Human Nature

Osho, there is a question in the Shatapatha Brahmana: Ko veda manushyasya? Who knows the human being? Osho, is man so complex and mysterious that no one can know him?

Purushottam Mahanti, man is not complex; he is certainly mysterious. If he were complex, knowing him would not be so difficult. However complex a thing is, complexity can be unraveled. Complexity is a puzzle that lies within the scope of the intellect, not beyond it. Whatever was complex, man has solved, or if not yet, he will. What was unknown yesterday is known today; what is unknown today will be known tomorrow. Science recognizes only two categories: the known and the unknown. There is no qualitative difference between them—only a difference of time. The unknown is that which is capable of becoming known: a little more effort, a little more search, a little more research, a little more reasoning, a little more science. But mystery is qualitatively different, not merely quantitatively. Mystery does not mean the unknown; mystery means the unknowable—what cannot be known at all, what lies beyond the…

Question: BELOVED MASTER, IS MAN PREDICTABLE? Tosho, man is not predictable -- if he is a man. But very few men are really men -- they are machines. Machines are predictable. Man has freedom. You cannot predict Buddha, but you can predict the so-called ordinary people. They are predictable -- they go on doing the same thing again and again. You know what they have been doing up to now and according to that you can predict what they are going to do tomorrow. Small children are not predictable because they are not yet converted into machines. Preparing to give a small boy an aptitude test, a psychiatrist told his nurse to put a pitchfork, a wrench and a hammer on the table. "If he grabs the pitchfork he will be a farmer. If he grabs the wrench he will be a mechanic.

Beloved Osho, what is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness of a buddha?

Whether you are for it or against it doesn't matter -- your concern shows where your ego is hanging. And I will include the capitalist in it also: his whole concern is how to gather money, hoard money -- because money has power over matter. You can purchase any material thing through money. You cannot purchase anything spiritual, you cannot purchase anything that has any intrinsic value; you can purchase only things. If you want to purchase love, you cannot purchase; but you can purchase sex. Sex is the material part of love. Through money, matter can be purchased, possessed. Now you will be surprised: I include the communist and the capitalist both in the same category, and they are enemies, just as I include Charvaka and Mahatma Gandhi in the same category, and they are enemies. They are enemies, but their concern is the same. The capitalist is trying…

Why do you call men monkeys? Isn't it insulting to the dignity of nan?

Monkeys think otherwise. They don't like to be compared with men; they think it is against the dignity of monkeys. When Darwin said that man has come out of the monkeys, has evolved out of the monkeys, monkeys were very angry. Great treatises have been written by the monkeys proving that man is a fall and not an evolution. And there are arguments for it. Man has fallen from the tree to the earth. It is a fall. And man has become less than he was. Ask any monkey. Just try to follow a monkey and it will be impossible. How strong a monkey is! Man is no longer strong. Man is almost impotent in comparison to the monkey. See the joy of the monkeys. Man is so sad. In the first place why should man think that his dignity is insulted or he is humiliated? Monkeys are beautiful people.…