Anarchism and Gnosticism

There is a certain relationship between anarchism and gnosticism because both depend on the individual. And anarchism will be impossible without gnosticism, because only gnosticism can transform people and can bring such quality and energy in them that they don’t need any government at all.

A man of awareness does not need anybody else to tell him what to do, what not to do. He does not need the moral teacher, the priest, the policeman, the judge. They all become meaningless.

And it will become one of the greatest days in the history of man when government becomes useless and is to be dropped. That means man has transcended all animality in him – violence, anger, hatred – all that needs a government to control people; otherwise there will be so many rapes, and there will be so many murders. There will be so many thefts, and nobody will be safe.

The government is simply an agreement of the society. “We are not capable of controlling ourselves – we need a central control, powerful enough so that individuals cannot dare… or if they dare to do something, then they can be punished.” Even with the government crime goes on growing, the jails go on growing, the judges go on growing, the criminals go on growing, the laws go on growing.

So if you simply remove the government, there will be chaos, and all that is repressed in man out of fear… because both government and religion, the two powerful institutions, use fear and greed to repress your animal. They don’t change it. If you are caught the government will send you to jail to be punished. If you are not caught, then the religions will send you to hell to suffer.

It is a basic agreement that if your action is found out, it becomes a crime; if it is not found out, it remains a sin. But on both bases the fear is there that you will have to suffer. And on the other hand, if you remain good the government has rewards. You become padam shree, you become bharat bhushan, you have a Nobel Prize, and so many awards around the world for people who have proved… who have repressed everything that can be objectionable – they are rewarded. And if they are not rewarded here, they will be rewarded in paradise with all the pleasures of the world.

But this is only a strategy to keep man’s animality somehow repressed. It does not bring any change.

Gnosticism means a change in your very being.

Then you don’t need any fear; you don’t need any hell, and you don’t need any awards. You don’t need any heaven, because to transcend your animality is the greatest reward possible. It is so blissful and so ecstatic to become really human that there is no need for anything else to be added to it. So gnosticism has no God, has no heaven, no hell – those are religious types of government.

So I can see a relationship between anarchism and gnosticism. But gnosticism is more fundamental, has to happen first; only then can anarchism have a chance. Up to now it has remained a utopia.

To single individuals it has happened, but it has to happen to the whole of humanity. And when it happens to single individuals, it is very strange: the governments are not happy. And now you can understand why they are not happy.

The very happening of the transformation of the human being so that he has no animality in him, creates a fear in government and in the religious hierarchy because that man shows that it can happen to all. And the moment it happens to all, governments and religions both will be useless, discarded. And nobody who has so much power would like to be discarded. No government wants to be discarded, no religion wants to be discarded.

So a very strange thing – they go on teaching people to be good, but deep down they want you to remain the same because their whole existence is dependent on your being the way you are.

Osho, Light on the Path, Ch 6, Q 1 (excerpt)