conformist or nonconformist

The nonconformist is a reactionary he acts out of anger, rage, violence and ego. His action is not based in consciousness. Although he goes against the society, just to be against the society is not necessarily to be right.  In fact most of the time to move from one extreme to another is always to move from one wrong to another wrong. a tremendous balance, and that is not possible without awareness, alertness, and immense compassion.

It is not a reaction, it is an action The nonconformist is only against the old, against the established; but he has no creative conception of why he is against it,

When I say reaction, I mean your orientation is basically dependent you are not acting out of freedom and independence. It has very deep implications. It means your action is just a by-product it also means that your action can be controlled very easily.

There is a small story about Mulla Nasruddin. He was a nonconformist, a fundamental reactionary, an absolutely negative mind. If his father would say, ”You have to go to the right,” you can be certain he would go to the left.

Soon the father became aware, and then there was no problem. When he wanted him to go to the right he would say, ”Please go to the left,” and he would go to the right.

He was disobeying, he was nonconformist, but he was completely unaware that he was being dictated to, ordered, controlled and doing actually what his father wanted him to do.

Slowly slowly, he also became aware –
”What is the matter? Before, my father used to be very angry that he had told me to go right and I went left. I am continuing to be as disobedient as ever, but now he never complains.”

Soon he figured out the strategy. One day the old father and Nasruddin were both crossing the river with their donkey, and on the donkey was a big bag of sugar. The bag was leaning more towards the right, and there was a danger that it might slip and fall down into the river.

The father was behind and he knew,
”If I say, ‘Move the bag towards the left,’ I have got such a strange son that he will move it immediately towards the right, and the bag will fall into the river and all the sugar will be lost.”

So he shouted, ”Nasruddin, move the bag towards the right,” hoping that he was going to move it to the left according to the old experience.

But by this time Nasruddin had also figured it out. He said,
”Okay,” and he moved the bag towards the right and the bag fell into the river!

The father said, ”What happened, are you no longer disobedient?”

He said, ”Now I will decide each time whether to be obedient or not. I will not have a fixed philosophy but I will move according to the situation, because you have been cunning with me, you have been cheating me. I’m your son and still you have been cheating me! You have been ordering me in such a way that I should disobey. From today onwards be alert – I may obey, I may disobey. From today I am not going to be predictable, controllable, in your hands anymore.”

The nonconformist is always in the hands of the society and the establishment. The establishment just has to be a little more clever and cunning, and then he can use the nonconformist very easily, without any difficulty.

His focus is not on the establishment his ,His focus is on a potential possibility. He acts out of his freedom. His consciousness.

That is the difference between reaction and action

reaction is always determined by your enemy. Perhaps you have never thought about it – that in reaction the enemy is in a dominating position, he is deciding your action.
What you are going to do, the enemy can decide.

To be a nonconformist is so cheap.

Look at the punks – these are nonconformists – who have cut off their hair on both sides, just keeping a small line of hair in the middle, and that too they have painted in psychedelic colors. Young men, young women...  young men with half their mustaches shaved off and the other half painted, or the full mustache painted in the whole rainbow of colors –

these are the nonconformists! It is very easy.

You can have the buttons of your pants in the back, and you are a nonconformist. It will be a little difficult, it will need a little discipline, but it is very cheap – and very stupid, too.



the crowd

man in the crowd has always behaved blindly. If you pull the same man out of the crowd and ask him,

”What were you doing? Can you do it alone, on your own?” he will feel embarrassed.

And you will be surprised to hear his answer:
”On my own I cannot do such a stupid thing, but when I am in a crowd something strange happens.”

For years lived in a city which was proportionately divided, half and half, into Hindus and Muslms. They were equally powerful, and almost every year riots happened. I used to know a professor in the university where I was teaching. I could never have dreamed that this man could put fire to a Hindu temple; he was such a gentleman – nice, well educated, well cultured.

When there was a riot between the Hindus and the Muslms I was watching, standing by the roadside. Muslm were burning a Hindu temple, Hindus were burning a Muslm mosque.

I saw this professor engaged in burning the Hindu temple. I pulled him out and I asked,
”Professor Farid, what are you doing?”.

He became very embarrassed. He said, ”I’m sorry, I got lost in the crowd. Because everybody else was doing it, I forgot my own responsibility – everybody else was responsible. I felt for the first time a tremendous freedom from responsibility. Nobody can blame me. It was a Muslms crowd, and I was just part of it.”

On another occasion,

a Muslm s watch shop was being looted. It was the most precious collection of watches. An old Hindu priest... The people who were taking away those watches and destroying the shop – they had killed the shop owner – were all Hindus.

An old priest I was acquainted with was standing on the steps and shouting very angrily at the people, ”What are you doing? This is against our religion, against our morality, against our culture. This is not right.”

I was seeing the whole scene from a bookstore, on the first story in a building just in front of the shop on the other side of the road. The greatest surprise was yet to come. When people had taken every valuable article from the shop... there was only an old grandfather clock left – very big, very antique.

Seeing that people were leaving, the old man took that clock on his shoulders. It was difficult for him to carry because it was too heavy. I could not believe my eyes! He had been preventing people, and this was the last item in the shop.

I had to come down from the bookstore and stop the priest. I said to him, ”This is strange. The whole time you were shouting, ‘This is against our morality! This is against our religion, don’t do it!’ And now you are taking the biggest clock in the shop.”

He said, ”I shouted enough, but nobody listened. And then finally the idea arose in me that I am simply shouting and wasting my time, and everybody else is getting something. So it is better to take this clock before somebody else gets it, because it was the only item left.”

I asked, ”But what happened to religion, morality, culture?”
He said this with an ashamed face –

but he said it: ”When nobody bothers about religion, culture and morality, why should I be the only victim? I am also part of the same crowd.

I tried my best to convince them, but if nobody is going to follow the religious and the moral and the right way, then I am not going to be just a loser and look stupid standing there. Nobody even listened to me, nobody took any notice of me.” He carried that clock away.

I have seen at least a dozen riots in that city, and I have asked individuals who have participated in arson, in murder, in rape, ”Can you do it alone, on your own?”

And they all said, without any exception, ”On our own we could not do it. It was because so many people were doing it, and there was no responsibility left. We were not answerable, the crowd was answerable.”

Man loses his small consciousness so easily into the collective ocean of unconsciousness. That is the cause of all wars, all riots, all crusades, all murders.

Individuals have committed very few crimes compared to the crowd. And the individuals who have committed crimes, their reasons are totally different – they are born with a criminal mind, they are born with a criminal chemistry, they need treatment.

But the man who commits a crime because he is part of a crowd has nothing that needs to be treated.... All that is needed is that he should be taken out of the crowd. He should be cleaned – he should be cleaned from all bondages, from any kind of collectivity.

He should be made an individual again –
just as he had come into the world.

The teacher is asking three boys in her class,

”What was your mother doing when you left for school this morning?”

”Doing the washing,” says Tom.

”Cleaning the bedroom,” says Dick.

”Getting ready to go out and shoot ducks,” says Harry.

”What! What are you talking about, Harry?” asked the teacher.
”Well miss,” says Harry, ”my dad has left home, and she threw her knickers on the fire and said she was going back to the game.”

People are imitators. People are not acting on their own grounds; they are reacting. The husband has left her; that brings a reaction in her, a revenge – she is going back to the game.

It is not an action out of consciousness, it is not an indication of individuality.

This is how the collective mind functions
 – always according to somebody else. Either for or against,
it does not matter either conformist or nonconformist,
it does not matter. But it always is directed, motivated, dictated by others.

Left to himself, he will find himself utterly lost – what to do

acts out of freedom with consciousness it is certainly risky, dangerous. It is only for those who have the lion’s heart, who have guts and who have the dignity of human beings. It is not for all.

A man who lives without danger does not live at all. The only way to live is to live dangerously, always moving on a razor’s edge. Then life has a freshness, youthfulness, and a moment to moment intensity, a moment to moment totality, because the next moment is not certain at all.

Those who are living conveniently, comfortably, a middle-class life... the term ”middle-class” is abusive; one should not live a middle-class life. Their convenience is more valuable than sincerity. Their so-called middle-class comforts are more valuable to them than a life lived with intensity and fire. taking initiation to become a flame, with a longing to live dangerously, dropping all conveniences, comforts, moving always into the unknown.

But the beauty is that when you live dangerously and you don’t have any certainty, any guarantee, any insurance for tomorrow, you live today to its fullest extent. You squeeze the juice of every moment to its totality, knowing perfectly well you may not have another chance.

Certainly these are dangerous paths. But those who have followed these paths have enjoyed life in its absolute glory, have lived life in utter ecstasy. Those who have remained middle-class sheep, crowds, their life is so lukewarm that it is neither hot nor cold. It is just a kind of tea which you would not like to drink – neither hot nor cold, just lukewarm.

Don’t live a lukewarm life.

Harry’s strong-minded wife, Martha, took him shopping to buy a pair of trousers.

”Do you want buttons or a zipper?” asked the shop assistant.
”Zipper,” replied Harry quickly.

”Very good, sir,” said the assistant. ”And do you want a five inch zip or a ten inch?”
”Ten inch,” Harry said before Martha could interrupt.

When they got outside, Martha was furious. ”You,” she said, ”you and your ten inch zip! Why, you remind me of the man who lives next door to my father. Every morning he goes down to his garden, unlocks his garage, opens the eight-foot double doors and then wheels his bike out.”

Don’t live a life on a bike.

feeling of insecurity ?.  But what is security ? Is there anything secure in life ? Does security exist at all, or is it just an idea, a consoling idea that man has created for himself?  What security is there?

The people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki had gone to bed with absolute security; I don’t think even a single person amongst those two big cities, two hundred thousand people, had gone to bed with any idea of insecurity. And by the morning there were only fires and dead bodies. Not a living thing was left, not even trees, not even birds, no animals, no man. All life simply disappeared. What security is there?

Do you think those six million Jews had ever thought that the gas chambers would be their end, that within a minute they would simply be going out of the chimneys as smoke in the sky? What security is there?

There has never been any security. Death can come any moment, and it always comes without any notice, without any warning. Still, we go on living with the idea of security, and whenever the idea of being a rebel, a rebellious spirit, arises, immediately we think of security. But you don’t have any security!

understands it there is no security – hence, don’t ask for it. Live in insecurity, because that is an actual fact of life. You cannot avoid it, you cannot prevent it, so there is no need to bother about it. Don’t waste time unnecessarily.

In the days when Disraeli and Gladstone were political enemies, the British houses of Parliament rang with their heated debates. Once Gladstone shouted at the prime minister,

”Sir, you will come to your end either upon the gallows or of a venereal disease.”

Disraeli adjusted his monocle and replied with unruffled calm,

”I should say, Mr. Gladstone, that depends on whether I embrace your principles or your mistress.”

Take life at ease. Be unruffled

Just look around life. It is so ridiculous, so humorous. Only people who are blind can be serious

with eyes, it is impossible to be serious. Just be watchful, look all around and you will be surprised how many beautiful things you are missing.

”Harry,” asks his wife, ”if we had a four-minute nuclear warning, what would you do?”
”Make love to you,” answered Harry.

”Yes,” said his wife, ”but what about the other three minutes?”

Take life as a beautiful joke. There is nothing to be serious about.