According to Osho, what we call civilization is a superficial pretense—skin-deep manners over boiling violence. True civilization cannot be imposed from outside; it must grow from within, rooted in primal, childlike innocence and ripened through meditation. Only Buddhas are truly civilized. Real culture flowers from the center to the periphery, transforming authenticity into nonviolence and intelligence, not masking our nature with hypocritical character.
Real civilization happens when you grow from your innocent heart through meditation, not by pretending to be good on the outside.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What do you think about civilization? Are you absolutely against it?
THERE IS NO CIVILIZATION ANYWHERE -- so how can I be against it? It exists not. It is just a pretension. Yes, man has lost his primitive, primordial innocence, but man has not become civilized -- because that is NO way to become civilized. The only way to become civilized is to base yourself on your innocence, to base yourself on your primitive innocence, to grow from there. That's why Jesus says: Unless you are reborn, unless you become a child again, you will never know what truth is. This so-called civilization is fake, it is a pseudo coin. If I am against it, I am not against civilization -- because this is not civilization. I am against it because this is not civilization at all. It is fake. I have heard: Someone once asked the former Prince of Wales, "What is your idea of civilization?" "It is a good…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, WHAT IS CIVILIZATION? And the third thing is the most interesting that he said. He said, "Moreover Osho has not committed any crime; we don't have any proof, we don't have any evidence." This recognition by the U.S. attorney for Oregon ... and still I was fined four hundred thousand dollars! They don't have any proof and they don't have any evidence, they don't think I have committed any crime. For what have I been fined? And they know perfectly well, I don't have a single dollar. I have not touched money for almost thirty-five years! Perhaps they were hoping that because I don't have any possessions ... how was I going to pay? Almost half a million dollars! So naturally, if I could not pay them they would have an excuse to put me in jail for at least twenty years, thirty years.
Question: First question: Osho, the ‘Indian Culture Parliament’ is completing twenty-five years. On this occasion, Dr. Prabhakar Machwe, addressing you as a thinker, philosopher, and sage, has invited your views for the volume ‘Indian Culture’, which he will publish at the beginning of the book and thereby feel honored. Osho, a request: please say something! Chaitanya Kirti! I am neither a brooder, nor a thinker, nor a man of intellect. We give great value to contemplation; we take thought to be a great fortune; in our view, intellectual acumen is the highest peak of life. But the truth is something else. Neither Buddha is a thinker, nor Mahavira, nor Kabir. Whoever has known is not a thinker. The one who does not know thinks. Thought is ignorance. A blind man wonders: what is light like, what is it? The one with eyes knows—he doesn’t think. So what sort of contemplation?
Osho, it is surprising that among animals there is hardly any hypocrisy or deceit, and among indigenous people it is also very little, whereas in the so-called educated and civilized society it is at its peak. Has humanity’s long and arduous journey from barbarism to civilization then gone in vain? And in that case, is the tribal order preferable?
Animals are without falseness, without hypocrisy—not because they have achieved something, but because they are incapable. They cannot be hypocrites; there is no way for them to be. They have no facility for being bad, no possibility of falling. But precisely because an animal cannot fall, it also cannot ascend to divinity. One who cannot fall cannot rise. And where there is no possibility of sin, there is no possibility of the divine either. The animal is in a kind of stupor; it does as nature makes it do. Its journey is mechanical. It has no free will. Therefore an animal cannot do evil, but it cannot do good either. It simply does what nature impels. It has no individuality of its own. Hence an animal can be neither wicked nor virtuous, neither a great sinner nor a great saint. An animal remains an animal. The animal is born complete.…
Has civilization done man any good?
Yes, it makes you sin so hard that one has to become a saint by and by. It throws you into such deep misery that you have to start looking for clues to go out of the imprisonment. Civilization helps tremendously. It helps you to grow, it helps you to understand the misery of life. Just look HERE -- many more people from the West come to me than from India. The West is more civilized, more cultured -- of course more miserable. Everybody is just on the verge of going berserk, just on the verge, a little push is needed... Out of four persons they say almost three are on the boundary line of becoming mad. Out of four persons almost one some day or other is going to become a victim of cancer. Out of four persons alive -- alive on this day -- out of those four,…