A peaceful group happens when each person wakes up inside, not when rules push them around.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, I sense something wonderful, something incredible happening to you over there in your chair. And more and more over the years, I sense something really wonderful happening within me over here. For me, it is not enlightenment -- I know that. But it is like a harmony with you. Osho, can you say something about how I can reach through the smoke of the mind to bring this wondrousness, this beautiful feeling of giftedness out into the open so that it can grow?
The phenomenon of harmony is one of the most mysterious experiences possible. It means that two bodies are still two bodies, but the two souls within them are no more two. One soul within two bodies: That's exactly the meaning of harmony. It is the most exquisite experience. Ordinarily we are living in conflict, in disharmony. The husband is living in disharmony with the wife -- they call it living together. But unless this oneness arises, their togetherness is nothing but an underground conflict, erupting at any moment for any meaningless, silly reason. Both are sitting on volcanoes. Parents are feeling a generation gap between themselves and their own children. There seems to be no common ground of understanding; harmony is a faraway goal. They don't even understand each other's language -- not that they speak different languages, but their visions are different, their attitudes are different, their approach towards…
Why establish order? Wherever people catch a note of swabhava, they fall silent. If they do not, the speaker should fall silent. Plain and simple. No need to arrange. Your silence here is an order arising from you. No one is bringing it. If brought from outside, a restlessness begins within. You may keep sitting, but you will toss and turn, because imposed order...inside something else is happening; above, you must do something else. You will tire; your life-energy will feel repressed. Watch how children leave school—like prisoners released. How happy they are! In that delight, slates break, books tear, satchels are flung. Ecstatic. And what are we doing? For six hours we impose order with a stick. If today universities are being burned worldwide, do not think only the children are responsible. It was bound to happen. What you are doing with children is compulsion.
Osho, you said today that there is nothing like a 'group soul', but I have been strongly feeling something like that in the commune. Not only that, but this feeling of a collective soul is becoming more and more intense and attuned day by day. It is something new for me, and very beautiful, and actually l experience it as the most beautiful thing that is happening for me here. I know that each of us has to awaken alone, but I feel that this 'collective soul' is a tremendous help, at least for us not to create other dreams.... Am I dreaming now of a 'collective soul'?
NO, IT IS A FACT, you just don t know the right word for it. 'Collective soul' is not the right term; it is very misleading. Soul can only be individual. Then what is happening here in this commune? Anybody who enters the ashram for the first time immediately becomes aware of something. He can see it on people's faces, he can see it in their walk, he can see it in the way they are working. He can see that it is no ordinary humanity. Some grace he can feel, some joy permeating the whole place, some playfulness, some sense of humor. And people are working seven days a week. Nobody is looking at the clock...except the Indians! People are enjoying the work: it is play, it is creativity. They are not tired. In fact, the deeper they go into this creativity, the more nourished they feel he more…
Beloved Osho, one of the security men who was here with us for a while said to me, "you're a wonderful group of people." and he was so surprised that we never fight with each other. This harmony here is truly a miracle, and yet feels so natural. Beloved Osho, could you say more about this magic. And are there there any ways your disciples can help one another on our adventure to consciousness?
Because somebody just likes a cup of tea in the morning, he would have to hide -- close the doors and prepare a cup of tea. And others would be watching and trying to find out why he closes the doors in the morning, why he is keeping a stove in his room. And when he is out somebody may search and find some tea leaves. And he is exposed and brought before Gandhi as a criminal -- that he has been hiding tea leaves. Every morning he has been closing his doors, and one knows not what he was doing with the tea. What can you do with tea? At the most you can drink tea! What else can you do? And slowly there were factions -- somebody else was also doing it -- and those who were in favor of tea would become a party: "Alone we cannot…
In a lecture you said that the really aware were able to live alone. How does this fit with the dream of a community?
Family members are dependent on each other, they cling to each other. It gives a certain comfort, security, safety. Then the family depends on other families. People depend on the church, people depend on clubs, people depend on societies. It is a great world of dependent people, childish ungrownups. A commune is a totally different world. It is not a society. A commune is a gathering of people who are all capable of being alone, and they would like to be together to create a great orchestra of being. A commune is not a dependent phenomenon, it is an independence. That's why many times in this ashram people come and tell me, "Everybody here seems to be so happy with himself that it looks as if nobody is interested in anybody else." Particularly the newcomers feel it, that it is as if people are indifferent. It is not so; they…