Independence

Question: BELOVED OSHO, AND WHAT IS IT BUT FRAGMENTS OF YOUR OWN SELF YOU WOULD DISCARD THAT YOU MAY BECOME FREE? IF IT IS AN UNJUST LAW YOU WOULD ABOLISH, THAT LAW WAS WRITTEN WITH YOUR OWN HAND UPON YOUR OWN FOREHEAD. YOU CANNOT ERASE IT BY BURNING YOUR LAW BOOKS NOR BY WASHING THE FOREHEADS OF YOUR JUDGES, THOUGH YOU POUR THE SEA UPON THEM. AND IF IT IS A DESPOT YOU WOULD DETHRONE, SEE FIRST THAT HIS THRONE ERECTED WITHIN YOU IS DESTROYED. FOR HOW CAN A TYRANT RULE THE FREE AND THE PROUD, BUT FOR A TYRANNY IN THEIR OWN FREEDOM AND A SHAME IN THEIR OWN PRIDE? AND IF IT IS A CARE YOU WOULD CAST OFF, THAT CARE HAS BEEN CHOSEN BY YOU RATHER THAN IMPOSED UPON YOU.

And as far as the inner journey is concerned, the guide can always be available in any crisis, in any trouble. You may be lost, you may forget the way. You may start moving away from the peak. The guide can watch that whether you are growing rightly or not. There are indications which show whether the person is going right or not. And if you love the person, you will listen. You will try to correct your way. So it is a very intimate relationship between guide, or the friend... The word leader is ugly. But in that INS application form they have only one category for religion; that is, 'religious leader'. So there was no other way. Now I will have to fight in the court, that your form and your categories need to be updated.

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…

Beloved Osho, there is a story of a disciple who comes to see his master and asks him whether man is free. The master tells his disciple to stand up and to lift one of his feet off the ground. The disciple, standing on one leg -- and the other one in the air -- understands less than before. Now the master asks him to also lift the other foot off the ground. Osho, can you speak on the difference between freedom for and freedom from?

Freedom from is ordinary, mundane. Man has always tried to be free from things. It is not creative. It is the negative aspect of freedom. Freedom for is creativity. You have a certain vision that you would like to materialize and you want freedom for it. Freedom from is always from the past, and freedom for is always for the future. Freedom for is a spiritual dimension because you are moving into the unknown and perhaps, one day, into the unknowable. It will give you wings. Freedom from, at the most, can take away your handcuffs. It is not necessarily beneficial -- and the whole of history is a proof of it. People have never thought of the second freedom that I am insisting on; they have only thought of the first -- because they don't have the insight to see the second. The first is visible: chains on their…