According to Osho, society should pause hurried reforms and first cultivate a "national mind": a climate of free, rigorous inquiry. For 5-10 years, organize dialogue everywhere—especially through youth—shutting down empty rhetoric, questioning every inherited belief, and compelling speakers to answer point by point. This collective mental revolution births clarity of the doer; then right action follows naturally, like a shadow.
Slow down, get everyone asking honest questions and discussing deeply, and once minds are clear, the right actions will come by themselves.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, from your talks we get a fairly clear sense of what ought to be done. But how should it be done? And not so much on an individual basis—please tell us, in more detail, what should be done as a community and as a society.
That would be easier if I came again and stayed a day or two. But for now, there is only one thing before the country: do not be in a hurry to do anything, and spread a climate of thought. Do not rush into action right now. Until the country has a right clarity, any attempt at doing will more likely lead to mistakes and upheaval. The country does not yet have a clear mind; haste for action will drop us into a ditch and take us nowhere. So I say: for the next five to ten years, the nation should strive to create a mind. Then action follows that mind the way a shadow follows you. Action in itself is not the main issue. Once the country’s mind is clear, what to do and how to do it both become easy. The real difficulty is: who is the doer,…
What measures should we take, Osho, to keep away from society, from its activities?
As I have said, these universities, this educational apparatus, is an effort to reimpose all the foolishness and all the ignorance of society onto new children. The attempt is that the children can again create the same kind of society, repeat the same kind of society. Certainly, breaking this endeavor is a very difficult matter. It can be broken only through individuals. So for now, it is simply a matter of carrying the message to individuals—one by one—to all those who can think, reflect, in whose presence questions have arisen, so that it can come into their awareness. Then there can be small, small schools where a few friends sit together and experiment. Let these experiments be at a very small level; gradually they can become larger experiments. And at the very least, it is certain that wherever a person is, if he comes to understand this, he can apply…
Osho, you are always immersed in bliss—what is the secret of it? When will I be able to attain this ecstasy?
Yogananda, I have given you the name Yogananda; the whole secret is in it. A human being can live in two ways: either cut off from existence, or in oneness with it. Whoever lives separate will live in sorrow—anxiety and anguish. That is natural, for to live apart from existence is like a tree pulling its roots out of the earth and trying to live. It will wither; the leaves will droop, flowers will cease to bloom. Spring will come and keep coming, but that tree will never become a bride, never a bridegroom. For it there will be no spring. If the roots have been torn from the soil, what remedy can even the honeyed month of spring offer? Then where is bliss, where is ecstasy! Then there is no dawn—only a dark new-moon night, a night with no morning. Such a life is called ego. And the tree…
Osho, but what will happen after that?
I do not worry about what comes afterward; I don’t, because a thoughtful, reflective society continually faces things and finds their solutions. There is no need to hand out fixed solutions. There are two ways. Either we tell you: go left, walk ten steps, and on the eleventh step turn right—there is the door. That is one way. The other way is that we teach you the art of seeing with your own eyes and say: you look! And wherever you find a path, take it. The path and the door will be visible to your open eyes. The mentality the world has had till now has been to give people a fixed formula, to give them an organized religion, to give them an organized party, to give them an ideology to follow—but not to give them a mind with which they can think and move. There is a difference…
Osho, you advise us to change the environment first, but how can that happen without a change in the social order?
You are absolutely right. First the social order or the environment? First the environment or the social order? No—the very question of before and after is misplaced; the whole thing is simultaneous. It’s the chicken-and-egg question: which comes first? None comes first. If the individual’s mind changes—society will change. If society changes—the individual’s mind will change. They are so interconnected that we must make efforts on both sides.