According to Osho, “society” and “nation” are only convenient words—what is real is the individual. Societal conditions merely mirror the consciousness of people; sleeping individuals create sick societies. Therefore, transformation cannot begin with abstract collectives but with personal awakening, awareness, and responsibility. Change the person, and the country changes; ignore the person, and problems perpetuate despite slogans or politics.
Society is a shadow of many people—help each person wake up and act wisely, and the whole shadow improves.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, as I understand your teaching, you want every individual to be aware and to understand life in its totality. But today’s society is very complicated. Our environment is so complicated that it does not allow us to live a free life, to love people, or to live in the state in which we could live a very clean and smooth life.
Society is as it is; only by accepting this truth can anything be done. Society is like this—but if a person can see that apart from a simple, loving, joyous, clean life there is no life at all; if he sees that without becoming loving he will remain deprived of life’s joy; if he sees that without becoming simple there is no path to reach truth—then he will drop worrying about what society is like. For what can society give him—what is it giving? Once he sees that in another direction—which society does not offer and in fact obstructs—there lies the doorway to his life’s bliss, he will begin to move toward it. Certainly the social order will create obstacles. But for such a person they will not be obstacles; they will turn into challenges, and he will try to make steps out of them. The stones thrown onto his…
What does your movement signify about the condition of society? Is it an escapist and self-regarding cult? Or do vou propose through changing human nature to change society and the world?
WHAT IS HAPPENING HERE IS NOT A movement: it is a mutation. It has no concern with the society: its whole concern is with the individual. It is a revolution in the true sense of the word. There is no idea of changing the society or the world, because there is no society at all. Only individuals exist -- society is an illusion. And because we believe in society, all the revolutions have failed. The belief that the society exists has sabotaged all efforts to change man -- because the belief is rooted in illusion. Ask the scientist: he says there is no matter but only electrons. Matter is an illusion. In exactly the same way, those who understand human consciousness will say that society is an illusion like matter. Electrons are true, so are individuals. The individual needs a mutation. And what we are doing here is utterly individualistic;…
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.
It is asked: Osho, a person is born in society; it is society that educates him, it is society that raises, nourishes and makes him grow. Then how can a person be independent of society?
You will say: this is very difficult, very hard. Because the mind does not become quiet even for a moment; it does not fall silent. Something or other is going on there — some thought, some matter, some memory is at work. Either the future or the past is holding you. There is work there twenty-four hours a day. The body may rest at times; there is no rest there. At night you sleep and dreams keep running; by day you wake and who knows what worries and thoughts keep running. So how will this happen? Many of you will have sat with a rosary and it did not happen. Many will have done name-repetition and it did not happen. Many will have prayed and recited mantras and it did not happen — and so the idea will have arisen that this is very difficult. It is not difficult; it…
Osho, on the level of the individual it is fine that we accept—but how are we to accept on the level of society?
In such an individualistic outlook, if one accepts everything, then the “person” does not remain at all. If you observe, the ego of the person is born out of resistance. The more the “I” fights—“I don’t want this; I want that”—in that very struggle my “I” arises: “I am.” Choice creates the “I”; there cannot be a choiceless ego. Then there is no way left to preserve it. “I am”—what does it mean? The sun rises in the morning and sets in the evening—where am I? That is to say, I insist, “There should be only morning, not evening!” The sun will take eight or ten hours to set. For those eight or ten hours I will strengthen my “I”: “I have not let it set yet; I am still holding the sun back; it is still morning.” When it does set, I will surely think that the fruits of…