Question 2:

Osho,

It seems to me that human beings feel that just to be themselves is not enough. why do most people have such a compulsion to reach power and prestige and so on, rather than just being simple human beings?

 

 

It is a complicated question. It has two sides, and both have to be understood. First: you have never been accepted by your parents, teachers, neighbors, society, as you are. Everybody was trying to improve upon you, to make you better. Everybody was pointing at the flaws, at the mistakes, at the errors, at the weaknesses, at the frailties, which every human being is prone to. Nobody emphasized your beauty, nobody emphasized your intelligence, nobody emphasized your grandeur.

 

Just being alive is such a gift, but nobody ever told you to be thankful to existence. On the contrary, everyone was grumpy, complaining. Naturally, if everything surrounding your life from the very beginning goes on pointing out to you that you are not what you should be, goes on giving you great ideals that you have to follow and you have to become, your isness is never praised. What is praised is your future - if you can become someone respectable, powerful, rich, intellectual, in some way famous, not just a nobody.

 

Constant conditioning against you has created in you the idea, "I am not enough as I am, something is missing. And I have to be somewhere else - not here. This is not the place I am supposed to be, but somewhere higher, more powerful, more dominant, more respected, more well known."

 

This is half the story - which is ugly, which should not be the case. This can be simply removed if people are a little bit more intelligent about how to be mothers, how to be fathers, how to be teachers.

 

You are not to spoil the child. His self-respect, his acceptance of himself, you have to help it to grow.

 

On the contrary, you are becoming a hindrance for growth. This is the ugly part but it is the simple part. It can be removed, because it is so simple and logical to see that you are not responsible for what you are, that this is the way nature has made you. Now unnecessarily weeping over the spilled milk is sheer stupidity.

 

But the second part is tremendously important. Even if all these conditionings are removed - you are deprogrammed, all these ideas are taken out of your mind - then you will still feel you are not enough; but that will be a totally different experience. The words will be the same, but the experience will be different.

 

You are not enough because you can be more. It will not be any longer a question of becoming famous, respectable, powerful, rich. That will not be at all your concern. Your concern will be that your being is only a seed. With birth you are not born as a tree, you are born only as a seed, and you have to grow to the point where you come to flowering, and that flowering will be your contentment, fulfillment.

 

This flowering has nothing to do with power, nothing to do with money, nothing to do with politics.

 

It has something to do absolutely with you; it is an individual progress. And for this, the other conditioning is a hindrance, it is a distraction, it is a misuse of a natural longing for growth.

 

Every child is born to grow and to become a fully-fledged human being, with love, with compassion, with silence. He has to become a celebration unto himself. It is not a question of competition, not even a question of comparison.

 

But the first ugly conditioning distracts you because the urge to grow, the urge to become more, the urge to expand, is being used by the society, by the vested interests. They divert it. They fill your mind so you think that this urge is to have more money, this urge means to be at the top in every way - in education, in politics. Wherever you are, you have to be at the top; less than that and you will feel you are not doing well, you will feel a deep inferiority complex.

 

This whole conditioning produces an inferiority complex because it wants you to become superior, more superior than others. It teaches you competition, comparison; it teaches you violence, fight. It teaches you that means don't matter, what matters is the end - success is the goal. And this can be easily done because you already are born with an urge to grow, with an urge to be somewhere else.

 

A seed has to travel far to become flowers. It is a pilgrimage. The urge is beautiful. It is given by nature itself. But the society, up to now, has been very cunning; it turns, deviates, diverts your natural instincts into some social utility.

 

These two are the sides that are giving you the feeling that wherever you are, something is missing; you have to gain something, achieve something, become an achiever, a climber.

 

Now your intelligence is needed to make it clear what your natural urge is, and what is social conditioning. Cut the social conditioning - it is all crap - so that nature remains pure, unpolluted.

 

And nature is always individualistic.

 

You will grow and you will come to blossom, and you may have roseflowers. Somebody else may grow and will have marigolds. You are not superior because you have roseflowers; he is not inferior because he has marigolds. You both have come to flowering, that is the point; and that flowering gives a deep contentment. All frustration, all tension disappears; a profound peace prevails over you, the peace that passes understanding. But first you have to cut the social crap completely; otherwise it will go on distracting you.

 

You have to be rich but not wealthy. Richness is something else. A beggar can be rich, and an emperor can be poor. Richness is a quality of being.

 

Alexander the Great met Diogenes, who was a naked beggar, with only a lamp - that was his only possession. And he kept his lamp lit even in the day. He was obviously behaving in a strange way; even Alexander had to ask him, "Why are you keeping this lamp lit in the day?"

 

He raised his lamp and looked at Alexander's face, and he said, "I am looking for the real man day and night, and I don't find him."

 

Alexander was shocked that a naked beggar should say such a thing to him, the world conqueror.

 

But he could see that Diogenes was so beautiful in his nudity. His eyes were so silent, his face was so peaceful, his words had such an authority, his presence was so cool and calm and soothing, that although Alexander felt insulted, he could not retaliate. The presence of the man was so much, that Alexander himself looked a beggar beside him. In his diary he has written, "For the first time I felt that richness is something other than having money. I have seen a rich man."

 

Richness is your authenticity, sincerity, your truth, your love, your creativity, your sensitivity, your meditativeness. This is your real wealth.

 

Society has moved your head towards mundane things, and you have forgotten completely that your head has been moved.

 

I remember it actually happened.... In India a man was driving on a motorcycle, and it was very cold so he put his coat on back to front because his chest was feeling very cold and the wind was just hitting him. From the other end of the road a sardar - the sardars are simple - was also coming on his motorbike. He could not believe his eyes because he thought, "This man has got his head on back to front!"

 

He became so afraid, that as he came close, he stumbled with his motorbike against the poor man, and the man fell on the ground, almost unconscious. The sardar looked closely and he said, "My God, what has happened to him? The city is far away, the hospital is far away, but something has to be done."

 

Sardars in India are the most strong people. And the poor man was unconscious, so he forced his head and put it right according to the coat. At that very time a police car reached there and the policemen asked, "What is happening?"

 

He said, "You have come in the right time. Look at this man - he has fallen from his motorbike."

 

They asked, "Is he alive or dead?"

 

The sardar said, "He used to be alive when his head was in a wrong position. When I turned his head in the right position he stopped breathing."

 

Those policemen said, "You were too interested only in the head. You did not see that the coat is wrong, not the head!"

 

The sardar said, "We are poor and simple people. I have never seen anybody wearing a coat whose buttons are at the back. I thought some accident had happened. He was breathing, although he was unconscious. I turned his head - it gave me trouble, but when I want to do something, I do it. I did it, and turned his head exactly right until it was fitting with the coat. Then he stopped breathing.

 

A strange fellow!"

 

Your head, your mind, has been turned in many ways by many people according to their ideas of how you should be. There was not any bad intention. Your parents loved you, your teachers loved you, your society wants you to be somebody. Their intentions were good, but their understanding was very short. They forgot that you cannot manage to make a marigold bush into roseflowers, or vice-versa.

 

All that you can do is help the roses to grow bigger, more colorful, more fragrant. You can give all the chemicals that are needed to transform the color and the fragrance - the manure that is needed, the right soil, the right watering at the right times - but you cannot make the rose bush produce lotuses.

 

And if you start giving the idea to the rosebush, "You have to become lotus flowers" - and of course the lotus flowers are beautiful and big - you are giving a wrong conditioning which will help only in that this bush will never be able to produce lotuses; and also, its whole energy will be directed on a wrong path so it will not produce even roses, because from where will it get the energy to produce roses? And when there will be no lotuses, no roses, of course this poor bush will feel continuously empty, frustrated, barren, unworthy.

 

And this is what is happening to human beings. With all good intentions, people are turning your mind. In a better society, with more understanding people, nobody will change you. Everybody will help you to be yourself - and to be oneself is the richest thing in the world. To be oneself gives you all that you need to feel fulfilled, all that can make your life meaningful, significant. Just being yourself and growing according to your nature will bring the fulfillment of your destiny.

 

So the urge is not bad, but it has been moved towards wrong objects. And you have to be aware not to be manipulated by anybody, howsoever good their intentions are. You have to save yourself from so many well-intentioned people, do-gooders, who are constantly advising you to be this, to be that.

 

Listen to them and thank them, they don't mean any harm, but harm is what happens.

 

You just listen to your own heart - that is your only teacher.

 

In the real journey of life, your own intuition is your only teacher.

 

Have you looked at the word 'intuition'? It is the same as 'tuition'. Tuition is given by teachers, from outside; intuition is given by your own nature, from inside. You have your guide within you. With just a little courage you will never feel that you are unworthy. You may not become the president of a country, you may not become a prime minister, you may not become Henry Ford; but there is no need. You may become a beautiful singer, you may become a beautiful painter. And it does not matter what you do.... You may become a great shoemaker.

 

When Abraham Lincoln became the president of America.... His father had been a shoemaker, and the whole senate was feeling a little embarrassed that a shoemaker's son should preside over the richest people, the high-class people, who believe they are superior because they have more money, because they belong to a long-standing famous family. The whole senate was in a way embarrassed, angry, irritated; nobody was happy that Lincoln had become the president.

 

One man, who was very arrogant, bourgeois, stood up before Lincoln gave his first, his maiden address to the senate. And he said, "Mr. Lincoln, before you start I would like you to remember that you are a shoemaker's son." And the whole senate laughed. They wanted to humiliate Lincoln; they could not defeat him, but they could humiliate him. But it is difficult to humiliate a man like Lincoln.

 

He said to the man, "I am tremendously grateful that you reminded me of my father, who is dead. I will always remember your advice. I know that I can never be such a great president as my father was a shoemaker." There was pindrop silence - the way Lincoln had taken it....

 

And he said to the man, "As far as I know, my father used to make shoes for your family too. If your shoes are pinching or some trouble is there - although I am not a great shoemaker I have learned the art with my father from my very childhood - I can correct it. And the same to anybody in the senate; if my father has made the shoes, and they need any correction, any improvement, I am always available - although one thing is certain, I cannot be that great. His touch was golden." And tears came to his eyes in the memory of his great father.

 

It does not matter: you may be a third-class president, you may be a first-class shoemaker. What fulfills is that you are enjoying what you are doing, that you are putting all your energies into it; that you don't want to be anybody else; that this is what you want to be; that you agree with nature that the part given to you to play in this drama is the right part, and you are not ready to change it even with a president or an emperor.

 

This is real richness. This is real power.

 

If everybody grows to be himself, you will find the whole earth full of powerful people, of tremendous strength, intelligence, understanding, and a fulfillment, a joy that they have come home.

 

- Osho, "The Transmission of the Lamp Talks in Uruguay, #26, Q2"