Panch Mahavrat or The Perennial Path The Art of Living

Author(s): Osho Rajnish
Publisher: Osho Rajnish

Page 13

CHAPTER 2. SOURCE OF VIOLENCE IN MAN
responsible for it? This does not mean that man is the creator of self-ignorance. No, self-ignorance is there, but if man does not try to destroy it, then the responsibility is his. He is not the creator of self-ignorance, but can become its destroyer; does not try to become so, so the responsibility lies on his head. If man prefers to remain self-ignorant, it will be his decision, he has kept his eyes closed. There is now no dearth of light.
I just now remembered a very famous and rare statement of Sartre. Sartre's sentence is 'Man is condemned to be free'. Man is not free. He is helpless in this matter. Man has got all kinds of freedom except one choice and that is to choose not to choose'. He cannot choose at all 'not to choose'. Except this, he will have to make all other choices. That is why he cannot choose not to choose, because that also will be a choice. Man has to make choices every moment. Manhood has a journey. Man is outside the responsibility of God. Man is out of this circle from where he is free to make a choice. Now if I am ignorant of the knowledge of self it is my choice, and if I have the knowledge of self it is also my choice. If I am miserable or happy it is my choice.
Man cannot be free from his responsibility. Now, as a human being, man's responsibility will go on increasing every moment. This responsibility is Man's dignity - his prestige. It is also his humanity. Man's thoughts make his individuality, his decision is his destiny, his intention is his longing, it is his own creation. So now none should even mistakenly think, 'What can I do in what I am?! As soon as he says 'what can I do?' he declares his inability to do it. One who refuses to choose, refuses also to be a human being. What is, is. After taking wine, man goes back to the animal world. After committing violence, he returns to the animal world. On becoming angry, he goes back to the animal world. So, if you look at a person filled with anger, you will see a human form only but not the soul of a man. If you look at angry eyes, you will not see man's eyes, but a different form of eyes. There comes a beast in his eyes which was hidden within. So when in anger or in becoming violent, man acts like a beast - he cuts, he shouts, he hacks. Man's nails have now become very short as there was not much need of them. Wild beasts have got such nails which can drag out bones and flesh of their prey.
For millions of years man did not need to use his nails to drag out flesh and bones, so they became shorter and shorter. Then man had to manufacture knives, spears and swords. These are substitutes by which he does the work of beasts. His teeth are not such so as to cut the flesh and bring it out. So man made deadly weapons and other tools and bullets which can penetrate men's chests. All the weapons, tools and missiles invented by man are to substitute his lost past beasthood. They are supplementaries. We have not got what beasts have, so we have to make their substitutes, and they are undoubtedly better than those of beasts.
Has any beast got the atom bomb? Has any beast the means and contrivance to throw bombs hundreds of miles away? No, beasts have got only the nature-given tools. Making use of his intelligence, man has produced that thing which cannot be produced even by the mass of millions of animals. This action is man's own choice. The day on which any person sees clearly that it is his own responsibility for what he is, his transformation and evolution begin on that very day. The door to religion can never open in the life of that person who thinks, what I am, I am; nothing is in my control, I am helpless. The understanding of this fact that I am responsible for my destiny. I am the person to decide my fate, transforms man's life. So I said that man is responsible for his ignorance of self-knowledge. He is responsible in the sense that he can remove his ignorance but does not do so. He can be a free man but does not become free.
The Perennial Path: The Art of Living
13
Osho