Osho speaks on human rights; part 3 of 4.
Part 1: Human rights are just hypocrisies
Part 2: Nowhere in the world are any of the basic rights being applied
Article one: All human beings are born free.
This is absolutely nonsense.
If all human beings are born free, leave a child in freedom: he will die within twenty-four hours. Man’s child is the most helpless child in the whole world – what freedom can he have? He cannot walk, he cannot talk, he cannot fly….
In fact, one scientist had the idea – and I feel some sympathy with his idea – that human child is born earlier than he should be. He needs at least nine months more in the mother’s womb because he is not complete, he’s still growing. You see animals, kids – they are born and they start walking around and searching for food. They are more independent and they are more complete. For the human child it is impossible to survive without the support of the mother and the father and the family or other human beings.
What freedom can he have?
This is what I say is the most cunning part of the politician’s mind: He is giving you the idea that you don’t need freedom. “Don’t ask for freedom. You are born free; all human beings are born free.”
All human beings are born utterly helpless and dependent. It may take years for them to be free. Then too, millions of people never become free. This declaration is saying that they are born free. I am saying millions of people die – even then they are not free. And you know it from your life: you are not free.
The husband is there, the wife is not free. The wife is there, the husband is not free. I have seen husbands and wives walking on the road – the husband is not even free to look here and there! He looks straight ahead, like a Buddhist monk, just four feet ahead. And his wife is looking out of the corner of her eye – where is he. What kind of freedom is this? The moment the husband reaches home, the first question is: “Where have you been?” – and you are a free man – “Why are you late?”
When I was in school, I was usually late. Life outside was so beautiful, and around my school there were so many mango trees. And when the mango season comes, just to pass by the side of mango trees – such fragrance, such sweetness in the air. The mango is certainly the king of all the fruits. There were other fruit trees too, and I was mostly in those trees rather than in class.
On the first day when I reached middle school, I was half an hour late. The teacher said, “This won’t do. At least with me, this will not do. If you have to study my subject, you have to be here before I come into the class – five minutes earlier. Why are you late?”
I said, “Listen – just because of this question I am not going to get married!”
He said, “What? The question of marriage?”
I said, “I will explain to you: I have been hearing it everywhere in my neighborhood; every wife is asking, ‘Where have you been? Why are you late?’ and I have decided that these questions I am not going to answer. So I am sacrificing my whole life – I’m not going to get married – because of this question, and you think I will answer it for you? I would rather change the subject. Goodbye!”
He said to the class, “This is a strange boy. Irrelevant things he brings in – marriage? What has marriage to do with my subject, geography?”
But he became interested in me. After school he caught hold of me and he said, “Now, we can sit. I want to understand what is the matter. Why?”
I said, “Nobody has the right to ask me why I am late, where I have been. It is my life: If I want to spoil it, it is my right. You are only a servant, to teach geography. You are not there to ask such questions to create dependence in me. I hate such questions. I can leave the school; I can completely forget about being educated, there is no need. Because if Jesus, without being educated, can experience himself; if Kabir, without being educated, can know the ultimate…. I am not interested in any business, in any service, in any employment. So if you want me in your class, you will have to be a little more human – not continuously interfering in my freedom.”
This first article says: “All human beings are born free.”
These are the strategies of hypnotizing and conditioning humanity. They have given you the idea that you are born free – now there is no need to fight for freedom, there is no need to create an inner revolution which makes you really free – free from everything, free from the body… because the body is a bondage.
The East is far more truthful. It says you are born in bondage, not that you are born free. Your body is a prison and your mind and your brain are prisons. Your consciousness is confined in a very small space, and your consciousness is capable of spreading all over the universe. Because you don’t know the potential, you think this is all you are.
These people, according to me, are criminals – greater criminals than those who go to the gallows – because they are deceiving the whole of humanity. But the deception is very clever: “You are born free.” Naturally, freedom is not a question, not something to be created, to be deserved, to be earned, to be worthy of; you are already free!
George Gurdjieff is the only man in the whole of history who has said such a tremendously significant thing: “You don’t have any soul.” Now, throughout the whole world, all the religions believe that you have a soul, that you come with a soul. George Gurdjieff’s voice is alone in the whole of history, saying that not all men are with a soul; the place of the soul is empty. There is a possibility – you can work, you can create the soul – but you are not born with it.
I know, and Gurdjieff knows that you are born with a soul – but the idea that we are born with a soul has not been helpful. It has made man more asleep: We are born with a soul, God is within you, the kingdom of God is within you, so what do you have to do? Things that are not within you, work hard to get them – money, power, respectability – because nobody says, “Every child is born with money, every child is born with political power, every child is born with respectability.” Nobody will say that. These things have to be earned.
Freedom, consciousness, God, whatever you call it, has to be discovered. It is hidden, dormant; it has to be made dynamic, has to be made fully mature. It should be brought to flower and fruition. But to tell people, “You are born free – and equal in dignity and rights”…. People can go on lying so smoothly, with such beautiful words – destroying those words.
Nobody is equal.
This is a psychological truth.
Neither in your body nor in your mind nor in your talents… nor among your geniuses – nobody is equal. A Sigmund Freud is a Sigmund Freud; a Bertrand Russell is a Bertrand Russell; a D.H. Lawrence is a D.H. Lawrence. There is not even one other D.H. Lawrence, and never will be.
Each individual is unique.
This idea of equality is so ugly, but it has become almost the religion of the contemporary man – ‘equality’.
I say to you, it is the most destructive idea that has penetrated into the human mind. You have to be reminded about your uniqueness.
All human beings are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
These are all assumptions without any validity. All human beings are not born with reason, are not endowed with reason.
For example, there are people, very few… I have just named Bertrand Russell – he can be said to be endowed with reason. A J. Krishnamurti… but ordinary people are living with all kinds of superstitions. Unless you have dropped all your superstitions, you cannot be said to be a rational person. What does reason mean? For the Hindus, the cow is the mother. This is ‘reason’.
I was talking to a shankaracharya – the equivalent of the pope to the Hindus – and I asked him, “Are you sure that the cow is your mother?”
He said, “What do you mean?”
“Now,” I said, “just entering your temple, I met your mother. So I was puzzled: who is your mother, this woman or the cow? Or perhaps one is your step-mother?”
He said, “What are you talking about? The woman is my biological mother, but the cow is my spiritual mother.”
I said, “My God! What about the bull? You must have some relationship with the bull or not? – your spiritual father? And who are you? – just a bull; or perhaps castrated, not even a bull.”
You live with superstitions, and you talk about reason.
All Christians believe – and the whole group of politicians who have drawn up this declaration, ninety percent of them are Christians – they all believe that Jesus is born of a virgin mother. And they are rational beings….
It happened: One college girl got pregnant. She tried to hide it, but there are a few things you cannot hide. Truth is one, pregnancy is another! It is just impossible; it goes on becoming bigger and bigger.
Finally her mother discovered it. She said, “What is the matter?” And the girl had to confess. The mother took her to the doctor.
The doctor examined her and said, “Even without examining her… she is pregnant – and eight months. Now abortion is not possible.”
The mother started shouting and screaming at the girl: “You have blackened our name, destroyed our respectability in the society.”
But the girl said, “Mom, I have not even touched the hand of a man. How can I be pregnant? This is impossible!”
Hearing this, the doctor got out of his chair, went to the nearby window and looked at the sky.
The mother said, “Why you are looking there?”
He said, “I am looking for the three wise men from the East.”
She said, “What do you mean?”
He said, “And I am also looking for the star because it happened once – when Jesus was born. The star came, leading three wise men. It seems it has happened again – a virgin birth!”
But ask these Christians, “Where is your rationality?” Jesus is born out of a virgin mother. He is crucified and he’s resurrected too, he makes dead people come back to life – and these are the fundamentals on which the faith of a Christian depends. You just take a few things out – it is very strange – and you will find Christianity to be the most irreligious religion, the poorest as far as religiousness is concerned.
The virgin birth – cancel it, if you have reason. Resurrection – cancel it, if you have reason. Walking on water – cancel it. Raising the dead back to life – cancel it. Changing water into alcohol – not only cancel it, but find the guy and give him to the police, because it is a crime, it is not a miracle. But if all these things are cancelled, what remains in Christianity? That is the poverty of Christianity.
In Buddhism, you cannot cancel anything because nothing is based on superstition. Buddha himself has cancelled anything that smells of superstition – it is just pure rationality.
But to say that man is endowed with reason by birth…. It doesn’t seem so. Looking at the world, it doesn’t seem that it is a rational world. We have not been living according to reason, we have been living according to all kinds of irrational things.
But these are sweet words to believe: that you are endowed with reason. The more idiotic you are, the more you will believe it, and sooner.
… and conscience, and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Conscience arises only after deep meditation – never before it. It is a flowering of meditation. Only very few people in the whole world, in the whole of history, have been conscious, have had conscience. Both the words mean the same, but because of religious people, in all the languages except French they have created different meanings for the two words. Only in French is ‘conscience’ and ‘consciousness’ one word, it means the same thing.
Religions around the world have tried to take conscience separately from consciousness for a certain reason: consciousness comes only after meditation. How long can you deceive people?
It is just like when you bring light into the room, and darkness disappears. The moment you are in a meditative state, you have consciousness, awareness.
They created another word, ‘conscience.’ And conscience is what the priests, the church, the religion, teach you about what is good, what is bad, what is virtuous, what is sin – all these teachings make your conscience. It is a very clever trick to separate conscience from consciousness.
There can be no conscience without consciousness.
But they have created a false, artificial conscience.
For example, I was born in a very ancient religion – perhaps the ancient most. It is a small religion as far as numbers are concerned, but they have their superstitions.
Up to the age of eighteen I had not seen a tomato in my house. Do you think tomatoes are dangerous people? But because the color of the tomato is the color of meat, that was enough to debar it. Up to the age of eighteen I had never eaten in the night, because it is prohibited by that religion – you can eat only between sunrise and sunset. Eating in the night you may eat some insect, some ant: some violence may happen. So it is better to eat in light, in full light.
When I was eighteen my friends were going to see a beautiful castle very close by, a few miles away. I went with them. I had no idea, I had not even thought about it, but going up the hill to the castle… and it was so beautiful, so old, and there were so many things to see, that nobody was ready to prepare food.
I asked, “Do something – soon the sun will be setting and I am feeling very hungry, you are feeling hungry. The whole day long we have been moving on the mountain… it has been tiring, but it has been an experience.”
They said, “As long as the sun is there, we don’t want to miss. There are a few more things to see.”
I was the only one who was not accustomed to eating in the night. They were all eating at night so there was no question. By nine or ten o’clock in the night, they had prepared such delicious food – and particularly after the whole day’s hunger, starvation, and moving on the mountain, I was in a dilemma – what to do? Then I told them: “There is a great difficulty. I have never eaten in the night, and the religion in which unfortunately I have been born, thinks that if you eat in the night, you will go to hell. I don’t want to go to hell just for one night’s food, but I cannot sleep either. Moreover, the smell of your food is too much!”
They persuaded me, saying, “We will not tell your parents or anybody. Nobody will ever know that you have eaten in the night.”
I said, “That is not the point – I will know. The question is not my parents or anybody. You can tell the whole world, that’s not the problem. The problem is that I cannot conceive of myself eating at night, after eighteen years of continuous conditioning.” But they persuaded me – and I had to be persuaded. I ate, but I could not sleep; I had to vomit the whole night. Now, nobody else vomited. Twenty persons were with me; they all slept – they were tired, they had eaten good food. They slept well. I had to remain awake the whole night, vomiting. Unless I was completely clean of the food, I could not sleep. It was just in the morning nearabout five that I went to sleep. That gave me the idea: perhaps eating in the night is dangerous. Just one time and the whole night became hell! And those who have been eating in the night for their whole lives… perhaps the idea that they go to hell is right. But the whole world is eating in the night. If it is true, then everybody will be going to hell. And these twenty friends are sleeping so beautifully – nobody has vomited so nothing was wrong with the food, and nothing is wrong with these people. Something is wrong in my conditioning; I have been brought up with a wrong idea.
But once you accept something, this creates a false conscience that goes on telling you, “Don’t do this, do this.” This is not consciousness. Consciousness simply knows what to do, what not to do. There is no question of choice. Consciousness is a choiceless state – you simply know what is right. You are not born with conscience. It has been created by the religions, and they have exploited man through creating conscience. It is time that we should drop the word ‘conscience’ because it has become associated with a long past and has wrong connotations. You should use the word ‘consciousness.’ But consciousness is the fragrance of your becoming absolutely silent; it does not come with your birth. Yes, if you can attain consciousness, you will have a new birth; you will be reborn. That’s what Jesus meant when he said to Nicodemus, “Unless you are born again, you will not understand me.” He does not mean in your next life. He means that you will have to transform your being, rise in your consciousness: “Only then will you be able to understand me.” If you have consciousness and silence and meditativeness, there is no need to say that the whole of humanity is one. It is – it is your experience. And it will not be only a brotherhood, it will be a brotherhood and a sisterhood! But it will be just a by-product; there is no need to declare it as a fundamental right.
Osho, Sermons in Stones, Ch 26 (part 3 of 4)
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