Recently Osho lovers in India were pleasantly surprised to read a news item in several newspapers that Shri Adityanath, the chief minister of Uttar Pradesh quoted from Osho’s very famous book on Socialism. It was a kind of Red Alert for the people of his state, a timely reminder to reject socialism being propagated by the Swamjawadi party.
The national newspapers reported: “Quoting spiritual leader Acharya Rajneesh, who was popularly known as Osho, Adityanath said he rightly said new “Samajwad makes the rich poor and the poor slave and a fool out of intellectuals and makes leaders powerful for their personal benefits.”
“If there is any biggest superstition of present times then it is samajwad,” he added.
This quote reminded me also, as this was the first book of Osho’s discourses ( Samajwad se Saavdhan—Beware of Socialism ) that I did read several times in 1970. Before this book, I had read only some articles excerpted from his discourses on the burning questions of India—Bharat Ke Jalte Prashn. The undercurrent of these 5 discourses that touched my heart deeply was: All so-called social revolutions in the past have proved totally futile. They did not prove beneficial to humanity at all—rather they were the real cause of large-scale bloodshed in the world.
Osho said: The poor have never been served; they have never been helped. Yes, in the name of the poor there have been plenty of movements, plenty of revolutions, and plenty of bloodshed. But they did the poor no good. It is time that we become alert about this whole business. Be alert and aware when somebody tells you that he wants to serve the poor — for sure, he is a dangerous man. He, too, is going to use the poor as a ladder. And the poor people are foolish; otherwise, they would not have been poor. They are poor because of their foolishness. So they will accept him as their new messiah. This is how they get their messiahs again and again, messiahs U ho exploit them, enslave them, torture them.
Osho gave the examples of Hitler who rose to power through “doing good for the poor”. Mussolini came to power for “the good of the poor”. So did Stalin and Mao. Everybody in the world seems to be busy doing good for the poor, and no good ever happens to them. The poor have remained as poor as ever. Why is it so?
And the fact is—as Osho pointed it out–there is a single reason why wealth is less and the number of people very large. As it is, you cannot do a thing for the good of the poor. Put whosoever in the seat of power, and nothing will happen. The real problem is that wealth is much less than the number of people on the earth. We need more wealth, much more. We need to have more wealth than the number of people. We need to have more wealth than the needs of the people.
We do need to create more and more wealth in the poor countries to be able to feed the whole population, which has been multiplying year after year. In the days when Osho was talking on socialism, the population of India was less than 70 crores—and now it is double. And no talk of socialism will do any good to people—they will be misled and will become poorer.
Osho contemplates: And the next problem is: How to produce this wealth? The irony is that the poor people are in opposition to those who can produce more wealth.
The poor are fighting their own benefactors. And this has been an ancient habit with mankind, and it is amazing. Galileo was killed, and yet the whole world today benefits by his discovery. We crucified Jesus, and yet the teachings of Jesus are instrumental in humanizing the world. We poisoned Socrates, and yet Socrates’ sayings will continue to guide mankind’s spiritual evolution for eternity.
Man is really a strange creature. He can never know who is really working for his good.
And the Enlightened master concludes: The revolutionaries have done no good. And all revolutions have failed. Not only revolutions that we know have failed to do good, they have definitely done immense harm to the society of homo sapiens. They have obstructed the growth of man; they have impeded the natural flow of life at many points.
Now we need a different revolution — altogether different from the past revolutions. We need a revolution that will make us forget all other revolutions. We need a revolution that will tell the do-gooders, “For God’s sake, leave us to ourselves. Enough is enough. You failed to do us any good for five thousand years; we don’t need you anymore. Be quiet!”
The good of the poor depends upon the production of wealth, more wealth. It depends upon the production of such instruments as can increase production a thousand times. The well-being of the poor demands that class conflict is eradicated from the world.
And it is a natural phenomenon, particularly when you are the disciple of a master — deep down you are angry at him. There are reasons for it, because surrendering is going against your ego, and the ego is always ready to take revenge — any excuse will do.
