Obedient child becomes just the common crowd...

The world never accepts anybody as he is. That is something very fundamental about the world and the way it treats individuals. The individual is small; the individual is born helpless, a child. The world is always big; it has all the power to create or to destroy.

The child has no idea who he is -- and certainly he needs an identity. The world gives him an identity. The world starts making him, manufacturing him according to its own needs.

The world does not exist for the individual. The whole effort is to make the individual exist for the world.

The whole education system, the priest, the politician, the leader, the so-called wise people -- they are all conspiring against the individual. Their conspiracy is to kill his individuality, his freedom, his intelligence -- any possibility of revolt. There should not be left in the individual any seed of saying no. He should be programmed in such a way that he becomes an obedient servant.

Hence, obedience is so much praised: parents like the obedient child, teachers like the obedient student, the society likes the obedient citizen. Those who are not obedient are thought to be misfits, they are condemned. Nobody wants to be condemned, and when the whole world is on one side, a single individual feels so tiny -- a dewdrop against the whole ocean -- that he cannot think himself to be right; the ocean must be right.

Obedience has a certain dumbness about it, disobedience a sharp intelligence about it. But obedience is respected because obedience gives less inconvenience. Of course that's right -- disobedience creates inconvenience. You would like a dead child because he will not create any inconvenience. You would not like an alive child -- the more alive, the more danger there is.

Parents, societies, schools, they all force obedience, they dull you; and then they respect those people. That's why in life you never see people who stand first in schools, universities; in life they are simply lost. You never find them in life, where they go... they prove themselves very talented in school, but somehow in life they are lost. It seems that the ways of school are different from the ways of life. Somehow life loves lively people -- the more lively, the more rebellious: people with their own consciousness, being, and personality; people who have their own ways to fulfill; people who are not dead. Schools prefer just the opposite. The whole society helps you to become dumb, deaf, blind, dead.

The disobedient child is continuously condemned. The obedient child is, on the other hand, continuously praised. But have you heard of any obedient child having become world-famous in any dimension of creativity? Have you heard of any obedient child who has attained the Nobel prize for anything -- literature, peace, science? The obedient child becomes just the common crowd. All that is added to existence is added by the disobedient.

Why have very few people become enlightened in the world? The reason is very simple: they did not dare to remain misfits, condemned, dishonored, rejected their whole life. That's why very few people have been individuals, and very few people have reached to the ultimate explosion of their being. There are people who start, but sooner or later they compromise, seeing the dangers of being just yourself.


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Innocence can be taken advantage of...

The roseflower is beautiful, full of fragrance. The rock is almost just the opposite, but the rock can kill the roseflower very easily.

So one thing has to be understood: the higher you go into silence, love, beauty, the more delicate you become, more fragile. The lower you go -- violent, murderous, criminal -- the harder you become.

Your heart has both the possibilities: to become the rock or to become a roseflower.

The second thing to be understood is: the rock has a certain kind of strength, but that strength is of death. It is not in the service of life; it is in the service of destruction and death. The roseflower also has a certain strength, but it is in the service of life, love and beauty. These are different kinds of strength.

Certainly, you cannot make bullets from roseflowers. That does not mean bullets become more important. You cannot kill somebody with a roseflower. That does not mean the arrow -- a poisonous arrow -- is more powerful than a rose. But it appears so.

The arrow is dead; hence you cannot kill it anymore. Do you think that is strength? Then all the people who are in the grave are stronger than you; they will never die again. You will be dying.

Would you like to change places with the people in the graves? They are, in a way, stronger than you, because death cannot happen to them. But they are dead. What is the point of their strength?

Life is fragile. The higher you go, the more fragile. The tree is not so fragile as the flower. The fragrance is even more fragile than the flower -- just a small breeze can take it away.

This is true, that you see innocence and lovingness all over the place in this commune. Naturally, the question has arisen in your mind that why did something like a fascist calamity happen to you?

Innocence can be taken advantage of. Lovingness can be exploited.

But no harm has been done to you! Fragrance may be fragile; it may exist only for a moment, but that moment is eternity. The rock may exist for eternity, but that eternity is not even equal to a single moment of fragrance.

The people who tried to exploit your innocence and love, your trust, have not destroyed you; they have destroyed themselves.

This is the beauty of the power of love, the power of trust, the power of innocence.

What harm has been done to you? No harm can be done to you. Even if you are killed, your loving being and your trusting being and your inner innocence are eternal. And you have seen the whole drama, that the people who were powerful but in the service of destructiveness had to escape finally.

Love is victorious.

And wherever they will go, a deep feeling of guilt, of inhumanity, of having taken advantage of trusting people, will follow them. They will not have a single night of peaceful sleep.

This is a fundamental law of life: your every action is followed by its result automatically.

The flower releases fragrance. These people have released poison, but the poison has not affected you at all. It has poisoned their own beings, their own growth. They have missed a great opportunity, and perhaps they will have to wait for lives to find it again.

I am not against power. All that is needed is that you should remain aware, more aware than before. Powerless you can afford to be unaware, but when you have power you cannot afford to be unaware. And then power can be of immense help -- to help you to destroy the Nadirshah within you, the Adolf Hitler within you. And if you can come out of power unscratched, then you will have an abundance of love, compassion, beauty, truth.

They have their own strength, but it is of a totally different dimension.


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Slavery has become safety...

What of the ox who loves his yoke... because the yoke, the slavery... although at a very great cost, because no ox is born as a ox. Just see the ox and the bull, and you will know the difference. The bull is a glory, a magnificent phenomenon of strength and power. But he is being castrated. This is something not to forget... because many bulls are not needed.

One bull is enough to make thousands of cows pregnant, he has so much power. You cannot yoke a bull to your vehicle. He is so powerful that with you and your vehicle he may jump into a ditch. If he sees a beautiful lady cow coming on the way he may forget all about the business, throw away the yoke -- first things first!

No bull is of any pragmatic use -- except that he can produce more bulls. But before they become bulls or become aware of their strength, they have to be castrated. They have to be made impotent. Then the same glorious bull is just a poor ox, and goes on and on carrying a bullock cart. Of course he has more security: always enough food, a shelter in rain, in heat. Naturally he thinks that the elk and the deer, the wild animals who have a beauty....

The ox is a crime against poor animals who cannot speak, cannot go to a lawyer and ask, "On what authority are we being made impotent?" But to console himself, he thinks that the deer and the elk and all other wild animals are unnecessarily running here and there, vagabonds: "I am a useful being because I am pulling a cart." And the yoke, the slavery has become his safety.

Bullock carts should disappear from the world. When you have buses and railway trains and cars, what is the need to destroy millions of beautiful bulls? Don't be worried where they will get their food, how they will live. All the wild animals live, get their food, and are immensely happy. The bulls will also be in the forests, in the mountains, amongst their sisters and brothers.

A bullock cart is ugly. It shows man's violence against a silent animal who cannot protest. But somehow he manages to console himself. And this is the same with all people who are consoling themselves in some way or other. In this metaphoric language, Kahlil Gibran is saying to people that you start loving your slavery because it gives you security, safety -- although you lose all your dignity, freedom, glory.


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Freedom from... Freedom for... and then just FREEDOM...

There are three kinds of freedom. One is 'freedom from'; that is a negative freedom: freedom from the father, freedom from the mother, freedom from the church, freedom from the society. That is a negative kind of freedom -- freedom from -- good in the beginning, but that can't be the goal. Once you are free from your parents, what are you going to do? Once you are free from your society then you will be at loss. You will lose all meaning and significance because your whole life had meaning in saying no. Now whom to say no to?

This is 'freedom from'. This is not much of a freedom, but better than nothing.

The second kind of freedom is 'freedom for'; that is positive freedom. Your interest is not in denying something, rather you want to create something. For example, you want to be a poet, and just because you want to be a poet you have to say no to your parents. But your basic orientation is that you want to be a poet and your parents would like you to be a plumber. "Better be a plumber! That is far more paying, far more economical, far more respectable too. Poet?! People will think you are crazy! And how are you going to live? And how are you going to support your wife and your children? Poetry can't pay!"

But if you are for poetry, ready to risk all, this is a higher freedom, better than the first. It is positive freedom -- 'freedom for'. Even if you have to live a life of poverty you will be happy, you will be cheerful. Even if you have to chop wood to remain a poet you will be utterly blissful, fulfilled, because you are doing what you wanted to do, you are doing your own thing. This is positive freedom.

And then there is a third freedom, the highest; in the East we have called it MOKSHA -- the ultimate freedom, which goes beyond both the negative and the positive. First learn saying no, then learn saying yes, and then just forget both, just be. The third freedom is not freedom against something, not for something, but just freedom. One is simply free -- no question of going against, no question of going for. 'Freedom from' is political, hence all political revolutions fail -- when they succeed. If they don't succeed they can go on hoping, but the moment they succeed they fail, because then they don't know what to do. That happened in the French Revolution, that happened in the Russian Revolution...that happens to every revolution. A political revolution is 'freedom from'. Once the Czar is gone, then you are at a loss: What to do now? Your whole life was devoted to fighting the Czar; you know only one thing, how to fight the Czar. Once the Czar is gone you are at a loss; your whole skill is useless. You will find yourself very empty.

'Freedom from' is political...

'Freedom for' is artistic, creative, scientific...

And 'just freedom' is religious...

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The Ten non-commandments...

In the West they have been emphasizing morality. When for the first time the Upanishads of the East were translated into Western languages the scholars were puzzled, because they didn't have anything like the Ten Commandments in the Upanishads -- "Don't do this, do that" -- nothing was there. They were puzzled. How are these Upanishads religious scriptures? Because religion means a morality, religion means,

"Don't do this and do that," it is a DOING. And the Upanishads don't talk about what to do, they only talk about how to be, what to be.

The 10 Commandments
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ONE: 'You shall have no other gods before Me.'
TWO: 'You shall not make for yourself a carved image--any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.'
THREE: 'You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain.'
FOUR: 'Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.'
FIVE: 'Honor your father and your mother.'
SIX: 'You shall not murder.'
SEVEN: 'You shall not commit adultery.'
EIGHT: 'You shall not steal.'
NINE: 'You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.'
TEN: 'You shall not covet your neighbor's house; you shall not covet your neighbor's wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor's.'

Small teachings tell you what to do, what not to do. They give you ten commandments: "Do this, don't do that" -- small teachings. A great teaching doesn't give you any commandment. It is not concerned with what you do, it is concerned with what you are. Your being, your center, your consciousness -- that is the only thing significant.

The Ten non-commandments
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The first: freedom.
The second: uniqueness of individuality.
The third: love.
The fourth: meditation.
The fifth: non-seriousness.
The sixth: playfulness.
The seventh: creativity.
The eighth: sensitivity.
The ninth: gratefulness.
Tenth: a feeling of the mysterious.

Anything practiced is false, pseudo. And you have been told by all your religions to do this, not to do that; you are all carrying ten thousand commandments. But because they have not arisen from your own being, they are just a burden. They don't make you free, they make you Hindus, they make you Mohammedans. They make you Buddhists, they make you Christians, but they don't make you divine beings.

Ten Commandments are just a very small by-product of the Ten non-Commandments.

Morality has nothing ultimate in it. That's why every society has its own morality, every culture has its own morality. One thing can be moral in India and immoral in America; another thing can be moral in America and may be immoral in India. If morality was really real, then it could not differ.

Imagination is a barrier...

Two Jews meet on a train. One asks the other if he has the time.

No answer.

Again he asks. Again, no answer.

Eventually, he taps him hard on the knee and almost shouts his question, and the other at last tells him the time.

"And why did it take you so long, if I may ask?"

"Well, it is like this. We will get talking. We will become friendly. When we get to Vienna, I will ask you to come home with me to have a bite to eat and you will meet my daughter. She is beautiful and you are a nice-looking chap and you will fall in love and you will want to get married and quite frankly, I don't want a son-in-law who has not got a watch."

Such long range thinking! But everybody's mind is doing such things.

Beware: imagination is not going to help. Howsoever beautiful it is, it is just a soap bubble.

Imagination is a great force. On the path of meditation, imagination is a barrier; on the path of love, imagination is a help. On the path of love, imagination is used as a device: you are told to imagine as intensely and passionately as possible. But on the path of meditation the same thing becomes a barrier.

Imagination simply means that you visualize a certain thing but you put so much energy into it that it almost becomes real. Every night we all dream. While dreaming, every dream looks real. To come to know in a dream that this is a dream will be the end of it; then you will find yourself awake. The dream can continue only if you believe that it is real. And even people who are very skeptical, doubting, of the scientific attitude, even they go on believing in the night, they go on believing in their dreams.

Every morning you find that it was just imagination but again every night you become a victim to it. And again when the dream unfolds you start believing it. On the path of meditation that hold of the dream faculty has to be loosened.

if you become interested in so-called big things, you will be missing life...

Respect life, revere life. There is nothing more holy than life, nothing more divine than life. And life does not consist of big things. Those religious fools have been telling you, "Do big things," and life consists of small things. The strategy is clear. They tell you, "Do big things, something great, something that your name will be remembered for afterwards. Do something great." And of course it appeals to the ego. The ego is the agent of the priest. All the churches and all the synagogues and all the temples have only one agent, and that is the ego. They don't use different agencies. There are not other agencies. There is only one agency, and that is the ego -- do something great, something big.

I want to tell you, there is nothing big, nothing great. Life consists of very small things. So if you become interested in so-called big things, you will be missing life.

Your mind has become expert in destroying you, because your life consists of simple things. The whole existence is simple, but man's mind has been cultivated, conditioned, educated, programmed in such a way that the simplest thing becomes crooked. The moment it reaches to your mind it is no longer simple. The mind starts interpreting it, finding things in it which are not there, ignoring things which are there.

Life consists of sipping a cup of tea, of gossiping with a friend; going for a morning walk, not going anywhere in particular, just for a walk, no goal, no end, from any point you can turn back; cooking food for someone you love; cooking food for yourself, because you love your body too; washing your clothes, cleaning the floor, watering the garden... these small things, very small things... saying hello to a stranger, which was not needed at all because there was no question of any business with the stranger.

The man who can say hello to a stranger can also say hello to a flower, can also say hello to the tree, can sing a song to the birds. They sing every day and you have not bothered at all that some day you should return the call. Just small things, very small things....
And I am not talking about going to the synagogue -- that is a big thing; going to the church -- that is a big thing. Leave all that to fools. There are many. And they also need some kind of engagement, occupation; those synagogues, and churches and temples provide it. But to you, existence, nothing but existence, is the only temple.

Nothing but life is the only God.

Respect your life. Out of that respect you will start respecting life in others.