Osho speaks on human rights; part 1 of 4.
Beloved Osho,
It feels strange when the establishment, worldwide, which is ever busy with all its efforts and resources to make sure in every possible way that man cannot remain man, asks us to celebrate “human rights day.” Goodness, what is all this that’s going on? Beloved master, would you care to explain?
One of the most fundamental things to be always remembered is that we are living in a hypocrite society.
Once, a great philosopher was asked: “What do you think of civilization?”
The philosopher said, “It is a good idea, but somebody has to change the idea into a reality. Civilization has not happened yet. It is a dream of the future.”
But the people who are in power – politically, religiously, socially – are in power because civilization has not happened. A civilized world, a mature man, needs no nations – all those boundaries are false – needs no religions, because all those theologies are simple fictions.
The people who have been for thousands of years in power – the priests, the politicians, the super-rich, they have all the powers to prevent human evolution. But the best way to prevent it is to convince man, “You are already civilized,” to convince man, “You are already a human being. You need not go through a transformation, it is unnecessary.”
And man’s weakness is that knowing perfectly well there exists no such thing as civilization, there exists no such thing as human sensitivity, still he starts believing in all the lies that the politicians have been speaking, the priests have been preaching, the educationists have been teaching – because it seems simpler to just believe, you don’t have to do anything for it.
To recognize the fact that you are not yet a man creates fear. The very ground underneath your feet disappears.
Truth makes you utterly naked – naked of all lies, naked of all hypocrisies. That’s why nobody wants truth; everybody believes that he has got it.
Do you see the psychological strategy? If you don’t want to give something to someone, convince him, hypnotize him, repeat again and again, “You have got it.” And when thousands of people around you – your parents, your teachers, your priests, your leaders – are all believing it, it seems almost impossible for new arrivals in the world, small children, not to be convinced of this thousands-of-years-old idea. Millions of people have lived and died believing that civilization has happened.
So the first thing I want you to understand is that we are still barbarous. Only barbarians can do things that we have been doing for thousands of years – not human beings. In three thousand years, five thousand wars… and you call man civilized?
In the twentieth century – exactly in the middle of the twentieth century – you can produce Adolf Hitler, you can produce Josef Stalin, you can produce Benito Mussolini, you can produce Mao Tse-tung, and still you believe man is civilized?
Adolf Hitler alone killed six million human beings, and killed with great sophistication. Science and technology have been used. One million Jews have been simply burned in gas chambers – within seconds thousands of people are nothing but smoke going out of the chimneys. He killed so many people that it was impossible to give each person the conventional grave.
Man has never been so poor – even beggars have graves, but he had killed so many people that to make graves for all of them… the whole of Germany would have became a graveyard. So he had deep ditches prepared, and people were simply thrown into the ditches and covered with mud. Before throwing their bodies in the ditches he destroyed even those dead peoples’ dignity. Their clothes were taken away; their heads, their beards, their moustaches were shaved so you could not recognize the face of the person. Their heads were cut off; so you would find somewhere the head and somewhere the hand and somewhere the leg and somewhere the remaining parts of the body. And thousands of people – it was impossible to figure out who you were looking for.
Why did he do that? So that nobody could be recognized. Even if somebody was found dead, he could not be recognized; he did not even have his whole body. And you say that man is civilized?
And this is not the end of the story. Seeing the second world war, one would have thought that just a little intelligence is needed and the second world war should be the last world war – seeing what man himself has been doing to man. But no, we are preparing for the third world war – and the last.
Albert Einstein was asked, “Can you say something about what is going to happen in the third world war?”
And Einstein said, “Excuse me, I cannot say anything about the third world war, but I can say something about the fourth.”
The questioner could not believe it. He said, “You cannot say anything about the third – and it is so complicated – yet you are ready to say something about the forth, which will be even more complicated!”
Albert Einstein said, “You don’t understand. I can say something definitively, categorically, about the fourth. And that is that the fourth is never going to happen, because the third will destroy all life – not only human beings, roses too. All that is living will disappear from the earth.”
And you say that humanity has become civilized?
No, you have been deceived and this declaration of human rights by the United Nations is nothing but the same hypocrisy.
George Gurdjieff used to tell a small story – but it is about humanity. The story is that there was a magician. He lived deep in the mountains and the forests, and he had thousands of sheep. But the problem was that the sheep were afraid of the magician because every day the sheep were seeing that one of them was being killed for his breakfast, another was being killed for his lunch. So they used to run away from the magician’s place, and it was a difficult job to find them in the vast forest. Being a magician, he used magic. He hypnotized all the sheep and told different sheep… to some, “You are a man, you need not be afraid. It is only the sheep who are going to be killed and eaten, not you. You are a man just like I am.”
Some other sheep were told, “You are a lion – only sheep are afraid. They escape, they are cowards. You are a lion; you would prefer to die than to run away. You don’t belong to these sheep. So when they are killed it is not your problem. They are meant to be killed, but you are the most loved of my friends in this forest.”
In this way he told every sheep different stories, and from the second day, the sheep stopped running away from the house. They still saw other sheep being killed, butchered, but it was not their concern. Somebody was a lion, somebody was a tiger, somebody was a man, somebody was…. Nobody was a sheep except the one who was being killed.
This way, without keeping servants, he managed thousands of sheep. They would go into the forest for their food, for their water, and they would come back home, believing always one thing: “It is some sheep who is going to be killed, not you. You don’t belong to this mob. You are a lion – respected, honored, a friend of the great magician.” The problems of the magician were solved.
I am telling you this story because it is literally true about you. You are being told things, and you accept them without even looking all around to see whether those things coincide with the reality or not.
The first thing… My first objection to the UN’s Declaration of Human Rights is that rights exist only when there are duties. Duties are roots, rights are the flowers: you cannot have rights without duties. And to celebrate a day in the year for human rights… but they don’t celebrate a day for human duties, which comes first.
Why are they not talking about human duties? Because they don’t want to give you your human rights. Without duties, rights can only be talked about, but you won’t have them in your hands. And about duties, these politicians who have made this declaration have no notion at all. I will give you a few examples.
They say that every human being is equal. And of course it satisfies the ego of every human being – nobody objects. It is one of the most dangerous lies to tell human beings.
I say to you, equality is a myth.
There are not even two human beings who are equal – in any way, in any dimension. I don’t mean that they are unequal, I mean that they are unique, incomparable, so the question of equality or inequality does not arise. Are you equal to these pillars in the hall? The pillars may be beautiful, but you are not equal to them. But does that mean you are inferior to the pillars? It simply means you are not a pillar – pillars are pillars, you are you.
Every human being is a category unto himself.
And unless we recognize the uniqueness of each individual, there are not going to be any human rights, and there is not going to be a civilized world – human, loving, rejoicing.
In the declaration they emphasized the fact again and again that you should love all human beings; you are all brothers. But have you ever seen brothers being in love? Have you ever seen brothers being friends? The way brothers fight, nobody fights.
And just saying, “You are brothers,” does not make it a reality. These people who declared these human rights – what authority have they got? Who are they? Politicans… and they are the cause of all the wars, they are the cause of all kinds of violence happening all over the world.
These are the people who have kept almost half of humanity – womankind – in a state of slavery. But looking at the declaration I had really a great time… because it does not talk about sisters, only brothers.
Sisters don’t count – yet they are half of humanity.
They are not even mentioned.
These politicians are articulate, clever, cunning… mostly coming from the legal profession. They are saying there should be no discrimination between man and woman, between black and white. Between races, religions, political ideologies, there should be no discrimination. And who is making the discrimination? These are the same people who are making the declaration.
They have enslaved the woman for centuries, and they are not yet willing to give her freedom – which, according to their declaration, is a basic human right.
The blacks are being treated as animals. Just at the end of the last century, the blacks were still being sold, auctioned in marketplaces like a commodity. And even today, they are not respected as the white people are respected.
And these are the white people – all these politicians are white. These white people have been driving the whole of humanity, for three hundred years, into slavery. They all had their empires. England had the biggest empire; it was said that the sun never set in the British Empire. Somewhere or other in the British Empire the sun was shining and it was day – all around the earth. But other white people were not far behind: the French, the Portuguese, the Spanish – they all had vast empires, exploiting the whole earth. They have been the parasites: and it is hilarious that all these parasites are now declaring human rights.
This is a deception. It is not meant; what they are saying they don’t mean. It is just to give you an idea that you are equal to everybody, you are a brother to everybody, that you have all the human rights.
But I know – all these human rights are just hypocrisies.
I know by my own experience.
There is one human right enumerated in this declaration: Nobody can be arrested without a warrant. I was arrested exactly like that in America – without warrant, without any arrest warrant or search warrant. Not even verbally did they inform me what crime I had committed. And when I asked them, “What crime have I committed? I must know at least,” the answer was loaded guns – twelve loaded guns surrounding my jet airplane.
When guns are answers, then you can be certain civilization is far away.
They did not have any arrest warrant. The simple thing for the court would have been… but they not only arrested me, they were clever, they had deliberately arrested me at such a time that I would have to be in jail for at least two days. On Monday the court would open – only then could I be bailed out. They themselves were certain that I would be bailed out because there was no reason to hold me; they didn’t have any proof, any evidence against me. They had chosen a certain situation in which for two days the court was closed – so at least they would have the satisfaction of torturing me for two days. On the third day… I was not amazed when the court refused to give me bail.
The magistrate, a woman, did not even allow my attorneys to question the fact that I had been arrested without any arrest warrant. In a democratic country which claims to be the greatest democratic country in the world, the court would not allow them even to discuss it, because to discuss it would be an exposure. There was no question of giving me bail. In the first place I had been arrested without any warrant, and even after three days they didn’t have the warrant – the question of bail does not arise. The bail was not given.
In the second court, in a higher federal court, again the question, What about my arrest? – which is the basic question – was not discussed.
Everything else is secondary. First, you arrest somebody without even telling him why he is being arrested….
And in these human rights, these same politicians sitting in America, say that nobody can be arrested without an arrest warrant; this is a fundamental human right. If I was not arrested, I might not have known.
They say nobody should interfere in anybody’s philosophy, religion, political ideology – that is every individual’s birthright. But my commune in America has been destroyed for the simple reason that Christianity – my being not a white man, my commune being universal…. There were black people, there were people from all over the world. It was the only place where there was no discrimination of any kind. They destroyed a commune which was fulfilling human rights in every detail.
On the surface man has become civilized, but deep in the darker parts of his unconsciousness he is still barbarous.
Osho, Sermons in Stones, Ch 26 (part 1 of 4)
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