Question 2
Individual freedom and authority on one side, and authoritarianism and dictatorship on the other side, move man's life and his aspirations.

Please comment on this.

It is the same problem, the same question, phrased differently. Society is authoritarian; the church is authoritarian; the educational system is authoritarian. They all say, "Whatever we say is right and you need not question it. You have simply to follow."

And there are problems, for example in the educational system... I have been a student, I have been a professor, and I know that for the best part of life a person is being ruined by authoritarian people in the schools, in the colleges, in the universities. I was expelled from many colleges for the simple reason that I could not accept any authoritarianism. I said, "You prove it and I am ready to accept it. But without proving it, without giving right arguments for it, without making it a rational statement, I am not going to accept it."

And I was fighting in every subject, because in every subject the teachers were simply lecturing. Students were taking notes, because all that was needed was to repeat in the examination papers what the teachers had been telling them. And the better you repeat, exactly like a parrot, the more credit you get.

Small things they were in difficulty to prove, and it became embarrassing to them. Every day it was a question... Anything they would say, I would stand up immediately -- and I was asking relevant questions -- "On what grounds...?"

For example, one of the professors who was teaching me religions made the statement that the VEDAS -- the Hindu holy scriptures -- were written by God. I had to stand up. I said, "I object. In the first place you have not been able to prove the existence of God. In the second place, now you are saying that these books, which are full of rubbish, are written by God. Have you ever looked into the VEDAS?" I asked him, "Have you ever read from the first page to the last page?" There are four VEDAS, big volumes. "I have brought all the four with me, and at random I can open and read, and let the whole class decide whether this is a statement which God could have written."

The VEDAS are full of prayers. Now, God cannot pray; to whom will he be praying? And prayers for such stupid things that it is simply ridiculous to say that they are written by God. One brahmin is praying, "I have been continuously doing all the rituals, living according to the scriptures and you have still not given me a child. Give me a child; that will be a proof that my prayers have been heard."

I asked him, "How could God have written this passage? It is written by someone and addressed to God, but it cannot be written by God himself. And if this is the situation of God, then that poor fellow should not be bothered about it. God is asking about a child from somebody else, so why should we not ask from the same source? Why should we bother this poor fellow?"

Their only answer finally was that every college would reject me. The principal would say, "We are sorry. We know you are right, but we have to run the college. You will destroy the whole institution. Professors are threatening to resign, students are saying that you don't allow the professors to teach, because on a single point every day the whole period is lost. Eight months have passed and the course will not be finished in the coming two months if the same thing continues.

"They have come here to pass examinations; they are not interested in truth, they are not interested in the validity of any statement. Their only reason to be here is to get a certificate. And you are a strange fellow -- you don't seem to be interested in certificates."

I said, "I am not interested at all in certificates. What will I do with the certificates of these people who don't know anything? I cannot think of these people as my examiners. The day you give me the certificate, I will tear it up immediately before you -- because these people can't answer."

But the whole system is geared in that way. When I became a professor myself, I had to make a new arrangement. The arrangement was that in each forty-minute period, twenty minutes I would teach the syllabus as it is written in the books, and twenty minutes I would criticize it. My students said, "We will go mad."

I said, "That is your problem -- but I cannot leave these statements without criticism. You can choose; when your examination comes you can choose to write whichever you want. If you want to fail, choose my part. If you want to pass, choose the first part. I am making it clear; I am not deceiving anybody -- but I cannot go on deceiving you by teaching you something which I think is absolutely wrong."

The vice-chancellor finally had to call me, and he said to me, "This is a strange type of teaching. I have been receiving every day reports that half the time you teach the syllabus and half the time you have your arguments, which destroy the whole thing that you have taught them. So they come as empty as they had gone in... in fact in more of a mess!"

I said, "I'm not worried about anybody. What have they done with me all these years when I was a student? I was expelled from one college and then another. And you can come one day and listen to whether I am doing any injustice to the prescribed course. When I teach the prescribed course, I do it as totally as possible, to make it clear."

He came one day and he listened, and after twenty minutes he said, "That is really great. I had been also a student of philosophy, but nobody has ever told me this way."

I said, "This is only half the talk. You just wait, because now I am going to destroy it completely, step by step."

And when I destroyed it completely he said, "My God! Now I can understand what the poor students are reporting to me. You are not supposed to be a professor in this structure of education. I can understand that what you are doing is absolutely honest, but this system does not create people of intelligence; this system only creates people of good memory -- and that's what is needed. We need clerks, we need stationmasters, we need postmasters -- and these people don't need intelligence, they need a good memory."

I said, "In other words you need computers, not men. If this is your educational system, then sooner or later you are going to replace men with computers" -- and that's what they are doing. Everywhere they are replacing important positions with computers, because computers are more reliable; they are just memory, no intelligence.

Man, however repressed, has a certain intelligence.

The man who dropped atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki -- if it was a computer, there was no question: at the exact time, at the exact mileage, it would have dropped the bomb, returned. It would have been simply mechanical. But the man who was dropping the bomb, howsoever you may have destroyed his intelligence, had to think twice what he was doing: killing one hundred thousand people who were absolutely innocent, who were civilians, who were not army people, who had not done any harm to anybody -- is it right?

Now everywhere, all nuclear weapons are in the hands of computers, not in the hands of man. Computers will fight the third world war. Man will be killed -- that is another matter. Computers don't care whether humanity survives or disappears; it does not matter to them, but they will do exact and efficient work which man cannot do. Man may hesitate in destroying the whole of humanity; something of intelligence, just a little bit of intelligence is enough to create the question, "What am I doing?"

All our institutions, our religions are authoritarian. They don't tell you why: "Just do it because it is written in the book, because Jesus says so." Jesus has not given a single argument why it should be done; he has not given a single rational ground for any of his doctrines. Neither has Moses done that, nor has Krishna.

Krishna simply says to Arjuna, "This is from God: You have to fight." This is authoritarianism. And God is used, manipulated in every situation, to make whatever you are saying absolutely unquestionable. We have to destroy all authoritarianism in the world.

Authority is totally different. Authoritarianism is connected with the society, with the church; authority is something which is concerned with the individual realization.

If I say something to you, I say it with authority. This simply means I am saying it because this is my experience -- but it does not mean that you have to believe it. It is enough that you listened to it; now you can think over it, you can decide for or against.

To me what is important is not that you decide for; what is important to me is that you decide on your own. It may be against it, it does not matter -- but the decision should come from your own being. If it doesn't come from your own being, then you are making me authoritarian.

I am speaking from my authority. Please don't make me into an authoritarian, because I am simply stating the fact with as much force and fire as I am capable of -- so that it is absolutely clear to you, and now you are free to decide. I am not deciding for you, and I am not asking you to have faith in me or believe in me.

I am simply asking, "Give me a little chance. Think about what I am saying to you" -- and I will be grateful that you thought about it. That's enough. Your thinking will give you a sharper intelligence... and I trust in intelligence. If you think, and your intelligence becomes sharper, I know whatever you conclude will be right.

And even if you conclude wrong one time, it does not matter. One has to fall many times and rise up again. That's how life is. One has to commit mistakes and learn from them, and change every blocking rock into a stepping-stone.

But around me there is no question of any belief or faith. With individual freedom, authoritarianism dies and a new thing arises: authority. Each individual is capable of having experiences of his own; then he has authority, then he can say, "I have seen it. I have tasted it. I have enjoyed it. I have danced it. And it is not a question that I am quoting from some scripture, I am simply opening my heart to you."

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"