Rebel- Osho

I find it wonderful that every time when I feel I am in need of advice, the advice will come. Sometimes it comes from within and this is of course the best advice of all- the only one I know I am capable of following. At other times it comes out of nature, be it the weather, the movement of birds or trees- the signs really can come from anything at all if you watch with a quiet mind. And then of course the advice can come from the mouths of fellow travellers.
Yesterday I was struggling to keep my heart open, cause once again I was forced to see the cruelty and inhumanity of the society we live in. It is easy to close one's heart at those times, even though it is the very thing that we do not want to do. Yet in a few instances the anguish from witnessing all that is vile and painful in the world can be so great that you can miss the chance of getting a grip of yourself before you have already run away into a self-protective mode of a closed heart.
How to come out of it, how to keep on the path of love...
How to reconcile yourself with a society that sometimes seems impossible to love, a world filled with hate, violence, killing, utter mindlessness, utter lack of responsibility, of love... How to remain sensitive when your senses come close to being destroyed by the pain that they feel... How to stay adament in hope while seeing a society so corrupt from top to bottom, that there seems not a single way to improve it... A revolution? A rebellion? Renunciation?
The answers lie within, always, but sometimes we are so shocked by an experience that we momentarily loose the path to them. Sometimes we are in a state of doubt, which is necessary I feel, cause it can help us reinforce that which for us is sacred.
It was Osho this time who held up the mirror.

"WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A REBEL AND A REVOLUTIONARY?

There is not only a quantitative difference between a rebel and a revolutionary, there is also a qualitative difference. The 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 man.
The rebel 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’, but if you go to find it, you will not find it anywhere. Wherever you will 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 right – and it has been proved by all the revolutions, because they have all failed.
No revolution has yet succeeded in changing man; but it seems man is not aware of the fact. He still goes 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 are all in their own way revolutionary. They all have failed, and failed utterly, because man has remained the same.
All the revolutionaries who have succeeded in capturing power have been corrupted by the power.
They could not change the power and its institutions; the power changed them and their minds and corrupted them. Only names became different, but the society continued to remain the same.

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 this century 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 man and his ugliness, his rotten ideologies, his stupid discriminations, idiotic superstitions, and create a new man, with fresh eyes, with new values; a discontinuity with the past – that’s the meaning of rebelliousness.

The revolutionary tries to change the old; the rebel simply comes out of the old, just as the snake slips out of the old skin, and never looks back. Unless we create such rebellious people around the earth, man has no future. The old man has brought man to his ultimate death. It is the old mind, the old ideologies, the old religions – they have all combined together to bring about this situation of global suicide. Only a new man can save humanity and this planet, and the beautiful life of this planet.

WHAT ARE THE QUALITIES OF A REBEL?

The qualities of a rebel are multidimensional. The first thing: the rebel does not believe in anything except his own experience. His truth is his only truth; no prophet, no messiah, no savior, no holy scripture, no ancient tradition can give him his truth. They can talk about truth, they can make much ado about truth, but to know about truth is not to know truth. The word ‘about’ means around – to know about truth means to go around and around it. But by going around and around you never reach to the center.
The rebel has no belief system – theist or atheist, Hindu or Christian; he is an inquirer, a seeker. But a very subtle thing has to be understood: that is, he is not an egoist. The egoist also does not want to belong to any church, to any ideology, to any belief system, but his reason for not belonging is totally different from the rebel. He does not want to belong because he thinks too much of himself. He is too much of an egoist; he can only stand alone.
The rebel is not an egoist, he is utterly innocent. His nonbelieving is not an arrogant attitude but a humble approach. He is simply saying, ”Unless I find my own truth, all borrowed truths are only burdening me, they are not going to unburden me. I can become knowledgeable, but I will not be knowing anything with my own being. I will not be an eyewitness of any experience.”
A rebel respects his own independence and also respects the independence of everybody else. He respects his own divineness and he respects the divineness of the whole universe. The whole universe is his temple – that’s why he has left the small temples made by man. The whole universe is his holy scripture – that’s why he has left all holy scriptures written by man. But it is not out of arrogance, it is out of a humble search. The rebel is as innocent as a child.

His second dimension will be not to live in the past, which is no more, and not to live in the future, which is not yet, but to live in the present with as much alertness and consciousness as he can manage. In other words, to live consciously in the moment. Ordinarily we live like somnambulists, sleepwalkers. The rebel tries to live a life of awareness. Awareness is his religion, awareness is his philosophy, awareness is his way of life.

His third dimension is that he is not interested in domination over others. He has no lust for power, because that is the ugliest thing in the world. The lust for power has destroyed humanity and has not allowed it to be more creative, to be more beautiful, to be more healthy, to be more wholesome. And it is this lust for power that ultimately leads to conflicts, competitions, jealousies and finally to wars.

His religion is not superstitious – it is scientific. His religion is not a search for God, because to begin with God means you have already accepted a belief, and if you have accepted a belief your search is contaminated from the very beginning.
The rebel goes into his inner world with open eyes, with no idea of what he is looking for. He goes on polishing his intelligence. He goes on making his silences deeper, his meditation more profound, so that whatever is hidden in him is revealed to him; but he has no preconceived idea of what he is looking for.
He is basically an agnostic. That word has to be remembered because it describes one of his basic qualities. There are theists who believe in God, there are atheists who do not believe in God and there are agnostics who simply say, ”We do not know yet. We will search, we will see. We cannot say anything before we have looked into every nook and corner of our being.” He begins with, ”I do not know.” That’s why I say he is just like a small child – innocent.

Only a rebellious person is truly revolutionary and is truly religious. He does not create an organization, he does not create a following, he does not create churches.
But it is possible that rebels can be fellow travelers: they may enjoy to be together, to dance together, to sing together, to cry and weep together, to feel the immensity of existence and the eternity of life together. They can merge into a kind of communion without any surrender of anybody’s individuality; on the contrary, the communion of rebels refreshes everybody’s individuality, nourishes everybody’s individuality, gives dignity and respect to everybody’s individuality.

IS RENOUNCING THE WORLD AND SOCIETY PART OF A REBELLIOUS SPIRIT?

The rebel is renouncing the past. He is not going to repeat the past; he is bringing something new into the world. Those who have escaped from the world and society are escapists. They have really renounced responsibilities, but without understanding that the moment you renounce responsibilities you also renounce freedom. These are the complexities of life: freedom and responsibilities go away together or remain together.
The more you are a lover of freedom, the more you will be ready to accept responsibilities. But outside the world, outside the society, there is no possibility of any responsibility. And it has to be remembered that all that we learn, we learn through being responsible.
Escapists are cowards, they are not rebels – although that’s what has been thought up to now, that they are rebellious spirits. They are not, they are simply cowards. They could not cope with life. They knew their weaknesses, their frailties, and they thought it was better to escape; because then you will never have to face your weakness, your frailty, you will never come to know any challenge.
But without challenges how are you going to grow?
No, the rebel cannot renounce the world and the society, but he certainly renounces many other things. He renounces the so-called morality imposed upon him by the society; he renounces the so-called values imposed by the society; he renounces the knowledge given by the society. He does not renounce the society as such, but he renounces everything that the society has given to him.
This is true renunciation.
The rebel lives in the society, fighting, struggling. To remain in the crowd and not to be obedient to the crowd but to be obedient to one’s own conscience, is a tremendous opportunity for growth. It makes you bring out your best; it gives you a dignity.

As far as the world is concerned... and the world and the society are not the same thing. In the past, the so-called religious people have renounced the society and the world, both. The rebel will fight against the society, renounce its ideals, and he will love the world – because the world, the existence, is our very source of life. To renounce it is to be anti-life. But all religions have been anti-life, life-negative.
The rebel should be life-affirmative. He will bring in all those values which make the world more beautiful, more lovable, which make the world more rich. It is our world – we are part of it, it is part of us – how can we renounce it? Where can we go to renounce it? The world is in the Himalayan cave as much as it is here in the marketplace.
The world has to be nourished because it is nourishing you. The world has to be respected because it is your very source of life. All the juice that flows in you, all the joys and celebrations that happen to you, come from existence itself. Rather than running away from it, you should dive deeper into it; you should send your roots to deeper sources of life and love and laughter. You should dance and celebrate.
Your celebration will bring you closer to existence, because existence is in constant celebration.
Your joy, your blissfulness, your silence, will bring the silences of the stars and the sky; your peace with existence will open the doors of all the mysteries it contains. There is no other way to become enlightened.
The world has not to be condemned, it has to be respected. The rebel will honor existence, he will have immense reverence for life in whatsoever form it exists – for men, for women, for trees, for mountains, for stars. In whatever form life exists, the rebel will have a deep reverence. That will be his gratitude, that will be his prayer, that will be his religion, that will be his revolution.

To be a rebel is the beginning of a totally new kind of life, a totally new style of life; it is the beginning of a new humanity, of a new man.
I would like the whole world to be rebellious, because only in that rebelliousness will we blossom to our full potential, will we release our fragrances. We will not be repressed individuals, as man has remained for centuries... the most repressed animal. Even birds are far more free, far more natural, far more in tune with nature.
When the sun rises, it does not knock on every tree, ”Wake up, the night is over.” It does not go to every nest of birds, ”Start singing, it is time for song.” No, just as the sun rises, the flowers start opening on their own accord. And the birds start singing – not by an order from above, but from an intrinsic inevitability, from a joy, from a blissfulness.

WHAT GUIDES THE REBEL?

That’s the beauty of the rebel – that he does not need a guide. He is his own guide, he is his own path, he is his own philosophy, he is his own future. It is a declaration that ”I am all that I need and existence is my home. I am not a stranger here.”"

Snippets from Osho's discourse series "Rebel"