heaven and hell: hell becomes your fear, and heaven your greed.
So when you come to me I have to destroy all these conditionings. And in destroying it all the traumas, all the old wounds again start oozing pus, but that is the only way to clean them. Once they are in the open, in the sun, they heal.
Don't be worried!
-Osho, "The Tongue-Tip Taste of Tao, #30"
You need not compromise, because it is out of fear and greed that one compromises. And you can live in rebellion because there is nothing to lose. You can become a rebellion; there is nothing to fear. Nobody can kill you, you have already done that thing yourself. Nobody can take anything away from you; you have dropped all that which can be taken away from you. Now you are in nothingness, you are a nothingness. Hence the paradoxical phenomenon: that in this nothingness arises a great security, a great safety, a stability -- because there is no more death possible.
And with death, time disappears. With death disappear all the problems that are created by death and by time. In the wake of all these disappearances, what is left is a pure sky. This pure sky is samadhi, nirvana. Buddha is talking about this.
-Osho, "The Heart Sutra, #3"
Don't be afraid, and expose yourself totally, because you can go into a group and still you can remain hiding, holding. Then it is pointless, it is unnecessary torture. You have to open up. This opportunity has to be used. And if you open up you will be surprised that there is nothing to fear.
And when the fear disappears you will feel liberated from a great bondage. And when there is no fear, love arises. Absence of fear is love. If there is fear, love cannnot arise.
-Osho, "The Madman's Guide to Enlightenment, #13"
My approach is totally different. I don't say be afraid -- that is the strategy of the priest, that is his trade secret. I say there is nothing to fear, because God is in you. There is nothing to fear. Live life fearlessly, live each moment as intensely as possible. Intensity has to be remembered.
-Osho, "The Book of Wisdom, #14"
I don't have anything to lose. That has given me a tremendous freedom to act spontaneously, to act without any fear, to say whatever I want to say -- to be against all the governments of the world, to be against all the religions of the world. And I don't think that even a shadow of fear arises in my heart.
On the contrary, the more I hit these idiots the more I rejoice, because according to me they are criminals. According to me they are the greatest calamities that have happened to humanity. There is nothing to fear from these people. There is nothing to be afraid of in the ghosts who are lying in their graves. But everybody is injected with fear from the very beginning, so that his whole blood becomes full of fear. This fearfulness helps all these criminals to dominate you, to destroy you, not to let you live your life of love and blissfulness.
-Osho, "Om Mani Padme Hum, #20"
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