In These Times of Such Confusion – Osho

How did I get so lucky to fall in the grace of your love in these times of such confusion in the world?

Prem Debal, the times of confusion and chaos are the greatest times to live in. When the society is static there is not much to live for, to live with. When a society is secure and there is no confusion and there is no chaos, then people live a dull, drab, dragging life – comfortable, convenient, stable, but not alive.

It is only in the times of chaos and confusion that great things happen, because people are loose. They are loose, uprooted: they can search for new soils, they can search for new lands, they can search for new countries, they can search for new continents of being.

This is one of the greatest moments in the history of human consciousness. It has never been so; this is a crescendo.

Buddha said – and he seems to have detected it richly – that after each twenty-five centuries there comes a moment of great turmoil and chaos. And that is the time when the greatest number of people become enlightened.

Now twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha. Again you are coming closer and closer to a moment where the past will lose all meaning. When the past loses its meaning, you are free, you are untethered from the past: you can use this freedom to grow tremendously, to grow to undreamed-of heights.

But you can destroy yourself too. If you are not intelligent, the confusion, the chaos, will destroy you.

Millions will be destroyed – because of their unintelligence, not because of the chaos. They will be destroyed because they will not be able to find a secure and comfortable and convenient life, as was possible in the past. They will not be able to find where they belong. They will have to live from their own sources; they will have to be individuals, they will have to be rebels.

The society is disappearing, the family is disappearing; now it is very difficult. Unless you are capable of being an individual it is going to be difficult to live. Only individuals will survive.

Now people who have become too accustomed to slavery, accustomed to being commanded, accustomed to being ordered by somebody else – people who have become too much accustomed to father-figures – they will be in a state of insanity. But that is their fault, it is not the fault of the times. The times are beautiful, because the times of chaos are the times of revolution. It is possible now to get out of the wheel of life and death more easily than it has been possible for twenty-five centuries since Buddha. In Buddha’s time, many people became enlightened; the society was in a turmoil. Again it is happening. Great times are ahead – prepare for them.

And that’s what I am trying to do here. Orthodox people cannot understand what is happening here; they have no eyes to see it and no heart to feel it. They only have old rotten values, and they go on judging me according to those values. Those values are out of date. I am creating new people, I am creating new values, I am creating a new future. They live in the past; they cannot understand the future that I am trying to bring here to the earth.

My sannyasins don’t belong to the past, they don’t represent any tradition. They belong to the future: they belong to something that is going to happen and has not yet happened. Hence there are no criteria – they cannot be judged easily, and they will be misunderstood.

I am going to be misunderstood, because people have their values, and those values come from the past. And I am trying to create a space for the future to happen.

You say: How did I get so lucky to fall in the grace of your love in these times of such confusion in the world?

It is not a question of luck, it is a question of intelligence. That is the only luck in the world – intelligence. And remember, everybody is born with intelligence but people don’t use it, because to be intelligent is to live in danger.

The intelligent child will be a constant pain in the neck for the parents; they try to crush his intelligence. Nobody wants an intelligent child, because he creates suspicions in you, he creates doubts in you. An intelligent child asks questions you cannot answer. An intelligent child is a problem for the teachers in the school, in the college, in the university.

An intelligent person will always remain a problem, wherever he is. So the society tries in every way to destroy your intelligence.

I have heard:

The teacher told the students that they were going to play a game. “I’ve got something behind my back and I’m going to describe it and you guess what it is,” she said.

“I’m holding something round and red. Can someone guess?”

“An apple?” little Herbie said.

“No,” said the teacher, ”but it shows you were thinking. It’s a cherry. Now I’m holding something round and orange. Can you tell me what it is?”

“An orange?” little Herbie said.

“No,” said the teacher, ” but it shows you were thinking. It’s a peach.”

Herbie raised his hand. “Teacher, can I play the game too?”

The teacher said, yes, and Herbie went to the back of the room, faced the rear and said, “Teacher, I’m holding something about two inches long with a red tip.”

The teacher said, “Herbie!”

“No,” said little Herbie, “but it shows you were thinking. It’s a match.”

Now, these intelligent children cannot be allowed to live! Nobody likes an intelligent person.

Hence people start playing unintelligent roles in life, because an unintelligent person is accepted everywhere. That’s why millions of people have become mediocre. Nobody is born mediocre, let me remind you. God gives intelligence to everybody; just as he gives life to everybody, he gives intelligence. Intelligence is an intrinsic part of life.

Have you ever seen an unintelligent animal? Have you ever seen an unintelligent bird, an unintelligent tree? Every tree is intelligent enough to find the source of water to send out roots.

And you will be surprised; scientists are very much surprised, at how trees find places.

When a tree starts sending out its roots, sometimes it sends them hundreds of feet away in a particular direction to where water is. Now, how does it find it? The water is a hundred feet away towards the north: it does not send its roots towards the south, it sends its roots towards the north – a hundred feet away! And not only to natural water sources – sometimes it sends its roots to the pipes, corporation pipes, hundreds of feet away; it detects them. It takes years for it to send out those roots. It lives, in its own way, an intelligent life.

If there is too much competition, trees grow higher; they have to. That’s why in the jungles of Africa, trees grow very high. The same trees in India won’t grow that high; there is no need, the competition is not so much. In thick forests if the tree remains small it will die; it will be in the shadow of other trees. It has to reach the sun: it goes on and on moving upwards.

Trees are intelligent in their own way, birds are intelligent in their own way, animals are intelligent in their own way. And so is man.

You will find the mediocre and the stupid only in human beings. I have never come across a stupid dog – I have tried – but there are millions of stupid human beings. What has happened to human beings? Intelligence is not allowed.

The whole society and the pattern of the society is against intelligence; it supports mediocre people.

Everybody is happy with a mediocre person, because whenever you are around a mediocre person he is never a problem; he is always ready to be obedient, and he always gives you a feeling that you are superior.

If people live intelligently, everybody will be lucky. If you are not lucky, it is not that God has been unfair to you; it is only because you have compromised with the society.

Debal, you could come to me because you have been courageous enough to use your intelligence.

It is not a question of luck; it is only a question of guts, courage. And these days are really beautiful, fantastic. Use these days, these times: you can soar high, higher than has ever been possible before.

Millions of people are in the situation now where enlightenment can happen. We can defeat Buddha for the first time. The times are very favorable, because there is so much chaos and so much confusion, and all the old ideologies are dead and dying of their own accord. Man is becoming free, coming out of his shell.

-Osho

From Unio Mystica, V.2, Discourse #2

Copyright© OSHO International Foundation

 

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