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| The Successful
Criminals in Politics and Religion |
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Question:
Osho,
How come you speak about political leaders and religious leaders in the same
tone -- is there no difference between them?
Fundamentally there is no difference at all.
Superficially of course there are differences.
The basic
desire to be a leader arises in people who are suffering from an inferiority
complex. It does not matter whether they move into the political world or into
the religious world; the will-to-power is an absolute indication that the man
feels himself inferior to others and he wants to prove to the world that it is
not so.
It is not
only a question of proving to the world; through the world he wants to prove it
to himself too, that he is not inferior to anybody. The only way mind can
manage it is to make everybody inferior to you.
Mind is not
your intelligence.
It may sound
strange but this is a truth, that mind is not your intelligence. Mind can be
intellectual, which is a very poor substitute for intelligence. Intellectuality
is mechanical. You can become a great scholar, a great professor, a great
philosopher -- just playing with words which are all borrowed, arranging and
rearranging thoughts, none of which are your own.
The intellect is absolutely bankrupt.
It has
nothing of its own, all is borrowed.
And that's
the difference between intelligence and intellect.
Intelligence
has an eyesight of its own, a capacity to see into things, into
problems.
Intelligence is your born quality.
It cannot be
learned, it cannot be nurtured. Everybody is born with intelligence, but the
society is in favor of intellect, because the intellectual person is not a real
individual, he is phony. He has nothing of his own; he is a beggar, and beggars
are not supposed to be emperors, are not supposed to be masters. They are
destined to remain slaves.
So your so-called greatest scholars are continuously proving
their slavery to the establishment. None of them is a rebel. They are hankering
for the prizes and awards the establishment can bestow upon them:
respectability, honor. They are all desiring to be Nobel laureates, but to get
the Nobel prize you have to sell your soul. You have to accept a thousand and
one things that no intelligent person can accept.
You have to
support the status quo, the people who are in power, who have the money. You
are just a puppet to them. Yes, it is a very mutual conspiracy: they give you
the Nobel prize, they give you honorary doctorates, they make you world famous;
in return you support their exploitation, their oppression, and whatever
nonsense they are doing. You have to become a protecting wall.
And of
course the world is going to listen to you because you are a Nobel prize
winner, honored by Oxford, by Cambridge, by Harvard. The ordinary people, the
common masses are bound to listen to you.
If you are
supporting the society then naturally there is nothing wrong with the society;
there is no need to change it. The problems are not created by the society but
by the "anti-social" elements. And who are the anti-social elements?
All the rebels are anti-social elements. It is these people who provoke the
masses, steal their souls, make them aware that they also are human beings, not
cattle. These are anti-social elements; they have to be destroyed...
OshO
From Darkness To Light,
Chapter 5
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