Freedom. Courage to be yourself

Freedom means the ability to say “yes” when “yes” is needed, to say “no” when “no” is needed, and sometimes to remain silent when nothing is needed - to be silent, to say nothing. When all these components are available, this is freedom.

Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself

All photographic and graphic materials are used with permission of the Osho International Foundation.

OSHO is a registered trademark and is used with permission from the Osho International Foundation.www.osho.com/trademarks

All rights reserved.

Published under an Agreement with the Osho International Foundation, Banhofstr/52, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland, www.osho.com

Preface. Three Dimensions of Freedom

Freedom is a three-dimensional phenomenon. Its first dimension is physical. You can be physically enslaved, and for thousands of years people were sold on the market like any other commodity. Slavery existed all over the world. Slaves were not given human rights; they were not accepted as human beings, they were not considered fully human. And some people are still not treated like people. In India there is Shudras, untouchables. It is believed that even touching them makes a person unclean; the one who touches must immediately perform ablution. Even touching not the person himself, but his shadow - ablution is required even then. A large part of India still lives in slavery; There are still parts of the country where people cannot get an education and have access only to those professions that were determined by tradition five thousand years ago.

All over the world, a woman's body is not considered equal to a man's body. She is not as free as a man. In China, for many centuries, a husband had the right to kill his wife with impunity, because the wife was his property. Just like you can break a chair or burn down your house - because it is your chair, it is your house - and it was your wife. Chinese law provided no punishment for a husband who killed his wife because she was considered to have no soul. She was only a reproductive mechanism, a factory for producing children.

Thus there is physical slavery. And there is physical freedom - your body is not chained, not in an inferior category, and there is equality as far as the body is concerned. But even today such freedom does not exist everywhere. Slavery is becoming less and less, but it has not yet disappeared completely.

Freedom of the body means that there is no division between black and white, there is no division between man and woman, there is no division as far as the body is concerned. No one is clean, no one is dirty; all bodies are the same.

This is the very basis of freedom.

Then, the second dimension is psychological freedom. Very few individuals in the world are psychologically free... because if you are a Muslim, you are not psychologically free; if you are a Hindu, you are not psychologically free. Our whole way of raising children is aimed at making them slaves - slaves of political ideologies, social ideologies, religious ideologies. We don't give children the slightest chance to think for themselves, to seek their own vision. We force their minds into molds. We fill their minds with rubbish - things that we ourselves have not experienced. Parents teach their children that God exists, without knowing anything about God themselves. They tell children that there is heaven and hell, without knowing anything about heaven and hell.

You teach children things you don't know yourself. You are simply conditioning their minds because your own minds were conditioned by your parents. In this way, the disease continues to be transmitted from one generation to another.

Psychological freedom will be possible when children are allowed to grow, when children are helped to grow to greater intelligence, to greater intelligence, to greater consciousness, to greater alertness. No beliefs will be instilled in them. They will not be taught any kind of faith, but will be encouraged in every way to seek the truth. And they will be reminded from the very beginning: “Your own truth, your own discovery will set you free; nothing else will do that for you.”

Truth cannot be borrowed. It cannot be learned from books. Nobody can tell it to you. You will have to sharpen your mind yourself so that you can look into existence and find it. If the child is left open, receptive, alert and encouraged to seek, he will have psychological freedom. And with psychological freedom comes enormous responsibility. There is no need for you to teach your child responsibility; it comes as a shadow of psychological freedom. And he will be grateful to you. Usually, every child is angry with his parents because they destroyed him: they destroyed his freedom, they conditioned his mind. Even before he asked the questions, his mind was filled with answers, each of which was fake - because it was not based on his parents' own experience.

The whole world lives in psychological slavery.

And the third dimension of freedom is ultimate freedom - consisting in the knowledge that you are not the body, in the knowledge that you are not the mind, in the knowledge that you are only pure consciousness. Such knowledge comes through meditation. It separates you from the body, it separates you from the mind, and ultimately you are present only as pure consciousness, as pure awareness. This is spiritual freedom.

These are the three main dimensions of individual freedom.

The collective has no soul, the collective has no mind. The collective does not even have a body; there is only a name. It's just a word. The collective has no need for freedom. When all individuals are free, the collective will be free. But we are very impressed by words, so impressed that we forget that there is nothing real in words. Collective, society, community, religion, church - all these are words. There is nothing real behind them.

This reminds me of a short story. In the fairy tale “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” Alice finds herself in the king’s palace. And the king asks her:

“Did you meet a messenger on the way heading towards me?”

And the little girl answers:

- I didn’t meet anyone.

And the king thinks that "Nobody" is someone, and he asks:

- But why then has Nobody gotten here yet?

Little girl says:

- Sir, no one means no one!

And the king says:

- Do not be silly! I understand: Nobody is Nobody, but he should have arrived before you. Nobody seems to walk slower than you.

And Alice says:

– This is absolutely wrong! Nobody walks faster than me!

And thus this dialogue continues. Throughout the entire dialogue, “nobody” becomes someone, and Alice is unable to convince the king that “nobody” is no one.

Collective, society - all these are just words. What really exists is individuality; otherwise a problem arises. What is freedom for a Rotary Club? What is freedom for the Lions Club? These are all just names.

The collective is a very dangerous idea. In the name of the collective, individuality, living reality, is always sacrificed. I am absolutely against this.

Nations sacrifice individuals in the name of the nation; and “nation” is just a word. The lines you drew on the map are nowhere on earth. It's just your game. But fighting over these lines you drew on the map, millions of people died - real people dying for unreal lines. And you make them heroes, national heroes!

The idea of ​​the collective must be completely destroyed; otherwise we will continue to sacrifice individuality in one way or another. We have sacrificed individuality in the name of religion in religious wars. A Muslim who dies in a religious war knows that he is guaranteed heaven. The priest told him: “If you die for Islam, you are reliably guaranteed paradise, with all the pleasures that you can only imagine and dream about. And the person you killed will also go to heaven, because he was killed by a Muslim. It's a privilege for him, so you shouldn't feel guilty about killing a person." Christians had crusades - jihads, religious wars, and they killed thousands of people, burned human beings alive. For what? For the sake of a certain collectivity - for the sake of Christianity, for the sake of Buddhism, for the sake of Hinduism, for the sake of communism, for the sake of fascism; Anything will do. Any word that represents a certain collectivity is enough for individuality to be sacrificed for its sake.

Collectivity does not even have a reason to exist: individuality is enough. And if individuals have freedom, if they are psychologically free, spiritually free, then, naturally, the collective will be spiritually free.

The team consists of individuals, not the other way around. It was said that the individual is only part of the collective; it is not true. The individual is not part of the collective; collective is only a symbolic word meaning a collection of individuals. They are not parts of anything; they remain independent. They remain organically independent; they do not become part of a collective.

From Osho's book, Freedom. Courage to be yourself.

Freedom is a three-dimensional phenomenon.

Its first dimension is physical. You can be physically enslaved, and for thousands of years people were sold on the market like any other commodity. Slavery existed all over the world. Slaves were not given human rights, they were not accepted as human beings, they were not considered fully human. A large part of India still lives in slavery; There are still parts of the country where people cannot get an education and have access only to those professions that were determined by tradition five thousand years ago.

Throughout the world, a woman's body is not considered equal to a man's body. She is not as free as a man. In China, for many centuries, a husband had the right to kill his wife with impunity, because the wife was his property. Just like you can break a chair or burn down your house - because it is your chair, it is your house - and it was your wife. Chinese law did not provide punishment for a husband who killed his wife because she was considered to have no soul. She was only a reproductive mechanism, a factory for producing children.

Thus there is physical slavery. And there is physical freedom - your body is not chained, not in an inferior category, and there is equality as far as the body is concerned. But even today such freedom does not exist everywhere. Slavery is becoming less and less, but has not yet disappeared completely.

Freedom of the body means that there is no division between blacks and whites, there is no division as far as the body is concerned. No one is pure, no one is dirty, all bodies are the same.

This is the very basis of freedom.

The second dimension is psychological freedom. Our whole way of raising children is aimed at making them slaves - slaves of political ideologies, social ideologies, religious ideologies. We don't give children the slightest chance to think for themselves, to seek their own vision. We force their minds into molds. We fill their minds with rubbish - things that we ourselves have not experienced. Parents teach their children that God exists, without knowing anything about God themselves.

You teach children things you don't know yourself. You are simply conditioning their minds because your own minds were conditioned by your parents. Thus, the disease continues to be transmitted from one generation to another.

Psychological freedom will be possible when children are allowed to grow, when children are helped to grow to greater intelligence, to greater intelligence, to greater consciousness, to greater alertness. They will not be taught any kind of faith, but will be encouraged in every way to seek the truth. And they will be reminded from the very beginning: "Your own truth, your own finding, will set you free; nothing else will do that for you."

Truth cannot be borrowed. It cannot be learned from books. Nobody can tell you. You will have to sharpen your mind yourself so that you can look into existence and find it. If the child is left open, receptive, alert and encouraged to seek, he will have psychological freedom. And with psychological freedom comes great responsibility.

There is no need for you to teach your child responsibility; it comes as a shadow of psychological freedom. And he will be grateful to you. Usually, every child is angry with his parents because they destroyed him: they destroyed his freedom, conditioned his mind. Even before he asked the questions, his mind was filled with answers, each of which was fake - because it was not based on his parents' own experience.

The whole world lives in psychological slavery.

The third dimension of freedom is ultimate freedom - which consists of knowing that you are not the body, knowing that you are not the mind, knowing that you are only pure consciousness. Such knowledge comes through meditation. It separates you from the body, it separates you from the mind, and ultimately you are present only as pure consciousness, as pure awareness. This is spiritual freedom.

These are the three main dimensions of individual freedom.

True freedom comes from choiceless awareness, but when there is choiceless awareness, freedom does not depend on things or on anyone to do anything. The freedom that follows choiceless awareness is to simply be yourself. And you - you are already born with it; therefore freedom does not depend on anything. No one can give it to you, no one can take it away from you. The sword can cut off your head, but it cannot cut off your freedom, your being.

Freedom is the culminating experience of life. There is nothing higher. And in freedom flowers will bloom within you.

Love is the flowering of your freedom. Compassion is another flowering of your freedom.

Everything that is valuable in life blossoms within you in an innocent state of being.

Therefore, do not associate freedom with independence. Independence is, naturally, independence from something, from someone. Don't associate freedom with what you want to do, because that is your mind, not you. Wanting to do something, trying to do something, you remain in fetters own desire and aspirations. In the freedom that I'm talking about, you simply are - in complete silence, serenity, beauty, bliss.

Osho
Freedom. Courage to be yourself.- St. Petersburg: IG "Ves", 2008, - 192 p..

Tell your friends about this page

updated 10/9/2013

Liberty

Freedom means the ability to say “yes” when “yes” is needed, to say “no” when “no” is needed, and sometimes to remain silent when nothing is needed - to be silent, to say nothing. When all these components are available, this is freedom.

Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself

All photographic and graphic materials are used with permission of the Osho International Foundation.

OSHO is a registered trademark and is used with permission from the Osho International Foundation.www.osho.com/trademarks

All rights reserved.

Published under an Agreement with the Osho International Foundation, Banhofstr/52, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland, www.osho.com

Preface. Three Dimensions of Freedom

Freedom is a three-dimensional phenomenon. Its first dimension is physical. You can be physically enslaved, and for thousands of years people were sold on the market like any other commodity. Slavery existed all over the world. Slaves were not given human rights; they were not accepted as human beings, they were not considered fully human. And some people are still not treated like people. In India there is Shudras, untouchables. It is believed that even touching them makes a person unclean; the one who touches must immediately perform ablution. Even touching not the person himself, but his shadow - ablution is required even then. A large part of India still lives in slavery; There are still parts of the country where people cannot get an education and have access only to those professions that were determined by tradition five thousand years ago.

All over the world, a woman's body is not considered equal to a man's body. She is not as free as a man. In China, for many centuries, a husband had the right to kill his wife with impunity, because the wife was his property. Just like you can break a chair or burn down your house - because it is your chair, it is your house - and it was your wife. Chinese law provided no punishment for a husband who killed his wife because she was considered to have no soul. She was only a reproductive mechanism, a factory for producing children.

Thus there is physical slavery. And there is physical freedom - your body is not chained, not in an inferior category, and there is equality as far as the body is concerned. But even today such freedom does not exist everywhere. Slavery is becoming less and less, but it has not yet disappeared completely.

Freedom of the body means that there is no division between black and white, there is no division between man and woman, there is no division as far as the body is concerned. No one is clean, no one is dirty; all bodies are the same.

This is the very basis of freedom.

Then, the second dimension is psychological freedom. Very few individuals in the world are psychologically free... because if you are a Muslim, you are not psychologically free; if you are a Hindu, you are not psychologically free. Our whole way of raising children is aimed at making them slaves - slaves of political ideologies, social ideologies, religious ideologies. We don't give children the slightest chance to think for themselves, to seek their own vision. We force their minds into molds. We fill their minds with rubbish - things that we ourselves have not experienced. Parents teach their children that God exists, without knowing anything about God themselves. They tell children that there is heaven and hell, without knowing anything about heaven and hell.

You teach children things you don't know yourself. You are simply conditioning their minds because your own minds were conditioned by your parents. In this way, the disease continues to be transmitted from one generation to another.

Psychological freedom will be possible when children are allowed to grow, when children are helped to grow to greater intelligence, to greater intelligence, to greater consciousness, to greater alertness. No beliefs will be instilled in them. They will not be taught any kind of faith, but will be encouraged in every way to seek the truth. And they will be reminded from the very beginning: “Your own truth, your own discovery will set you free; nothing else will do that for you.”

Truth cannot be borrowed. It cannot be learned from books. Nobody can tell it to you. You will have to sharpen your mind yourself so that you can look into existence and find it. If the child is left open, receptive, alert and encouraged to seek, he will have psychological freedom. And with psychological freedom comes enormous responsibility. There is no need for you to teach your child responsibility; it comes as a shadow of psychological freedom. And he will be grateful to you. Usually, every child is angry with his parents because they destroyed him: they destroyed his freedom, they conditioned his mind. Even before he asked the questions, his mind was filled with answers, each of which was fake - because it was not based on his parents' own experience.

The whole world lives in psychological slavery.

And the third dimension of freedom is ultimate freedom - consisting in the knowledge that you are not the body, in the knowledge that you are not the mind, in the knowledge that you are only pure consciousness. Such knowledge comes through meditation. It separates you from the body, it separates you from the mind, and ultimately you are present only as pure consciousness, as pure awareness. This is spiritual freedom.

These are the three main dimensions of individual freedom.

The collective has no soul, the collective has no mind. The collective does not even have a body; there is only a name. It's just a word. The collective has no need for freedom. When all individuals are free, the collective will be free. But we are very impressed by words, so impressed that we forget that there is nothing real in words. Collective, society, community, religion, church - all these are words. There is nothing real behind them.

This reminds me of a short story. In the fairy tale “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” Alice finds herself in the king’s palace. And the king asks her:

“Did you meet a messenger on the way heading towards me?”

And the little girl answers:

- I didn’t meet anyone.

And the king thinks that "Nobody" is someone, and he asks:

- But why then has Nobody gotten here yet?

Little girl says:

- Sir, no one means no one!

And the king says:

- Do not be silly! I understand: Nobody is Nobody, but he should have arrived before you. Nobody seems to walk slower than you.

And Alice says:

– This is absolutely wrong! Nobody walks faster than me!

And thus this dialogue continues. Throughout the entire dialogue, “nobody” becomes someone, and Alice is unable to convince the king that “nobody” is no one.

Collective, society - all these are just words. What really exists is individuality; otherwise a problem arises. What is freedom for a Rotary Club? What is freedom for the Lions Club? These are all just names.

The collective is a very dangerous idea. In the name of the collective, individuality, living reality, is always sacrificed. I am absolutely against this.

Nations sacrifice individuals in the name of the nation; and “nation” is just a word. The lines you drew on the map are nowhere on earth. It's just your game. But fighting for these lines that you have drawn on the map, millions of people have died - real people dying for unreal lines. And you make them heroes, national heroes!

The idea of ​​the collective must be completely destroyed; otherwise we will continue to sacrifice individuality in one way or another. We have sacrificed individuality in the name of religion in religious wars. A Muslim who dies in a religious war knows that he is guaranteed heaven. The priest told him: “If you die for Islam, you are reliably guaranteed paradise, with all the pleasures that you can only imagine and dream about. And the person you killed will also go to heaven, because he was killed by a Muslim. It's a privilege for him, so you shouldn't feel guilty about killing a person." Christians had crusades - jihads, religious wars, and they killed thousands of people, burned human beings alive. For what? For the sake of a certain collectivity - for the sake of Christianity, for the sake of Buddhism, for the sake of Hinduism, for the sake of communism, for the sake of fascism; Anything will do. Any word that represents a certain collectivity is enough for individuality to be sacrificed for its sake.

Collectivity does not even have a reason to exist: individuality is enough. And if individuals have freedom, if they are psychologically free, spiritually free, then, naturally, the collective will be spiritually free.

The team consists of individuals, not the other way around. It was said that the individual is only part of the collective; it is not true. The individual is not part of the collective; collective is only a symbolic word meaning a collection of individuals. They are not parts of anything; they remain independent. They remain organically independent; they do not become part of a collective.

If we truly want to see the world free, we will have to understand that so many mass atrocities have been committed in the name of collectivity that it is time to stop. All collective names must lose the luster they were given in the past. Individuality should be the greatest value.

* * *

Liberty from something is not true freedom. The freedom to do what you want to do is also not the freedom I'm talking about. My vision of freedom is for a person to be himself.

It's not about getting freedom from something. This freedom will not be freedom because it is still given to you; she has a reason. What you felt dependent on is still present in your freedom. You owe it to me. Without this you would not be free.

Freedom to do what you want to do is also not freedom, because the desire, the desire to “do” something arises from the mind - and the mind is your fetters.

True freedom comes from choiceless awareness, but when there is choiceless awareness, freedom does not depend on things or on doing anything. The freedom that follows choiceless awareness is simply the freedom to be yourself. And you are already you, you are born with it; therefore freedom does not depend on anything. No one can give it to you, no one can take it away from you. The sword can cut off your head, but it cannot cut off your freedom, your being.

This is another way of saying that you are centered, rooted in your natural, existential being. It has nothing to do with anything external.

Freedom from things depends on something external. The freedom to do something also depends on the external. The freedom to be extremely pure does not have to depend on anything outside of you.

You are born free. The only problem is that conditioning has made you forget about it. The threads remain in someone else's hands. If you are a Christian, you remain a puppet. Your threads are in the hands of God, who does not exist, and therefore, just to give you the feeling that God exists, you need prophets, messiahs, representing God.

They do not represent anyone, they are just egoistic people - but even the ego wants to reduce you to a puppet. They will tell you what to do, they will give you the Ten Commandments. They will give you an identity - and each of you will be a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim. They will give you so-called knowledge. And naturally, under the heavy burden that is placed on you since childhood - under the weight of the Himalayas on your shoulders - under everything hidden and suppressed, your natural being remains hidden and suppressed. If you can get rid of all conditioning, if you can consider yourself neither a communist, nor a fascist, nor a Christian, nor a Muslim...

You were not born a Christian or a Muslim; you were born with a pure, innocent consciousness. To be in this purity again, in this innocence, in this consciousness - this is what I call freedom.

Freedom is the culminating experience of life. There is nothing higher. And in freedom many flowers will bloom within you.

Love is the flowering of your freedom. Compassion is another flowering of your freedom.

Everything that is valuable in life blossoms within you in an innocent, natural state of being.

Therefore, do not associate freedom with independence. Independence is, of course, independence from something from someone. Don't associate freedom with what you want to do, because that is your mind, not you. Wanting to do something, striving to do something, you remain in the shackles of your own desire and aspiration. In the freedom I'm talking about, you just There is- in complete silence, serenity, beauty, bliss.

Understanding the Roots of Slavery

To be totally free, a person needs to be totally aware, because our bonds are rooted in our unconsciousness; they don't come from outside. No one can make you not free. You can be destroyed, but your freedom cannot be taken away from you. Unless you give it away yourself. In the deepest analysis, it is always your reluctance to be free that makes you not free. It is your desire to remain dependent, to throw off the responsibility of being yourself, that makes you not free.

The moment you accept responsibility for yourself... And remember: this path is not paved with only roses, roses also have thorns; Not everything is sweet on this path; there are also moments of bitterness. Sweetness is always balanced by bitterness; they always remain in equal proportions. Roses are balanced by thorns, days by nights, summers by winters. Life maintains a balance between polar opposites. Thus, a person who is ready to accept the responsibility of being himself, with all the beauties, with all the bitterness, with all the joys and agony, can be free. Only such a person can be free...

Live it in all the agony and in all the ecstasy; both are yours. And always remember: ecstasy cannot exist without agony, life cannot exist without death, and joy cannot exist without sorrow. This is the nature of things - nothing can be changed about it. This is nature itself, the Tao of things.

Accept the responsibility of being yourself, as you are, with everything that is good and bad in it, with everything that is beautiful and not beautiful in it. In this acceptance, one goes beyond limits and one becomes free.

Society and Individual Freedom. Interview

It appears that social rules are a basic need of human beings. Yet no society has yet helped a person to realize himself. Would you be so kind as to explain what kind of relationship exists between individuals and society, and how they can help each other to evolve?

This is a very complex and fundamental question. In all of existence, only man needs rules. No other animal needs rules.

Here's the first thing to understand: there is something artificial about the rules. The reason why man needs rules is that he has ceased to be an animal, but has not yet become a human being; he remains in the vestibule. This is where the need for all the rules comes from. If he were an animal, there would be no need. Animals live perfectly well without any rules, constitutions, laws, or courts. If a person truly becomes a human being - not only in name, but in reality - he will not need any rules.

Very few people have understood this until now. For example, for people like Socrates, Zarathustra, Bodhidharma, there was no need for any rules. They are vigilant enough not to harm anyone. They didn't need laws or constitutions. If all humanity develops to the point of being truly human, there will be love, but there will be no laws.

The problem is that man needs rules, laws, governments, courts, armies, police forces because he has lost the natural behavior of an animal, but has not yet achieved a new natural status. He remains in between. He is neither here nor there; he is in chaos. Laws are needed to control this chaos.

The problem becomes even more complex because the forces involved in controlling man - religions, states, courts - have gained so much power. They had to be given power; How else would they be able to control people? And thus we found ourselves in a kind of voluntary slavery. Now that our institutions have gained power, the development of humanity is not in their interests. They don't want man to evolve.

You are asking how man and society, individual and society, can evolve. You don't understand this problem at all. If individuality evolves, society dissipates. Society exists only because individuality is not allowed to evolve. The social apparatus has been controlling man for centuries and enjoying its own power and prestige. He is not prepared to allow man to evolve, to allow man to grow to the point where he and his institutions become useless. Many situations will help you understand this.

It happened in China, twenty-five centuries ago...

Lao Tzu was renowned for his wisdom, and he was without a doubt the wisest man who ever lived. The Emperor of China very humbly asked him to lead his Supreme Court, because no one could take into account the laws of the country better than him. Lao Tzu tried to dissuade the emperor: “I am not suitable for this,” but the emperor insisted.

Lao Tzu said:

- If you don’t listen to me... One day in court will be enough for you to be convinced that I’m not fit for this, because I’m wrong myself system. Out of modesty, I did not tell you the truth. Either I can exist, or your law, order and society can exist. But... let's try.

On the very first day, a thief was brought to court who stole almost half of the treasures from the richest man in the capital. Lao Tzu heard the case and said that both the thief and the rich man should go to prison for six months.

The rich man exclaimed:

- What are you saying? They stole from me, I was robbed - what kind of justice is this if you send me to prison for the same term as the thief?

“I am undoubtedly unfair to the thief,” said Lao Tzu. “The need to send you to prison is much greater, because you have collected so much money for yourself, taken money from so many people... the rights of thousands of people have been violated, and you are collecting and collecting money. For what? Your very greed gives birth to these thieves. You are responsible. The first was your crime.

Lao Tzu's logic is absolutely clear. If there are too many poor people and too few rich people, it will be impossible to stop the thieves, it will be impossible to stop the theft. The only way to stop it is to arrange society in such a way that everyone has enough to satisfy their needs, and no one has unnecessary savings - simply out of greed.

The rich man said:

“Before you send me to prison, I want to see the emperor, because your decision is not in accordance with the constitution; it does not comply with the law of this country.

Lao Tzu replied:

– The constitution and law of this country are to blame. I'm not responsible for this. Go and see the emperor.

A rich man came to the emperor:

“Listen, this man needs to be removed from his post immediately; he is dangerous. Today I can go to prison, tomorrow you will end up in prison. If you want to be saved, this person must be expelled; he poses a huge danger. And he is very rational. What he says is correct; I can understand this - but he will destroy us!

The Emperor understood everything perfectly. “If this rich man is the criminal, then the biggest criminal in this country is me. Lao Tzu will not hesitate to send me to prison.”

Lao Tzu was relieved of his post.

“I tried to tell you earlier,” said Lao Tzu, “you wasted my time.” I told you that I’m not fit for this. The reality is that your society, your law, your constitution is wrong. You will need the wrong people to manage this wrong system.

The problem is that the forces that we created to keep man from falling into chaos have now gained so much power that they do not want to leave you the freedom to grow - because if you are able to grow, you are able to become an individual, alert, aware and conscious , all these forces will not be needed. People in the security forces will lose their jobs, and along with their jobs they will lose prestige, power, the position of leader, priest, pope - all this will be taken away. So those who were needed at first to protect humanity turned into its enemies.

My approach is not to fight these people because they have power, they have armies, they have money, they have everything. You can't fight them; fight and you will be destroyed. The only way out of this chaos is to silently begin to grow in your own consciousness, and this cannot be prevented by any force. In fact, no one can even know what is going on inside you.

I offer you the alchemy of inner transformation. Change your inner being. And the moment you yourself are changed, completely transformed, suddenly you see that you are free from imprisonment, that you are no longer a slave. You were a slave because you were in chaos.

This happened during the Russian Revolution...

On the day the revolution took place, one woman in Moscow began to walk in the middle of the road. The policeman said:

- It is not right. You can't walk in the middle of the road.

“Now we are free,” said the woman.

Even if you are free, you will have to follow certain rules traffic, otherwise movement will become impossible. If people and cars start moving wherever they want, turning wherever they want, not paying any attention to traffic lights, accidents will just start, people will start dying. This will create the need for an army to enforce the law that one must drive on the right - or left, depending on the custom in the country - side of the road, but no one must drive in the middle. Then, at gunpoint, you will have to start following the rules. I always remember this woman; it is very symbolic.

Freedom does not mean chaos. Freedom brings more responsibility, so much responsibility that no one needs to interfere with your life anymore: you can be left to your own devices, the government doesn't have to interfere with anything, the police don't have to interfere with anything, the law has nothing to do with you - you just out of this world.

This is my approach: if you really want to transform humanity, each individual must begin to grow on its own. And, in fact, you don’t need a crowd to grow.

Growth is something similar to how a child grows in its mother's womb; the mother just has to be careful. must be born in you new person. You must become the womb for a new human being. No one will know about it, and it will be best if no one knows about it. You just continue to do your ordinary job, live in an ordinary world, be simple and ordinary - without becoming revolutionaries, reactionaries, punks and skinheads. It won't help. This is sheer stupidity. I understand that this comes from frustration, but it is still pathological. Society is pathological, and because of disappointment you become pathological? Society is not afraid of pathological people; society fears only people who have become so centered, so conscious, that laws have become useless to them. A conscientious person always does the right thing. He is beyond the grasp of the so-called interests of power.

If individuals grow, the role of society will decrease. What was known as society - with its government, army, courts, policemen, prisons - this society will be diminished. Of course, since there are so many human beings, new forms of collectivity will come into existence. I would not like to call them "society", just to avoid confusion in words. I call this new collectivity a “commune.” This word is significant: it implies a place where people not only live together, but where people are in deep belonging.

Living together is one thing; we do this: in every city, in every village, thousands of people live together - but what commonality is there between them? People don't even know their neighbors. They live in the same skyscraper - thousands of people - and never know that they live in the same house. This is not a community because there is no belonging between them. It's just a crowd, not a community. So I would like to replace the word society in a word commune.

Society rests on certain fundamental principles. You will have to eliminate them, otherwise society will not disappear. The first and basic unit of society was the family: if the family remains the same as it is now, society cannot disappear, the church cannot disappear; religion cannot disappear. We will not be able to create a single world, a single humanity.

The family is psychologically outdated. And it didn't always exist; There were times when there was no family, and people lived in tribes. The family began to exist in connection with the emergence of private property. There were people who had more power and managed to get more property than others, and they wanted to pass it on to their children. Until that time, the question of family had not been raised. But as soon as private property came into existence, men became very possessive of women. He also turned the woman into a kind of property.

In Indian languages, a woman is literally called "property". In China, a woman was property to such an extent that even if a husband killed his wife, there was no law against it. No crime has been committed - you are absolutely free to destroy your property. You can burn furniture, burn down a house... it's not a crime, it's your house. You can kill your wife...

With the advent of private property, woman also became private property, and every possible strategy was invented to ensure that a man could be absolutely sure that the child born to his wife was really his child.

This is really a problem: a father can never be absolutely sure; only the mother knows. But the father created all possible obstacles to ensure that the woman could move freely, so that she could encounter other men. All possibilities and all doors were closed.

It is no coincidence that only old women go to your churches and temples, because for centuries this was the only place where they were allowed to go. A woman could go to church because it was well known that the church protected the family. The Church knows very well that as soon as there is no family, there will be no church. And the church, of course, is the last place where any romantic encounters can happen. Every precaution was taken against this. And one of the guarantees is that the priest had to be celibate, he is celibate, he is against sex, he is against women, in different religions, in different forms.

A Jaina monk cannot touch a woman; in fact, a woman should not come within eight feet of a Jain monk. A Buddhist monk is not allowed to touch a woman. There are religions that do not allow women to enter their religious places, or they put up barriers to separate them. Men occupy the main part of the temple or mosque, women are allocated a small corner, but separated by a partition. Men can't even see them; it is impossible to meet anyone.

Many religions, such as Islam, covered the faces of their women. The faces of Muslim women have become pale because they never see sunlight. Their faces are covered, their bodies are covered as much as possible. A woman should not be educated because education gives people all kinds of strange thoughts. People start thinking, people start arguing...

Women were not allowed to have paid work because it meant independence. And thus she was cut off from all possible sides, and for one simple reason: so that the man could be sure that his son was really his son. Those who really had a lot of power - such as kings - castrated male servants because they lived in the palace, worked and served others. They had to be castrated, otherwise there was danger... And there was danger, because each emperor had hundreds of wives, many of whom he had never seen. Naturally, they could fall in love with anyone. But only castrated men were allowed into the palace, so that even if women fell in love, they could not create children. This was the most important thing.

The family must disappear and give way to the commune. A commune means that people collect all their energy, all their money, everything they have into one reservoir that will take care of the people. The children will belong to the commune, so there will be no question of individual inheritance. And if you put all the energy, all the money and all the resources into one reservoir, every community can be rich, and every community can enjoy life equally.

As soon as individuals begin to grow, and communities begin to grow side by side, society will disappear, and with society all the troubles created by this society will disappear.

I'll give you one example.

Only in China two thousand years ago was a revolutionary step taken. It consisted in the fact that the patient paid the doctor only if he remained healthy. If the patient fell ill, the doctor did not have to pay. This seems very strange. We pay the doctor when we are sick and he makes us healthy again. But this is dangerous because you make the doctor dependent on his illnesses. The disease becomes his interest: than more people sick, the more he can earn. He becomes interested not in health, but in illness. If everyone stays healthy, then the doctor will be the only one sick!

The Chinese came up with the revolutionary, practical idea that every person would pay his doctor as long as he remained healthy. The doctor gets paid every month. A doctor's job is to keep people healthy - and naturally, he does this because he gets paid for it. If a person gets sick, the doctor loses money. When epidemics occur, the doctor goes bankrupt.

Right now the situation is the opposite. I heard one story.

Freedom means the ability to say “yes” when “yes” is needed, to say “no” when “no” is needed, and sometimes to remain silent when nothing is needed - to be silent, to say nothing. When all these components are available, this is freedom.

Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself

All photographic and graphic materials are used with permission of the Osho International Foundation.

OSHO is a registered trademark and is used with permission from the Osho International Foundation.www.osho.com/trademarks

All rights reserved.

Published under an Agreement with the Osho International Foundation, Banhofstr/52, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland, www.osho.com

Preface. Three Dimensions of Freedom

Freedom is a three-dimensional phenomenon. Its first dimension is physical. You can be physically enslaved, and for thousands of years people were sold on the market like any other commodity. Slavery existed all over the world. Slaves were not given human rights; they were not accepted as human beings, they were not considered fully human. And some people are still not treated like people. In India there is Shudras, untouchables. It is believed that even touching them makes a person unclean; the one who touches must immediately perform ablution. Even touching not the person himself, but his shadow - ablution is required even then. A large part of India still lives in slavery; There are still parts of the country where people cannot get an education and have access only to those professions that were determined by tradition five thousand years ago.

All over the world, a woman's body is not considered equal to a man's body. She is not as free as a man. In China, for many centuries, a husband had the right to kill his wife with impunity, because the wife was his property. Just like you can break a chair or burn down your house - because it is your chair, it is your house - and it was your wife. Chinese law provided no punishment for a husband who killed his wife because she was considered to have no soul. She was only a reproductive mechanism, a factory for producing children.

Thus there is physical slavery. And there is physical freedom - your body is not chained, not in an inferior category, and there is equality as far as the body is concerned. But even today such freedom does not exist everywhere. Slavery is becoming less and less, but it has not yet disappeared completely.

Freedom of the body means that there is no division between black and white, there is no division between man and woman, there is no division as far as the body is concerned. No one is clean, no one is dirty; all bodies are the same.

This is the very basis of freedom.

Then, the second dimension is psychological freedom. Very few individuals in the world are psychologically free... because if you are a Muslim, you are not psychologically free; if you are a Hindu, you are not psychologically free.

Our whole way of raising children is aimed at making them slaves - slaves of political ideologies, social ideologies, religious ideologies. We don't give children the slightest chance to think for themselves, to seek their own vision. We force their minds into molds. We fill their minds with rubbish - things that we ourselves have not experienced. Parents teach their children that God exists, without knowing anything about God themselves. They tell children that there is heaven and hell, without knowing anything about heaven and hell.

You teach children things you don't know yourself. You are simply conditioning their minds because your own minds were conditioned by your parents. In this way, the disease continues to be transmitted from one generation to another.

Psychological freedom will be possible when children are allowed to grow, when children are helped to grow to greater intelligence, to greater intelligence, to greater consciousness, to greater alertness. No beliefs will be instilled in them. They will not be taught any kind of faith, but will be encouraged in every way to seek the truth. And they will be reminded from the very beginning: “Your own truth, your own discovery will set you free; nothing else will do that for you.”

Truth cannot be borrowed. It cannot be learned from books. Nobody can tell it to you. You will have to sharpen your mind yourself so that you can look into existence and find it. If the child is left open, receptive, alert and encouraged to seek, he will have psychological freedom. And with psychological freedom comes enormous responsibility. There is no need for you to teach your child responsibility; it comes as a shadow of psychological freedom. And he will be grateful to you. Usually, every child is angry with his parents because they destroyed him: they destroyed his freedom, they conditioned his mind. Even before he asked the questions, his mind was filled with answers, each of which was fake - because it was not based on his parents' own experience.

The whole world lives in psychological slavery.

And the third dimension of freedom is ultimate freedom - consisting in the knowledge that you are not the body, in the knowledge that you are not the mind, in the knowledge that you are only pure consciousness. Such knowledge comes through meditation. It separates you from the body, it separates you from the mind, and ultimately you are present only as pure consciousness, as pure awareness. This is spiritual freedom.

These are the three main dimensions of individual freedom.

The collective has no soul, the collective has no mind. The collective does not even have a body; there is only a name. It's just a word. The collective has no need for freedom. When all individuals are free, the collective will be free. But we are very impressed by words, so impressed that we forget that there is nothing real in words. Collective, society, community, religion, church - all these are words. There is nothing real behind them.

This reminds me of a short story. In the fairy tale “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” Alice finds herself in the king’s palace. And the king asks her:

“Did you meet a messenger on the way heading towards me?”

And the little girl answers:

- I didn’t meet anyone.

And the king thinks that "Nobody" is someone, and he asks:

- But why then has Nobody gotten here yet?

Little girl says:

- Sir, no one means no one!

And the king says:

- Do not be silly! I understand: Nobody is Nobody, but he should have arrived before you. Nobody seems to walk slower than you.

And Alice says:

– This is absolutely wrong! Nobody walks faster than me!

And thus this dialogue continues. Throughout the entire dialogue, “nobody” becomes someone, and Alice is unable to convince the king that “nobody” is no one.

Collective, society - all these are just words. What really exists is individuality; otherwise a problem arises. What is freedom for a Rotary Club? What is freedom for the Lions Club? These are all just names.

The collective is a very dangerous idea. In the name of the collective, individuality, living reality, is always sacrificed. I am absolutely against this.

Nations sacrifice individuals in the name of the nation; and “nation” is just a word. The lines you drew on the map are nowhere on earth. It's just your game. But fighting for these lines that you have drawn on the map, millions of people have died - real people dying for unreal lines. And you make them heroes, national heroes!

The idea of ​​the collective must be completely destroyed; otherwise we will continue to sacrifice individuality in one way or another. We have sacrificed individuality in the name of religion in religious wars. A Muslim who dies in a religious war knows that he is guaranteed heaven. The priest told him: “If you die for Islam, you are reliably guaranteed paradise, with all the pleasures that you can only imagine and dream about. And the person you killed will also go to heaven, because he was killed by a Muslim. It's a privilege for him, so you shouldn't feel guilty about killing a person." Christians had crusades - jihads, religious wars, and they killed thousands of people, burned human beings alive. For what? For the sake of a certain collectivity - for the sake of Christianity, for the sake of Buddhism, for the sake of Hinduism, for the sake of communism, for the sake of fascism; Anything will do. Any word that represents a certain collectivity is enough for individuality to be sacrificed for its sake.

Collectivity does not even have a reason to exist: individuality is enough. And if individuals have freedom, if they are psychologically free, spiritually free, then, naturally, the collective will be spiritually free.

The team consists of individuals, not the other way around. It was said that the individual is only part of the collective; it is not true. The individual is not part of the collective; collective is only a symbolic word meaning a collection of individuals. They are not parts of anything; they remain independent. They remain organically independent; they do not become part of a collective.

If we truly want to see the world free, we will have to understand that so many mass atrocities have been committed in the name of collectivity that it is time to stop. All collective names must lose the luster they were given in the past. Individuality should be the greatest value.

* * *

Liberty from something is not true freedom. The freedom to do what you want to do is also not the freedom I'm talking about. My vision of freedom is for a person to be himself.

It's not about getting freedom from something. This freedom will not be freedom because it is still given to you; she has a reason. What you felt dependent on is still present in your freedom. You owe it to me. Without this you would not be free.

Freedom to do what you want to do is also not freedom, because the desire, the desire to “do” something arises from the mind - and the mind is your fetters.

True freedom comes from choiceless awareness, but when there is choiceless awareness, freedom does not depend on things or on doing anything. The freedom that follows choiceless awareness is simply the freedom to be yourself. And you are already you, you are born with it; therefore freedom does not depend on anything. No one can give it to you, no one can take it away from you. The sword can cut off your head, but it cannot cut off your freedom, your being.

This is another way of saying that you are centered, rooted in your natural, existential being. It has nothing to do with anything external.

Freedom from things depends on something external. The freedom to do something also depends on the external. The freedom to be extremely pure does not have to depend on anything outside of you.

You are born free. The only problem is that conditioning has made you forget about it. The threads remain in someone else's hands. If you are a Christian, you remain a puppet. Your threads are in the hands of God, who does not exist, and therefore, just to give you the feeling that God exists, you need prophets, messiahs, representing God.

They do not represent anyone, they are just egoistic people - but even the ego wants to reduce you to a puppet. They will tell you what to do, they will give you the Ten Commandments. They will give you an identity - and each of you will be a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim. They will give you so-called knowledge. And naturally, under the heavy burden that is placed on you since childhood - under the weight of the Himalayas on your shoulders - under everything hidden and suppressed, your natural being remains hidden and suppressed. If you can get rid of all conditioning, if you can consider yourself neither a communist, nor a fascist, nor a Christian, nor a Muslim...

You were not born a Christian or a Muslim; you were born with a pure, innocent consciousness. To be in this purity again, in this innocence, in this consciousness - this is what I call freedom.

Freedom is the culminating experience of life. There is nothing higher. And in freedom many flowers will bloom within you.

Love is the flowering of your freedom. Compassion is another flowering of your freedom.

Everything that is valuable in life blossoms within you in an innocent, natural state of being.

Therefore, do not associate freedom with independence. Independence is, of course, independence from something from someone. Don't associate freedom with what you want to do, because that is your mind, not you. Wanting to do something, striving to do something, you remain in the shackles of your own desire and aspiration. In the freedom I'm talking about, you just There is- in complete silence, serenity, beauty, bliss.

Understanding the Roots of Slavery

To be totally free, a person needs to be totally aware, because our bonds are rooted in our unconsciousness; they don't come from outside. No one can make you not free. You can be destroyed, but your freedom cannot be taken away from you. Unless you give it away yourself. In the deepest analysis, it is always your reluctance to be free that makes you not free. It is your desire to remain dependent, to throw off the responsibility of being yourself, that makes you not free.

The moment you accept responsibility for yourself... And remember: this path is not paved with only roses, roses also have thorns; Not everything is sweet on this path; there are also moments of bitterness. Sweetness is always balanced by bitterness; they always remain in equal proportions. Roses are balanced by thorns, days by nights, summers by winters. Life maintains a balance between polar opposites. Thus, a person who is ready to accept the responsibility of being himself, with all the beauties, with all the bitterness, with all the joys and agony, can be free. Only such a person can be free...

Live it in all the agony and in all the ecstasy; both are yours. And always remember: ecstasy cannot exist without agony, life cannot exist without death, and joy cannot exist without sorrow. This is the nature of things - nothing can be changed about it. This is nature itself, the Tao of things.

Accept the responsibility of being yourself, as you are, with everything that is good and bad in it, with everything that is beautiful and not beautiful in it. In this acceptance, one goes beyond limits and one becomes free.

Society and Individual Freedom. Interview

It appears that social rules are a basic need of human beings. Yet no society has yet helped a person to realize himself. Would you be so kind as to explain what kind of relationship exists between individuals and society, and how they can help each other to evolve?

This is a very complex and fundamental question. In all of existence, only man needs rules. No other animal needs rules.

Here's the first thing to understand: there is something artificial about the rules. The reason why man needs rules is that he has ceased to be an animal, but has not yet become a human being; he remains in the vestibule. This is where the need for all the rules comes from. If he were an animal, there would be no need. Animals live perfectly well without any rules, constitutions, laws, or courts. If a person truly becomes a human being - not only in name, but in reality - he will not need any rules.

Very few people have understood this until now. For example, for people like Socrates, Zarathustra, Bodhidharma, there was no need for any rules. They are vigilant enough not to harm anyone. They didn't need laws or constitutions. If all humanity develops to the point of being truly human, there will be love, but there will be no laws.

The problem is that man needs rules, laws, governments, courts, armies, police forces because he has lost the natural behavior of an animal, but has not yet achieved a new natural status. He remains in between. He is neither here nor there; he is in chaos. Laws are needed to control this chaos.

The problem becomes even more complex because the forces involved in controlling man - religions, states, courts - have gained so much power. They had to be given power; How else would they be able to control people? And thus we found ourselves in a kind of voluntary slavery. Now that our institutions have gained power, the development of humanity is not in their interests. They don't want man to evolve.

You are asking how man and society, individual and society, can evolve. You don't understand this problem at all. If individuality evolves, society dissipates. Society exists only because individuality is not allowed to evolve. The social apparatus has been controlling man for centuries and enjoying its own power and prestige. He is not prepared to allow man to evolve, to allow man to grow to the point where he and his institutions become useless. Many situations will help you understand this.

It happened in China, twenty-five centuries ago...

Lao Tzu was renowned for his wisdom, and he was without a doubt the wisest man who ever lived. The Emperor of China very humbly asked him to head his supreme court, because no one could consider the laws of the country better than him. Lao Tzu tried to dissuade the emperor: “I am not suitable for this,” but the emperor insisted.

Lao Tzu said:

- If you don’t listen to me... One day in court will be enough for you to be convinced that I’m not fit for this, because I’m wrong myself system. Out of modesty, I did not tell you the truth. Either I can exist, or your law, order and society can exist. But... let's try.

On the very first day, a thief was brought to court who stole almost half of the treasures from the richest man in the capital. Lao Tzu heard the case and said that both the thief and the rich man should go to prison for six months.

The rich man exclaimed:

- What are you saying? They stole from me, I was robbed - what kind of justice is this if you send me to prison for the same term as the thief?

“I am undoubtedly unfair to the thief,” said Lao Tzu. “The need to send you to prison is much greater, because you have collected so much money for yourself, taken money from so many people... the rights of thousands of people have been violated, and you are collecting and collecting money. For what? Your very greed gives birth to these thieves. You are responsible. The first was your crime.

Lao Tzu's logic is absolutely clear. If there are too many poor people and too few rich people, it will be impossible to stop the thieves, it will be impossible to stop the theft. The only way to stop it is to arrange society in such a way that everyone has enough to satisfy their needs, and no one has unnecessary savings - simply out of greed.

The rich man said:

“Before you send me to prison, I want to see the emperor, because your decision is not in accordance with the constitution; it does not comply with the law of this country.

Lao Tzu replied:

– The constitution and law of this country are to blame. I'm not responsible for this. Go and see the emperor.

A rich man came to the emperor:

“Listen, this man needs to be removed from his post immediately; he is dangerous. Today I can go to prison, tomorrow you will end up in prison. If you want to be saved, this person must be expelled; he poses a huge danger. And he is very rational. What he says is correct; I can understand this - but he will destroy us!

The Emperor understood everything perfectly. “If this rich man is the criminal, then the biggest criminal in this country is me. Lao Tzu will not hesitate to send me to prison.”

Lao Tzu was relieved of his post.

“I tried to tell you earlier,” said Lao Tzu, “you wasted my time.” I told you that I’m not fit for this. The reality is that your society, your law, your constitution is wrong. You will need the wrong people to manage this wrong system.

The problem is that the forces that we created to keep man from falling into chaos have now gained so much power that they do not want to leave you the freedom to grow - because if you are able to grow, you are able to become an individual, alert, aware and conscious , all these forces will not be needed. People in the security forces will lose their jobs, and along with their jobs they will lose prestige, power, the position of leader, priest, pope - all this will be taken away. So those who were needed at first to protect humanity turned into its enemies.

My approach is not to fight these people because they have power, they have armies, they have money, they have everything. You can't fight them; fight and you will be destroyed. The only way out of this chaos is to silently begin to grow in your own consciousness, and this cannot be prevented by any force. In fact, no one can even know what is going on inside you.

I offer you the alchemy of inner transformation. Change your inner being. And the moment you yourself are changed, completely transformed, suddenly you see that you are free from imprisonment, that you are no longer a slave. You were a slave because you were in chaos.

This happened during the Russian Revolution...

Current page: 1 (book has 11 pages total) [available reading passage: 8 pages]

Osho
Freedom. Courage to be yourself

Freedom means the ability to say “yes” when “yes” is needed, to say “no” when “no” is needed, and sometimes to remain silent when nothing is needed - to be silent, to say nothing. When all these components are available, this is freedom.

Freedom: The Courage to Be Yourself

All photographic and graphic materials are used with permission of the Osho International Foundation.

OSHO is a registered trademark and is used with permission from the Osho International Foundation.www.osho.com/trademarks

All rights reserved.

Published under an Agreement with the Osho International Foundation, Banhofstr/52, 8001 Zurich, Switzerland, www.osho.com

Preface. Three Dimensions of Freedom

Freedom is a three-dimensional phenomenon. Its first dimension is physical. You can be physically enslaved, and for thousands of years people were sold on the market like any other commodity. Slavery existed all over the world. Slaves were not given human rights; they were not accepted as human beings, they were not considered fully human. And some people are still not treated like people. In India there is Shudras, untouchables. It is believed that even touching them makes a person unclean; the one who touches must immediately perform ablution. Even touching not the person himself, but his shadow - ablution is required even then. A large part of India still lives in slavery; There are still parts of the country where people cannot get an education and have access only to those professions that were determined by tradition five thousand years ago.

All over the world, a woman's body is not considered equal to a man's body. She is not as free as a man. In China, for many centuries, a husband had the right to kill his wife with impunity, because the wife was his property. Just like you can break a chair or burn down your house - because it is your chair, it is your house - and it was your wife. Chinese law provided no punishment for a husband who killed his wife because she was considered to have no soul. She was only a reproductive mechanism, a factory for producing children.

Thus there is physical slavery. And there is physical freedom - your body is not chained, not in an inferior category, and there is equality as far as the body is concerned. But even today such freedom does not exist everywhere. Slavery is becoming less and less, but it has not yet disappeared completely.

Freedom of the body means that there is no division between black and white, there is no division between man and woman, there is no division as far as the body is concerned. No one is clean, no one is dirty; all bodies are the same.

This is the very basis of freedom.

Then, the second dimension is psychological freedom. Very few individuals in the world are psychologically free... because if you are a Muslim, you are not psychologically free; if you are a Hindu, you are not psychologically free. Our whole way of raising children is aimed at making them slaves - slaves of political ideologies, social ideologies, religious ideologies. We don't give children the slightest chance to think for themselves, to seek their own vision. We force their minds into molds. We fill their minds with rubbish - things that we ourselves have not experienced. Parents teach their children that God exists, without knowing anything about God themselves. They tell children that there is heaven and hell, without knowing anything about heaven and hell.

You teach children things you don't know yourself. You are simply conditioning their minds because your own minds were conditioned by your parents. In this way, the disease continues to be transmitted from one generation to another.

Psychological freedom will be possible when children are allowed to grow, when children are helped to grow to greater intelligence, to greater intelligence, to greater consciousness, to greater alertness. No beliefs will be instilled in them. They will not be taught any kind of faith, but will be encouraged in every way to seek the truth. And they will be reminded from the very beginning: “Your own truth, your own discovery will set you free; nothing else will do that for you.”

Truth cannot be borrowed. It cannot be learned from books. Nobody can tell it to you. You will have to sharpen your mind yourself so that you can look into existence and find it. If the child is left open, receptive, alert and encouraged to seek, he will have psychological freedom. And with psychological freedom comes enormous responsibility. There is no need for you to teach your child responsibility; it comes as a shadow of psychological freedom. And he will be grateful to you. Usually, every child is angry with his parents because they destroyed him: they destroyed his freedom, they conditioned his mind. Even before he asked the questions, his mind was filled with answers, each of which was fake - because it was not based on his parents' own experience.

The whole world lives in psychological slavery.

And the third dimension of freedom is ultimate freedom - consisting in the knowledge that you are not the body, in the knowledge that you are not the mind, in the knowledge that you are only pure consciousness. Such knowledge comes through meditation. It separates you from the body, it separates you from the mind, and ultimately you are present only as pure consciousness, as pure awareness. This is spiritual freedom.

These are the three main dimensions of individual freedom.

The collective has no soul, the collective has no mind. The collective does not even have a body; there is only a name. It's just a word. The collective has no need for freedom. When all individuals are free, the collective will be free. But we are very impressed by words, so impressed that we forget that there is nothing real in words. Collective, society, community, religion, church - all these are words. There is nothing real behind them.

This reminds me of a short story. In the fairy tale “Alice Through the Looking Glass,” Alice finds herself in the king’s palace. And the king asks her:

“Did you meet a messenger on the way heading towards me?”

And the little girl answers:

- I didn’t meet anyone.

And the king thinks that "Nobody" is someone, and he asks:

- But why then has Nobody gotten here yet?

Little girl says:

- Sir, no one means no one!

And the king says:

- Do not be silly! I understand: Nobody is Nobody, but he should have arrived before you. Nobody seems to walk slower than you.

And Alice says:

– This is absolutely wrong! Nobody walks faster than me!

And thus this dialogue continues. Throughout the entire dialogue, “nobody” becomes someone, and Alice is unable to convince the king that “nobody” is no one.

Collective, society - all these are just words. What really exists is individuality; otherwise a problem arises. What is freedom for a Rotary Club? What is freedom for the Lions Club? These are all just names.

The collective is a very dangerous idea. In the name of the collective, individuality, living reality, is always sacrificed. I am absolutely against this.

Nations sacrifice individuals in the name of the nation; and “nation” is just a word. The lines you drew on the map are nowhere on earth. It's just your game. But fighting for these lines that you have drawn on the map, millions of people have died - real people dying for unreal lines. And you make them heroes, national heroes!

The idea of ​​the collective must be completely destroyed; otherwise we will continue to sacrifice individuality in one way or another. We have sacrificed individuality in the name of religion in religious wars. A Muslim who dies in a religious war knows that he is guaranteed heaven. The priest told him: “If you die for Islam, you are reliably guaranteed paradise, with all the pleasures that you can only imagine and dream about. And the person you killed will also go to heaven, because he was killed by a Muslim. It's a privilege for him, so you shouldn't feel guilty about killing a person." Christians had crusades - jihads, religious wars, and they killed thousands of people, burned human beings alive. For what? For the sake of a certain collectivity - for the sake of Christianity, for the sake of Buddhism, for the sake of Hinduism, for the sake of communism, for the sake of fascism; Anything will do. Any word that represents a certain collectivity is enough for individuality to be sacrificed for its sake.

Collectivity does not even have a reason to exist: individuality is enough. And if individuals have freedom, if they are psychologically free, spiritually free, then, naturally, the collective will be spiritually free.

The team consists of individuals, not the other way around. It was said that the individual is only part of the collective; it is not true. The individual is not part of the collective; collective is only a symbolic word meaning a collection of individuals. They are not parts of anything; they remain independent. They remain organically independent; they do not become part of a collective.

If we truly want to see the world free, we will have to understand that so many mass atrocities have been committed in the name of collectivity that it is time to stop. All collective names must lose the luster they were given in the past. Individuality should be the greatest value.

* * *

Liberty from something is not true freedom. The freedom to do what you want to do is also not the freedom I'm talking about. My vision of freedom is for a person to be himself.

It's not about getting freedom from something. This freedom will not be freedom because it is still given to you; she has a reason. What you felt dependent on is still present in your freedom. You owe it to me. Without this you would not be free.

Freedom to do what you want to do is also not freedom, because the desire, the desire to “do” something arises from the mind - and the mind is your fetters.

True freedom comes from choiceless awareness, but when there is choiceless awareness, freedom does not depend on things or on doing anything. The freedom that follows choiceless awareness is simply the freedom to be yourself. And you are already you, you are born with it; therefore freedom does not depend on anything. No one can give it to you, no one can take it away from you. The sword can cut off your head, but it cannot cut off your freedom, your being.

This is another way of saying that you are centered, rooted in your natural, existential being. It has nothing to do with anything external.

Freedom from things depends on something external. The freedom to do something also depends on the external. The freedom to be extremely pure does not have to depend on anything outside of you.

You are born free. The only problem is that conditioning has made you forget about it. The threads remain in someone else's hands. If you are a Christian, you remain a puppet. Your threads are in the hands of God, who does not exist, and therefore, just to give you the feeling that God exists, you need prophets, messiahs, representing God.

They do not represent anyone, they are just egoistic people - but even the ego wants to reduce you to a puppet. They will tell you what to do, they will give you the Ten Commandments. They will give you an identity - and each of you will be a Christian, a Jew, a Hindu, a Muslim. They will give you so-called knowledge. And naturally, under the heavy burden that is placed on you since childhood - under the weight of the Himalayas on your shoulders - under everything hidden and suppressed, your natural being remains hidden and suppressed. If you can get rid of all conditioning, if you can consider yourself neither a communist, nor a fascist, nor a Christian, nor a Muslim...

You were not born a Christian or a Muslim; you were born with a pure, innocent consciousness. To be in this purity again, in this innocence, in this consciousness - this is what I call freedom.

Freedom is the culminating experience of life. There is nothing higher. And in freedom many flowers will bloom within you.

Love is the flowering of your freedom. Compassion is another flowering of your freedom.

Everything that is valuable in life blossoms within you in an innocent, natural state of being.

Therefore, do not associate freedom with independence. Independence is, of course, independence from something from someone. Don't associate freedom with what you want to do, because that is your mind, not you. Wanting to do something, striving to do something, you remain in the shackles of your own desire and aspiration. In the freedom I'm talking about, you just There is- in complete silence, serenity, beauty, bliss.

Understanding the Roots of Slavery

To be totally free, a person needs to be totally aware, because our bonds are rooted in our unconsciousness; they don't come from outside. No one can make you not free. You can be destroyed, but your freedom cannot be taken away from you. Unless you give it away yourself. In the deepest analysis, it is always your reluctance to be free that makes you not free. It is your desire to remain dependent, to throw off the responsibility of being yourself, that makes you not free.

The moment you accept responsibility for yourself... And remember: this path is not paved with only roses, roses also have thorns; Not everything is sweet on this path; there are also moments of bitterness. Sweetness is always balanced by bitterness; they always remain in equal proportions. Roses are balanced by thorns, days by nights, summers by winters. Life maintains a balance between polar opposites. Thus, a person who is ready to accept the responsibility of being himself, with all the beauties, with all the bitterness, with all the joys and agony, can be free. Only such a person can be free...

Live it in all the agony and in all the ecstasy; both are yours. And always remember: ecstasy cannot exist without agony, life cannot exist without death, and joy cannot exist without sorrow. This is the nature of things - nothing can be changed about it. This is nature itself, the Tao of things.

Accept the responsibility of being yourself, as you are, with everything that is good and bad in it, with everything that is beautiful and not beautiful in it. In this acceptance, one goes beyond limits and one becomes free.

Society and Individual Freedom. Interview

It appears that social rules are a basic need of human beings. Yet no society has yet helped a person to realize himself. Would you be so kind as to explain what kind of relationship exists between individuals and society, and how they can help each other to evolve?

This is a very complex and fundamental question. In all of existence, only man needs rules. No other animal needs rules.

Here's the first thing to understand: there is something artificial about the rules. The reason why man needs rules is that he has ceased to be an animal, but has not yet become a human being; he remains in the vestibule. This is where the need for all the rules comes from. If he were an animal, there would be no need. Animals live perfectly well without any rules, constitutions, laws, or courts. If a person truly becomes a human being - not only in name, but in reality - he will not need any rules.

Very few people have understood this until now. For example, for people like Socrates, Zarathustra, Bodhidharma, there was no need for any rules. They are vigilant enough not to harm anyone. They didn't need laws or constitutions. If all humanity develops to the point of being truly human, there will be love, but there will be no laws.

The problem is that man needs rules, laws, governments, courts, armies, police forces because he has lost the natural behavior of an animal, but has not yet achieved a new natural status. He remains in between. He is neither here nor there; he is in chaos. Laws are needed to control this chaos.

The problem becomes even more complex because the forces involved in controlling man - religions, states, courts - have gained so much power. They had to be given power; How else would they be able to control people? And thus we found ourselves in a kind of voluntary slavery. Now that our institutions have gained power, the development of humanity is not in their interests. They don't want man to evolve.

You are asking how man and society, individual and society, can evolve. You don't understand this problem at all. If individuality evolves, society dissipates. Society exists only because individuality is not allowed to evolve. The social apparatus has been controlling man for centuries and enjoying its own power and prestige. He is not prepared to allow man to evolve, to allow man to grow to the point where he and his institutions become useless. Many situations will help you understand this.

It happened in China, twenty-five centuries ago...

Lao Tzu was renowned for his wisdom, and he was without a doubt the wisest man who ever lived. The Emperor of China very humbly asked him to head his supreme court, because no one could consider the laws of the country better than him. Lao Tzu tried to dissuade the emperor: “I am not suitable for this,” but the emperor insisted.

Lao Tzu said:

- If you don’t listen to me... One day in court will be enough for you to be convinced that I’m not fit for this, because I’m wrong myself system. Out of modesty, I did not tell you the truth. Either I can exist, or your law, order and society can exist. But... let's try.

On the very first day, a thief was brought to court who stole almost half of the treasures from the richest man in the capital. Lao Tzu heard the case and said that both the thief and the rich man should go to prison for six months.

The rich man exclaimed:

- What are you saying? They stole from me, I was robbed - what kind of justice is this if you send me to prison for the same term as the thief?

“I am undoubtedly unfair to the thief,” said Lao Tzu. “The need to send you to prison is much greater, because you have collected so much money for yourself, taken money from so many people... the rights of thousands of people have been violated, and you are collecting and collecting money. For what? Your very greed gives birth to these thieves. You are responsible. The first was your crime.

Lao Tzu's logic is absolutely clear. If there are too many poor people and too few rich people, it will be impossible to stop the thieves, it will be impossible to stop the theft. The only way to stop it is to arrange society in such a way that everyone has enough to satisfy their needs, and no one has unnecessary savings - simply out of greed.

The rich man said:

“Before you send me to prison, I want to see the emperor, because your decision is not in accordance with the constitution; it does not comply with the law of this country.

Lao Tzu replied:

– The constitution and law of this country are to blame. I'm not responsible for this. Go and see the emperor.

A rich man came to the emperor:

“Listen, this man needs to be removed from his post immediately; he is dangerous. Today I can go to prison, tomorrow you will end up in prison. If you want to be saved, this person must be expelled; he poses a huge danger. And he is very rational. What he says is correct; I can understand this - but he will destroy us!

The Emperor understood everything perfectly. “If this rich man is the criminal, then the biggest criminal in this country is me. Lao Tzu will not hesitate to send me to prison.”

Lao Tzu was relieved of his post.

“I tried to tell you earlier,” said Lao Tzu, “you wasted my time.” I told you that I’m not fit for this. The reality is that your society, your law, your constitution is wrong. You will need the wrong people to manage this wrong system.

The problem is that the forces that we created to keep man from falling into chaos have now gained so much power that they do not want to leave you the freedom to grow - because if you are able to grow, you are able to become an individual, alert, aware and conscious , all these forces will not be needed. People in the security forces will lose their jobs, and along with their jobs they will lose prestige, power, the position of leader, priest, pope - all this will be taken away. So those who were needed at first to protect humanity turned into its enemies.

My approach is not to fight these people because they have power, they have armies, they have money, they have everything. You can't fight them; fight and you will be destroyed. The only way out of this chaos is to silently begin to grow in your own consciousness, and this cannot be prevented by any force. In fact, no one can even know what is going on inside you.

I offer you the alchemy of inner transformation. Change your inner being. And the moment you yourself are changed, completely transformed, suddenly you see that you are free from imprisonment, that you are no longer a slave. You were a slave because you were in chaos.

This happened during the Russian Revolution...

On the day the revolution took place, one woman in Moscow began to walk in the middle of the road. The policeman said:

- It is not right. You can't walk in the middle of the road.

“Now we are free,” said the woman.

Even if you are free, you will have to follow certain traffic rules, otherwise driving will become impossible. If people and cars start moving wherever they want, turning wherever they want, not paying any attention to traffic lights, accidents will just start, people will start dying. This will create the need for an army to enforce the law that one must drive on the right - or left, depending on the custom in the country - side of the road, but no one must drive in the middle. Then, at gunpoint, you will have to start following the rules. I always remember this woman; it is very symbolic.

Freedom does not mean chaos. Freedom brings more responsibility, so much responsibility that no one needs to interfere with your life anymore: you can be left to your own devices, the government doesn't have to interfere with anything, the police don't have to interfere with anything, the law has nothing to do with you - you just out of this world.

This is my approach: if you really want to transform humanity, each individual must begin to grow on its own. And, in fact, you don’t need a crowd to grow.

Growth is something similar to how a child grows in its mother's womb; the mother just has to be careful. A new person must be born in you. You must become the womb for a new human being. No one will know about it, and it will be best if no one knows about it. You just continue to do your ordinary job, live in an ordinary world, be simple and ordinary - without becoming revolutionaries, reactionaries, punks and skinheads. It won't help. This is sheer stupidity. I understand that this comes from frustration, but it is still pathological. Society is pathological, and because of disappointment you become pathological? Society is not afraid of pathological people; society fears only people who have become so centered, so conscious, that laws have become useless to them. A conscientious person always does the right thing. He is beyond the grasp of the so-called interests of power.

If individuals grow, the role of society will decrease. What was known as society - with its government, army, courts, policemen, prisons - this society will be diminished. Of course, since there are so many human beings, new forms of collectivity will come into existence. I would not like to call them "society", just to avoid confusion in words. I call this new collectivity a “commune.” This word is significant: it implies a place where people not only live together, but where people are in deep belonging 1
From English: commune - commune; communion – here: participation. – Note translation

Living together is one thing; we do this: in every city, in every village, thousands of people live together - but what commonality is there between them? People don't even know their neighbors. They live in the same skyscraper - thousands of people - and never know that they live in the same house. This is not a community because there is no belonging between them. It's just a crowd, not a community. So I would like to replace the word society in a word commune.

Society rests on certain fundamental principles. You will have to eliminate them, otherwise society will not disappear. The first and basic unit of society was the family: if the family remains the same as it is now, society cannot disappear, the church cannot disappear; religion cannot disappear. We will not be able to create a single world, a single humanity.

The family is psychologically outdated. And it didn't always exist; There were times when there was no family, and people lived in tribes. The family began to exist in connection with the emergence of private property. There were people who had more power and managed to get more property than others, and they wanted to pass it on to their children. Until that time, the question of family had not been raised. But as soon as private property came into existence, men became very possessive of women. He also turned the woman into a kind of property.

In Indian languages, a woman is literally called "property". In China, a woman was property to such an extent that even if a husband killed his wife, there was no law against it. No crime has been committed - you are absolutely free to destroy your property. You can burn furniture, burn down a house... it's not a crime, it's your house. You can kill your wife...

With the advent of private property, woman also became private property, and every possible strategy was invented to ensure that a man could be absolutely sure that the child born to his wife was really his child.

This is really a problem: a father can never be absolutely sure; only the mother knows. But the father created all possible obstacles to ensure that the woman could move freely, so that she could encounter other men. All possibilities and all doors were closed.

It is no coincidence that only old women go to your churches and temples, because for centuries this was the only place where they were allowed to go. A woman could go to church because it was well known that the church protected the family. The Church knows very well that as soon as there is no family, there will be no church. And the church, of course, is the last place where any romantic encounters can happen. Every precaution was taken against this. And one of the guarantees is that the priest had to be celibate, he is celibate, he is against sex, he is against women, in different religions, in different forms.

A Jaina monk cannot touch a woman; in fact, a woman should not come within eight feet of a Jain monk. A Buddhist monk is not allowed to touch a woman. There are religions that do not allow women to enter their religious places, or they put up barriers to separate them. Men occupy the main part of the temple or mosque, women are allocated a small corner, but separated by a partition. Men can't even see them; it is impossible to meet anyone.

Many religions, such as Islam, covered the faces of their women. The faces of Muslim women have become pale because they never see sunlight. Their faces are covered, their bodies are covered as much as possible. A woman should not be educated because education gives people all kinds of strange thoughts. People start thinking, people start arguing...

Women were not allowed to have paid work because it meant independence. And thus she was cut off from all possible sides, and for one simple reason: so that the man could be sure that his son was really his son. Those who really had a lot of power - such as kings - castrated male servants because they lived in the palace, worked and served others. They had to be castrated, otherwise there was danger... And there was danger, because each emperor had hundreds of wives, many of whom he had never seen. Naturally, they could fall in love with anyone. But only castrated men were allowed into the palace, so that even if women fell in love, they could not create children. This was the most important thing.

The family must disappear and give way to the commune. A commune means that people collect all their energy, all their money, everything they have into one reservoir that will take care of the people. The children will belong to the commune, so there will be no question of individual inheritance. And if you put all the energy, all the money and all the resources into one reservoir, every community can be rich, and every community can enjoy life equally.

As soon as individuals begin to grow, and communities begin to grow side by side, society will disappear, and with society all the troubles created by this society will disappear.

I'll give you one example.

Only in China two thousand years ago was a revolutionary step taken. It consisted in the fact that the patient paid the doctor only if he remained healthy. If the patient fell ill, the doctor did not have to pay. This seems very strange. We pay the doctor when we are sick and he makes us healthy again. But this is dangerous because you make the doctor dependent on his illnesses. The disease becomes his interest: the more people get sick, the more he can earn. He becomes interested not in health, but in illness. If everyone stays healthy, then the doctor will be the only one sick!

The Chinese came up with the revolutionary, practical idea that every person would pay his doctor as long as he remained healthy. The doctor gets paid every month. A doctor's job is to keep people healthy - and naturally, he does this because he gets paid for it. If a person gets sick, the doctor loses money. When epidemics occur, the doctor goes bankrupt.

Right now the situation is the opposite. I heard one story.