He(Engo) says about the enlightened man:

 

THE ENLIGHTENED MAN ENJOYS PERFECT FREEDOM IN ACTIVE LIFE.

 

That is the foundation of his following statements; it has to be understood, with all its implications.

 

The unconscious man lives according to others -- either following them or denying them, but the focus is always the other. So there are followers and there are anti-followers; there are theists and there are atheists. But at the very foundation they are no different. One is positively in favor of some doctrine and one is negative, reactive, against the same doctrine, but both are hanging on to something other than themselves. They are other-oriented.

 

I am always reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre, and his statement that "the other is hell." He may have made it in a different context, but in itself the statement is valuable. I want you to know: the other is hell because the other takes away your freedom. It may be done very lovingly, without any bad intention. It may be done with all good intentions but that does not matter: the ancient saying is that "the path to hell is paved with good intentions."

 

The parents, the teachers, the neighbors, the friends -- all are continuously giving a shape to your life, a style to your life. If you look into your mind you will find many voices together: your father is speaking, your grandfather is speaking, your mother, your brother, your teachers, your professors. But one thing you will not find there is your voice. Your voice has been completely repressed by other voices.

 

Layer upon layer, you have lost track even of your own voice, of your own self, of your own face. So many masks...

 

When a small child comes into the world, he is just a clean slate; and you immediately start writing on his slate without even bothering to ask his permission. You make him a Christian, you make him a Hindu, you make him a Mohammedan; you make him anything you want to make him -- and you don't understand that consciousness is not something that you can give a mode to, a certain pattern. What ultimately happens from all your efforts and intentions is a hypocrite, a person who knows that he is doing something but his heart is not in it. He becomes phony; he becomes a slave of all the others who surround him. Not only the living ones but the dead ones also are creating your slavery.

 

Engo's statement is, THE ENLIGHTENED MAN ENJOYS PERFECT FREEDOM IN ACTIVE LIFE. He is not a slave to any tradition, to any culture, to any civilization. He lives according to his own spontaneity, according to his own awareness.

 

And that is one of the troubles: the enlightened person is bound to be misunderstood, because the whole world is full of slaves. They cannot understand the language of freedom.

 

It is almost like selling eyeglasses to a world of blind people. Even if they have the glasses, they are of no use -- they cannot see, they don't have the eyes.

 

A man went to one eye specialist and asked him, "Check my eyes. Do you think I will be able to read if you prescribe glasses?"

 

The eye specialist said, "Of course you will be able to read."

 

He wrote the prescription and the glasses were made. But the man said, "By the way, I must inform you that I don't know how to read."

 

The specialist said, "You are strange! You should have said this before, because even with glasses, if you don't know how to read, you are not going to read."

 

People are carrying scriptures which describe freedom, which even talk about freedom from scriptures. People are worshipping statues of persons like Gautam Buddha whose last words were, "Remember these are my last words, my last wish: my statues should not be made." Ten thousand sannyasins were listening, and as it happened, there are now more statues of Gautam Buddha in the world than of anyone else. A single temple in China even has ten thousand Buddhas. The whole mountain, miles long, has been carved into Buddha statues.

 

It is strange blindness. It is strange misunderstanding....

 

And a man of freedom is bound to be condemned by slaves because the slaves cannot accept the idea that they are slaves. So anybody who is enlightened and becomes a man of freedom, becomes a danger to millions of egos. His freedom to fly across the sky with open wings is bound to be condemned by all those who are crippled, who are caught in cages. The cages may be of gold -- very precious, cozy, a good shelter -- but the joy of being on your own wings in the sky, unlimited, with no barriers, no boundaries, is much more valuable than any golden cage.

 

Engo says, THE ENLIGHTENED MAN ENJOYS PERFECT FREEDOM IN ACTIVE LIFE. He is not bound by any morality, not bound by any rules, not bound by any ethos, not bound by any society, any civilization, any culture, any education. He remains true and honest to his own being. He does not care whether his action is going against the society, whether his action is going against the scriptures. All that he is committed to is his own spontaneous response. He has no other commitments. He cannot be a Christian or a Mohammedan or a Jew or a Jaina. He can only be a human being without any fetters.

 

But naturally he has to suffer. He has to suffer because the whole crowd is of slaves, blind people. They feel hurt -- deeply hurt -- by his presence, by his freedom. They continuously compare, and feel deep down guilty that they have never stood up for their own freedom. They have remained sheep, just part of a crowd; they never declared their individuality. And now there is a man of absolute freedom.

 

Those who have any intelligence will fall in love with this man of freedom; but very few people have intelligence. Most people live without any intelligence in their life -- a robot life, almost mechanical. They all are going to be against such persons -- in the name of religion, in the name of morality, in the name of society. Their excuse is that these people are dangerous: if everybody starts functioning according to his own truth, then there will be no society, no state, no nation, no army, no war.

 

The whole society is committed to such stupid things that a man of enlightened freedom cannot be committed to any of them. He cannot be Indian or French or Chinese; the whole earth is one for him. His every action is according to his own consciousness, not according to any teaching of some dead, so-called wise person. He has his own eyes to see; why should he listen to others? He has his own ears to hear; why should he listen to others? He has his own consciousness to decide; why should he follow the ten commandments of Moses, or the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus, or the SHRIMAD BHAGAVADGITA of Krishna? They may be beautiful, but they are not going to guide your life.

 

The moment you have guidelines from others, you are spiritually a slave.

 

In other words, Engo is saying the enlightened man lives according to his own life source, without any consideration or compromise with the crowd. He is absolutely an individualist and he wants everybody else also to be individualists.

 

There is nothing more valuable than freedom because only in freedom can you blossom to your ultimate potential. As a slave you are crippled, you are cut, you are in a mold; you are in chains, you are in cages -- different sizes of cages, different forms of cages....

 

But remember one thing: that which has not arisen within you is always some kind of slavery.

 

The first definition of the enlightened man is PERFECT FREEDOM IN ACTIVE LIFE. He is bound to be condemned, because the crowd gets disturbed. The crowd gets disturbed because such a man is going to destroy their slavery, which they think is a very cozy and safe lifestyle.

 

I am reminded of a story.

 

In a mountainous region, a man of freedom rested for a day in a caravanserai. That caravanserai had a beautiful parrot, and the owner had taught the parrot... The parrot was continuously asking for freedom -- "Freedom!" It was strange....

 

The stranger, an enlightened man, could not believe this whole thing. Because first you put him in the cage, and then you teach him to repeat "Freedom!" If the owner is honest, he should give him freedom!

 

In the night, he could not resist. He woke up, opened the door of the parrot's cage, and told the parrot, "Now the doors are open and the whole sky is yours. Get out!"

 

And the parrot was clinging to the cage, and still shouting loudly, "Freedom, freedom!"

 

Finally the man said, "This is strange -- the door is open! Why are you clinging to the cage?"

 

He forced his hand inside, took the parrot out -- it was very unwilling, gave a good fight, scratched his hand -- but the man took the parrot out, and threw it into the sky. Then, feeling a deep relief, he went to sleep. In the morning, the first thing he heard was, "Freedom!"

 

He looked out and the parrot was inside the cage; the door was still open....

 

Outside the cage it is such a vast life, one becomes afraid. There are enemies; there will be days that are too cold, there will be nights that are too hot, there will be times you will have to go hungry. There will be nobody continuously protecting you.

 

Once you have become accustomed to living in a cage, freedom becomes a very dangerous idea.

 

Twenty-one countries have decided about me, that I am a dangerous man. I have not killed a single ant in my whole life; I have never used even a paper knife, and the parliaments of twenty-one countries decide that I'm a dangerous man. And nobody asks, "What is the definition of danger? Why is this man dangerous?"

 

I am not a terrorist, I am not teaching people how to make bombs, I am not an anarchist. But the danger is that I spread the fire of freedom. I wake people up, saying that unless you demand your freedom -- from all kinds of chains, handcuffs, from all kinds of cages -- you can never be a Gautam Buddha. You will never know the joys and the blessings and the ecstasies of freedom. You will never know your own eternity. You will always be afraid of death, not knowing that death is a fiction -- it is very superficial, it occurs only on the surface. Inside, life continues forever and forever.

 

But to know all this you need freedom. And this freedom is not social or political or economic; this freedom is spiritual. You need to go inside yourself and find that space which has not yet been chained. Finding that space from where your life arises, you will attain enlightenment and freedom together; they are two different names for the same, single experience.

 

Engo says:

 

HE IS LIKE A DRAGON SUPPORTED BY DEEP WATERS OR LIKE A TIGER THAT COMMANDS ITS MOUNTAIN RETREAT. THE MAN WHO IS NOT ENLIGHTENED DRIFTS ABOUT IN THE AFFAIRS OF THE WORLD.

 

Just watch yourself. What have you been doing in the world? Just drifting like deadwood, no direction, no dimension, no clarity, no vision. Just following a crowd -- not even knowing where you are going, just trusting that the crowd must know: if so many people are going, then we must be right because so many people cannot be wrong.

 

And the reality is, so many people cannot be right! To be right is a very unique experience; to be right is to be enlightened.

 

Beware of this unconscious calculation that because the whole world is doing something, it must be right; so many people cannot be wrong. This is the arithmetic we have been living. So we stumble, we grope in the darkness; we follow this man, we follow that man, and we never think, "If we are alive, then there must be a source within us -- has to be -- otherwise from where does our life come?"

 

Without knowing this source, even if you are following a buddha you are going to go astray. Because every individual is so unique, you can never follow anybody.

 

THE MAN WHO IS NOT ENLIGHTENED DRIFTS ABOUT IN THE AFFAIRS OF THE WORLD.

 

Your life, if it is not enlightened, is nothing but a drifting.

 

-Osho, “The Buddha: The Emptiness of the Heart, #8”