Osho

Question 1
NORMAN O. BROWN HAS SAID: 'THE NEXT GENERATION NEEDS TO BE TOLD THAT THE REAL FIGHT IS NOT THE POLITICAL FIGHT BUT TO PUT AN END TO POLITICS. FROM POLITICS TO METAPOLITICS. FROM POLITICS TO POETRY.' IN WHAT WAY IS POETRY REVOLUTIONARY?

POETRY IS not revolutionary, poetry is revolution -- because poetry is a totally different vision of life. Poetry is a metamorphosis, a metanoia. Poetry means looking at life with wonder, looking at life as if it is a mystery, looking at life and celebrating it. Poetry is not just poetry, it is approaching existence with love. Science is a rape because basically reason is a rape -- and poetry is a love affair. Reason is aggressive, reason is violent; poetry is non-violent. Reason thinks; poetry feels.
We have built a world around thinking and it has failed, it has failed utterly. In the world of prose, in the world of logic and reason, the politician becomes very, very important. In the world of feeling, in the world of poetry, in the world of love, the mystic will replace the politician.
Reason is ambitious, it wants to capture power. Why does it want to capture power? Why does it want to possess power? Because deep down it feels impotent; a great inferiority complex exists just at the bottom. To cover it, reason tries to become powerful. Whatsoever is needed to be done -- good or bad -- reason is ready to do it. But power is needed at any cost because without power deep down one feels a nobody, one feels a non-entity. Reason is the ego-trip. Let prose be the symbol for reason.
Poetry is a symbol for feeling. It is so powerful in itself that it needs no other power as a substitute. It suffers from no inferiority complex. A man of feeling is non-ambitious. He loves tremendously but he is not a hoarder. He has a being but he is not in search of having more and more and more. He is non-competitive -- if he is non-ambitious how can he be competitive? And when he is non-ambitious and non-competitive he befriends existence. That's what Buddha calls compassion.
Yes, poetry is revolution, but I don't know if Norman O. Brown knows exactly what poetry is because he himself is a logician. I don't know whether he has ever experienced poetry. When he talks about poetry that too is talking about it. You can talk about poetry but what you say remains prose. One has to BE poetry, one has to be a mystic. Talking about mysticism is not going to help -- it is the same thing, nothing has changed. It is the same disease with a new label. Maybe the bottle is new, but the wine is old. That's why he misses.
Look again at his statement. 'THE NEXT GENERATION NEEDS TO BE TOLD....' The language of 'telling the next generation' is the language of the politician. The next generation needs not to be told, the next generation needs to be shown. One should become a mystic, that's the only statement possible. It is not that the next generation has to be 'told' because then you become a leader, then you are no longer a Master. What is the difference between a leader and a Master? A leader tells you what to do, a Master is. He shows you how to be.
Brown says: 'THE NEXT GENERATION NEEDS TO BE TOLD THAT THE REAL FIGHT IS NOT THE POLITICAL FIGHT....' But it still remains a fight. The language is still of aggression; the language is still of rape, not of love. These things show. These are the loopholes. One has to read between the lines only then will you understand. To fight again? The very word 'fight' is ugly.
And he says: 'THE REAL FIGHT IS NOT THE POLITICAL FIGHT....' But any fight is going to be political; fight as such is politics. Against what you fight makes no difference, you will become a politician. The mystic does not fight, the mystic is a drop-out -- remember it. He is not a fighter, he is a drop-out. Seeing the absurdity of things he gets out of it, he jumps out of the wheel. If you fight, you remain in it, you become part of it. Even in opposition you remain in it. Just by being opposite to anything you don't go beyond, just by being opposite you are not transformed. Then you will have the politics of an anti-politician, but that is nothing.
And remember, when two persons fight they become alike. People are more like their enemies than like their friends -- have you not observed it? When you have to fight with somebody you have to choose the same strategy, the same techniques, the same weapons, the same ways. Churchill fighting a Hitler almost becomes a Hitler. It bas to happen otherwise he will not win over Hitler. Churchill wins over Hitler because he proves to be more of a Hitler than Hitler himself.
The enemy transforms you utterly into being like himself -- that's why I say you can choose your friends foolishly but never choose your enemies unwisely. Friends don't transform you very much but enemies go deep, enmity goes deep. Love seems to be very, very momentary; hate seems to be permanent. A love affair happens and goes, the honeymoon ends very soon, but enmity continues for years, for generations, sometimes for centuries.
Why is man more capable of hatred than of love? In fact, sometimes when you see him in love it is only because of hatred. For example, if India and Pakistan go to war, there is great love amongst Indians; they feel more united, they feel more like a family. Then the Maharashtrian is not fighting with the Gujarati, then the Hindi speaking people are not against the non-Hindi speaking people. Then they forget all their enmity, they are one. The common enemy creates a kind of love. But it is love created out of hatred and when that hatred is no longer there then this love will disappear -- it was a by-product.
Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill and Roosevelt had been enemies but they became friends because of a common enemy, Hitler. Once Germany had gone their friendship went also. That friendship was not a friendship, it was a political affair born out of having a common enemy. Remember, love that is born out of enmity is not love, it is a false coin. And all political unity depends on it. You are not united with somebody, you are united against somebody -- that's the logic of politics.
If you tell people that the real fight is going to be against politics, you will make them political. They will start fighting politicians, they will start fighting politics -- and they will become political. Slowly, slowly they will learn the same technology, the same strategy, the same ways, and by the time they will they will be as political as the people they were fighting against. This has happened so many times in the world that it is simply stupid that we are not aware of it.
What happened in the Russian Revolution? The communists were fighting against the Czar, one of the most despotic rulers ever. Fighting with the Czar they became czars. When they came to power they proved to be more dangerous, more despotic, more dictatorial than the Czar himself. One Josef Stalin was as dangerous as one thousand czars. He killed millions of people, and killed them in the name of revolution. Those people were not rich people, they were poor people, proletarians. Proletarians were killed for the sake of proletarians -- the violence continued.
What happened? What was the mechanism? Why did Josef Stalin turn anti-revolutionary? After being one of the greatest revolutionaries how did he turn into an anti-revolutionary? If you fight with a czar you will have to become like a czar; by and by you will learn the same language. By the time you come into power it is another czar coming into power. The czar changes but the 'czardom' continues.
That's how it has always happened. Very little intelligence is needed to show it to you. Revolution has always failed because the revolutionary turns into an anti-revolutionary when he comes to power. He has to, he cannot do anything else.
'THE NEXT GENERATION HAS TO BE TOLD THAT THE REAL FIGHT IS NOT THE POLITICAL FIGHT....' The real fight is not a fight at all, the real fight cannot be a fight at all. One has to drop out. The real revolutionary is not fighting anybody, he simply sees the absurdity of things and drops out. He says that he is not going to be a part of it this way or that -- he is neither for nor against. It is so stupid that he cannot even be against it. Very few people are real revolutionaries -- a Buddha is a real revolutionary, a Bodhidharma is a real revolutionary, the Zen mystics I have been talking about are real revolutionaries. But they have not been thought of as revolutionaries, they are thought to be escapists. Even Brown will think that they are escapists -- they should give the politician a good fight, then they are revolutionaries. But if you give the politician a good fight you become a politician -- one politician is defeated but another politician comes into power. And, naturally, the one who comes into power is more powerful than the one who has been defeated. Power goes on moving into more cunning and more dangerous hands.
What do I say? I say that the real fight is not a fight at all. Very courageous people are needed to become drop-outs. If many, many people become drop-outs the world will change -- there is no other way. I am all for drop-outs. Enough of revolution and enough of revolutionaries! They simply go on giving hope. They are just carrots dangling in front of you. You can never catch the carrot, it goes on moving. It is like a receding horizon -- you go on rushing towards it and it goes on receding, and the distance remains the same.
Says Brown: 'FROM POLITICS TO METAPOLITICS.' It still remains politics. He calls it metapolitics but just by changing names nothing is changed. If you ask me I will say: 'From politics to no-politics' -- not metapolitics. From politics to no-politics -- only then will you move from politics to poetry.
Poetry is a benediction. Poetry is not in any way concerned with any structure -- social, political, economical. Poetry is concerned with existence, poetry is concerned with clarity of vision, poetry is concerned with a meditative state of consciousness. For poetry you have to become meditative, you have to become more celebrating, you have to learn more dancing and more singing, you have to learn the language of joy, you have to become more sensitive. You have to become more alive in your senses -- your eyes should see more, your ears should hear more, your hands should touch more. You should become a little more wild again. You should learn from the peacocks how to dance, you should learn again from the birds how to go on singing madly, you should learn from the mountains and the rivers and the sands.
To be poetic one needs to be natural; politics is artificial. Poetry is falling back into nature, losing yourself back into nature. Poetry is dissolving your being into something bigger than you.
Yes, poetry is revolution -- and that's what I am teaching you here. Be poets. I don't mean become a Shakespeare or a Kalidas or a Rabindranath... no, I don't mean that. When I say 'be poets' I mean become a Buddha -- because whatsoever you call poetry is just a glimpse of that great poetry which I am talking about, just a glimpse, a fragment. What a Rabindranath comes to see is just a glimpse; it is far away like the Himalayan peaks, far away, thousands of miles far away. The poet has a glimpse of it but Buddha lives there on those peaks.
Rabindranath creates poetry, Buddha is a poet. The difference is tremendous. Buddha may not create poetry -- when you are a poet who bothers? Rabindranath creates poetry. He has moments which are so beautiful, moments which are so luminous that when he comes back to the earth they linger -- as a nostalgia, a sweet memory, a fragrance. And he wants to put it into words lest he forgets. Those moments are rare, they happen once in a while -- otherwise the poet is as ordinary as you are, he is as political as you are. Those moments are few and far between; only rarely is he transported away in a vision. But Buddha lives there, Bodhidharma abides there. For Rabindranath poetry is all activity, for Buddha it is life itself. Rabindranath writes poetry, Buddha breathes it.
So when I say become poets I mean become Buddhas, start living in a totally different kind of landscape. Listen more to the heart, listen less to the head. It is in the head that a Josef Stalin and an Adolf Hitler is created. A Buddha is sitting in your heart, in the innermost recesses of your heart. Go there. Move silently inwards.
If many, many people are poets like Buddha the world would he changed -- but not by any direct effort, not by direct action. Direct action is political, indirect action is poetry. You don't do it directly, it simply starts happening. Because you have changed you create a vibe of change. Because you live on a different plane those who come in contact with you start hearing the sound of a different plane, they start hearing a song of a different world, they start becoming diffused with it, they start carrying your fragrance.
One poet like Buddha or Bodhidharma creates thousands of poets in the world. He becomes catalytic. His presence inspires. That's why in the East we have praised SATSANGA. SATSANGA means to be in the presence of a poet, to be in the presence of a Master, to be with a Master who has arrived -- just to be with him, that's all. If you pass through a garden you may not even have touched the flowers but when you come back home suddenly you find the fragrance lingering on your clothes.

When you come to a Master something starts lingering, something starts hanging around you. In the beginning it is very hazy, in the beginning you cannot be certain what it is nor what it is not, but one thing is certain: something is there. By and by it starts becoming more and more clear; by and by clarity arises, more transparency. And soon you find yourself settling in a totally different dimension of being.

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