Becoming An Authentic Rebel
by Osho
 The following question was posed to
Osho: "For my whole life, friendliness has been a shield for me to
protect myself from others. Sitting with you in discourse and feeling your
overwhelming love, layers of this shield are dropping away, more and more, and I
feel a space in which I am enough unto myself. Out of this space, a more
open and less fearful connection happens. And yet, I often watch myself not
being totally authentic and real. Why is this so difficult?"
One of the problems that every human being has to face is the
world in which
he is born. His being and the intentions of the world don't go
together. The world wants him to serve, to be a slave, to be used by
those who are in power. And naturally he resents it. He wants to be
himself. The world does not allow anybody to be what he is by nature
supposed to be.
The world tries to mold every person into a commodity: useful,
efficient,
obedient - never rebellious, never asserting itself, never declaring
its own individuality, but always being subservient, almost like a
robot. The world does not want you to be human beings. It wants you to
be efficient machines. The more efficient you are, the more
respectable, the more honored.
And this is what creates the problem. No individual is born here to
be a machine. It is a humiliation, a degradation; it is taking away his
pride and dignity, destroying him as a spiritual being and reducing him
into a mechanical entity.
Hence every child, from the very beginning, as he becomes aware of
the intentions of the society, of the parents, of the family, of the
educational system, of the nation, of the religion - as he becomes
aware, he starts closing himself. He starts becoming defensive, just
out of fear, because he has to encounter a tremendous force. And he is
so small and so fragile, so vulnerable, so helpless, so dependent on
the same people against whom he has to protect himself.
And the problem becomes more complicated because the people he has
to protect himself against are the people who think that they love him.
And perhaps they are not lying. Their intentions are good but their
consciousness is missing, they are fast asleep. They don't know that
they are being puppets in the hands of a blind force
called the society, the establishment - all the vested interests are
together.
The child faces a dilemma. He has to fight against those whom he
loves, and he thinks they love him too. But it is strange that the
people who love him don't love him as he is. They say to him, "We will
love you, we do love you, but only if you follow the way we are
following, if you follow the religion we are following, if you become
obedient the way we are obedient."
If you become part of this vast mechanism, in which you are going to
live your whole life... fighting against it is simply meaningless, you
will he crushed. It is wiser just to surrender and just to learn to say
yes, whether you want to or not. Repress your no. In all conditions, in
all situations, you are expected to be a
yea-sayer. The no is prohibited. The no is the original sin.
Disobedience is the original sin - and then the society takes revenge
with a great vengeance.
This creates great fear in the child. His whole being wants to
assert its potentiality. He wants to be himself because other than that
he cannot see any meaning in life. Other than that, he will never be
happy, joyous, fulfilled, contented. He will never feel at ease, he
will always be in a split. A part, the most intrinsic part of his
being, will always feel hungry, thirsty, unfulfilled, incomplete.
But the forces are too big and to fight against them is too risky.
Naturally every child, slowly slowly, starts learning to defend
himself, to protect himself. He closes all the doors of his being. He
does not expose himself to anybody, he simply starts pretending. He
starts being an actor. He acts according to the orders given to him.
Doubts arise in him, he represses them. His nature wants to assert
itself, he represses it. His intelligence wants to say, "This is not
right, what are you doing?" - he drops being intelligent. It is safer
to be retarded, it is safer to be unintelligent.
Anything that brings you in conflict with the vested interests is
dangerous. And to open yourself, even to people who are very close, is
risky.
Such is the worldly teaching. That's why everybody has become closed.
Nobody
opens one's petals fearlessly like a flower, dancing in the wind, and
in the
rain, and in the sun... so fragile but without any fear.
We are all living with closed petals, afraid that if we open up we
will become vulnerable. So everybody is using shields of all kinds -
even a thing like friendliness you say you have been using as a shield.
It will look contradictory, because friendliness means openness to each
other, sharing each other's secrets, sharing each other's hearts.
But it is not only the case with you. Everybody is living in such
contradictions. People are using friendliness as a shield, love as a
shield, prayer as a shield. When they want to cry they cannot cry, they
smile, because a smile functions as a shield. When they don't feel like
crying they cry, because tears can function in certain situation as a
shield.
This whole society has been created around a certain idea that is
basically hypocritical. Here you have to be what others expect you to
be, not what you are. That's why everything has become false, phony.
Even in friendliness you are keeping a distance. Only so far do you
allow anybody to come close.
People like Adolf Hitler...it is known that he never allowed anybody
to put their hands on his shoulders. That much intimacy people like
Adolf Hitler would not allow at all. They would like people to be far
away; a distance that can allow them to pretend things. Perhaps, if
somebody is very close, he may look behind your mask. Or he may
recognize that it is not your face; it is the mask, your face is behind
it.
Everybody in the world in which we have been living has been untrue
and unauthentic. My vision of a sannyasin
(seeker) is of a rebel, of a man who is in search of his original self,
of his original face. A man who is ready to drop all masks, all
pretensions, all hypocrisies, and show to the world what he, in
reality, is. Whether he is loved or condemned, respected, honored or
dishonored, crowned or crucified, does not matter; because to be
yourself is the greatest blessing in existence. Even if you are
crucified, you will be crucified fulfilled and immensely contented.
Just remember Jesus' last words on the the cross. He prayed to God,
"Father, forgive these people who are crucifying me, because they know
not what they are doing." He is not angry, he is not complaining. On
the contrary, he is praying for them, that they should be forgiven.
What a great dignity, what a man. A man of truth, a man of sincerity, a
man who
knows love and who knows compassion, and who understands that people
are blind,
unconscious, asleep, spiritually asleep. What they are doing is almost
in their
sleep.
Being an initiate into sannyas (seeking)
simply means the beginning of dropping all your masks. And that's what is
gradually happening to you. You are feeling a new space... "Out of this
space a more open and less fearful connection happens. And yet, I often watch
myself not being totally authentic and real."
Don't be impatient. You have been conditioned for so long, for so
many years - your whole life - now unconditioning will also take a
little time. You have been burdened with all kinds of false, pseudo
ideas. It will take a little time to drop them, to recognize that they
are false and they are pseudo. In fact, once you recognize something as
false, it is not difficult to drop it. The moment you recognize the
false as false, it falls by itself.
The very recognition is enough. Your connection is broken, your
identity is lost. And once the false disappears, the real is there in
all its newness, in all its beauty. Because sincerity is beauty,
honesty is beauty, truthfulness is beauty.
Just being yourself is being beautiful.
And to me there is no other religion than this. Just a little
patience... what you have gathered in your sleep of many, many years -
even if you wake up, the dust of dreams that you have gathered will
take a little time to fall away. But your awareness, your understanding
and your courage that you are determined and committed to find
yourself, will dissolve all false faces that have been given to you by
people.
They are also unconscious - your parents, your teachers - don't be
angry with them. They are also victims like you. Their fathers, their
teachers, their priests, have corrupted their minds; and your parents
and your teachers have corrupted you. All that you can do is: don't
corrupt the younger children. Your children are your brothers and your
sisters. Anybody whom you can influence, don't influence in a way that
he becomes false; help the person to be himself. What has been done in
unconsciousness to you, you should not do to others - because you are
becoming a little conscious, and each day the consciousness will grow.
It needs nourishment, support; and being here with me and with all
these fellow travelers, you can get immense support and nourishment.
The whole atmosphere is to bring your authentic self out of all the
clouds that have been covering you. But a little patience is certainly
necessary.
You have never thought that what you are being taught by your
parents - who love you
- by your teachers, by your priests, could be wrong. But it has been
wrong; it has created a whole wrong world. It has been wrong every
inch. And the proofs are spread all over history: all the wars, all the
crimes, all the rapes....
Millions of people have been murdered, butchered, burned alive in
the name of religion, in the name of God, in the name of freedom, in
the name of democracy, in the name of communism - beautiful names. But
what has happened behind those beautiful names is so ugly that one day
man is going to look at history as if it were the history of insanity,
not of a sane humanity.
Sannyas (seeking) is an effort to at least make yourself sane and
help others towards sanity. And the first step is, never pretend.
Whatever the consequence, be true. Howsoever easy the hypocrisy may be,
it is dangerous. It is dangerous because it is going to destroy your
very spirituality, your very humanity. It is not worth it. It is better
that everything should be taken away, but your dignity and your pride
as a human being, as a spiritual being, should be left. That is more
than enough to feel blissful and grateful towards existence.
This
article was excerpted, with
permission, from "The Rebel" by
Osho (this book is now out of print). It is from a talk given in Poona,
India, in June 1987. © Osho
International Foundation. All rights
reserved. For more information, visit www.osho.com
where these is an "Ask Osho"
section where people can write their
question and the web editors will find the
nearest answer to the question from Osho,
who has answered thousands of questions
from seekers over the years.
Books by this author
About
The Author
"Never
Born - Never Died - Only visited this planet
Earth between December 11, 1931 and January
19, 1990." With these literally immortal
words, Osho both dictates his epitaph and
dispenses with his biography. Having
previously removed his name from everything,
he finally agrees to accept "Osho,"
explaining that it is derived from William
James' "oceanic." "It is not my name," he
says, "it is a healing sound." His thousands
of hours of extemporaneous talks, spoken to
people around the world over a twenty-year
period, are all recorded, often on video.
The transcriptions of these talks are now
published in hundreds of titles in dozens of
languages.
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