The Real Anarchism
Birthday of Russian Philosopher Peter Kropotkin
9th December is the birthday of the Russian “anarcho-communist” philosopher Peter Kropotkin. He advocated a state-less decentralised communist society based on voluntary associations of self-governing communities. In his book, The Conquest of Bread (1892) he proposed a system of economics based on exchanges under mutual-cooperation with eventual abolition of money. He argued that in a socially, culturally and industrially developed society; the ‘competitive’ tendencies in humans give way to ‘mutual aid’.
Expectedly, Kropotkin’s revolutionary ideas did not go down well with Czarist Russia and he was imprisoned. He managed to escape 2 years later and spent 41 years in exile lecturing on communism.
Kropotkin also advocated self-sufficiency; that a country should manufacture its own goods and grow its own food, lessening dependence on imports. An idea whose merit has been underscored by the COVID-19 pandemic!
Osho said Kropotkin’s idea of anarchism: no state-no government is a beautiful dream but with this criminal humanity, with this stupid mass, if there is no government and no court and no police there will be simply chaos, not anarchism. Man has not come to the point where governments can be dissolved. I want to raise the consciousness of human beings to the point where government becomes futile, courts remain empty, nobody is murdered, raped, tortured or harassed. I am an anarchist from a very different dimension. Do you see the difference? Kropotkin’s emphasis is: dissolve the governments. My emphasis is: raise the consciousness of human beings and governments will disappear on their own accord.
BELOVED OSHO,
AN AMERICAN AMBASSADOR REPORTEDLY SAID, IN REFERENCE TO YOU, TO A FOREIGN HEAD OF STATE, “HE IS EXTREMELY INTELLIGENT, AN ANARCHIST, AND VERY DANGEROUS BECAUSE HE CAN CHANGE MEN’S MINDS. HE WILL DESTROY YOUR WHOLE SOCIETY.”
HOW CAN WE SAFEGUARD AGAINST AMERICA AND ITS ALLIES STOPPING YOUR EFFORTS TO AWAKEN MEN?
The American ambassador is perfectly right, but he is not aware that the danger of intelligence is impossible to prevent. All other dangers are very small. They are visible, they may look big, but the danger that he is talking about is concerned with two things: one, that I am extremely intelligent, and second, that I am an anarchist. Both together are far more dangerous than all their nuclear weapons.
You need not be worried about how America should be prevented from destroying my efforts. It is beyond any power to destroy my efforts. The more they try, the more strength they will give to my ideology. This has been so in the whole history of man. No truth has ever been defeated. It may take time, but its victory is absolutely certain. In fact they have already started accepting their defeat when the American ambassador says to the head of a foreign government that I am extremely intelligent, and anarchist, and I can easily change human minds. In his statement he has accepted their defeat. Now it is only a question of realizing it. Conceptually they have accepted it. Their desperate effort to destroy me, my work, my people is very symbolic. Unless they are immensely afraid, they would not make such an effort — their fear shows their defeat.
One point is clear, that they are unable to propose any alternative to my way of seeing things. The statement makes it absolutely clear that they are utterly helpless. It is not coming out of power, it is coming out of a certain hunch. Deep down they have accepted defeat.
It is strange that they have all kinds of intellectuals on their side, but none of their intellectuals have the guts to propose arguments against me. These desperate efforts simply show that they know they are empty and their exposure is imminent. And every day they are becoming more and more desperate.
Intelligence can be defeated, because it is part of the mind, but the ambassador does not know that what he is calling intelligence is something much more: it is awareness, which includes intelligence, but it is far superior to intelligence, far higher. Intelligence can be argued against, but if awareness is there you cannot argue against intelligence. This is not mere intellect, this is a vision of the truth. It is not a question of me, it is a question of the truth being defeated — which is not in the nature of things.
And he is trying to make the head of the foreign government afraid by adding the word “anarchist.” Anarchist means “one who does not believe in any government, one who does not believe in any kind of discipline, who believes only in the individual and his freedom to act, to think, to express, to create.” For the anarchist the society is a means in the service of the individual — not vice versa. Using the word “anarchist” with me, is simply to create more fear… and then saying that I have the capacity to change the minds of men. In that small statement he has made everything clear about why America is so afraid: my capacity to change the minds of men. It includes that I may change men’s minds towards anarchism, and it shows their acceptance that I have a certain intelligence which seems difficult for them to encounter.
But as far as I am concerned, I am not interested in changing the mind of man, I am interested in destroying the mind of man. Changing won’t help; it will be only a reformation, not a revolution. It will be a touch here and there but the basic quality of the mind will remain there. I am for no-mind. The American ambassador and the American president should understand it — perhaps they have never heard the word “no-mind.” My effort is to take people beyond mind.
Secondly, I am not “extremely intelligent” the way they see it. I have no concern with intellect. Whatever I am saying and doing is not an intellectual approach, but an existential approach. That is why they are freaking out. It would not have been difficult for them if it was only intelligence. They could have found a thousand and one arguments about it, against it. But it is something they are absolutely unacquainted with. It is meditativeness, of which they don’t have even a vague idea what it is. This unknown creates the fear in them. At the most they can think it is extreme intelligence, but it is far away from intelligence. Intelligence itself cannot reach to the world of meditation.
They are also not right when they say I am an anarchist, because anarchists like Prince Kropotkin and others are beautiful people but their philosophy is naive. They want there to be no government, no police, no law. They are too naive, too simple, too innocent, too childlike. They don’t understand man – that he is full of animality, barbarism, cruelty, violence, murder, rape. If all order and discipline is removed, the society will be in a chaos. Right now, it is in a chaos, but the chaos is in a certain order. There is a certain system, a certain method, but with Prince Kropotkin and their colleagues the chaos will explode into a state that man has never seen.
I am an anarchist in a very different way. I don’t say there should be no government. I always work from the roots; I never prune the leaves. I don’t say there should be no discipline, I don’t say there should be no courts and no law – that would be simply idiotic.
What I say is that the individual should drop the personality, be authentic, be honest; that the individual should drop ambitions, desires, and start rejoicing with whatsoever is available. He always goes on hankering for the moon; the earth is available but he cannot dance here, he will dance on the moon.
My effort is to make man so immensely blissful, peaceful, silent, meditative, that the need for government disappears, that the need for the politician disappears, that sooner or later the courts have to be closed because nobody comes there or they have to be changed into meditation centres, that jails become useless. I teach man to be expressive. In the jails are the people who were taught to be repressive and could not repress and went against society; and now society is taking revenge.
I teach you to be expressive and to accept all your nature with pride – it is your inheritance from nature. Living naturally without inhibition, things like rape will disappear. Living silently and meditatively, violence is not possible. Compassion will be just a natural phenomenon. Governments, politicians, parliaments, assemblies, should become useless. If I meet Prince Kropotkin somewhere, I think he will understand what I am saying. Anarchism cannot be imposed from above, it can only be grown through each individual, from below. And as individuality becomes stronger, integrated, all these things are bound to disappear.
It is just like somebody is against medicines, and he wants all medicines to be destroyed. The idea is not bad. In a really healthy society, there should be no medicines, but he is starting from the wrong end. First the society has to be healthy, so that medicines become useless, physicians become useless, and health becomes such a natural thing that sickness becomes something that used to happen in the past; it is part of history. Then automatically medicines will disappear. Medical colleges will close, you need not close them.
I am a far more dangerous anarchist than Prince Kropotkin. I don’t talk about it; I am preparing for it. Prince Kropotkin was only talking about it. But Prince Kropotkin could not create it, because he had no idea that the individual has to be completely changed. Only then can there be a society which does not need any order: everybody is so responsible that the policeman is not needed on the street; neither is God needed in heaven to punish anybody. Strangely the politician and the priest will disappear together. They have a certain contract. The courts and the temples will disappear together, because the courts live on crime and the temples live on sin.
You have to understand what the difference is between the two. A crime is a sin that has been caught. And a sin is a crime that you managed – you befooled the whole system and nobody could catch you. So, for the criminal there is – the court, the police, the law; and for the sinner there is – the priest, the bishop, the pope, the God. They need hell as their jail, they need heaven as their reward. But they are together, and they both will disappear together.
The American ambassador should understand that I am far more dangerous than he thinks. And as far as your question is concerned, they cannot prevent anything. It is not something that I am saying, it is something that is the need of the times. The time has come for me. I may be alone but the times are with me. They may have all the forces, but the times are not with them. They are digging their own graves; they are out of date. Their ideologies, their philosophies, their theologies are all out of date. My challenge is open. I am ready to argue against everything that their society stands upon; it is hypocrisy and nothing else.
Source:
Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.
Discourse series: The Path of the Mystic Chapter #33
Chapter title: More dangerous than nuclear weapons
20 May 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay
References:
Osho has spoken on notable philosophers Aristotle, Bakunin, Berkeley, Bukharin, Camus, Carlyle, Confucius, Descartes, Feuerbach, Fichte, Friedrich Schelling, Hegel, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Huxley, Jaspers, Kant, Kierkegaard, Kropotkin, Marcel, Marx, Moore, Nietzsche, Plato, Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Russell, Sartre, Schiller, Socrates, Voltaire, Wittgenstein and many others in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- The Golden Future
- Ecstasy: The Forgotten Language of the Heart
- I Say unto You Vol.1-2
- The Goose is Out!
- The Beloved Vol. 1-2
- Just Like That
- From Misery to Enlightenment
- From Personality to Individuality
- From Death to Deathlessness