Osho
quotes on Society
- To me, each individual is far more valuable than
society as a whole.
- This whole society, up to now, has been very violent
with the individual. It does not believe in the individual; it is against
the individual. It tries in every possible way to destroy you for its own
purposes. It needs clerks, it needs stationmasters, deputy-collectors,
policemen, magistrates, it needs soldiers. It does not need human beings.
- Because all the societies, all the nations, all the
cultures, have taken it for granted that the individuals exist for them,
not vice-versa. To me, just the opposite is the case: the society exists
for the individual, the culture exists for the individual, the nation
exists for the individual. Everything can be sacrificed, but the
individual cannot be sacrificed for anything. Individuality is the very
flowering of existence -- nothing is higher than it. But no culture, no
society, no civilization is ready to accept a simple truth.
- The society wants you to have beautiful personalities;
the society wants you to have personalities which are comfortable for the
society, convenient for the society. But the person is not the real thing,
the individual is the real thing. The individual is not necessarily always
comfortable to the society -- in fact he is very inconvenient.
- During the first seven years, every society tries to
condition the mind -- and conditioning means nothing but hypnosis: forcing
authority, law, tradition, religion, scripture, the priest, the church,
into the innermost unconscious of the child so that from there you can
control him.
- All the great masters in the world have been saying
only one thing down the centuries, "Have your own mind and have your
own individuality. Don't be a part of the crowd; don't be a wheel in the
whole mechanism of a vast society. Be individual, on your own. Live life
with your own eyes; listen to music with your own ears." But we are
not doing anything with our own ears, with our own eyes, with our own
minds; everything is being taught, and we are following it.
- The individual has totally different interests from the
society, because the society has no soul. The society is soulless. And if
you become too much a part of the society, it will reduce your soul also
to a non-entity. Beware, before you have lost your whole opportunity.
Don't be a slave. Follow society to the point you feel is needed, but
always remain master of your own destiny.
- Remember, character is not of much value. What is
valuable is consciousness -- not conscience but consciousness. Conscience
is created by the society. The more foolish you are, the more the society
is able to create a conscience in you. It gives you an idea how to live
your life. It manipulates you in a very subtle way. It hypnotizes you and
conditions you. And the conditioning is so long that you forget completely
that these are not your ideas.
- Society is just a structure with no soul. The soul is
of the individual. One individual outweighs all societies. And, one
individual's revolution outweighs all revolutions in the whole of history,
because one man can become the womb for God to be reborn.
- The more you become a part of society, the less and
less you are an individual, the less and less you are spontaneous --
because the very membership in the society will not allow you to be
spontaneous. You will have to follow the rules of the game. If you enter a
society, you accept to follow those rules that the society is playing, or
has decided to play.
- Meditation means: put the mind aside and watch. The
first step -- LOVE YOURSELF -- will help you tremendously. By loving
yourself you will have destroyed much that society has implanted within
you. You will have become freer from the society and its conditioning.
- The fool knows nothing of God; he never comes across
anything divine. He remains part of the stupid collectivity. Remember, the
society, the collective has no soul; the soul belongs to the individual.
Hence, those who belong to the collective are destroying every possibility
of being souls.
- Meditation means a state of unconditioned mind.
Meditation is the process of undoing the harm that every society goes on
doing to every individual -- communist or Catholic, Jaina or Jew, it does
not matter. I am not talking about any particular conditioning that is
wrong; I am saying conditioning AS SUCH is wrong.
- I call a man a sannyasin who breaks out of these institutions and lives spontaneously. To be a sannyasin is the most courageous act possible. To be a sannyasin means to live without the mind, and the moment you live without mind you live without society. The mind has created society, and society has created the mind; they are interdependent. To be a sannyasin means to renounce all that is false but not to renounce the world, to renounce all that is unauthentic, to renounce all the answers, to be responsive, spontaneously responsive, and not to think about the reasons, but to be real.
- Law is for the society; love is for the individual. Law
is how you behave with others; love is how you behave with yourself. Love
is an inner flowering; law is an outward performance. Because you live
with people you have to be lawful, but that is not enough -- good, but not
enough.
