Osho: Men are not equal, they are unique

Question:
When answering the following you would be speaking to about half a million radio listeners in Europe; most of them may not have heard anything about you yet.
If one of the listeners to this program is devoted to socialism, what would you tell him?
If one of the listeners is a practicing Catholic, what story would you have for him?
If one of the listeners is a potential seeker, what message would you have for him?
However, if your message is silence, how would you convey this silence on radio?

— Götz Hagmüller

Osho:
First, I am not for socialism, because to me freedom is the ultimate value; nothing is higher than that. And socialism is basically against freedom — it has to be, it is inevitable, because the very effort of socialism is to bring something unnatural into existence.

Men are not equal, they are unique. How can they be equal? All are not poets and all are not painters. Every person has unique talents to him. There are people who can create music and there are people who can create money. Man needs absolute freedom to be himself. Socialism is dictatorship of the state; it is a forced economic structure. It tries to equalize people who are not equal; it cuts them in the same size, and they have different sizes. Naturally to few people, to very few people it will fit, but to the majority it will be a crippling phenomenon, paralyzing, destructive.

I appreciate freedom in every sphere of life so that everybody is allowed to be himself. The society is not the end but only a means; the end is the individual. Individual has a greater value than the social organization. The society exists for the individual, not vice versa. Hence I believe in ‘laissez-faire ’.

Capitalism is the most natural economic structure; it has not been forced, it has grown. It has not been imposed, it has come on its own. Certainly I would like poverty to be eradicated from the world — it is ugly — but socialism cannot do it. It has failed in Russia, in China; in every country it has failed to eradicate poverty. Yes, it has succeeded in one thing: it has made everybody equally poor; it has distributed poverty.

And man is so foolish that if everybody else is also as much poor as you are you feel more at ease; you don’t feel jealous. The whole idea of socialism has arisen out of jealousy. It has nothing to do with understanding man, his psychology, his growth, his ultimate flowering; it is rooted in jealousy. Few people become rich; those few people are targets of everybody else’s jealousy — they have to be pulled down. Not that you will become richer by pulling them down; you may become even more poor than before because those few people know how to create money. If they are destroyed you will lose all capacity to create richness.

That’s what has happened in Russia: the rich people have disappeared, but that has not made the whole society rich; everybody has become equally poor. Of course people feel happier in that way because there is nobody who is richer than them. Everybody is equally poor, all are beggars; it feels good. Somebody rising higher than you, and your ego is hurt.

People talk about equality, but something fundamental has to be understood: men are not psychologically equal. What can be done about it? Albert Einstein is not equal to any Tom, Harry, Dick — he is not! You can sooner or later start equalizing people as far as intelligence is concerned; Shakespeare, Milton, Shelley are not equal to other people; they have a dimension of their own.

One thing I agree: that there should be freedom for everybody, and equal freedom for everybody, to be himself. To put it more precisely: freedom means that everybody is free to be unequal! Equality and freedom cannot go together, they cannot coexist. If you choose equality, freedom has to be sacrificed and with freedom all is sacrificed. Religion is sacrificed; genius, the very possibility of genius, is sacrificed; man’s higher qualities are sacrificed. Everybody has to fit with the lowest denominator, only then you can be equal.

It is like you are going to climb a mountain — if all have to be equal, then the person who is the laziest will become the criterion; everybody has to move according to the laziest. The first will not be the criterion but the last. This will be a great calamity. If the last becomes the decisive factor, then what about those who are like Everest?

And my observation is that every individual is born with some specific talent, some specific genius to himself. He may not be a poet like Shelley or Rabindranath, he may not be a painter like Picasso or Nandalal, he may not be a musician Like Beethoven or Ravi Shankar, but he must have something. That something has to be discovered. He has to be helped that he can discover what he has brought to the world as a gift from God.

Nobody comes without a gift; everybody brings a certain potential. But the idea of equality is dangerous, because the rose has to be the rose and the marigold has to be the marigold and the lotus has to be the lotus. If you start trying to make them equal then you will destroy all; the roses, the lotuses, the marigolds, all will be destroyed. You can succeed in creating plastic flowers which will be exactly equal to each other, but they will be dead.

And that is what is going to happen if socialism becomes our way of life in the whole world: man will be reduced into a commodity, he will be reduced into a machine. Machines are equal. You can have millions of Ford cars exactly equal to each other. They go on coming through the assembly line, absolutely the same as the other. But man is not a machine, and to reduce man to be a machine will be destroying humanity from the earth.

Do you think in Soviet Russia Gautam Buddha is possible, Jesus Christ is possible, Lao Tzu is possible? And what to say about Buddha, Jesus and Lao Tzu? I ask you: is even Karl Marx possible? Even Karl Marx is not possible, because Karl Marx has an intelligence of his own and he will not be tolerated. He is not an ordinary person; certainly he is not a part of the so-called proletariat. He was part of the most refined bourgeoisie.

His whole life he never worked. From morning to evening he was sitting in the British Museum studying. In fact, British Museum has never come again across another scholar of the same caliber. He was so much intrigued with his studies, so much fascinated, that when the closing time will come he had to be forcibly thrown out every day, because he will insist, “Just wait a little more — let me finish this book! Don’t disturb me! What does it matter if you close the museum half an hour late? If I don’t do this work, tomorrow I may have completely lost the track of it. Let me finish it!” He had to be forced, physically forced.

And it happened many times that he was found almost in a state of coma; studying continuously he will become so dizzy he will fall unconscious, he will fall in a swoon, and he had to be carried on a stretcher to his home.

Now this man is no more possible. In the first place British Museum is not possible in Russia.

I have heard:

An American journalist — must be somebody like Götz Hagmüller — was visiting Russia. He asked a professor… thinking that a professor will answer him intelligently, but whatsoever he asked the professor always started his answer, ”Yes, just the other day I read in Pravda…”

The Russian word Pravda means the truth. What irony! It should mean the lie! The Pravda is the most lying newspaper in the world, but it means the truth. He will always start. ”I have read in the Pravda…

Disgusted, the journalist finally asked, ”Have you not got any opinion of your own?”

The professor said, ”Yes, I have got my own opinions, but I don’t believe in them!”

In Russia there is no freedom of thought, because freedom of thought means the beginning of inequality. Freedom of thought means man is not a machine, and then two men cannot be equal.

The idea of equality is absolutely unpsychological. I can accept it only in one sense: that everybody should be given equal opportunity to be himself — and that means to be unequal. You have to understand this paradox: everybody has to be given equal opportunity and freedom to be himself, and that simply means everybody has to be given equality to be unequal.

The poverty can be destroyed — there is no need for socialism — the poverty can be destroyed only by a higher capitalist system. Karl Marx has predicted that the first country to go communist or socialist will be America; his prediction proved absolutely wrong. He had never thought that a country like Russia or China is ever going to become communist; Russia and China are economically very backward. In the days of Karl Marx, Russia was living in the world of feudalism; even capitalism has not happened there.

If Karl Marx comes back he will be absolutely unable to understand how it happened that Russia became the first communist country, the first socialist society. He was hoping America will become the first communist country. Why he was hoping that? — because if capitalism grows and reaches to a peak of producing wealth to the maximum, poverty will disappear naturally, because when wealth is too much nobody wants to hoard it. You don’t hoard air — it is available. It is freely available, it is so much there. You don’t hoard anything which is not in scarcity.

People are money-minded, greedy, because money is scarce. If you don’t hoard it, if you don’t cling to it, somebody else will snatch it away from you. Before somebody else does it you have to do it. Otherwise you will be a loser. And the only way to destroy poverty is to create so much wealth that greed becomes irrelevant. When wealth is enough, the poverty will disappear. Of course there will be still people who will have more wealth and people who will have less wealth, but that is natural and nothing is wrong in it. Somebody will be more intelligent and somebody less intelligent, and somebody will be more healthy and somebody less healthy, but we can create a society where everybody can attain to his maximum. Even then inequality is bound to remain, and there is no need to destroy that because that creates variety. and variety brings richness. It is good that people are not equal.

Poverty should go, but the only way for it to go is to produce more wealth, to industrialize society more scientifically, to bring more and more technology, and with a deep understanding of nature so your technology and industry don’t destroy nature. They should become part of ecology, they should not go against it. That is the highest scientific development. It cannot happen through socialism; it can happen only through capitalism.

The word “capitalism” has become very derogatory, but I am not worried about that. I believe in capitalism and not in socialism, because to me capitalism is the only hope for freedom, for growth, for individual uniqueness. It is a respect for the individual; socialism is disrespectful of the individual. Socialism does not believe in the soul of man; it cannot believe because if you believe in the soul of man then you cannot behave as if man is a machine. You have to give respect to the uniqueness of every individual. Not to give that respect means committing suicide.

The second thing you ask: If one of the listeners is a practicing Catholic, what story would you have for him?

It is good to be a Christ, it is ugly to be a Christian — Catholic or Protestant, it doesn’t matter. It is good to be a Buddha, but ugly to be a Buddhist. When you can be a Christ, why settle for less? When Christ-consciousness can flower in you, when you can become a Buddha in your own right, when you can experience what Buddha and Christ have experienced, then why just be a follower, an imitator, a carbon copy? I am against carbon copies.

My effort here is to help you to discover your original face, so whether you are a practicing Catholic or a Protestant or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, it is all wrong. Love Christ, but don’t be a Christian. Love is a totally different phenomenon. If you become a Christian you are addicted with Christ, you become dependent on Christ. If you are a Christian you are bound to be anti-Buddha, anti-Mahavira, anti-Lao Tzu, anti-Zarathustra, anti-Patanjali.Just choosing Christ and becoming anti to all the other great awakened individuals who have walked on the earth is becoming poor, unnecessarily poor. When you can claim the whole heritage of humanity, when all the Buddhas, all the awakened ones can enrich your being, why narrow down your consciousness? Why become focused and obsessed with Christ or Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna?

A Catholic means he is obsessed with Christ, a Hindu means he is obsessed with Krishna, a Jain means he is obsessed with Mahavira, and obsession is a psychological disease

One should be open, one should be available, to the stars, to the sun, to the moon, to the wind, to the flowers, to the birds. One should be available to all, because this whole belongs to us.

Love Christ, because love is not excluding others; love is an inclusive phenomenon. If you love Christ you have to love Buddha too, because that is another aspect of being a Christ. If you love Christ you have to love Mahavira too, because that is again another aspect of the same fulfillment. Buddha, Christ, Mahavira, Mohammed, Bahauddin, Kabir, Nanak — different aspects of the truth.

Truth is multidimensional. Why choose one dimension? Why become linear? Why be so miserly, even in your spiritual love? Why not be open and available, vulnerable to all, so they can all dance in your being?

I would like my sannyasins to be lovers of all. Enjoy all kinds of flowers! Don t become addicted with the rose, because the lotus has its beauty just as the rose has its beauty. And where is the problem? Cannot you enjoy the rose and the lotus together? Just one thing has to be understood: if you love beauty you can enjoy all, if you love truth you can enjoy all the awakened ones.

But a practicing Catholic does not love truth — he believes. No believer is a seeker of truth; all believers are non-seekers. They have already believed without inquiring, without going in the exploration, without adventuring into the unknown territory. They have already become prejudiced.

And what do you mean by “a practicing Catholic”? What you can practice in the name of Catholicism? Whatsoever you do will be nothing but an effort of conditioning yourself according to your belief It will be a state of autohypnosis, and autohypnosis is not going to help you to become awakened.

Religion is not a question of practicing at all. If you practice you will miss religion and its beauty. Religion is the experience of a spontaneously flowing consciousness. Practicing means imposing something upon yourself, cultivating a character. Religion has nothing to do with cultivating a character. It is an inquiry into “Who am l?” It is going inwards, reaching to the very rock bottom of your being, to the ground of your being, discovering your center. And from that discovery an explosion happens and your old character simply disappears like a nightmare, and a new quality arises in you. You are more alive, more rejoicing, more full of love, more full of celebration. And this state of celebration makes you aware that existence is not dead. Because you are alive you can contact the living sources of God is not a person but only the experience that the whole existence is an alive phenomenon; it is not matter alone. It is throbbing with life! It is overflowing with life; that it has a heartbeat. The moment you know that the universe has a heartbeat you have discovered God. But first, please, discover your own heartbeat, discover your own center.

Religion is not a question of practicing, it is a question of discovering. It is not a question of belief. Beliefs are all against truth; they make your mind prejudiced. Belief means you don’t know, still you pretend to know. Belief is a lie, it is hypocrisy.

So whether somebody is a practicing Catholic or a Hindu or a Mohammedan, all practicing people are dangerous. They are false, pseudo; they are not authentic, they are not real. The real person is a seeker.

And the third thing you ask: If one of the listeners is a potential seeker, what message would you have for him?

My whole message is only for him, the potential seeker. These are the qualities of a seeker. First: he will not be a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a communist; he will not be an atheist or a theist. To seek, this basic requirement has to be fulfilled: you have to put aside all your beliefs, because if you carry your beliefs then your beliefs will distort your vision. Beliefs are like colored glasses: they will make the whole existence of the same color as your glasses. It will not be the true color of existence; it will be imparted by your glasses. You have to put aside all your glasses. You have to contact reality directly, immediately. There should be no idea between you and existence, no a priori conclusion.

A real seeker has to be in the state that Dionysius calls agnosia — a state of not-knowing. Socrates said at the very end of his life, “I know only one thing, that I know nothing.” This is the state of a true seeker.

In the East we call this state meditation: no belief, no thought, no desire, no prejudice, no conditioning — in fact, no mind at all. A state of no-mind is meditation. When you can look without any mind interfering, distorting, interpreting, then you see the truth. The truth is already all around; just you have to put your mind aside.

The seeker has to fulfill only one basic thing: he has to drop his mind. The moment the mind is dropped, a great silence arises — because the mind carries your whole past; all the memories of the past go on hankering for your attention, they go on crowding upon you, they don’t leave any space within you.

And the mind also means future. Out of the past you start fantasizing about the future. It is a projection out of the past. You have lived a certain life in the past: there have been a few moments of joy and many many dark nights. You would not like to have those dark nights; you would have your future to be full of those joyous moments. So you sort out from your past: you choose few things and you project them in the future, and you choose a few other things and you try to avoid them in the future. Your future is only nothing but a refined past — a little bit modified here and there, but it is still the past because that’s all that you know.

And one thing very significant to be remembered: those few moments of joy that you had in the past were basically part of those long dark nights, so if you choose those moments those dark nights will come automatically; you cannot avoid them. The silver linings in the dark clouds cannot be chosen separately from the dark clouds. In the dark night you see the sky full of stars; in the day those stars disappear. Do you think they evaporate? They are still there, but the context is missing. They need darkness; only then you can see them. In the night, you will be able to see them again. Darker the night, the more shining are the stars.

In life everything is intertwined with each other. Your pleasures are intertwined with your pains, your ecstasies mixed inevitably, inseparably with your agonies. So your whole idea of the future is sheer nonsense. You cannot manage it, nobody has ever been able to manage it, because you are trying to do something which cannot be done in the very nature of things. It will be simply a repetition of your past.

Whatsoever you desire is not going to make any difference. It will be again and again a repetition of your past, the same past, maybe a little bit different, but not because of your expectations — a little bit different because life goes on changing, people go on changing, existence goes on changing. So there will be few differences but not basic differences, only in the non-essential parts. Essentially it will be the same tragedy.

Dropping the mind means dropping the past, and with it of course the future disappears. Dropping the mind means you are suddenly awakened into the present, and the present is the only reality there is. Past is non-existential, so is future. Past is no more, future is not yet, only the present is. It is always now — only the now exists. And the meditator starts merging and melting with the now.

And that’s what silence is. It can be conveyed, Götz Hagmüller, to your radio listeners. Just these pauses… these wordless moments… when you start feeling the now, the here… when suddenly you become aware that five thousand people are sitting here, but as if there is nobody at all. The Buddha Hall is absolutely empty.

When we are in the present… silence descends. You can hear the birds chirping, but they don’t disturb the silence — they enhance it, they beautify it.

Take my message to your people. First: freedom is the ultimate goal and socialism goes against it, hence I favor a state of laissez-faire. Secondly: nobody can practice religion. Religion really means your spontaneity, your nature. You cannot practice it, you have to allow it. You have to remove all the barriers that prevent the flow of your nature. It is like a stream prevented by rocks: remove the rocks. There is no question of practicing; it is already there. It is your nature! When the hindrances are no more there you start flowing, just like a river moving towards the ocean.

Each consciousness moving towards God, towards the ultimate ocean, is religious. Religion is neither Christian nor Hindu nor Mohammedan. These are all political games played in the name of religion. A religious person is simply religious, natural, spontaneous, living out of his own light.

Buddha said to his disciples, and this was his last message on the earth: “Be a light unto yourself” — live according to your own light, not following and practicing somebody else’s light, because that will make you only a carbon copy, and howsoever beautiful the carbon copy is it is still a carbon copy.

Discover your originality, and it cannot be done by practicing. Practicing means imposing some ideas from others, trying to act as others would like you to act. Act as you would like to act. Take the risk — it is dangerous.

To be religious is to live in danger — it is not security. To live in religion means constantly exploring the unknown and ultimately the unknowable.

And thirdly: be a seeker, never be a believer. If you cannot say, “I know God,” please don’t say, “I believe in God,” because that is falsifying. That is even not being true about God, not even being sincere with God. With whom you are going to be sincere then? If you don’t know, say, “I don’t know.” At least that is true. Don’t pretend that you know because pretensions are dangerous. They will deceive others and they can deceive yourself too.

And only a seeker can become a meditator. Meditation means absolute silence. It is only in silence that one comes to know, one comes to love, one comes to dance in tune with existence.

Osho – ‘I Am That’, Chapter 11, Question 1
21 October 1980 am, Buddha Hall, Pune, India