REBEL vs. Revolutionary by OSHO <~~dopeness

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.



A revolutionary is part of the political world; his approach is through politics. His understanding is that changing the social structure is enough to change the human being.

A rebel, as I use the term, is a spiritual phenomenon. His approach is absolutely individual. His vision is that if we want to change the society, we have to change the individual. Society in itself does not exist; it is only a word, like "crowd" - if you go to find it, you will not find it anywhere. Wherever you encounter someone, you will encounter an individual. "Society" is only a collective name - just a name, not a reality - with no substance.

The individual has a soul, has a possibility of evolution, of change, of transformation. Hence, the difference is tremendous.

The rebel is the very essence of religion. He brings into the world a change of consciousness - and if the consciousness changes, then the structure of the society is bound to follow it. But vice versa is not the case, and it has been proved by all the revolutions because they have failed.

No revolution has yet succeeded in changing human beings; but it seems we are not aware of the fact. We still go on thinking in terms of revolution, of changing society, of changing the government, of changing the bureaucracy, of changing laws, political systems. Feudalism, capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism - they were all in their own way revolutionary. They all have failed, and failed utterly, because man has remained the same.

We have to be rebels, not revolutionaries. The revolutionary belongs to a very mundane sphere; the rebel and his rebelliousness are sacred. The revolutionary cannot stand alone; he needs a crowd, a political party, a government. He needs power - and power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Human consciousness has not grown for centuries. Only once in a while someone blossoms - but in millions of people, the blossoming of one person is not a rule, it is the exception. And because that person is alone, the crowd cannot tolerate him. His existence becomes a kind of humiliation; his very presence feels insulting because he opens your eyes, makes you aware of your potential and your future. And it hurts your ego that you have done nothing to grow, to be more conscious, to be more loving, more ecstatic, more creative, more silent - to create a beautiful world around you.

Hence a Gautam Buddha or a Chuang Tzu hurts you because they have blossomed and you are just standing there.

The world has known only very few rebels. But now is the time: if humanity proves incapable of producing a large number of rebels, a rebellious spirit, then our days on the earth are numbered. Then the coming decades may become our graveyard. We are coming very close to that point.

We have to change our consciousness, create more meditative energy in the world, create more lovingness. We have to destroy the old - its ugliness, its rotten ideologies, its stupid discriminations, idiotic superstitions - and create a new human being with fresh eyes, with new values. A discontintuity with the past - that's the meaning of rebelliousness.

These three words will help you to understand: reform, revolution, and rebellion.

Reform means a modification. The old remains and you give it a new form, a new shape - it is a kind of renovation to an old building. The original structure remains; you whitewash it, you clean it, you create a few windows, a few new doors.

Revolution goes deeper than reform. The old remains, but more changes are introduced, changes even in its basic structure. You are not only changing its color and opening a few new windows and doors, but perhaps building new stories, taking it higher into the sky. But the old is not destroyed, it remains hidden behind the new; in fact, it remains the very foundation of the new. Revolution is a continuity with the old.

Rebellion is a discontinuity. It is not reform, it is not revolution; it is simply disconnecting yourself from all that is old. The old religions, the old political ideologies, the old human being - all that is old, you disconnect yourself from it. You start life afresh, from scratch.

The revolutionary tries to change the old; the rebel simply comes out of the old, just as a snake slips out of the old skin and never looks back.

The future needs no more revolutions. The future needs a new experiment, which has not been tried yet. Although for thousands of years there have been rebels, they remained alone - individuals. Perhaps the time was not ripe for them. But now the time is not only ripe....if you don't hurry, the time has come to an end. In the coming decades, either mankind will disappear or a new human being with a new vision will appear on the earth. That new human being will be a rebel.

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

When mind knows, we call it knowledge.
When heart knows, we call it love.
And when being knows, we call it meditation.

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.



No religion has been courageous enough to say, "We know this much, but there is much we don't know; perhaps in the future we may know it. And beyond that, there is a space which is going to remain unknowable forever."

A true religion will have the humbleness to admit that only a few things are known, much more is unknown, and something will always remain unknowable. That "something" is the target of the whole spiritual search. You cannot make it an object of knowledge, but you can experience it, you can drink of it, you can have the taste of it - it is existential.

All these religions have been against doubt. They have been really afraid of doubt. Only an impotent intellect can be afraid of doubt; otherwise doubt is a challenge, an opportunity to inquire.

There is doubt, and doubt is not destroyed by believing. Doubt is destroyed by experiencing.

They say, believe. I say, explore. They say, don't doubt; I say, doubt to the very end, till you arrive and know and feel and experience. Then there is no need to repress doubt; it evaporates by itself. Then there is no need for you to believe.

You have to be again innocent, ignorant, not knowing anything, so that the questions can start arising again. Again the inquiry becomes alive, and with the inquiry becoming alive you cannot vegetate. Then life becomes an exploration, an adventure.

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

Everybody is after being extraordinary. That is the search of the ego: to be someone who is special, to be someone who is unique, incomparable. And this is the paradox: the more you try to be exceptional, the more ordinary you look, because everybody is after extraordinariness. It is such an ordinary desire. If you become ordinary, the very search to be ordinary is extraordinary, because rarely does somebody want to be just nobody, rarely does somebody want to be just a hollow, empty space. This is really extraordinary in a way, because nobody wants it. And when you become ordinary you become extraordinary, and, of course, suddenly you discover that without searching you have become unique.

In fact, everybody is unique. If you can stop your constant running after goals for even a single moment, you will realize that you are unique. Your uniqueness is nothing to be invented, it is already there. It is already the case - to be is to be unique. There is no other way of being. Every leaf on a tree is unique, every pebble on the shore is unique, there is no other way of being. You cannot find two identifcal pebbles anywhere on the whole of earth.

Two identical things do not exist at all, so there is no need to be "somebody." You just be yourself, and suddenly you are unique, inconmparable. That's why I say that this is a paradox: those who search fail, and those who don't bother, suddenly attain.

It is said by one of Lao Tzu's great disciples, Lieh Tzu, that once an idiot was searching for fire with a candle in his hand. Said Lieh Tzu: "Had he known what fire was, he could have cooked his rice sooner." He remained hungry the whole night because he was searching for fire but couldn't find it - and he had a candle in his hand, because how can you search in the dark without a candle?

You are searching for uniqueness, and you have it in your hand; if you understand, you can cook your rice sooner. I have cooked my rice and I know. You are unnecessarily hungry - the rice is there, the candle is there, the candle is fire. There is no need to take the candle and search. If you take a candle in your hand and you go searching all over the world, you will not find fire because you don't understand what fire is. Otherwise you could have seen that you were carrying it in your hand.

You need not search for uniqueness, you are unique already. There is no way to make a thing more unique. The words "more unique" are absurd. It is just like the word "circle." Circles exist; there is no such thing as "more circular." That is absurd. A circle is always perfect, "more" is not needed.

There are no degrees of circularity - a circle is a circle, less and more are useless. Uniqueness is uniqueness, less and more don't apply to it. You are already unique. One realizes this only when one is ready to become ordinary, this is the paradox. But if you understand, there is no problem about it, the paradox is there, and beautiful, and no problem exists. A paradox is not a problem. It looks like a problem if you don't understand; if you understand, it is beautiful, a mystery.

Become ordinary and you will become extraordinary; try to become extraordinary and you will remain ordinary.

Excerpt from "The Book of Understanding" by OSHO.

The Highest Elevation

A familiarity. A knowing. An overstanding. A balance. A LOVE. A greatness. A reciprocity. A moment. A passion. A feeling. A-wareness.

Your existence excites my mind. Your frequency penetrates my core. Your knowledge causes spasms in places untouched. You are beautiful.

I AM a goddess. I've saved you a seat - beside me in paradise. Sit. Let us build. Resurrect in this moment.

I see thru to him. He resides inside of me. Heaven becomes where we are. We ascend into a higher elevation. Being freely. We are gods.

One heart. One soul. One pulse. We can breathe together.