Question 1

Beloved Osho,

It touches so much when you talk about the new man. when you first mentioned this concept to us many years ago, the new man was simply that to me: a concept that was intriguing, a fascinating possibility. but lately, i feel as if i know this new man -- this new race of people -- and really care about him. it sounds audacious to repeat the words i have heard you use:

"i am pregnant with the new man." but actually, that's how i feel; not only about myself, but about all of your people.

what is our relationship to the new man?

 

 

Maneesha, the new man contains my whole philosophy about life and how it should be -- lived in totality, in intensity, in wholeness, so that we are not only dragging ourselves from the cradle to the grave, but we can make each moment a tremendous rejoicing -- a song, a dance, a celebration.

 

The old man that has existed up to now is on his death bed. He has suffered much; he needs all our compassion. He has been conditioned to live in misery, in suffering, in self-torture. He was given promises: promissory notes for great rewards after death -- the more he suffers, the more he tortures himself, the more he is masochistic, the more he is destructive of his own dignity, the more he will be rewarded.

 

That was a very convenient concept for all the vested interests because the man who is ready to suffer can easily be enslaved. The man who is ready to sacrifice today for an unknown tomorrow has already declared his inclination to be enslaved. The future becomes his bondage. And for thousands of years, man has lived only in hope, in imagination, in dreams, in utopias, but not in reality. And there is no other life than the life of reality, than the life that exists in this moment.

 

The new man is a rebellion, a revolt, a revolution against all the conditionings which can enslave him, oppress him, exploit him, just by giving him hopes of a fictitious heaven, frightening him, blackmailing him about another fictitious phenomenon: hell. All the old ways of life were strangely in agreement on one point: that man is a sacrificial animal at the feet of a fictitious God.

 

There were times when men were actually sacrificed alive, butchered before stone statues. Although nobody dares to do such a thing now, psychologically the situation has not changed. Man is still sacrificed either in the name of communism, or in the name of capitalism, or in the name of an Aryan race, in the name of Islam, in the name of Christianity, in the name of Hinduism. Instead of stone gods, now there are only phony words, meaningless. But man has accepted to live like this for the simple reason that every child finds himself born in a crowd which is already conditioned. The teachers are conditioned, the parents are conditioned, the neighbors are conditioned; and the small child is almost helpless -- he cannot envisage any other alternative than to be part of the crowd.

 

The old man was a crowd, a cog in the wheel; the old man had no individuality. The vested interests had taken all care to destroy self-respect, dignity, a joy and a gratefulness that you are a human being, that you are the highest creation in the long, long path of evolution... that you are the crowning glory.

 

These ideas were dangerous. If a man has some respect for himself, some dignity of being human, you cannot reduce him to a slave; you cannot destroy his soul and make him a robot. Up to now, man has only pretended to live -- his life has been only hypothetical.

 

The new man is a revolt against the whole past.

 

He is a declaration that we are going to create a new way of life, new values of life; that we are destined for new goals -- faraway stars are our targets. And we are not going to allow anybody to sacrifice us for any beautiful name. We are going to live our lives, not according to ideals, but according to our own longings, our own passionate intuitions. And we are going to live moment to moment; we are no longer to be befooled by the tomorrow, and the promises for tomorrow.

 

The new man contains the whole future of humanity. The old man is bound to die. He has prepared his own grave -- he is digging it every moment, deeper and deeper. What do you think Ronald Reagan is doing? -- digging a grave for humanity as deep as possible. These people seem to be afraid even of dead people -- that if the grave is not deep enough, they may come back; they may come back alive.

 

Nuclear weapons and all destructive measures are a preparation for a global suicide. The old man has decided to die. It is up to the intelligent people in the world to disconnect from the old man before he destroys you too... to disconnect yourself from old traditions, old religions, old nations, old ideologies.

 

For the first time, the old is no longer gold. The old is the rotten corpse of an ugly past. It is a great responsibility for the new generation, for the young people to renounce the past.

 

In the past, religions used to renounce the world. I teach you to love the world so that it can be saved, and to renounce the past totally and irrevocably, to be discontinuous.

 

The new man is not an improvement upon the old; he is not a continuous phenomenon, not a refinement. The new man is the declaration of the death of the old, and the birth of an absolutely fresh man -- unconditioned, without any nation, without any religion, without any discriminations of men and women, of black and white, of East and West, or North and South.

 

The new man is a manifesto of one humanity. It is the greatest revolution the world has ever seen.

 

You have heard about the miracle that Moses parted the sea in two parts. That miracle is nothing. I want to part humanity, the whole ocean of humanity divided in two parts: the old and the new.

 

The new will love this life, this world. The new will learn the art of living and loving and dying.

 

The new will not be concerned about heaven and hell, sin and virtue. The new man will be concerned about how to increase the joys of life, the pleasures of life -- more flowers, more beauty, more humanity, more compassion. And we have the capacity and the potential to make this planet a paradise, and to make this moment the greatest ecstasy of your life.

 

Let the old die. Let the old be led by people like Ronald Reagan. Let the blind people follow the blind.

 

But those who have a younger spirit -- and when I say "a younger spirit," it includes even those old people who are not old in spirit; and it does not include even the young people who are old in spirit. The spiritually young are going to be the new man.

 

The new man is not a hope: You are already pregnant with it.

 

My work is just to make you aware that the new man has already arrived. My work is to help you to recognize him and to respect him.

 

You are asking, Maneesha: "What is our relationship to the new man?" There is no relationship between you and the new man because you are the new man. You just have to drop all the dust that has gathered down the ages on the mirror of your consciousness.

 

The new man is not someone coming from another planet. The new man is you in your freshness, in your silences of the heart, in your depth of meditation, in your beautiful spaces of love, in your songs of joy, in your dances of ecstasy, in your love of this earth. No religion teaches you to love this earth -- and this earth is your mother, and these trees are your brothers, and these stars are your friends.

 

You are not going to have a relationship with the new man because that would be a separation; all relationships separate. You are going to be the new man. In my vision you are already on the path of the new man. You have started the journey, although you are not fully awake; but as you will see the old man moving more and more towards the graveyard, it will become easier for you to renounce him and his ways of life, his churches, his synagogues, his temples, his gods, his holy scriptures.

 

Your holy scripture is your whole life,

 

and nobody else can write it -- you have to write it. You come with an empty book, and it depends on you what you make of it. Birth is not life; it is only an opportunity given to you to create life... to create a life as beautiful, as glorious, as loving as you can imagine, as you can dream.

 

The new man's dreams and his reality will be one because his dreams will be rooted here in this earth. They will bring flowers and fruits. They will not be just dreams -- they will make the world a dreamland.

 

Realize the responsibility... man has never faced a greater responsibility before: a responsibility to renounce the whole past, to erase it from your being.

 

Be Adam and Eve again, and let this earth be the Garden of Eden; and this time we will see who the God is who has the guts to drive man out of the Garden of Eden! It is going to be our garden, and if God wants to be in our garden, He will have to knock on our doors.

 

This earth can be a splendor, a magic, a miracle. Our hands have that touch -- it is just that we have never tried it. Man has never given a chance to his own potential to grow, to blossom, to bring fulfillment, contentment, to shower the whole earth with flowers, to fill the whole earth with fragrance. To me, that fragrance is godliness.

 

The new man will not worship a God as a creator of the world; the new man will create God as a fragrance, as beauty, as love, as truth. Up to now God has been the creator: for the new man, man will be the creator, and God is going to be the created. We can create godliness -- it is within our hands.

 

That's why I say the new man is the greatest revolution that has ever happened in the world. And there is no way to avoid it because the old man is determined to die, determined, committed to commit suicide. Let him die peacefully. Those who have a rebellious spirit should just disconnect themselves, and they will be the saviors, they will create a Noah's ark, they will be the beginning of a new world. And because we have known the old world and its miseries; we can avoid all those miseries; we can avoid all those jealousies, all those angers, all those wars, all those destructive tendencies....

 

We can go through a total transformation: we can create innocent people, loving people, people who breathe in freedom, people who help each other to be free. We can create nourishment for everybody to be dignified, to be respected -- not according to some ideals and values, but just as he is.

 

The new man is going to be the very salt of the earth.

-Osho, "The Golden Future, #32, Q1"