WHAT MAKES PEOPLE STUPID-Osho

 

WHAT MAKES PEOPLE STUPID

 

The mystics have compared man to a ladder. The ladder can be used for two things: You can use it to go upward, and you can use it to go downward. You use the same ladder for both purposes, only your direction changes. The ladder is the same, but the result will be totally different.

 

      Man is a ladder between heaven and hell. That's why it is only human beings who repress, who manipulate, who kill, who try to conquer the natural flow of nature. Only human beings are stupid--and that is because they can be buddhas. Because human beings have intelligence, that's why they can be stupid. Stupidity does not mean the absence of intelligence; it simply means you have not used it. If there is no presence of intelligence you cannot call h u m a n beings stupid. You cannot call a rock stupid--a rock is a rock, there is no question of stupidity. But you can call humans stupid because with humans there is hope, a ray of great light. With the human being, a door opens toward the beyond. Man can transcend himself and he is not doing it--that's his stupidity. He can grow, and he is not growing, he is clinging to all kinds of immaturity--that is his stupidity. He goes on and on living in the past, which is no more --that is his stupidity. Or he starts projecting into the future, which is not yet--that is his stupidity.

 

       O n e should live in the present with deep passion, with great love, with intensity, with awareness, and that will become your intelligence. It is the same energy--upside down it is stupidity; rearrange it, put it right, and it becomes intelligence.

 

      Intelligence and stupidity are not separate energies. The energy that functions in harmony is intelligence; the same energy functioning in contradictions is stupidity. Man can be stupid--but don't think this is unfortunate. It appears on the surface that it is unfortunate, but hidden behind it is great glory, great splendor, which can be discovered.

 

      But the society--the so-called religions, the state, the crowd—wants you to be stupid. Nobody wants you to be intelligent. They all condition you to remain stupid your whole life for the simple reason that stupid people are obedient. Intelligent people start thinking on their own; they start becoming individuals. They start having their own life, their own lifestyle, their own way of seeing, of being, of growing. They are no longer part of the crowd--they cannot be. They have to leave the crowd behind, only then can they grow. And the crowd feels offended; the crowd does not want anybody to be more than the "average person"-- one who becomes more intelligent, more individual, more aware, will not be any longer part of the mob psychology.

 

      You cannot force a buddha to follow stupid people, and the stupid people are many--the majority, 99.9 percent. They have a great power with them, the power of violence--and they show it whenever it is needed.

 

                          SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

 

The human being is in a dilemma for the simple reason that he is not only intelligent, he is also aware of his intelligence. That is something unique about man--his privilege, his prerogative, his glory--but it can turn very easily into his agony. Man is conscious that he is intelligent. That consciousness brings its own problems. The first problem is that it creates ego.

 

      Ego does not exist anywhere else except in human beings, and ego starts growing as the child grows. The parents, the schools, colleges, university, they all help to strengthen the ego for the simple reason that for centuries man had to struggle to survive, and the idea has become a fixation, a deep unconscious conditioning, that only strong egos can survive in the struggle of life. Life has become just a struggle to survive. And scientists have made it even more convincing with the theory of the "survival of the fittest." So we help every child to become more and stronger in the ego, and it is there that the problem arises.

 

     As the ego becomes strong it starts surrounding intelligence like a thick layer of darkness. Intelligence is light, ego is darkness. Intelligence is very delicate, ego is very hard. Intelligence is like a rose flower, ego is like a rock. And if you want to survive, they say--the so-called authorities--then you have to become rocklike, you have to be strong, invulnerable. You have to become a citadel, a closed citadel, so you cannot be attacked from outside. You have to become impenetrable.

 

       But then you become closed. Then you start dying as far as your intelligence is concerned because intelligence needs the open sky, the wind, the air, the sun in order to grow, to expand, to flow. To remain alive it needs a constant flow; if it becomes stagnant it becomes, slowly, a dead phenomenon.

 

       We don't allow children to remain intelligent. The first thing is that if they are intelligent they will be vulnerable, they will be delicate, and they will be open. If they are intelligent they will be able to see many falsities in the society--in the state, in the church, in the educational system.

 

 

They will become rebellious. They will be individuals; they will not be cowed easily. You can crush them, but you cannot enslave them. You can destroy them, but you cannot force them to compromise.

 

      In one sense intelligence is very soft, like a rose flower, in another sense it has its own strength. But that strength is subtle, not gross. That strength is the strength of rebellion, of a non-compromising attitude. One is ready to die, one is ready to suffer, but one is n o t ready to sell one's soul.

 

      And the whole society needs slaves; it needs people who function like robots, machines. It does not want people, it wants mechanisms. Hence the whole conditioning is to make the ego strong. It serves a double purpose. First, it gives the person the feeling that now he can struggle in life. And secondly it serves the purposes of all the vested interests. They can exploit the person; they can use him as a means to their own ends.

 

      Hence the whole educational system rotates around the idea of ambition; it creates ambitiousness. Ambitiousness is nothing but ego. "Become the first, become the most famous. Become a prime minister or a president. Become world known; leave your mark on history." It does not teach you to live totally. It does not teach you to love totally. It does not teach you to live gracefully, it teaches you h o w to exploit others for your own purposes. And we think that the people w h o are clever are the ones w h o succeed. They are cunning, but we call them clever. They are not intelligent people.

 

      An intelligent person can never use another person as a means; he will respect the other. An intelligent person will be able to see the equality of all. Yes, he will see the differences too, but differences make no difference as far as equality is concerned. He will have tremendous respect for others' freedom--he cannot exploit them, he cannot reduce them to things, he cannot make them stepping-stones to the fulfillment of some absurd desire to be the first. Hence we go on conditioning children.

 

      But before that conditioning happens, children are immensely intelligent. It has been said by Buddha, by Lao Tzu, by Jesus, by all the awakened ones. Jesus says: Unless you are like a small child there is no hope for you. Again he says: Unless you become like small children you can- not enters into my kingdom of God. Again and again he repeats one of his most famous beatitudes: Blessed are those who are the last in this world, because they will be the first in my kingdom of God. He is teaching no ambitiousness--to be the last. He says: Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the kingdom of God--the meek, the humble, the people who are standing last in the queue. It was natural, very natural, that the society he was born in was against him, because he was destroying the very roots of their ambitiousness.

 

      And Jews have been very ambitious people, so much so that for centuries, against all hazards, they have carried the idea in their minds that they are the chosen people of God. A thousand and one calamities have happened because of this stupid idea; if they can drop it they will be more accepted in the world. But they cannot drop it--their whole ego is involved in it. And it is an ancient ego, at least three thousand years old. Since Moses they have been carrying the idea that they are the chosen people of God. And here comes this m a n w h o says, "Be the last!" We are meant to be the first, and he says, "Be humble and meek!" And we are the chosen people! If we are humble and meek then those who are not chosen will become the first! And Jews are earthly people; they don't bother much about the other world. They are worldly: "Who knows about the other world? He is saying, 'If you are the last here you will be the first in my kingdom of God.' But where is your kingdom of God? It may be just a fiction, just a dream."

 

      Jesus looks like a dreamer, a poet maybe. But he is destroying their very foundation. They cannot forgive him; they have not even forgiven him yet. They still carry the idea that "we are the chosen people." They have suffered m u c h for it; the more they have suffered the stronger the idea has become--because if you have to face suffering, you have to become more and more egoistic, more rocklike, so that you can fight, struggle, so that nobody can destroy you. But they have also become very closed.

 

                                                     

      Jesus was creating an opening for them; they refused him. He was telling them to come into the open sky. He was telling them to be just ordinary: "Drop this nonsense of being special." If they had listened to Jesus their whole history would have been different, but they could not listen.

 

       Hindus did not listen to Buddha for the same reason--Hindus are also carrying the idea they are the holiest people in the world and their land is the holiest land. Even the gods long to be born in India! No other country is so holy. And Buddha said, "This is all nonsense!" They had to reject him. Buddhism was thrown out of India. No society can tolerate such people, w h o are telling the truth, because they seem to sabotage the very structure of things.

 

       But now the time has come when we have suffered enough. All over the world, in different ways, people have suffered much, and it is time to have a look at history and its stupidity and its ridiculousness and drop the whole idea of these egoistic patterns.

 

Watch small children and then you will see their intelligence. True, they are not knowledgeable. If you want them to be knowledgeable, then you will not think that they are intelligent. If you ask them questions that depend on information, then they will look not intelligent. But ask them real questions, which have nothing to do within formation, which need an immediate response, and see--they are far more intelligent than you are. Of course your ego won't allow you to accept it, but if you can accept it, it will help tremendously. It will help you; it will help your children, because if you can see their intelligence you can learn much from them.

 

       Even though the society destroys your intelligence it cannot destroy it totally; it only covers it with many layers of information. And the whole function of meditation is to take you deeper into yourself. It is a method of digging into your own being to the point when you come to the living waters of your own intelligence, when you discover the springs of your own intelligence. When you have discovered your child again, when you are reborn, then, only then will you understand why the buddhas have been emphasizing again and again that children are really intelligent.

 

      Start watching children, their responses--not their answers but their responses. Don't ask them foolish questions, ask them something immediate which does not depend on information and see their response.

 

      The mother was preparing little Pedro to go to a party. When she finished combing his hair she straightened his shirt collar and said, "Go now, son. Have a good time . . . and behave yourself!"

 

 "Come on, Mother!" said Pedro. "Please decide before I leave which it is going to be!"

 

      You see the point? T h e child's response is really of tremendous value. He says, "Please decide before I leave which it is going to be. If you allow me to have a good time, then I cannot behave; if you want me to behave, then I cannot have a good time." The child can see the contradiction so clearly; it may not have been apparent to the mother.

 

       A passerby asks a boy, "Son, can you please tell me what time it is?"

 

      "Yes, of course," replies the boy, "but what do you need it for? It's always changing!"

 

      A new traffic sign was put in front of the school. It read: "Drive Slowly. Do Not Kill a Student!"

 

      The following day there was another sign under it scribbled in a childish writing: "Wait for the Teacher!"

      Little Pierino comes home from school with a big smile on his face.

    "Well, dear, you look very happy. So you like school, do you?"

    "Don't be silly, Mom, "replies the boy. "We mustn't confuse the going with the coming back!"

      The father was telling stories to his sons in the living room after dinner. "My great-grandfather fought in the war against Rosas in Brazie, my uncle fought in the war against the Kaiser, my grandfather fought in the war of Spain against the Republicans, and my father fought in the Second World War against the Germans."

 

     To which the smallest son replied, "What's wrong with this family? They can't relate to anybody!"

 

                          STRIVING FOR EFFICIENCY

 

You will be surprised to know that your schools, colleges, and universities don't exist, in fact, to help you to become intelligent--no, not at all. I have been associated with universities as a student and then as a professor, for many years. I know the very inner structure of your educational system. It is not concerned with creating intelligence in people. Of course it wants to create efficiency--but efficiency is not intelligence, efficiency is mechanical. A computer can be very efficient, but a computer is not intelligent.

 

      Never think that intelligence and efficiency is synonymous. Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon. Efficiency is not intelligence, it is mechanical expertise. The universities are concerned with creating efficiency so that you can be better clerks and better bureaucrats and managers. But they are not concerned with creating intelligence--in fact, they are all against intelligence. The whole structure of your educational system all over the world is to make you more and more capable of memorizing things.

 

      Memory is a biocomputer. Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon. Intelligence arises out of meditation, intelligence arises out of rebellion. Intelligence does not arise out of memory. But your examinations only concern themselves with your memory. Whoever has a better memory is thought to be more intelligent. But it happens many times that stupid people have beautiful memories, and intelligent people are not so good as far as m e m o r y is concerned.

 

      Thomas Edison was not good as far as memory is concerned. He invented hundreds of scientific gadgets; nobody else before him had invented so many things. Just the quantity of his inventions is enormous, unbelievable. You may not be aware that you are using Edison's inventions every day: The gramophone record, the radio, the electric bulb, the fan, the loudspeaker--all these things come from the creativity of one single person, Edison. But his memory was lousy, very sloppy, so much so that once he even forgot his own name, which is really very difficult! It is almost impossible to forget your own name. If you can forget your own name you can forget anything. He managed to do the least likely thing.

 

       In the First World War, rationing came for the first time into existence in America, and he was standing in a queue to take his ration card. Slowly he came closer to the window. T h e n the last person in front of him moved and they called his name: "Thomas Alva Edison!" And he looked around as if they were calling somebody else; he looked up and down the queue . . .

 

       One man recognized him, and said, "As far as I know, you are Thomas Alva Edison. Why you are looking here and there?"

 

       Edison said, "You are right! I had completely forgotten! Many thanks that you reminded me. Yes, I am Thomas Alva Edison."

 

       His wife used to have to keep everything in order because his whole room was in constant chaos--thousands of papers, research papers—and whenever he wanted to find something it would take days to figure out where it was. He kept forgetting everything. He might have invented something and would start inventing it again. And his wife would remind him, "You have done it! It is already in the market!"

 

      He used to keep loose papers around, and would go on writing down whatever thought came to his mind. Then those loose papers would be lost here and there. His wife told him, "It would be better if you would keep a notebook."

 

      He said, "That's a beautiful idea! Why did it never occur to me?" But then he lost the whole notebook! He said, "Look what happened when I followed your suggestion. With loose papers at least one thing was good -- once in a while I would lose a few notes, but not all of them. Now all my notes are lost!"

 

      Albert Einstein was not a man who had a good memory. He failed many exams in school simply because he could not memorize anything. This greatest mathematician of all the ages, and for ages to come, was incapable of counting small amounts of money. He would have to count again and again. Once he was traveling in a bus. He gave the conductor some money; the change was returned to him. He counted it once, twice, thrice, and each time the result was different, so he started counting the fourth time.

 

      The conductor was watching and he said, "What is the matter with you? Don't you know figures? Thrice you have counted, now you are counting a fourth time! Don't you know how to count change?"

 

      Einstein said, "Yes, I am a little lousy in math."

      This man who had worked out the greatest mathematics possible was incapable of counting small amounts of money. He would go into his bathroom and would not come out for hours because he would forget where he was and that he should come out. One of my friends, Doctor Ram Manohar Lohia, went to see him. He told me, "I had to wait six hours because he was in the bathroom! And his wife kept apologizing again and again. She said, ' He is in the bathroom, he is still in the bathroom.' I said, 'But what is he doing in the bathroom?' The wife said, ' Nobody knows . . . but if you disturb him he becomes very angry--he starts throwing things! But he always forgets; whenever he goes in there he for- gets to come out. N o w we have to wait until whenever he comes. When he starts to feel hungry or thirsty or something, then he will remember.' "

 

 

      Doctor Lohia asked, "But what is he doing in there?"

      The wife said, "I have also been curious about that for all these years. In the beginning I used to peep through the keyhole--what is he doing? He sits in the bathtub playing with soap bubbles! When I asked him, what you are doing?' he said, 'Don't disturb me--never disturb me, because it is in playing with soap bubbles that I have discovered the theory of relativity. It is through playing with soap bubbles that I came to understand that the universe is expanding just like a soap bubble. It goes on expanding and one day it will burst--just like a soap bubble!'"

 

   If you look d o w n the ages you will find thousands of geniuses with very bad memories and thousands of people who had tremendous memories with no intelligence at all--because memory and intelligence come from different sources. M e m o r y is part of the mind -- intelligence is part of no mind. Intelligence is part of your consciousness, and memory is part of your brain. The brain can be trained--that's what the universities go on doing. All your examinations are tests for your memory, not for your intelligence. The universities give you the wrong impression--as if memory is intelligence. It is not.

 

    This whole educational system exists to destroy intelligence or to divert you from intelligence toward memory. Memory is useful, utilitarian. Intelligence is dangerous; it has no utility for the status quo, it has no utility for the vested interests. Intelligent people have always proved to be difficult people just because of their intelligence. They cannot bow down to any stupid thing. And our society is full of superstitions, stupidities--all kinds of nonsense prevail in the name of religion, in the name of politics, in the name of literature, art.

 

                  REPRESSION AND MANIPULATION

 

Each child is distracted, is diverted. Hence there is so much stupidity. It is really a miracle how a few people have escaped from this prison--a Buddha, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu, a Jesus, a Pythagoras . . . very few people. It is almost impossible to escape from this prison because the prison is all around, and it starts from the very beginning. From your very childhood you are conditioned to be a prisoner--a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan. And when you are prisoners of churches, nations, races, then naturally there is going to be violence.

 

      No animal is as violent as man. Animals kill but they kill only when they are hungry, otherwise not. Man is the only animal who enjoys killing for no reason at all, as if killing in itself is a blissful activity.

 

       One day in a restaurant a lion and a hare entered. The manager was shocked; he could not believe his eyes. A great silence fell over the restaurant. Many people were there eating, talking, gossiping; all became absolutely silent. What was happening? The manager rushed to the new customers. Somehow he managed to stammer to the hare, "What would you like, sir?"

 

      The hare asked for coffee. The manager asked, "And what would your friend like to have?"

     The hare laughed and he said, "Do you think if he were hungry I would be here? He is not hungry; otherwise he would have eaten his breakfast and I would be gone! We can be together only when he is not hungry."

 

       A Hon won't kill if he is not hungry. It is only man who kills for no reason at all--for stupid ideas. One can understand--if somebody is hungry, one can understand. But one cannot understand Hiroshima and Nagasaki--destroying a hundred thousand people within three minutes, just for the sheer joy of destruction.

 

       This is happening because we have not allowed man's intelligence to flower. And whenever it has happened in any society that intelligence is allowed a little freedom, that society has become weaker than other societies. It happened in India: India remained a slave for two thousand years for many reasons. One of the reasons was the great revolution that was brought by Krishna, Patanjali, Saraha, Mahavira, Buddha. These people brought such a great revolution, such a radical change in the consciousness of India, that many people were released from the bondage of stupidity; a great intelligence was released. The result was that the intelligent people stopped killing, they became nonviolent; they refused to be recruited into the army. Buddhists and Jains refused to be recruited into the army, the Brahmins refused to be recruited into the army. Now this was the cream, and the cream refused to fight. Then very stupid countries and very ordinary people--Huns, Turks, Moghuls, who were backward in every possible way--overran the country. And because the most intelligent people of the younger generation were no longer interested in killing and violence, there was no resistance, no fight. These people conquered the country—a big country was conquered by very small countries. For two thousand years India remained in slavery for that simple reason.

 

       The same thing happened in Athens. Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Heraclitus . . . these were the people w h o released great intelligence, and a climate was created of freedom, of free thinking. It was one of the most beautiful phenomena that was happening on the earth, and it was destroyed by stupid people, barbarians. The whole Greek civilization disappeared.

 

       My own suggestion is that unless we create a world government, intelligence cannot be allowed. The time has come for a world government. National governments are no longer needed: They are things of the past; they are part of our stupid past. Nations are no longer needed, only a world government. And if there is a world government it will have a totally different quality.

 

       Armies will have to be reduced, because there will be no question of fighting with anybody. Now seventy percent of the world's money, wealth, and resources go to the military and military weapons—seventy percent! Only thirty percent is left for other purposes. That means seventy percent of our energy is devoted to killing, to being violent, to being destructive.

 

      A world government is an absolute necessity to save humanity. A n d the quality of the world government will be totally different because it won't need great armies; just small police forces will.be enough. It will take care of all things like the post office, the railway, the airplanes, etcetera--but they are not destructive; they serve people. And once the armies disappear from the world, great intelligence will be released-- because the army is destructive of intelligence. It recruits the healthiest people and destroys their minds, because a real soldier is possible only if the person becomes absolutely mechanical.

 

      Man kills for no reason. Man tries to repress rather than to understand, to manipulate rather than to relate, because to relate with somebody needs great understanding.

 

      Manipulation needs no understanding. Repression is easy, very easy--any fool can do it. That's w h y if you go to the monasteries you will find all kinds of repressions and you will find all kinds of fools gathered together there. I have never come across intelligent monks and nuns; if they are intelligent they will not be monks and nuns anymore. They will renounce that nonsense; they will come out of their so-called religious prisons. But repression needs no wisdom; it simply needs a powerful ego, so you can go on suppressing everything into the unconscious. But whatever you suppress will have to be suppressed again and again--and still it will never be eliminated. It will become more and more powerful as you grow older because you will become weaker. The suppressor will become weaker and the suppressed will remain fresh and young, because it has never been used.

 

       The real problem arises in old age when suppression starts exploding and creates all kinds of ugliness. It is five thousand years of suppression that is creating all our neuroses, all our perversions. Suppress sex and you will become more sexual; your whole life will be colored with sex. You will think always in terms of sexuality and nothing else. Suppress sex and the ugly institution of prostitution will arise, is bound to arise. The more suppressive a society is, the more prostitutes will be found there; the proportion is always the same. You can count your nuns and monks and you can know by counting them how many male and female prostitutes will be in the country. It will be exactly the same number because nature keeps a balance. And perversions… because sexual energy will find its ways, its own ways. Either it will create neurosis or hypocrisy. Both are ill states. The poor will become neurotic and the rich will become hypocrites.

 

      It is said that when Moses in his rage smashed the tablets of the Ten Commandments, everybody rushed to grab a piece.

 

       Of course the rich and the politicians were the first. They got all the good pieces on which were inscribed, "Commit adultery," "lie," "steal." The poor and all the rest got only the pieces that said, "Thou shalt not," "Thou shalt not."

 

      Repression creates cunningness. You lose authenticity; you lose naturalness, spontaneity you lose truth. You start lying to others, you start lying to yourself. You start finding ways to he and to go on lying. And a single lie will need a thousand other lies to protect it, to support it.

 

                          THE SIN OF DISOBEDIENCE

 

It is said that w h e n Henry Thoreau came out of the university, Emerson gave a big party to celebrate the occasion. And he told the participants, "I am giving this party not because Thoreau has attained great knowledge in the university but because he has been able to come back from the university and he is still intelligent. T h e university has not been able to destroy his intelligence. T h e university has failed, that's why I am giving this party! I respect this young man for the simple reason that he has escaped from the whole cunning strategy that is our education."

 

      Intelligence simply means the ability to respond, because life is a flux. You have to be aware and to see what is demanded of you, what is the challenge of the situation. The intelligent person behaves according to the situation, and the stupid behaves according to the ready-made answers. Whether those answers come from Buddha, Christ, or Krishna, he always carries "scriptures" around himself. He is afraid to depend on himself. T h e intelligent person depends on his own insight. He trusts his own being. He loves and respects himself. T h e unintelligent person respects others.

 

      And you can see the point -- why are the vested interests interested in creating stupidity? Because that is the only way they can get respect. No parents really want their children to be intelligent, because if the children are intelligent they are rebellious, too; they are disobedient, too. Obedience has been imposed on you as a great value--it is not. It is one of the basic causes of the destruction of your intelligence.

 

       I am not saying be disobedient. I am simply saying that when you feel like being obedient, be obedient; when you feel like being disobedient, be true to yourself. Your only responsibility is toward yourself and nobody else.

 

       An intelligent person takes risks. He will be ready to die rather than to compromise. Of course, he will not fight about unnecessary things, he will not fight about nonessentials--but as far as the essentials are concerned he is not going to be obedient.

 

       But you have obeyed even about the essentials. What is your belief in God? You have simply obeyed others. What do you know about God? You have simply obeyed; you have followed your parents, and they followed their parents. Parents are happy with unintelligent children because they are obedient -- they have to be obedient. The children come to know one thing that whatever they do is bound to be wrong, so it is better to listen to the parents' advice.

 

      For thousands of years every society has been telling children, "Respect your parents," because they are afraid of children--they may not respect their parents. And I am not saying to disrespect your parents. I am simply saying that you must first respect yourself. Out of that respect, you can respect your parents, your teachers--you can respect everybody. But if you don't respect yourself, your respect for anybody else is going to be false; deep down there will be hatred. Each child hates his parents . . . deep down he feels, "The parents are my enemies." He can see how his intelligence is being crippled.

 

      After putting her two children to bed one night, a young mother changed into a ragged blouse and an old pair of slacks and proceeded to wash her hair. All during the shampoo she could hear the children growing wilder and noisier. Finishing as hurriedly as possible, she wrapped a large towel around her head, stormed into their room, and put them back to bed with a stern warning to stay there. As she left, she heard the two-year-old say to his sister in a trembling voice, "Who was that?"

 

       This is intelligence!

       But the society is not interested in intelligent people. It is not interested in seekers, it is interested in soldiers. It wants to create soldiers. And unless you are stupid you cannot be a good soldier. The greater you are in your stupidity the better, as far as being a soldier is concerned.

 

       As the last soldier was about to j u m p from the airplane he panicked, grabbed hold of his sergeant and said, "What happens if my second parachute doesn't open, either?"

 

     

      "Don't worry," said the sergeant with a smile. "Just come back and I will give you a new one!"

 

      Life is a beautiful journey if it is a process of constant learning, exploration. Then it is excitement every moment, because every moment you are opening a new door, every moment you are coming in contact with a new mystery.

 

      The word disciple means one who learns, and discipline means the process of learning. But the word has been prostituted. Now discipline means obedience. They have turned the whole world into a Boy Scout camp. High above there is somebody who knows--you need not learn, you have simply to obey. They have turned the meaning of discipline in to its very opposite.

 

      Learning automatically consists of doubting, of questioning, of being skeptical, of being curious--not of being a believer certainly, because a believer never learns. But they have used the word for thousands of years in this way. And it is not only one word that they have prostituted, they have prostituted many words. Beautiful words have become so ugly in the hands of the vested interests that you cannot even imagine the original meaning of the word . . . thousands of years of misuse.

 

      They want everybody to be disciplined the way people are disciplined in the army. You are ordered and you have to do it without asking why. This is not the way of learning! And from the very beginning they have imposed stories on the minds of people--for example that the first sin committed was disobedience. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden because they disobeyed.

 

       I have looked at it in thousands of ways, but I don't see that Adam and Eve committed any sin or any crime. They were simply exploring. You are in a garden and you start exploring the fruits and flowers and what is edible and what is not edible.

 

       And God is responsible, because he prohibited them from two trees. He indicated the trees: "You should not approach these two trees. One is the tree of wisdom, and the other is the tree of eternal life." Just think, if you were Adam and Eve--was not God himself tempting you to go to these two trees? And those two trees were of wisdom and of eternal life--why should God be against them? If he were really a father, one who loved you, he might have pointed to them, saying, "This is a poisonous tree, don't eat from it." Or, "This is the tree of death; if you eat anything from it you will die." But these two trees are perfectly good! Eat as much as you can, because to be wise and to have eternal life is absolutely right.

 

      Every father would want his children to have wisdom and eternal life. This father seems to be absolutely loveless. Not only loveless but, as the devil said to Eve, "He has prevented you from these two trees. Do you know the reason? The reason is that if you eat from these two trees you will be equal to him, and he is jealous. He does not want you to become divine. He does not want you to become gods, full of wisdom and eternal life."

 

       I cannot see that the devil's argument has any flaw in it. It is absolutely right. In fact, he is the first benefactor of humanity. Without him, perhaps there would have been no humanity--no Gautam Buddha, no Kabir, no Christ, no Zarathustra, no Lao Tzu . . . just buffaloes and donkeys, all eating grass, chewing grass contentedly. And God would have been very happy, that his children are very obedient!

 

       But this obedience is poison, pure poison. The devil must be counted as the first revolutionary of the world, and the first m a n to think in terms of evolution, of wisdom, of eternal life.

 

                          JUST FOLLOWING ORDERS

 

All over the world, in every army, they are turning millions of people into machines--of course, in such a way that you don't understand what is going on. Their methodology is very indirect.

 

       What does it mean that thousands of people every morning are marching, following orders: "Right turn, left turn, move forward, move backward." For what is this entire circus going on? And for years it goes on.

 

      This is to destroy your intelligence. For years continuously you go on following any kind of stupid order, meaningless, every day in the morning, every day in the evening--and you are not supposed to ask why. You just have to do it, to do it as perfectly as possible; there is no need for you to understand why. And w h e n a person goes through such training for years, the natural effect is that he stops asking why.

 

      The questioning attitude is the very base of all intelligence. The moment you stop asking why, you have stopped growing as far as intelligence is concerned.

 

      It happened in the Second World War . . .

  A retired army man . . . he had fought in the First World War and he was honored; he was a brave man. And now almost twenty-five years had passed. He had a small farm and lived silently.

 

             He was going from the farm to the town with a bucketful of eggs, and a few people in a restaurant, just jokingly, played a trick on the poor old army man. One of the men in the restaurant shouted, "Attention!" and the man dropped the bucket and stood in the position of attention.

 

    It had been twenty-five years since he had gone through the training. But the training had gone into the bones, into the blood, into the marrow; it had become part of the unconscious. He completely forgot what he was doing--it happened almost autonomously, mechanically.

 

     He was very angry. But those people said, "Your anger is not right, because we can call out any word we want. W h o is telling you to follow it?"

 

     He said, "It is too late for me to decide whether to follow it or not to follow it. My whole mind functions like a machine.

      Those twenty- five years simply disappeared. Attention only means attention. You destroyed my eggs, and I am a poor man . . ."

 

      But this is being done all over the world. And not only today; from the very beginning armies have been trained not to use their intelligence but to follow orders.

 

      You have to understand one thing very clearly: To follow an order and to understand a thing are two diametrically opposite things. If, by understanding, your intelligence feels satisfied and you do something out of that, you are not following an order from the outside; you are following your own intelligence.

 

       I am reminded of another incident in the First World War. In Berlin, a German professor of logic was recruited into the army. There was a shortage of soldiers, and everybody who was physically able was asked to volunteer. Otherwise, they were forcing people to join the army. All the societies, all the nations, all the cultures, have taken, it for granted that the individual exists for them, not vice versa.

 

       To me, just the opposite is the case: T h e society exists for the individual, the culture exists for the individual, and the nation exists for the individual. Everything else can be sacrificed, but the individual cannot be sacrificed for anything. Individuality is the very flowering of existence nothing is higher. But no culture, no society, no civilization is ready to accept that simple truth.

 

       The professor was forced to volunteer for the army. He said, "I am not a man who can fight. I can argue, I am a logician. If you need some-body to argue with the enemies I am ready, but fighting is not my business. It is barbarous to fight."

 

                                     

      But nobody listened, and finally he was brought to the parade grounds. The parade started, and the commander said, "Left turn." Everybody turned left, but the professor remained standing as he was standing.

 

      The commander was a little worried: "What is the matter? Perhaps the man is deaf." So he shouted loudly, "Now turn to the left again!" All the people turned to the left again, but that man remained standing as if he had not heard anything. Forward, backward . . . all the orders were given and everybody followed. That man remained just standing in his place.

 

      He was a well-known professor; even the commander knew him. He could not be treated just like any other soldier, he inspired a certain respect. Finally, w h e n the parade ended and everybody returned to where they had started, the commander went to the professor and asked, "Is there some problem with your ears? Can't you hear?"

 

      He said, "I can hear."

       "But then," the commander said, "why did you remain standing? Why did you not follow the orders?"

       He said, "What is the point? When everybody finally has to come back to the same state, after all this movement going forward and backward, left and right, what have they gained?"

       The commander said, "It is not a question of gaining, it is a question of training!"

      But he said, "I don't need any training. You come to the same place after doing all kinds of stupid things, which I don't see any point in. Can you explain to me why I should turn left and not right?"

       The commander said, "Strange, no soldier asks such questions."

       The professor said, "I am not a soldier, I am a professor. I have been forced to be here, but you cannot force me to do things against my intelligence."

       The commander went to the higher authorities and said, "What to do with this man? He may ruin the others--because everybody is laughing at me and everybody is saying, 'Professor, you did great!' I cannot tackle that man. He asks such questions, and each thing has to be explained: 'Unless I understand it, unless my intelligence supports it, I am not going to do it.'"

 

      T h e commander in chief said, "I k n o w the man. He is a great logician. His whole life's training is in questioning everything. I will take care of him, don't be worried."

 

      He called the professor to his office and said, "I am sorry, but we cannot do anything. You have been recruited; the country needs soldiers. But I will give you some work that will not create any difficulty for you and will not create any difficulty for others. You come with me to the army mess."

 

      He took the professor there, and showed him a big pile of green peas. He told the professor, "Sit down here. You can sort out the big peas on one side and the small peas on the other side. In an hour I will come to see h o w things are progressing."

 

      After an hour he came back. The professor was sitting there and the peas were also sitting there, in the same place. He said, " W h a t is the matter? You have not even started."

 

       The professor said, "For the first and for the last time, I want you all to understand that unless you explain to me . . . Why I should sort out the peas? My intelligence feels insulted by you. Am I an idiot, to sort these peas? W h a t is the need? Moreover, there are other difficulties. Sitting here, I thought that perhaps there could be some need, but there are questions which have to be decided: There are peas that are big and there are peas that are small, but there are peas of many other sizes. Where are they going to go? You have not given me any criteria."

 

       Orders, disciplines, guidelines--these have been used by people who wanted to dominate you, by people w h o wanted to dictate their terms, to enforce their ideas on other people's lives. I call all such people great criminals. To impose their ideas on somebody, to enforce some ideal, some mold, is violence, sheer violence. They are being destructive.