Society

Social rules seem to be a basic need for human beings. Yet no society has ever helped man to realize himself. Can you please explain what kind of relationship exists between individuals and society, and how they can help each other to evolve?

Nobody will come to know about it, and it is better that nobody knows about it. You simply go on doing your ordinary work, living in the ordinary world, being simple and ordinary -- not becoming revolutionaries, reactionaries, punks and skinheads. That is not going to help. That is sheer stupidity. It is out of frustration, but still it is insane. The society is insane and out of frustration you become insane. The society is not afraid of these people; the society is afraid only of people who can become so centered, so conscious that laws become useless for them. They always do right. They are beyond the grip of the so-called powerful interests. If individuals grow, society will diminish. The way they have known society -- with the government, with the army, with the courts, with the policemen, with the jails -- this society will diminish. Certainly, because there…

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…

This is a marxist, a christian theologian's question -- so many diseases together!

IN TRADITIONAL CHINA THERE WAS A SAYING,'CONFUCIAN IN OFFICE, TAOIST OUT OF OFFICE.' THIS REPRESENTED A DEEP DIVISION AND DILEMMA IN CHINESE SOCIETY, PERHAPS ALL SOCIETIES. CAN THERE BE AN ENLIGHTENED SOCIETY WHICH DOES NOT TEACH THE WAY OF THE EGO? OR IS SOCIETY BY NATURE OF ITS VERY ORDERED AND PATTERNED REALITY OF THE CALCULATING AND REPRESSIVE COLLECTIVE MIND OR EGO; IS SOCIETY, EVEN THAT OF ENLIGHTENED INDIVIDUALS OR WOULD-BE ENLIGHTENED INDIVIDUALS, BY ITS VERY NATURE, OPPOSED TO ENLIGHTENMENT? First, the old saying is perfectly beautiful: A Taoist out of office, and a Confucian in the office. When you live with people, you have to follow certain rules. Those rules have no ultimacy about them; they are rules of a game. For example: if you walk on the road you have to walk to the right or to the left, as the society has decided. If you start walking…

Osho, in this complicated society based on the division of labor—and division of labor requires communication—don’t we necessarily have to maintain certain links and make certain adjustments?

When I was in high school, a teacher used some abusive words toward me. I said to him, “If you are using abusive words, I take it you are not opposed to their use. Since you are using them, I can assume you permit them—so may I also use such words?” He became so furious that he went and entered a five-rupee fine against my name in the punishment register, writing that I had behaved indecorously. I followed him and, beneath that entry, I wrote a twenty-five-rupee fine against his name: if a student behaves indecorously, a five-rupee fine is fine; but if a teacher behaves indecorously, at least five times the fine should be there, because he is assumed to be five times wiser than I am. I wrote twenty-five rupees. The principal called me and said, “Have you gone mad? Has any student ever fined a teacher?” I…