Question 4

What factors do you attribute the western youth revolt to, and why are so many young people from the west now becoming interested in eastern religion and philosophy?

 

 

Mind is a very contradictory thing. It works in polar opposites. But our logical way of thinking always chooses one part and denies the other. So logic proceeds in a non-contradictory way, and mind works in a contradictory way. Mind works in opposites, and logic works linearly.

 

For example, the mind has two possibilities: to be angry or to be silent. If you can be angry it does not mean that at the other extreme you cannot also be non-angry. If you can be disturbed it does not mean that you cannot be silent. The mind goes on working in both ways. If you can be loving you can be full of hatred also. One doesn't deny the other.

 

But if you are loving you begin to think you are incapable of hate. Then hate goes on accumulating inside and when you reach the peak of your loving, everything shatters. You sink into hate. And not only does the rational mind work like that; society does also.

 

The West has come to a peak of rational thinking. Now the irrational part of the mind will take revenge. The irrational has been denied expression and in the last fifty years it has been taking its revenge in so many ways: through art, poetry, drama, literature, philosophy, and now, even through living. So the revolt of the young is really a revolt of the irrational part of the mind against too much rationality.

 

The East can be helpful to those in the West because the East has lived with the other part of the mind: the irrational. It has also reached a peak: a peak of irrationality. Now young people in the East are more interested in communism than in religion, more interested in rational thinking than in irrational living. As I see it, the whole pendulum will turn now. The East will become like the West, and the West will become like the East.

 

Whenever one part of the mind reaches a peak, you move to the opposite. That is what always happens in history. So in the West now, meditation will be more meaningful. Poetry will gain a new hold and science will decline. Modern-day Western youth will be anti-technological, anti-scientific. This is a natural process, an automatic balancing of the extreme.

 

We have not yet been able to develop a personality that combines both polarities, that is neither Eastern nor Western. We have always chosen only one part of the mind and the opposite part remains hungry, starved. Then there is bound to be rebellion. Everything that we have worked to develop will be shattered, and the mind will move to the other polarity. This has happened throughout history; this has been the dialectic.

 

For the West now, meditation will be more meaningful than thinking because meditation means no-thinking. Zen will be more appealing, Buddhism will be more appealing, yoga will be more appealing. These are all irrational attitudes toward life. They do not emphasize conceptualizations, theories, theologies. They emphasize a zest to move deep into existence, not into thinking. As I see it, the more grip technology has on the mind, the more likely it is that the other pole will be coming.

 

The revolt of young people in the West is very meaningful, very significant. It is a historical point of change, a whole change of consciousness. Now the West cannot continue as it has been. A point of deep crisis has come. The West will have to move in another direction now.

 

The whole society in the West is affluent now. Individuals have been affluent before, but never the whole society. When a society becomes affluent, riches lose their meaning. They are meaningful only in a poor society. But even in a poor society, when someone becomes really affluent he is bored. The more sensitive a person is, the sooner he becomes bored. A Buddha is just bored. He leaves everything.

 

The whole attitude of modern youth is one of boredom with an empty affluence. The youth are leaving the society, and they will go on leaving it unless the whole society becomes poor. Then they will not be able to leave. This leaving, this renunciation, can exist only in an affluent society. If it is taken to an extreme, the society will decline. Then technology will not progress, and if this continues the West will become like the East is today.

 

In the East they are turning to the other extreme. They will create a society just like that of the West. The East is turning to the West and the West is turning to the East, but the disease remains the same. As I see it, the disease is the imbalance, the acceptance of one thing and the denial of the other.

 

We have never allowed the human mind to flower in its totality. We have always chosen one part against the other, at the cost of the other. This has been the misery. So I am neither for the Eastern way nor the Western way. I am against both, because they are partial attitudes. One should choose neither the East nor the West; they have both failed. The East has failed by choosing religion and the West is failing by choosing science. Unless both are chosen there is no way out of this vicious circle.

 

We can change -- from one extreme to the other. If you talk about Buddhism in Japan, no young person is ready to listen. They are interested in technology, and you are interested in Zen Buddhism. In India, the new generation is not interested in religion in the least. They are interested in economics, in politics, in technology, engineering, science -- in everything except religion. Youth in the West is interested in religion while youth in the East is interested in science. This is just changing the burden from one extreme to another. The same fallacy will still exist.

 

I am interested in the total mind, in a mind that is neither Eastern nor Western, that is just human -- a global mind. It is easy to live with one part of the mind, but if you want to live with both parts you will have to live a very inconsistent life -- inconsistent superficially of course. On a deeper layer you will have a consistency, a spiritual harmony.

 

Man remains spiritually poor unless the opposite polarity is also a part of him. Then he becomes rich. If you are simply an artist and have no scientific mind, your art is bound to be poor. Richness comes only when the opposite is there. If there are only males in the room, the room lacks something. The moment females enter, the room becomes spiritually rich. Now, the polar opposites are both there. The whole becomes greater.

 

The mind must not be fixed. A mathematician will be richer if he can move into the world of arts. If his mind has the freedom to move away from its main fixations and then back to them again, he will be a richer mathematician. Through the opposite, a cross-breeding happens. You begin to look at things in a different way. Your total perspective will be richer.

 

A person should have a religious mind along with scientific training, a scientific mind along with religious discipline. I see no inherent impossibility in it. On the contrary, I think the mind will become more alive if it can move from one to the other. To me, meditation means an ability to move deeply in all directions, a freedom from fixations.

 

For example, if I become too logical then I become incapable of understanding poetry. Logic becomes a fixation. Then when I listen to poetry, my fixation is there. The poetry looks absurd. Not because it is, but because I have a fixation with logic. From the viewpoint of logic, poetry is absurd. On the other hand, if I become fixated on poetry then I begin to think of logic as just a utilitarian thing, with no depth in it. I become closed to it.

 

This denial of one part by the other has been happening throughout history. Every period, every nation, every part of the world, every culture has always chosen one part and created a personality around it. The personality was poor, lacking much. Neither the East has been rich spiritually nor the West. They cannot be. Richness comes through opposites, through the inner dialectic. To me, neither the East is worth choosing nor the West. A different quality of mind must be chosen. By that quality I mean that one is at rest with oneself, without choosing.

 

A tree grows. We can cut down all the branches except one and allow the tree to grow only in one direction. It will be a very poor tree, very ugly, and ultimately it is bound to be in deep difficulty because a single branch cannot grow by itself; it can grow only in a family of branches. A moment is bound to come when the branch will feel it has reached a cul-de-sac. Now it cannot grow anymore. For a tree to really grow it must be allowed to grow in all directions. Only then will the tree be rich, strong.

 

The human spirit must grow like a tree: in all directions. The concept that we cannot grow in opposite directions must be dropped. Really, we can grow only if we grow in opposite directions. Up until now we have been saying that one must specialize, one must go in one specific direction only. Then something ugly happens. One grows in a specific direction, and he lacks everything. He becomes a branch, not a tree. And even this branch is bound to be poor.

 

Not only have we been cutting the branches of the mind, but we have been cutting the roots. We allow only one root and only one branch, so a very starved human being has developed all over the world: in the East, in the West, everywhere. Then those in the East are attracted to the West and those in the West to the East, because one is attracted to what one lacks.

 

Because of the needs of the body, the East has begun to be attracted to the West. Because of the needs of the spirit, the West has begun to be attracted to the East. But even if we change positions, change attitudes, the disease remains the same. It is not a question of changing positions; it is a question of changing the whole perspective.

 

We have never accepted the whole human being. Somewhere sex is not accepted. Somewhere else, the world is not accepted. Somewhere else, emotion is not accepted. We have never been strong enough to accept everything that is human, without condemnation, and to allow human beings to grow in every direction. The more you grow in opposite directions, the greater will be the growth, the richness, the inner affluence. Our total perspective must change. We must move from the past to the future -- not from East to West, not from one present to another present.

 

The problem is so arduous because our fragmentation has gone so deep: I cannot accept my anger, I cannot accept my sex, I cannot accept my body, I cannot accept my totality.... Something has to be denied and thrown away. This is evil, this is bad, this is sin... I have to go on cutting branches. Soon I am not a tree at all, not an alive thing. And the fear is always there that the branches I have denied can come up again, can grow again. I become fearful about everything. Disease sets in: a sadness, a death.

 

We go on living partial lives that are nearer to death than to life. One must accept the total human potentiality, bringing everything within oneself to a peak without feeling any inconsistency, any contradiction. If you cannot be authentically angry, you cannot be loving. But this has not been the attitude up to now. We have been thinking that a person is more loving if he is incapable of anger.

 

- Osho, "The Psychology of the Esoteric, #12, Q4"