Man Will Be Able To Be Controlled

That’s what Lieh Tzu says – for three years of serving the master continuously, waiting and waiting, not asking anything, one day, he got a glance from the master.

After five years my mind was again thinking of right and wrong, and my mouth was again speaking of benefit and harm. For the first time the master’s face relaxed into a smile.

Try to penetrate this story: this is your story. It is not something that happened in the past, it is something which is going to happen in the future. All Zen stories are future stories about you. So don’t think it is something that happened in the past. Zen is never in the past, it is always in the future. And you have to bring it into the present. What happened? After three years of serving the master he didn’t dare to think of what was right and wrong, didn’t dare to say what was right and wrong, what was harmful and what was beneficial. Then what happened after the glance?… My mind was again thinking of right and wrong, and my mouth was again speaking of benefit and harm. What happened?

First you think something is right and something is wrong, because society has conditioned you that way. It is not your thinking, it is not you, it is the society in you. Society has conditioned your mind. It has penetrated within you and controls you from there.

Now scientists say that sooner or later we will be able to fix electrodes in the deepest part of the mind and, through those electrodes, a man will be able to be controlled. The government will be able to control the whole country, and you will not know that somebody else is controlling you. You will feel that you are doing these things. You can be pacified immediately: a knob has only to be pushed. You can be made angry: a knob has only to be pushed.

Delgado did a very famous experiment. He fixed an electrode, a small, tiny electrode, in the brain of a bull. Then he gave a public demonstration. He had a small mechanism in his hand, just a small radio with a few buttons on it. He pushed one button and the bull rushed towards him, ferocious, and everybody became concerned that Delgado would be killed. Just in the nick of time, exactly when the bull was going to penetrate Delgado, he pushed another button. Suddenly, the bull stopped as if dead, like a statue. The inside electrode was controlled by the wireless – the bull would become ferocious just by pushing a button, and it could be stopped just by pushing a button.

The government
will be able
to control the
whole country.

This is a very, very new finding but society has been doing it since prehistorical days in a different way, in a subtle way. Society doesn’t fix an electrode in your mind although soon it will do that, because it will be cheaper, and easier, and then there will be no possibility for human freedom. Delgado has done one of the most dangerous things, more dangerous than atomic energy, an atom bomb, or an H-bomb – because they can kill your bodies, but Delgado can kill your very soul, the very possibility of your freedom. And you will not be able to know that you are functioning because of somebody else’s directions, you will think that you are doing it.

The same is being done by society in a very subtle, primitive way. Society teaches you what is right and what is wrong. From the very childhood it forces what is right and what is wrong onto your mind and then continuous repetition hypnotizes you – the continuous repetition and feedback. Whenever you do right you are appreciated, and whenever you do wrong you are condemned. Whenever you do right, there is a positive feedback; prizes are given to you, appreciations.

Whenever there is something wrong, a negative feedback is given; you are punished, condemned. This is how society has been fixing the electrode inside you. Then it controls. If your society has conditioned you to be a vegetarian, you cannot eat meat. Not that meat cannot be eaten, but simply the electrode, the conditioning controls and, seeing the meat, you will start vomiting. It is nothing that you are doing, it is being done by society, and every society conditions in its own way. That’s why it is very difficult to live in another society; to live in a foreign country becomes difficult. Your conditionings are different and their conditionings are different and all moralities are nothing but conditionings. So when a person starts moving towards the ultimate freedom and truth, first the conditioning of the society falls.

That’s what happened to Lieh Tzu. After three years of serving the master, watching, living, being with him, he came to know that all right and wrong are just social conditionings. They fell.

Then arises your own conscience. The real conscience. The conscience that you carry right now is false, it is borrowed. Then arises your own conscience: then you have your own vision of what is right and what is wrong. That is what happened.

Osho, The Grass Grows By Itself, Ch 2