Stuffing everybody with ideas

Millions of people in the world are without flowers, without intelligence, without freedom, without individuality. They have all been told to become like Rama, like Krishna, like Buddha, like Mahavira, like Christ, like Mohammed. That’s what all these religions are. It is perfectly beautiful that somebody was a Buddha and somebody was a Confucius and somebody was a Zarathustra, but there is no need to imitate them.

Imitation is a way of crippling people, paralysing people, cutting their roots. And each child is told to repeat the beliefs of his parents. And of course, if his mind is programmed to repeat the beliefs he will repeat them.

From the kindergarten to the university that’s what we are doing. We call it education. It is not education at all, it is just the opposite of education. The very word ’education’ means drawing something out that is inside the person, bringing his centre to the surface, to the circumference, bringing his being into a form of manifestation — it is latent, unmanifest, it is dormant — making it active, dynamic. That’s what education is.

But this is not happening in the name of education. In the name of education just the opposite is happening: they are stuffing everybody with ideas. Nothing is being drawn out of the well; the waters of the well are not being drawn, instead rocks are being thrown into the well. Soon the waters will disappear; the well will be full of rocks. And that’s who you call a scholar, a pundit, a professor. They are nothing but stuffed tomatoes, stuffed potatoes — nothing else, just stuffed people, stuffed with all kinds of bullshit.

Osho, Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing, Ch 1