Astrall
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A revolutionary is part of the political world; he views everything through the prism of political life. He thinks it is enough to change the structure of society, and man will change as well. A rebel, however, as I understand the word, is a spiritual phenomenon. In his worldview, he relies on the individual. He believes that if we want to change society, we must start with the individual. Society as such does not exist; it is merely a concept. Take the word "crowd," for example. Try to find it — you won't succeed. Did you bump into someone? That wasn't a crowd; you bumped into a person. "Society" is just a collective name. It is not a reality, but merely a notion; it cannot be seen or held in your hands. An individual has a soul; an individual can evolve, change, transform. So the difference between them is immense. A rebel expresses the essence of religion.
He brings a change of consciousness into this world — and when consciousness changes, the structure of society is forced to change along with it. But the opposite does not work; all revolutions have proven this, for they all ended in failure. No revolution has ever succeeded in changing man, but it seems we still haven't realized this. The ideas of revolution, changing society, overthrowing the government, reforming the bureaucracy, altering legislation and political systems still live in our heads. Feudalism, capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism — all of them were revolutionary in their own way. But they all failed, and spectacularly at that, because MAN did not change…
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Gautama Buddha, Zarathustra, Jesus — these people were rebels. They believed in the individual. They too failed, but for a completely different reason. Their failure differs from the failure of revolutionaries. Revolutionaries tried to implement their ideas in many countries and through various means — and they got nowhere.
But the ideas of Gautama Buddha didn't work because no one actually tried to implement them. Jesus failed because the Jews crucified Him, and the Christians buried Him. His teachings were not brought to life — they were never given a chance. The rebel remains an unknown quantity to this day. We must be rebels, not revolutionaries. A revolutionary belongs to very mundane realms; a rebel and his rebellious spirit belong to the realm of the spirit. A revolutionary cannot be alone: he needs a crowd, a political party, a government. He needs power. But power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power has spoiled all revolutionaries who managed to seize it. They did not change the nature of power and its institutions — they couldn't. It was power that changed their souls and consciousness, it spoiled these people. Only the names changed, while society remained the same.
Human consciousness has not changed for centuries. Only occasionally does someone succeed — but for millions of people, one person's success is not the rule, it is the exception. And because such a person is always alone, the crowd does not accept him. His very existence humiliates you. You feel that his presence insults you, for he opens your eyes, shows you your potential and your future. Your ego is wounded; you realize you have done nothing for your spiritual growth, your consciousness has not expanded, there is no more love, joy, creativity, or silence within you — the world around has not become better. You have given nothing to this world: your existence here is not a blessing, but a torment. And you give free rein to your anger and cruelty, your jealousy and drive to be first, your thirst for power.
You turn the world into a battlefield: you thirst for blood and infect everyone around you with this feeling. You strip human nature of its humanity. You help man forget his human qualities and fall lower than animals. That is why Gautama Buddha and Zhuangzi bother you so much — they succeeded, while you are still stuck in place. Years pass, yet nothing ignites within you. Birds do not fly to you, do not build their nests near you, and do not sing their songs beside you. It's easier to crucify Jesus and poison Socrates — better they not exist, so you don't have to feel your spiritual inferiority.
History knows few rebels. But now the time has come: if humanity cannot give the world hundreds and thousands of rebels, if the rebellious spirit does not ignite, then our days on earth are numbered. Then the coming decades may be our last. We have come very close to this line. We must change our consciousness, must give the world more meditative energy, give it more love. We must destroy the past — its ugliness, its rotten ideology, its stupid discrimination and foolish prejudices. We must create a new human being with a fresh view of the world and new values. Refusal — that is the meaning of rebelliousness. Here are three words that will help you understand: reform, revolution, and rebellion. Reform means modification.
The old remains, and you give it a new form, a new appearance — it's like renovating an old house. Its structure remains unchanged; you touch up the paint a bit, clear out the debris, knock in a few new windows and doors. Revolution goes further than reform. The old remains, but the changes are more profound, they even affect the basic structure of the house. You not only change the color or punch in new windows and doors but perhaps add new floors, and the building rises upward. But the old is not destroyed; it remains, hidden behind the new; by and large, it remains the foundation of the new. Revolution maintains ties with the past.
Rebellion breaks these ties. It is not reform and not revolution; you simply break with everything old. Old religions, old political ideologies, the old human being — all of this has outlived its time, and you renounce it. You start life from scratch, from a clean slate. The revolutionary tries to change the old; the rebel simply says goodbye to it and, like a snake slithering out of its old skin, never looks back. If we do not create people with such a rebellious spirit on Earth, humanity will have no future. The man of the past has led us to the final line. Old thinking, old ideologies, old religions — all of them together have brought us to a state of global suicide.
Only a new human being can save the human race, our planet, and life on this planet. I teach rebellion, not revolution. For me, rebelliousness is the most important quality of a religious person. It is spirituality in its primordial purity. The times of revolutions are over. The French Revolution ended in failure, the Russian revolution suffered a fiasco, the Chinese revolution failed. In India, even Gandhi's revolution failed, and it happened right before Gandhi's own eyes. All his life he taught "non-violence," and before his eyes the country was divided, millions of people were killed and burned alive, millions of women were raped. Gandhi himself was shot. A strange end for a saint who preached non-violence.
Along the way, he himself forgot everything he had taught. Even before the Indian revolution was complete, the American thinker Louis Fischer asked Gandhi: "What are you going to do with the weapons and armies when India becomes independent?" "I am going to throw all the weapons into the ocean, and I will disband the armies and send the soldiers to work in the fields and gardens," said Gandhi. "Have you forgotten? Your country could be attacked!" exclaimed Louis Fischer. "We will welcome the invaders warmly. If someone attacks us, we will receive them as guests and say to them: 'You can live here too, just as we live here. We have no need to fight,'" replied Gandhi.
And then he completely forgot his entire philosophy — that's how revolutions fail. How wonderful it is to talk about such things, but when power is in your hands… At first, Mahatma Gandhi refused any government posts. The reason was fear, because he would have to answer if asked about the weapons he intended to throw into the ocean. And about the armies working in the fields. When Gandhi saw what huge problems this would entail, he walked away from the responsibility he had fought for all his life. If he had agreed to take a government post, he would have had to come into conflict with his own philosophy. But his disciples, people he had chosen himself, entered the government. And Gandhi did not ask them to disband the army. When Pakistan attacked India, he did not tell the Indian government: "Let us go to the border and welcome the invaders as guests."
Instead, he blessed the first three planes that flew to bomb Pakistan. These planes flew over the villa in New Delhi where Gandhi was staying. He went out into the garden and blessed them. With his blessing, the planes flew on to kill his former fellow citizens, who just a few days earlier had been "our brothers and sisters." He did this without any pangs of conscience and saw no contradiction in his action…
The Russian revolution failed before Lenin's eyes. Following Karl Marx, he declared: "When the revolution triumphs, we will abolish marriage, because marriage is a manifestation of private property. When private property disappears, the institution of marriage will disappear. People can love each other, can live together, and society will take care of the children." But everything changed when the communist party, which Lenin led, seized power. When people come to power, they start thinking differently. Now Lenin reasoned thus: it is dangerous to give such independence and freedom from responsibility — people might become too individualistic. Therefore, they must be burdened with family — he completely forgot about abolishing the institution of marriage. It is amazing how revolutions failed right before the eyes of the revolutionaries who created them. And all because, as soon as power fell into their hands, they began to reason completely differently. Over time, they became too attached to their power. The only thing that concerned them was how to hold onto power forever and how to keep the people under control.
The future does not need any more revolutions. The future needs a new experiment, one that has not yet been conducted. For thousands of years, rebels have been born, but they always remained alone. Perhaps the time for them had not yet come. But now the time has not only come… if we do not hurry, it may end. In the coming decades, either humanity will disappear, or a new man with a new way of thinking will appear on Earth. And this new man will be a rebel.
Osho (The Book of Awareness)
He brings a change of consciousness into this world — and when consciousness changes, the structure of society is forced to change along with it. But the opposite does not work; all revolutions have proven this, for they all ended in failure. No revolution has ever succeeded in changing man, but it seems we still haven't realized this. The ideas of revolution, changing society, overthrowing the government, reforming the bureaucracy, altering legislation and political systems still live in our heads. Feudalism, capitalism, communism, socialism, fascism — all of them were revolutionary in their own way. But they all failed, and spectacularly at that, because MAN did not change…
...
Gautama Buddha, Zarathustra, Jesus — these people were rebels. They believed in the individual. They too failed, but for a completely different reason. Their failure differs from the failure of revolutionaries. Revolutionaries tried to implement their ideas in many countries and through various means — and they got nowhere.
But the ideas of Gautama Buddha didn't work because no one actually tried to implement them. Jesus failed because the Jews crucified Him, and the Christians buried Him. His teachings were not brought to life — they were never given a chance. The rebel remains an unknown quantity to this day. We must be rebels, not revolutionaries. A revolutionary belongs to very mundane realms; a rebel and his rebellious spirit belong to the realm of the spirit. A revolutionary cannot be alone: he needs a crowd, a political party, a government. He needs power. But power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Power has spoiled all revolutionaries who managed to seize it. They did not change the nature of power and its institutions — they couldn't. It was power that changed their souls and consciousness, it spoiled these people. Only the names changed, while society remained the same.
Human consciousness has not changed for centuries. Only occasionally does someone succeed — but for millions of people, one person's success is not the rule, it is the exception. And because such a person is always alone, the crowd does not accept him. His very existence humiliates you. You feel that his presence insults you, for he opens your eyes, shows you your potential and your future. Your ego is wounded; you realize you have done nothing for your spiritual growth, your consciousness has not expanded, there is no more love, joy, creativity, or silence within you — the world around has not become better. You have given nothing to this world: your existence here is not a blessing, but a torment. And you give free rein to your anger and cruelty, your jealousy and drive to be first, your thirst for power.
You turn the world into a battlefield: you thirst for blood and infect everyone around you with this feeling. You strip human nature of its humanity. You help man forget his human qualities and fall lower than animals. That is why Gautama Buddha and Zhuangzi bother you so much — they succeeded, while you are still stuck in place. Years pass, yet nothing ignites within you. Birds do not fly to you, do not build their nests near you, and do not sing their songs beside you. It's easier to crucify Jesus and poison Socrates — better they not exist, so you don't have to feel your spiritual inferiority.
History knows few rebels. But now the time has come: if humanity cannot give the world hundreds and thousands of rebels, if the rebellious spirit does not ignite, then our days on earth are numbered. Then the coming decades may be our last. We have come very close to this line. We must change our consciousness, must give the world more meditative energy, give it more love. We must destroy the past — its ugliness, its rotten ideology, its stupid discrimination and foolish prejudices. We must create a new human being with a fresh view of the world and new values. Refusal — that is the meaning of rebelliousness. Here are three words that will help you understand: reform, revolution, and rebellion. Reform means modification.
The old remains, and you give it a new form, a new appearance — it's like renovating an old house. Its structure remains unchanged; you touch up the paint a bit, clear out the debris, knock in a few new windows and doors. Revolution goes further than reform. The old remains, but the changes are more profound, they even affect the basic structure of the house. You not only change the color or punch in new windows and doors but perhaps add new floors, and the building rises upward. But the old is not destroyed; it remains, hidden behind the new; by and large, it remains the foundation of the new. Revolution maintains ties with the past.
Rebellion breaks these ties. It is not reform and not revolution; you simply break with everything old. Old religions, old political ideologies, the old human being — all of this has outlived its time, and you renounce it. You start life from scratch, from a clean slate. The revolutionary tries to change the old; the rebel simply says goodbye to it and, like a snake slithering out of its old skin, never looks back. If we do not create people with such a rebellious spirit on Earth, humanity will have no future. The man of the past has led us to the final line. Old thinking, old ideologies, old religions — all of them together have brought us to a state of global suicide.
Only a new human being can save the human race, our planet, and life on this planet. I teach rebellion, not revolution. For me, rebelliousness is the most important quality of a religious person. It is spirituality in its primordial purity. The times of revolutions are over. The French Revolution ended in failure, the Russian revolution suffered a fiasco, the Chinese revolution failed. In India, even Gandhi's revolution failed, and it happened right before Gandhi's own eyes. All his life he taught "non-violence," and before his eyes the country was divided, millions of people were killed and burned alive, millions of women were raped. Gandhi himself was shot. A strange end for a saint who preached non-violence.
Along the way, he himself forgot everything he had taught. Even before the Indian revolution was complete, the American thinker Louis Fischer asked Gandhi: "What are you going to do with the weapons and armies when India becomes independent?" "I am going to throw all the weapons into the ocean, and I will disband the armies and send the soldiers to work in the fields and gardens," said Gandhi. "Have you forgotten? Your country could be attacked!" exclaimed Louis Fischer. "We will welcome the invaders warmly. If someone attacks us, we will receive them as guests and say to them: 'You can live here too, just as we live here. We have no need to fight,'" replied Gandhi.
And then he completely forgot his entire philosophy — that's how revolutions fail. How wonderful it is to talk about such things, but when power is in your hands… At first, Mahatma Gandhi refused any government posts. The reason was fear, because he would have to answer if asked about the weapons he intended to throw into the ocean. And about the armies working in the fields. When Gandhi saw what huge problems this would entail, he walked away from the responsibility he had fought for all his life. If he had agreed to take a government post, he would have had to come into conflict with his own philosophy. But his disciples, people he had chosen himself, entered the government. And Gandhi did not ask them to disband the army. When Pakistan attacked India, he did not tell the Indian government: "Let us go to the border and welcome the invaders as guests."
Instead, he blessed the first three planes that flew to bomb Pakistan. These planes flew over the villa in New Delhi where Gandhi was staying. He went out into the garden and blessed them. With his blessing, the planes flew on to kill his former fellow citizens, who just a few days earlier had been "our brothers and sisters." He did this without any pangs of conscience and saw no contradiction in his action…
The Russian revolution failed before Lenin's eyes. Following Karl Marx, he declared: "When the revolution triumphs, we will abolish marriage, because marriage is a manifestation of private property. When private property disappears, the institution of marriage will disappear. People can love each other, can live together, and society will take care of the children." But everything changed when the communist party, which Lenin led, seized power. When people come to power, they start thinking differently. Now Lenin reasoned thus: it is dangerous to give such independence and freedom from responsibility — people might become too individualistic. Therefore, they must be burdened with family — he completely forgot about abolishing the institution of marriage. It is amazing how revolutions failed right before the eyes of the revolutionaries who created them. And all because, as soon as power fell into their hands, they began to reason completely differently. Over time, they became too attached to their power. The only thing that concerned them was how to hold onto power forever and how to keep the people under control.
The future does not need any more revolutions. The future needs a new experiment, one that has not yet been conducted. For thousands of years, rebels have been born, but they always remained alone. Perhaps the time for them had not yet come. But now the time has not only come… if we do not hurry, it may end. In the coming decades, either humanity will disappear, or a new man with a new way of thinking will appear on Earth. And this new man will be a rebel.
Osho (The Book of Awareness)