Hinduism and the Caste System
Manu made Hindu society into four classes. There is no mobility. You are born a brahmin; that is the only way to be a brahmin. And that is the highest society, the topmost class. Then number two is the warriors, the kings -- the chhatriyas. But you are born in that caste, it is not a question that you can move. Then third is the class of the vaishyas, the business people; you are born in it. And the fourth is the sudras, the untouchables. All are born into their caste. That's why, until Christianity started converting so many Hindus, particularly the sudras, who were ready, very willing to become Christians, because at least they would be touchable.... Amongst Hindus sudras are untouchable, and there is no way to get out of the structure. For your whole life you have to remain the same as your forefathers remained for five thousand years. For five thousand years there has been a stratified society. If somebody is a shoemaker, his family has been making shoes for five thousand years. He cannot do any other work, he cannot enter into any other profession. That is not allowed.
HINDUS WERE NOT A CONVERTING RELIGION, because the great question was, if you convert somebody, in what class are you going to put the person? Christianity is a converting religion because it has no classification; you simply become a Christian. If Catholics convert you, you become a Catholic; if Protestants convert you, you become a Protestant. But in Hinduism you cannot be converted, for a simple reason: Where will you be put? Brahmins won't allow you, and you would not like to be put with the sudras, the untouchables. What is the point of coming to a religion where you will not be even touched? Even your shadow will be untouchable. A brahmin has to take a bath if the shadow of a sudra falls on him. The sudra has not touched him, but his shadow is also untouchable.
It is the most ancient religion, still Hinduism has not been spreading; it has been shrinking. Buddhism spread all over Asia, and it is only twenty-five centuries old. Hinduism is at least ten thousand years old, or more, but it could not spread for the simple reason that birth is decisive. You can be a Hindu only by birth, just as you can be a Jew only by birth -- and these are the two most ancient religions. These are really the two basic religions.
CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMMEDANISM ARE OFFSHOOTS of Judaism; and Jainism and Buddhism are offshoots of Hinduism. Jainism and Buddhism are both the rebellion of the second class -- the chhatriyas, the warriors -- because they had power. They were the kings, they were the soldiers, they had the power -- and yet the brahmin was on top of them. So naturally, sooner or later they were going to revolt, and finally they did revolt. Gautam Buddha and Mahavira are both from the second class. They wanted to be first class, they had the power, and the brahmins had nothing: Why should they be the highest class? So it was a rebellion.
But it was a strange thing that although these two religions got out of the Hindu fold, only Buddhism could spread all over Asia. Jainism could not spread out of India. Buddhism managed to spread out of India: from India it disappeared, but it took over the whole of Asia. And the reason was that it was through Gautam Buddha's very compassionate mind that he allowed anybody to enter into Buddhism.
JAINAS, ALTHOUGH THEY had also rebelled against the brahmins, remained of the same mind -- that they are higher than the other two classes. They wanted to be higher than brahmins too, but they never started converting anybody, because who would they convert? Brahmins will not be ready to be converted -- they are already higher than everybody. Only sudras can be converted because they will be raised on the evaluation scale. But Jainas -- Mahavira and his group -- were not so compassionate as to take them in. So Jainism is not a complete culture -- it has to depend on Hinduism for everything -- it has remained only a philosophy. No Jaina can make shoes -- some Hindu sudra has to make the shoes. No Jaina can clean the toilets -- some sudra has to do that work. Although they rebelled against brahmins, their rebellion was just against the superiority of the brahmins, and they wanted themselves to be higher than the brahmins. But they were also not in favor of the lower classes being taken higher.
The ultimate result was that Jainas have remained a very small religion, confined in numbers. And because they left Hinduism, rather than rising higher than brahmins, they even fell from the second category. Because they left Hinduism, they were no longer chhatriyas. They were no longer considered to be warriors -- and they could not be, because of their nonviolence. They had to drop the idea of fighting, so the only way was to become business people. Lower you can go -- nobody prevents you -- so they had to go from the second class to the third class, and they all became business people. So the rebellion failed very badly. Jainas wanted to become higher than the first class; the outcome of their revolution was that they went from the second class to the third class.
And they are absolutely dependent on Hindus. For their manual work they need workers -- they cannot work. And because they became business people, slowly, slowly the Hindu vaishyas, the Hindu business people, and the Jaina business people came closer. Even marriages started happening between them. By and by they even had to ask brahmins to do their worship work -- and they had money to pay for it. So brahmins worshipped for the Jainas -- who are against brahminism, against Hinduism; but they had to use Hindus for everything. Their shoes are made by the sudras; their toilets are cleaned by the sudras. Their properties have to be protected by the chhatriyas, because they cannot take the sword in their hands. They cannot kill, so they cannot fight, they cannot go to war; they have their security force in the warrior race. And finally their priests -- the brahmins came in from the back door as their priests.
The Utopian Idea of Manu
Manu tried this immobile society -- which is still the same -- five thousand years ago. That too was a kind of utopia, because he was thinking in terms of there being no class struggle this way.
THE CLASS STRUGGLE can be dropped in two ways. Either there should be no classes; then there will be no class struggle.... That's what communism was doing, but it has failed because a new class has appeared. The other way is that the classes should be so stratified that there is no question of one person moving into another class. No struggle will be there, so there will be no competition. The brahmin will remain a brahmin. He will remain on the top; whether he is poor or rich does not matter. The businessman will remain a businessman. Just because he is rich he cannot become a brahmin, he cannot purchase the caste. He cannot rise; he will remain third class, however rich he is. The sudras will remain sudras: they have to do all the dirty work and they cannot move from there.
This was also a utopia. The idea was that if the classes are completely static, there is not going to be any struggle, competition. In a way Manu succeeded more than Marx, because for five thousand years his idea has remained in practice, and in India the Hindu society has never been in a class struggle. The poor are there, the rich are there, but that is not the real problem for the Hindu. His real problem is those four classes, which are absolutely static.
But that is very dangerous because you prevent people from moving in a direction where they can find their potential fulfilled. A sudra may prove to be a great warrior, but he will never be allowed. A brahmin may prove a great industrialist, but he cannot lower himself. So it saved the society from class struggle, but it destroyed the individual and his potential completely. The genius was ruined. In just the same way it happens n communism, the individual is destroyed, his genius is ruined. He cannot move upwards even if he has the capacity.
A Society of Enlightened People
THERE HAVE BEEN attempts all over the world to make a harmonious human society, but all have failed for the simple reason that nobody has bothered why it is not naturally harmonious.
It is not harmonious because each individual inside is divided, and his divisions are projected onto the society. And unless we dissolve the individual's inner divisions, there is no possibility of really realizing a utopia and creating a harmonious society in the world.
So the only way for a utopia is that your consciousness should grow more, and your unconsciousness should grow less, so finally a moment comes in your life when there is nothing left which is unconscious: you are simply a pure consciousness. Then there is no division. And this kind of person, who has just consciousness and nothing opposed to it, can become the very brick in creating a society which has no divisions. In other words, only a society which is enlightened enough can fulfill the demand of being harmonious -- a society of enlightened people, a society of great meditators who have dropped their divisions.
INSTEAD OF THINKING IN TERMS OF REVOLUTION and changing the society, its structure, we should think more of meditation and changing the individual. That is the only possible way that some day we can drop all divisions in the society. But first they have to be dropped in the individual -- and they can be dropped there. It is almost like the fourfold division as Manu conceived the society. You have the conscious, you have the unconscious, you have the collective unconscious, and you have the cosmic unconscious. These are the four divisions within you; as you go deeper you go into darker spaces. Manu also divided society in four. The most conscious part is the brahmin -- he makes up the topmost, the wisest part. But he starts with the society.
When Manu first divided the society, somebody may have been a wise man, but it is not necessary that his sons and daughters will also be wise, that generation after generation the wise man will create only wise people -- that is a stupid idea. So the first division may have been very accurate. He may have sorted out people correctly: the conscious people on the top, then less conscious people, then more unconscious people, then absolutely unconscious people. And if Manu calls absolutely unconscious people "sudras," untouchables, there is nothing wrong in it; philosophically it is absolutely right. But practically he went wrong because he did not think that it would not always happen that the unconscious people would produce unconscious people.
It happened that all the enlightened people came from the second class -- that is from the warriors -- not from the brahmins, which were the topmost class. It is very strange. Even Hindu incarnations -- Rama and Krishna -- they all belonged to the second class; they were not brahmins. Buddha and Mahavira -- they were not brahmins. So the brahmin class has not produced a single enlightened person, because they became very self-satisfied. They were on the top -- what more do you need? Everybody was going to touch their feet; even the king had to touch their feet. They were the purest people, so there was no urge to find more; it was enough. It was very satisfying and gratifying to their egos.
Why did it happen to the chhatriyas, the second class? My understanding is, because they were second class, there was an immense urge for them to surpass the brahmins, and the only way they could find to surpass the brahmins was to become enlightened. Then only could they surpass the brahmins; otherwise they could not. The brahmins are the most learned scholars. The chhatriyas had to attain something which is higher than learning and scholarship. They had to attain something which is not given by birth, so brahmins cannot claim it. Just by birth nobody can claim enlightenment.
It only happened in the second class because it is part of human psychology that the closer you are to the highest class the more competitiveness is within you. The more distant you are the less hope you have that you can manage to compete with the brahmin. The businessman cannot think he can manage to compete. The sudra of course cannot even imagine or dream that he can manage anything. He is not allowed even to read; he is not allowed to be educated. He is kept completely enslaved in his unconsciousness, so there is no question of a sudra becoming enlightened.
THE BUSINESSMAN HAS another competition, and that is of money. That is a horizontal competition amongst businessmen. He is trying to compete to have more money, and he knows he cannot compete with the warriors: a businessman is not a soldier. And he cannot compete with the priest because a businessman is not a scholar, and the brahmins kept a complete hold on all the great ancient scriptures and literature. They were only to give those books to their children, to their descendants. For thousands of years those books were not printed, although printing started in China three thousand years ago, and it could have come to India without any difficulty. People must have been aware -- they were constantly coming and going to China. If Buddhism could spread all over China, it is impossible that they could not have brought back the mechanism and understanding to print.
But brahmins were against printing. They were even against printing their scriptures when the Britishers came -- three hundred years ago -- and took over India from the Mohammedans. It was against their will that the scriptures were printed, because they were afraid that once they are printed, they become public property. Then anybody can read them, and anybody can become a scholar. They wanted to keep them to themselves, so there were only handwritten copies which were kept as a family tradition: so each family has its own handwritten copy of certain scriptures. The brahmins monopolized it.
The chhatriyas, the second class, tried -- and that was a great effort -- to become enlightened to surpass the brahmins. But it is very significant to understand that by becoming enlightened they became divisionless, their being became one. And certainly they became higher than any human being who was divided. There was no question about their superiority. So even brahmins would come to the enlightened people without bothering that they came from the second class. Brahmins have touched the feet of non-brahmins -- which would have been impossible otherwise. But once the non-brahmin has become enlightened then the brahmin knows that what he knows is only parrot-like. What this man knows is not parrot-like. He is not a scholar, he is really a knower. So hundreds of brahmins were disciples of Buddha, hundreds of brahmins were disciples of Mahavira.
The Harmony of Meditation
The world can come to a harmony if meditation is spread far and wide, and people are brought to one consciousness within themselves. This will be a totally different dimension to work with.
Up to now it was revolution. The point was society, its structure. It has failed again and again in different ways. Now it should be the individual; and not revolution, but meditation, transformation.
AND IT IS NOT SO DIFFICULT as people think. They may waste six years in getting a master's degree in a university; and they will not think that this is wasting too much time for just a degree which means nothing.
It is only a question of understanding the value of meditation. Then it is easily possible for millions of people to become undivided within themselves. They will be the first group of humanity to become harmonious. And their harmoniousness, their beauty, their compassion, their love -- all their qualities -- are bound to resound around the world.
My effort is to make meditation almost a science -- so it is not something to do with religion, so anybody can practice it, whether he is a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, it doesn't matter. What his religion is, is irrelevant; he can still meditate. He may not even believe in any religion, he may be an atheist; still he can meditate.
MEDITATION HAS TO become almost like a wildfire. Then there is some hope.
And people are ready: they have been thirsting for something that changes the whole flavor of the society. It is ugly as it is, it is disgusting. It is at the most, tolerable. Somehow people have been tolerating it. But to tolerate is not a very joyful thing.
It should be ecstatic.
It should be enjoyable.
It should bring a dance to people's hearts.
And once these divisions within a person disappear, he can see so clearly about everything. It is not a question of his being knowledgeable, it is a question of his clarity. He can look at every dimension, every direction with such clearness, with such deep sensitivity, perceptiveness, that he may not be knowledgeable but his clarity will give you answers which knowledge cannot give.
This is one of the most important things -- the idea of utopia -- which has been following man like a shadow for thousands of years. But somehow it got mixed up with the changing of society; the individual never got looked at . Nobody has paid much attention to the individual -- and that is the root cause of all the problems. But because the individual seems to be so small and the society seems so big, people think that we can change society, and then the individuals will change.
This is not going to be so -- because "society" is only a word; there are only individuals, there is no society. The society has no soul -- you cannot change anything in it.
You can change only the individual, howsoever small he appears. And once you know the science of how to change the individual, it is applicable to all the individuals everywhere.
And my feeling is that one day we are going to attain a society which will be harmonious, which will be far better than all the ideas that utopians have been producing for thousands of years.
The reality will be far more beautiful.
---OSHO---
Thanks.
Manu made Hindu society into four classes. There is no mobility. You are born a brahmin; that is the only way to be a brahmin. And that is the highest society, the topmost class. Then number two is the warriors, the kings -- the chhatriyas. But you are born in that caste, it is not a question that you can move. Then third is the class of the vaishyas, the business people; you are born in it. And the fourth is the sudras, the untouchables. All are born into their caste. That's why, until Christianity started converting so many Hindus, particularly the sudras, who were ready, very willing to become Christians, because at least they would be touchable.... Amongst Hindus sudras are untouchable, and there is no way to get out of the structure. For your whole life you have to remain the same as your forefathers remained for five thousand years. For five thousand years there has been a stratified society. If somebody is a shoemaker, his family has been making shoes for five thousand years. He cannot do any other work, he cannot enter into any other profession. That is not allowed.
HINDUS WERE NOT A CONVERTING RELIGION, because the great question was, if you convert somebody, in what class are you going to put the person? Christianity is a converting religion because it has no classification; you simply become a Christian. If Catholics convert you, you become a Catholic; if Protestants convert you, you become a Protestant. But in Hinduism you cannot be converted, for a simple reason: Where will you be put? Brahmins won't allow you, and you would not like to be put with the sudras, the untouchables. What is the point of coming to a religion where you will not be even touched? Even your shadow will be untouchable. A brahmin has to take a bath if the shadow of a sudra falls on him. The sudra has not touched him, but his shadow is also untouchable.
It is the most ancient religion, still Hinduism has not been spreading; it has been shrinking. Buddhism spread all over Asia, and it is only twenty-five centuries old. Hinduism is at least ten thousand years old, or more, but it could not spread for the simple reason that birth is decisive. You can be a Hindu only by birth, just as you can be a Jew only by birth -- and these are the two most ancient religions. These are really the two basic religions.
CHRISTIANITY AND MOHAMMEDANISM ARE OFFSHOOTS of Judaism; and Jainism and Buddhism are offshoots of Hinduism. Jainism and Buddhism are both the rebellion of the second class -- the chhatriyas, the warriors -- because they had power. They were the kings, they were the soldiers, they had the power -- and yet the brahmin was on top of them. So naturally, sooner or later they were going to revolt, and finally they did revolt. Gautam Buddha and Mahavira are both from the second class. They wanted to be first class, they had the power, and the brahmins had nothing: Why should they be the highest class? So it was a rebellion.
But it was a strange thing that although these two religions got out of the Hindu fold, only Buddhism could spread all over Asia. Jainism could not spread out of India. Buddhism managed to spread out of India: from India it disappeared, but it took over the whole of Asia. And the reason was that it was through Gautam Buddha's very compassionate mind that he allowed anybody to enter into Buddhism.
JAINAS, ALTHOUGH THEY had also rebelled against the brahmins, remained of the same mind -- that they are higher than the other two classes. They wanted to be higher than brahmins too, but they never started converting anybody, because who would they convert? Brahmins will not be ready to be converted -- they are already higher than everybody. Only sudras can be converted because they will be raised on the evaluation scale. But Jainas -- Mahavira and his group -- were not so compassionate as to take them in. So Jainism is not a complete culture -- it has to depend on Hinduism for everything -- it has remained only a philosophy. No Jaina can make shoes -- some Hindu sudra has to make the shoes. No Jaina can clean the toilets -- some sudra has to do that work. Although they rebelled against brahmins, their rebellion was just against the superiority of the brahmins, and they wanted themselves to be higher than the brahmins. But they were also not in favor of the lower classes being taken higher.
The ultimate result was that Jainas have remained a very small religion, confined in numbers. And because they left Hinduism, rather than rising higher than brahmins, they even fell from the second category. Because they left Hinduism, they were no longer chhatriyas. They were no longer considered to be warriors -- and they could not be, because of their nonviolence. They had to drop the idea of fighting, so the only way was to become business people. Lower you can go -- nobody prevents you -- so they had to go from the second class to the third class, and they all became business people. So the rebellion failed very badly. Jainas wanted to become higher than the first class; the outcome of their revolution was that they went from the second class to the third class.
And they are absolutely dependent on Hindus. For their manual work they need workers -- they cannot work. And because they became business people, slowly, slowly the Hindu vaishyas, the Hindu business people, and the Jaina business people came closer. Even marriages started happening between them. By and by they even had to ask brahmins to do their worship work -- and they had money to pay for it. So brahmins worshipped for the Jainas -- who are against brahminism, against Hinduism; but they had to use Hindus for everything. Their shoes are made by the sudras; their toilets are cleaned by the sudras. Their properties have to be protected by the chhatriyas, because they cannot take the sword in their hands. They cannot kill, so they cannot fight, they cannot go to war; they have their security force in the warrior race. And finally their priests -- the brahmins came in from the back door as their priests.
The Utopian Idea of Manu
Manu tried this immobile society -- which is still the same -- five thousand years ago. That too was a kind of utopia, because he was thinking in terms of there being no class struggle this way.
THE CLASS STRUGGLE can be dropped in two ways. Either there should be no classes; then there will be no class struggle.... That's what communism was doing, but it has failed because a new class has appeared. The other way is that the classes should be so stratified that there is no question of one person moving into another class. No struggle will be there, so there will be no competition. The brahmin will remain a brahmin. He will remain on the top; whether he is poor or rich does not matter. The businessman will remain a businessman. Just because he is rich he cannot become a brahmin, he cannot purchase the caste. He cannot rise; he will remain third class, however rich he is. The sudras will remain sudras: they have to do all the dirty work and they cannot move from there.
This was also a utopia. The idea was that if the classes are completely static, there is not going to be any struggle, competition. In a way Manu succeeded more than Marx, because for five thousand years his idea has remained in practice, and in India the Hindu society has never been in a class struggle. The poor are there, the rich are there, but that is not the real problem for the Hindu. His real problem is those four classes, which are absolutely static.
But that is very dangerous because you prevent people from moving in a direction where they can find their potential fulfilled. A sudra may prove to be a great warrior, but he will never be allowed. A brahmin may prove a great industrialist, but he cannot lower himself. So it saved the society from class struggle, but it destroyed the individual and his potential completely. The genius was ruined. In just the same way it happens n communism, the individual is destroyed, his genius is ruined. He cannot move upwards even if he has the capacity.
A Society of Enlightened People
THERE HAVE BEEN attempts all over the world to make a harmonious human society, but all have failed for the simple reason that nobody has bothered why it is not naturally harmonious.
It is not harmonious because each individual inside is divided, and his divisions are projected onto the society. And unless we dissolve the individual's inner divisions, there is no possibility of really realizing a utopia and creating a harmonious society in the world.
So the only way for a utopia is that your consciousness should grow more, and your unconsciousness should grow less, so finally a moment comes in your life when there is nothing left which is unconscious: you are simply a pure consciousness. Then there is no division. And this kind of person, who has just consciousness and nothing opposed to it, can become the very brick in creating a society which has no divisions. In other words, only a society which is enlightened enough can fulfill the demand of being harmonious -- a society of enlightened people, a society of great meditators who have dropped their divisions.
INSTEAD OF THINKING IN TERMS OF REVOLUTION and changing the society, its structure, we should think more of meditation and changing the individual. That is the only possible way that some day we can drop all divisions in the society. But first they have to be dropped in the individual -- and they can be dropped there. It is almost like the fourfold division as Manu conceived the society. You have the conscious, you have the unconscious, you have the collective unconscious, and you have the cosmic unconscious. These are the four divisions within you; as you go deeper you go into darker spaces. Manu also divided society in four. The most conscious part is the brahmin -- he makes up the topmost, the wisest part. But he starts with the society.
When Manu first divided the society, somebody may have been a wise man, but it is not necessary that his sons and daughters will also be wise, that generation after generation the wise man will create only wise people -- that is a stupid idea. So the first division may have been very accurate. He may have sorted out people correctly: the conscious people on the top, then less conscious people, then more unconscious people, then absolutely unconscious people. And if Manu calls absolutely unconscious people "sudras," untouchables, there is nothing wrong in it; philosophically it is absolutely right. But practically he went wrong because he did not think that it would not always happen that the unconscious people would produce unconscious people.
It happened that all the enlightened people came from the second class -- that is from the warriors -- not from the brahmins, which were the topmost class. It is very strange. Even Hindu incarnations -- Rama and Krishna -- they all belonged to the second class; they were not brahmins. Buddha and Mahavira -- they were not brahmins. So the brahmin class has not produced a single enlightened person, because they became very self-satisfied. They were on the top -- what more do you need? Everybody was going to touch their feet; even the king had to touch their feet. They were the purest people, so there was no urge to find more; it was enough. It was very satisfying and gratifying to their egos.
Why did it happen to the chhatriyas, the second class? My understanding is, because they were second class, there was an immense urge for them to surpass the brahmins, and the only way they could find to surpass the brahmins was to become enlightened. Then only could they surpass the brahmins; otherwise they could not. The brahmins are the most learned scholars. The chhatriyas had to attain something which is higher than learning and scholarship. They had to attain something which is not given by birth, so brahmins cannot claim it. Just by birth nobody can claim enlightenment.
It only happened in the second class because it is part of human psychology that the closer you are to the highest class the more competitiveness is within you. The more distant you are the less hope you have that you can manage to compete with the brahmin. The businessman cannot think he can manage to compete. The sudra of course cannot even imagine or dream that he can manage anything. He is not allowed even to read; he is not allowed to be educated. He is kept completely enslaved in his unconsciousness, so there is no question of a sudra becoming enlightened.
THE BUSINESSMAN HAS another competition, and that is of money. That is a horizontal competition amongst businessmen. He is trying to compete to have more money, and he knows he cannot compete with the warriors: a businessman is not a soldier. And he cannot compete with the priest because a businessman is not a scholar, and the brahmins kept a complete hold on all the great ancient scriptures and literature. They were only to give those books to their children, to their descendants. For thousands of years those books were not printed, although printing started in China three thousand years ago, and it could have come to India without any difficulty. People must have been aware -- they were constantly coming and going to China. If Buddhism could spread all over China, it is impossible that they could not have brought back the mechanism and understanding to print.
But brahmins were against printing. They were even against printing their scriptures when the Britishers came -- three hundred years ago -- and took over India from the Mohammedans. It was against their will that the scriptures were printed, because they were afraid that once they are printed, they become public property. Then anybody can read them, and anybody can become a scholar. They wanted to keep them to themselves, so there were only handwritten copies which were kept as a family tradition: so each family has its own handwritten copy of certain scriptures. The brahmins monopolized it.
The chhatriyas, the second class, tried -- and that was a great effort -- to become enlightened to surpass the brahmins. But it is very significant to understand that by becoming enlightened they became divisionless, their being became one. And certainly they became higher than any human being who was divided. There was no question about their superiority. So even brahmins would come to the enlightened people without bothering that they came from the second class. Brahmins have touched the feet of non-brahmins -- which would have been impossible otherwise. But once the non-brahmin has become enlightened then the brahmin knows that what he knows is only parrot-like. What this man knows is not parrot-like. He is not a scholar, he is really a knower. So hundreds of brahmins were disciples of Buddha, hundreds of brahmins were disciples of Mahavira.
The Harmony of Meditation
The world can come to a harmony if meditation is spread far and wide, and people are brought to one consciousness within themselves. This will be a totally different dimension to work with.
Up to now it was revolution. The point was society, its structure. It has failed again and again in different ways. Now it should be the individual; and not revolution, but meditation, transformation.
AND IT IS NOT SO DIFFICULT as people think. They may waste six years in getting a master's degree in a university; and they will not think that this is wasting too much time for just a degree which means nothing.
It is only a question of understanding the value of meditation. Then it is easily possible for millions of people to become undivided within themselves. They will be the first group of humanity to become harmonious. And their harmoniousness, their beauty, their compassion, their love -- all their qualities -- are bound to resound around the world.
My effort is to make meditation almost a science -- so it is not something to do with religion, so anybody can practice it, whether he is a Hindu or a Christian or a Jew or a Mohammedan, it doesn't matter. What his religion is, is irrelevant; he can still meditate. He may not even believe in any religion, he may be an atheist; still he can meditate.
MEDITATION HAS TO become almost like a wildfire. Then there is some hope.
And people are ready: they have been thirsting for something that changes the whole flavor of the society. It is ugly as it is, it is disgusting. It is at the most, tolerable. Somehow people have been tolerating it. But to tolerate is not a very joyful thing.
It should be ecstatic.
It should be enjoyable.
It should bring a dance to people's hearts.
And once these divisions within a person disappear, he can see so clearly about everything. It is not a question of his being knowledgeable, it is a question of his clarity. He can look at every dimension, every direction with such clearness, with such deep sensitivity, perceptiveness, that he may not be knowledgeable but his clarity will give you answers which knowledge cannot give.
This is one of the most important things -- the idea of utopia -- which has been following man like a shadow for thousands of years. But somehow it got mixed up with the changing of society; the individual never got looked at . Nobody has paid much attention to the individual -- and that is the root cause of all the problems. But because the individual seems to be so small and the society seems so big, people think that we can change society, and then the individuals will change.
This is not going to be so -- because "society" is only a word; there are only individuals, there is no society. The society has no soul -- you cannot change anything in it.
You can change only the individual, howsoever small he appears. And once you know the science of how to change the individual, it is applicable to all the individuals everywhere.
And my feeling is that one day we are going to attain a society which will be harmonious, which will be far better than all the ideas that utopians have been producing for thousands of years.
The reality will be far more beautiful.
---OSHO---
Thanks.
