From Bondage to Freedom.doc

from bondage to freedomanswers to the seekers on the pathtalks given from 15/09/85 am to 27/10/85 amenglish discourse series43 chaptersyear published: 1985original title the rajneesh bible volume 8. the last 17 discourses were originally titled the rajneesh bible volume 9.from bondage to freedomchapter #1chapter title: to be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world15 september 1985 am in rajneeshmandirarchive code: 8509150shorttitle: bondag01audio: yesvideo: yeslength: 114 minsquestion 1beloved master,please speak on the difference between mediocrity and ordinariness.mediocrity is the general state of humanity as it is. it is a retardedness of intelligence. nobody wants you to be intelligent, because the more intelligent you are, the more it is difficult to exploit you, to enslave you.every vested interest wants you to be mediocre. a mediocre person is just like a tree whose roots have been continuously cut so it cannot grow. the mediocre person never comes to know fruition, flowering, fragrance. he lives just like a vegetable. but this is the common state. and to keep the mediocre, mediocre, a strange thing has to be put in his mind: that he is extraordinary.george gurdjieff used to tell a story.there was a shepherd who was a magician, and he had many sheep. to take care of them, not to let them wander into the forest and be eaten by wild animals, he managed a strategy. he hypnotized all the sheep and told them, you are not sheep, you are lions. since that day, the sheep started behaving like lions.the mediocre person will rebel against mediocrity because it is ugly to be mediocre. but the society in many ways gives him the feeling of being extraordinary. hence, it is very difficult to find a man who does not, deep down, believe that he is special - the only begotten son of god.he may not say so, because he knows what happens if you say that you are the only begotten son of god. then crucifixion is certain, and resurrection. nobody knows whether it happened or not. so he keeps it inside. this helps him to remain mediocre.if he understands he is mediocre, that very understanding will destroy his mediocrity. to understand you are mediocre is a great jump into intelligence.the ordinary person i talk about is the natural person. nature does not produce special people. it produces unique people, but not special. everybody is unique in his own way.the big pine tree and the small rosebush - who is higher? neither the pine tree ever boasts that she is higher, nor the rosebush ever boasts that you may be higher, but where are the roses? the real height is in the roses and the fragrance, in the flowering. height itself is not enough to be higher.but the rosebush and the pine remain together without any quarrel, competition, for the simple reason that both understand they are part of the same nature.when i say ordinariness, i am saying drop the idea of being extraordinary, which is keeping you mediocre.to be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing in the world. just watch yourself. it hurts very much, it is painful to accept that you are not extraordinary. watch when you accept the idea that you are ordinary. a great burden is relieved. suddenly you are in the open space, natural, just the way you are.the ordinary person has a uniqueness and a simplicity, humbleness. out of his simplicity, humbleness, uniqueness, he has really become extraordinary, but he has no idea of it.so it is a paradox: the people who think they are extraordinary are simply retarded, mediocre. and the people who are humble and just accept that they are ordinary people like everybody else - you will see a light in their eyes. you will see a grace in their actions. you will not see them competing, you will not see them cheating. you will not see them betraying. they will not have double minds. they will not be hypocrites.what is the need for an ordinary person to be a hypocrite? he can show his heart openly to anybody, because he is not pretending anything.you become secretive when you start pretending. you start feeling very great. you may say it or not, but by hypocrisy, masks, your head goes on becoming more and more swollen. it is a state of sickness.and who is the person who believes himself extraordinary? the person who suffers immensely from an inferiority complex. to cover it up, he projects just the opposite idea. but he is only deceiving himself, nobody else is deceived by him.the ordinary person has no need to be a hypocrite, no need to be a pretender. he is just open; he need not be secretive. and there is beauty in openness, simpleness.so it is a rare paradox that the person who feels himself ordinary becomes extraordinary, and the person who goes on feeling himself extraordinary, remains very retarded, a mediocrity.everybody has to look within himself. but people are such deceivers that, deceiving others, slowly slowly they start deceiving themselves. they become so articulate about deceiving. it is dangerous to be a hypocrite, because sooner or later you will start thinking this is your real face.in my thirty-five years work with people i have come across thousands of people, intimately, and i was puzzled that these people have deceived themselves. to deceive others can be understood, but they have deceived themselves.and you cannot take them out of that deception, because that is their only treasure. they know behind it there is just darkness, hollowness, an inferiority complex. so they cling to it.even in this commune - which hurts me, because at least here people should not be like that. otherwise, what the hell are you doing here?i just saw venu at the gate. sheela had asked which people were coming with her, and venu had said that her place is with sheela. i was surprised. what is she doing here standing at the gate? her place is not here! she should go with sheela. not a single moment she should be here. people should be honest!sheela asked me again and again during these four years, beloved master, help me, so that i never deceive you, never betray you.i told her, sheela, asking it again and again means there is a tendency, of which you are aware, that you can betray, you can deceive. otherwise, what is the point of asking it?and finally she did. and the reason why she did is worth understanding for everybody.when i was silent for three and a half years, she was the spokesman. i knew that this is going to be a difficult task the day i start speaking directly, because then she will see she is no more a celebrity; no interviews on the television, radio, newspapers, magazines.but i had to speak. just for one person i cannot hold back from one million sannyasins, and for the sannyasins who will be coming later on, my heartfelt feelings, truths, experiences. and there is too much to say.as you get prepared only then i can say it. those three and a half years prepared you, and now you can see the difference between the way i am speaking now and the way i was speaking three and a half years before. as you mature, as you graduate, i can tell you more naked truths, trusting that you will be able to understand them.so the problem was, i knew that if i start speaking, then sheelas swollen head will start shrinking, and that will be difficult. i was perfectly aware the day i started speaking, she started becoming sad; and slowly slowly she started being away from rajneeshpuram, finding excuses that she is needed in australia, she is needed in europe. she was never needed before.and this time when she came, she wrote a letter to me, beloved master, i do not feel the same excitement here. i feel happier in europe, in australia, anywhere else. but she did not look why.i sent a message to her that, see the point. where has the excitement gone? the excitement was not being with me, with the commune, creating a new way of life, hoping for a new man to arrive. that was not your real excitement. your real excitement was becoming a celebrity - on the television, on the radio, in the magazines, in the newspapers. you enjoyed your name, your photograph; now this will not be possible. i am speaking myself. i am speaking to the whole world press. and certainly you cannot represent me.i had to teach her everything for three and a half years, two hours every day - what she has to say, what she has not to say. and she was repeating like a parrot, because it is not her experience. but she did well; as a parrot she was perfect.but now, when i started speaking, she started feeling sad, gloomy. i sent the message, you should look at the cause of it. the cause is your ego.three and a half years is a long enough time to get a swollen head, and i am now bringing it back to its real position. it is sick. this swelling is more dangerous than any cancer, because the cancer can kill the body, but this swelling kills the mind and the very soul of man.and why are you feeling happy in europe? if you want to check it, i can come to europe, and immediately you will know it is not because you are in europe that you are feeling happy. you will feel even more unhappy than here.but man is so stupid. she did not even respond to my message. on the contrary, she collected the bunch of people that she has placed in important places. now the sadness was turning into revengefulness. the idea was that all these people will go with her, and the commune will be in a chaos.now, the commune is always in a chaos! nobody can disturb it. what more chaos can be there?and it is a simple law that people who are in power. and i had given her all the powers, simply because i was not interested in getting involved in small things. it was impossible to be silent and get involved in small things.she removed all the people who were in some way more intelligent, stronger, and a danger to her position; any day they can be the competitors. so she removed those people, and she chose people who were even more mediocre than her. they will never be a challenge.now, this venu was saying, my place is with sheela. certainly her place is with sheela, because she is more mediocre than sheela. but i was surprised to see her standing here. what is she doing here? she should have left with sheela.it is a good change. be happy about it. it was bound to happen. now you can have a better and stronger group of people to run the commune - because i am not afraid of anybody being more ordinary than me. you cannot find on the whole earth a competitor for me. so this gives me immense freedom.thats why arup can ask the question. while sheela was here, arup was pushed back in every way. and i was watching, sadly. she is far more intelligent, far stronger.now all the people who had been thrown out of the commune by sheela can come back. so inform all your friends who have left that sheela is gone and gone forever. and not alone - with the whole bunch, the whole gang. so inform the people who have left just because of her, because those people were intelligent, and she could not tolerate any intelligent person.this is a problem with all mediocre people. they cannot tolerate anybody who is better than them because that destroys their illusion of being extraordinary. but nobody can take your ordinariness. it is something which is not a projection, but a reality.the rosebush is ordinary, the pine is ordinary, the deer is ordinary. why should any man try to be extraordinary?only man seems to be sick. the whole existence lives in absolute ordinariness and is so joyful, such a blessing; but man is sick. his sickness is that he cannot accept himself as he is. he wants to be somebody great: alexander the great. less than that wont do.but he forgets what alexander gained. he lived only thirty-three years, spent his whole life fighting, invading, killing. he had no chance to live, no time to live.he had met a great philosopher, sage, wise man, diogenes, before he was going to invade india. he asked diogenes if he had any message for him.diogenes said, only one: rather than wasting time, live it. you are not living yourself, and you are not allowing others to live. you are committing immense crimes against life - for what? just to be called alexander the great?everybody thinks like that. just inside, you can call yourself alexander the great; nobody is preventing you. if you want, you can even put a signboard on your chest: alexander the great - but live! you will look like a buffoon, but that is far better than to be a buffoon; at least you will have time to live, love, sing, dance.alexander understood the message. he said, i can see the point. when i come back, i will try to follow it.diogenes said, remember, nobody comes back from such an ego trip, because this ego trip never ends, it goes on and on. you will end, not your ego trip.and thats what happened: he never came back home. on the way, he died. and when he was dying, he remembered diogenes statement that nobody comes back. ego drives you, and there is no end for the ego. it creates more goals, new goals, higher goals.in deep respect for diogenes, he told the people who were going to carry his body to the grave, let my hands hang out of the casket.his prime minister asked, but this is not the tradition. hands have to be inside the casket. hanging them out will look really odd.but he said, i want them to hang out, because i want people to know that empty-handed i had come into the world, empty-handed i lived in the world, and empty-handed i am going from the world.these empty hands of alexander the great represent almost everybodys hands.if you want to live authentically and sincerely, then just be ordinary. then nobody can compete with you. you are out of the race of competition, which is destructive.suddenly you are free to live. you have time to live. you have time to do what you want to do. you can laugh, you can sing, you can dance. you are an ordinary man. even if the whole world laughs at it, so what? i am an ordinary man. they are all extraordinary people. they have the right to laugh; i have the right to dance. their laughter is phony; your dance is real.sheela could not tolerate it. i even sent her the message, if it gives you pleasure that i should not speak, i can go into silence again. of course, millions of sannyasins today and tomorrow and in the future will be at a loss, because there is much which i have yet to say. but to make you happy, i can do that.but remember, if my silence makes you happy, then my absence may make you happier. perhaps, deep down, my death will be the right thing for you. then you can become the head. nobody will be there to prevent you.if you try to look into things deeper, you will be surprised what revealing factors come up.now, sheela was very much concerned about my death - almost paranoid. she had arranged so many guards and security. but she will never understand why this paranoia.something deep inside herself was longing for my death. and to avoid seeing it, she was projecting that somebody is going to assassinate me.mind is very complex. it projects things which are inside onto others.and she was promising me continuously, i am yours forever.i said, sheela, dont say such things, because forever is a long time. just today is enough. tomorrow, nobody knows.but she said, i love you so much that i can say that i will always love you.i said, if you want to say these things, you can go on saying, but you dont see that i am a mirror. i can see all the layers within you. why this insistence that i will never betray you. even if you tell me to resign from the presidentship of the commune, foundation, or any post that i am holding, i will do it immediately?i said to her, just wait.now she has resigned on her own, and she has taken those idiots she has put in powerful positions.vidya is gone with her. she was one of the thickest heads here.and they all have written letters to me, beloved master. still they dont see the point, that now it is better to address them mr. rajneesh. why beloved master?we love you, and we will always love you, but we are leaving. no reason why they are leaving. and still no sensibility that words like beloved master do not suit in the context they are, perhaps unconsciously, using them.and none of them - neither sheela nor vidya - has given any reason why, because they know if they give the reason why. they cannot give the real reason, which will be very humiliating. and they cannot give any wrong reason, because i can see what is right and what is wrong. so they decided not to give any reason.but to see the words beloved master from these people makes me sick. what they are doing is just the opposite.these are the mediocre people. remaining here with me for years, they have not understood what it means to be ordinary, simple human beings. they wanted a hierarchy, they wanted to be on the top, they wanted to have power. it was their political game.i told sheela again and again, that the people who have come to the commune have not come just to work; they have come here to meditate, to grow, to come to a realization of their self. but she was not interested in that at all. her interest was only one: that she should remain on the top.but it is good that on her own she has taken all the stupid people. a few are still here who have promised her they will leave. i hope they leave soon, because i have better people here, i have better people around the world who can be called.and the commune does not become just a factory where people are only working, no time for them even to love. this was heavy on my heart for all these years. i cannot see my people just working, and tired and going to sleep.you are not for the work. work