What education can stimulate people's minds to give love or live in a state of love?

Do you suggest, Osho, any education that can so stimulate people's minds that they can give love or live in a state of love?

Certainly—absolutely! The way we have educated and “cultured” the person up to now, the kind of civilization we have taught—the whole of it, all civilization, all culture, all education—only makes him clever, makes him cunning. Cunning in the sense that the educated man learns how to turn other people into means. And the one we call educated is the one who can make the maximum number of people into means! The one who cannot make anyone into a means is labeled uneducated, rustic, illiterate. In this world, the more people a man can use as means, the greater he becomes—successful, a bigger politician, occupying higher posts—because he has turned more people into his instruments; he rides on them, on their chests, on their heads. All our education so far is education in cleverness, and all of it is education in ambition. Keep this in mind: a man filled with ambition…

Beloved Osho, can love be taught? Can one be schooled in love? Can one without heart learn to have heart?

No one is without heart. You have the heart, but a nonfunctioning heart; it is there, but not functioning. It is there as a seed, it has not grown. Love cannot be taught, but situations can be created where the heart can grow; and when the heart grows love grows. Situations are needed. Love cannot be taught like mathematics. Mathematics can be directly taught, it is informative; love cannot be taught that way, it is not simply information. You have to grow, you have to change -- but situations can be created. In old Eastern universities -- Nalanda, Taxila -- there were many situations created where love became possible. For example, children were not taught under the roofs, in the rooms; they were always taught under the trees, in the shade of the trees. Have you ever felt any difference? Sit by the side of a concrete wall, and then…

Osho, do you feel, sir, that a new education could bring about a revolution that frees the individual and creates a beautiful society?

Two things are certain: 1) First, we must save new children from the old. Half of education’s task should be to protect children from the stupidities of the past. At present, education initiates them into those past follies—it inducts them. The foolishness that has gone on for thousands of years, we teach to new children too. The primary work is to save them from the errors of the past. 2) Second, where the past went wrong, we must do the opposite. Instead of fighting sex, sex should be known and understood. Instead of fighting anger, it should be recognized and known. This knowing will operate on two planes. One: there should be laboratories where such experiments are conducted on a large scale. And two: each person should become a laboratory himself, continuing his own experiments. Just as we eat every day and sleep every day, so too every day we…

But what education of love, what initiation in love have we given? What certificates of love have we conferred? And then if in three thousand years man has become completely loveless, murderous and violent, who is responsible for it? None other than our education can be held responsible for it. But the teachers need not feel offended by this, because putting this responsibility on education means I am giving lots of honor to education; I am saying education is the center of life. Hence the teacher should be ready to bear the main responsibility; tomorrow the main honor too can be his. Tomorrow, if life is transformed, it is education which will receive the honor. And today if life has become polluted and poisoned, then the educationist should be prepared to accept the main charge and responsibility also. This is indicative of education being central.

When you are insulting the one who is behind are you not goading his ego to push him to the forefront? When the one who has come first is being honored, are you not boosting his ego? So when the children are thus trained in ego, jealousy and competition, how can they love? Love is that which allows the loved ones to go ahead. Love always means to remain always last. I will tell you a small anecdote to make this clearer. There were three Sufi saints who were to be hanged until dead. So-called religious people are always against real saints. While they were waiting to be hanged, they were sitting in a row. The hangman would call out the names, one after the other, and would hang them. The hangman cried out the name, "Nuri," that he should come forward.