WHY ARE YOU
AGAINST CULTIVATING A MORAL CHARACTER??
OSHO: FIRST TO CULTIVATE ANYTHING is to become
pseudo. Cultivation means you will be creating something around yourself WHICH
YOU ARE NOT. Cultivation means you will create a split, cultivation means you
will create a facade. Cultivation means you will live in a camouflage: you will
be one thing and you will pretend to be something else; you will do one thing
and you will say another thing.
Cultivation
means you will repress - that's why I am against cultivation. Cultivation does
not create true morality; it creates only ugly puritans. It creates only the
so-called righteous; it creates people who are pretenders. It creates the
attitude of holier-than-thou, that's all. It gives a great ego satisfaction.
And it also
creates a prison. When you cultivate something, you are imprisoned in it,
because deep down you are just the contrary. For example, you are violent - you
can cultivate non-violence. What will be the result? On the surface there will
be a thin layer of non-violence, only on the surface; it will not even be
skin-deep. Scratch any non- violent man just a little bit and you will find
violence arising. Beware of non-violent people; they are the most dangerous
people if you scratch them.
If you
scratch a violent person he may not be so violent, because he does not carry a
long long repressed violence in him; he does not accumulate. He explodes once
in a while so there is no accumulation. But the non-violent person, the
Gandhian, the so-called religious person, beware of him; he is a dangerous
person. He is carrying great explosive forces in himself. Just a little scratch
will prove to be a spark and he will explode; he can prove murderous, he can be
very dangerous. And when you create non-violence around yourself and inside you
are boiling with violence, you live in a prison.
Just look
at your so-called moral people - they are living in a prison. And they all have
to become diplomatic. They all have to have backdoors to their lives, otherwise
they will go crazy. Cultivated morality arouses only two alternatives: one is
to go mad - if the person is sincere he will go mad - the other alternative is
that he will be a hypocrite. And naturally people choose to be hypocrites
rather than going mad, and I cannot condemn them either. That is more
intelligent.
That's why
you see such hypocrites all over the place around the world. They are
everywhere - pretenders. You know them. They live a totally different life
behind the walls. They have two lives: their real life is underground. They are
living in such inner conflict that they cannot be happy. And the person who is
not happy will not allow anybody else to be happy either. These people are sad,
they have long faces; they are tense, they live in constant conflict and
anguish, and they would like everybody to live like that. Naturally, they will
condemn all joy, they will condemn all laughter. They will condemn EVERYTHING
that is playful, that is fun. They will reduce you to utter seriousness, and
seriousness is illness, it is pathological.
Life is
available only to those who are playful. Life is not for the serious; for the
serious is the grave. Life is for those who are festive, who know how to
celebrate.
I am
against cultivating a moral character, because cultivating a moral character
does not give you real morality. That's why I am against it. The real morality
has not to be cultivated: it comes as a shadow of being more aware. It is a
consequence of consciousness.
If your
conscience is not a consequence of your consciousness, then your conscience is
ugly, dangerous, poisonous. Then your conscience is nothing but the policeman
that the society has implanted in you. Then your conscience is nothing but your
parental voice, the priests shouting inside you, "Don't do this - do that!"
You are not free, you are not a free man: you are controlled from within - a
very subtle strategy to control humanity.
The real
conscience does not come from the outside: it wells up within you; it is part
of your consciousness. I don't say cultivate morality: I say become more
conscious - and you will be moral. But that morality will have a totally
different flavour to it. It will be spontaneous; it will not be ready-made. It
will be moment-to-moment alive, flowing, changing. It will reflect all the
colours of life. It will be appropriate to the moment; it will be responsible.
You will respond to the situation with full awareness - not because Moses has
said to do it, not because Jesus has said to follow it, but because your own
God inside feels this is the way to respond. Then you are functioning from the
very source of consciousness, and that is true morality. It has not to be
cultivated. The cultivated means the false.
That's why
I say the real man of character has no character. The real man of character is
characterless. The real man of character cannot afford to have a character,
because the character means that which you have learnt in the past; character
means the past. And you have to respond to the present moment. Your character
will come between you and the present. It will force you to behave according to
the past pattern, and when you behave according to the past pattern you are
never appropriate.
So your
so-called moral people are never appropriate, they cannot be. They miss the
moment. They function out of the past so they cannot relate to the present. And
there is only one life, ONLY one life: to relate to the present.
The
so-called moral people cannot go direct in anything; they always go roundabout.
They always have to be cautious, because they have to keep their masks; they
cannot drop their masks. And one lie leads into another ad infinitum, and
slowly slowly a person becomes just a bundle of lies.
The true
man of character is authentic, is whatsoever he is. He is utterly nude, naked;
he is not hiding. I would like the new humanity to be of those who are brave.
Long we have lived like cowards; long long, we have suffered like cowards. It
is time now to come into the open, under the sun - to be sincere, to be
authentic, to be whatsoever you are. There is NO need to hide, because every
other human being is just like you. There are neither saints nor sinners but
only human beings.
The whole
dichotomy of the saints and the sinners is the by-product of the cultivated
character. And you will be surprised that sinners are more innocent than your
so-called saints. You will see in the eyes of sinners more the quality of
childlikeness, more sincerity, more innocence, more truth, than you will ever
find in the eyes of your so- called saints. Their eyes will be cunning - they
have to be because cultivation brings cunningness.
I would
like a totally different humanity in the world, where saints and sinners have
disappeared, where there are only authentic people, open to the wind, open to
the rain, open to the sun... open!
This will
be hated by the society very much. This will be a great problem for the
society, because the open person immediately makes you uneasy if you are
closed, because the open person immediately hits at the very root of your
being. The open person immediately makes you feel inferior, ugly, false. The
open person immediately makes you feel unintelligent, stupid.
That's why
Socrates is poisoned - an open person. Not a saint, but a man of tremendous
awareness. A sage not a saint. Jesus is crucified - a sage not a saint -
because he was not fulfilling the expectations of the society. He was moving
with thieves - now saints don't move with thieves. He was moving with socially
condemned people: gamblers, drunkards, prostitutes. He was at ease with
humanity at large, with everybody. This was not tolerable. The rabbis, the
saints of those days, the moralistic people, the puritans, could not tolerate
it. He HAD to be crucified.
This has
been happening down the ages. Now this has to be stopped! You have crucified
enough. And now we have to explode in such a tidal wave on the earth that even
if they crucify, they cannot find so many crosses. One Jesus can be crucified,
one Socrates can be poisoned....
My effort
is to create so many open people that it becomes almost impossible to crucify
and to poison them. To give the quality of openness, simpleness, innocence, to
SO many people - only then can the quality of this rotten society be changed,
can it be made alive.
I am
against the cultivated moral character because it is neither moral nor healthy.
I am against character because character creates only an armour around you; it
is a defence measure, it does not allow you to be open. And a person who is not
open lives in a grave.
