According to Osho, to be unorthodox in a commune means living from awareness rather than rules; refusing to let even 'be unorthodox' harden into a doctrine. Like Russell’s paradox, any rule about nonconformity turns into conformity. A true commune remains an organism, not an organization: individuals free to question, to disobey mechanically given orders, and to respond freshly, responsibly, and lovingly in each moment.
Don’t follow rules just to be different—stay awake inside and choose freshly each time, whether that means yes or no.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, you say the rajneeshees need to be unorthodox, untraditional, unconventional. It is clear what this means in a world full of traditions and conventions, but in your commune I find it more difficult to understand. Would you speak about the flavor of rebellion in your commune?
You were going to distribute wealth, not kill people. And now the czar is no longer the czar, you are in power: he is nobody, just a prisoner. What was the point of killing these people -- women, old women, children -- who have nothing left? You have taken everything from them -- now life also has to be distributed? I remember one time in Jabalpur.... Jabalpur w as one of the most vulnerable cities for Hindu -- mohammedan riots because both communities were almost equally balanced. And strangely, the division of the city was such that the Mohammedan community lived in almost half of the town and the Hindu community in the other half So riots were very simple and easy. It was almost every two, three years that there would be a riot. Anybody can create one, it is so simple. Somebody can just go and play on…
Osho, our commune is not like any of the traditional ashrams or monasteries. Would you talk to us more about the function of your commune?
IT is necessary first to understand the traditional structure of an ashrama, and also of a monastery. It will give you the background to understand the meaning of my commune. The ashrama is an Eastern concept based on renouncing society, its comforts, conveniences. An ashrama is a group of people living together in austerity, self-imposed poverty, starvation in the name of fasting; torturing the body in order to have control over the physical by the spiritual; doing all kinds of exercises so that they become able to concentrate on the idea of God if they are Hindus, or on the idea of the ultimate growth of human consciousness if they are Buddhists and Jainas. But the goal is far away for all the three -- you can call it God, you can call it the Buddha, you can call it the Jina. They are different words signifying nothing, but pointing…
Question: OSHO, PLEASE DESCRIBE AN ORTHODOX RAJNEESHEE. One great Master, Nan In, was on his deathbed. He is one of those people who I can say was religious, really religious. His whole life is full of incidents, anecdotes, stories, which give a clear indication of a man of tremendous insight. He was dying. He had told his disciples, "I would not like my death to be mourned. because it is not death, so you will be unnecessarily wasting your tears and crying and weeping. And I will be laughing from the other shore, because I will see,'These fools! The whole of my life I have wasted, and they have not understood a simple thing.' "I would like you to dance and sing and laugh and rejoice, because death is not death. I am going, leaving this house because it is no longer useful.
Osho, you have been speaking about the importance of being oneself. Could you talk about the paradox of being an individual and melting into the commune?
But the pseudo-religions have done just the opposite. They are against love. You can understand now, why they are against love: because love will destroy the personality, and the pseudo-religion depends on your personality. The pseudo-religions have made a great effort -- all these churches and priests and sermons -- and what are they doing? Their whole work is to create the personality. They manufacture personality -- of course, different kinds of personality: a Hindu personality, a Christian personality, a Mohammedan personality. These are different models of personalities. All these religions are just like factories creating different models of cars, but the function is the same. The pseudo-religions are all afraid of love. They talk about love, and they teach you marriage. They talk about love and they say marriages are made in heaven. It is not something that you have to find out; God has already found the person…
Beloved Osho, you have spoken to us about being in the world yet not of it. How come you have not spoken to us about being in the commune yet not of it?
The KGB, the Intelligence Department, has caught hold of twenty sannyasins and has interrogated them continuously for weeks, harassed them just because they had my books. They have taken away all their books, and they were trying to force them to tell who the other sannyasins are. And because they were not telling, they were harassed continuously in the middle of the night; they would be called to the police station and the whole night continuous interrogation... and this is revolution! Man has become even more a slave than he was ever before. Man was not such a slave even in the days of the czar before the revolution; society was not so dominant and so afraid of people and their freedom. America makes claims of democracy. I lived there for five years, and there is no democracy at all. It is one of the most hypocritical societies; it is…