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CHAPTER 1. NONVIOLENCE
Life-force becomes violent when it flows towards another. It flows towards miseries, it flows towards hell. We all are in search of our own hells. When life-force travels within, it becomes submitted. Life-force is the same. There are no different 'forces' in the world, only the directions are different. 'Forces-Powers' are not different in the world, the only difference is that of going up or Coming down. It is like your going down or climbing up the steps of a staircase of a temple. It can be like this: you and your friend are standing on the same staircase, your face is downwards and your friend's face is upwards. Then heaven and hell both will be there on the same staircase. Your neighbour whose face is upwards will be in heaven on the same step while your face which is downwards will be in hell on the same step. Therefore, know that there are no such geographical positions - places like heaven and hell. Everything depends on which direction one's mind's attitude looks at. Violence is the decline and nonviolence is the upward movement of life-force.
NATURE OF VIOLENCE
Violence is a thing given to man by nature but it is not the nature of man. It is animal's nature, it is the nature of beasts. Man has passed-travelled-through this nature and so has carried all the experiences impressions of that animal life with him. Violence is like this: suppose a man is passing on a road and is covered with particles of dust and when he enters a palace, he refuses to remove those particles of dust saying they have come with me, they are a part of me. Those dust-particles are those things which have stuck on man's soul while passing through an animal life. They have become fixed but they are not the nature of man. Violence is natural far beasts, it is their nature because they have no choice in this matter. Violence is not natural for man because he has a choice in this matter. In fact, manhood to be human - begins with this choice. Manhood begins with this decision. Manhood begins with this resolve. Man is standing at the cross roads. All beasts are on a unidimensional road. They can therefore have no choice.
Man can become violent or nonviolent as he wishes. This is man's freedom. Beasts haven't got it. It is the helplessness of a beast. That is why there is no difference between the nature of beasts and the fact of being beasts. There is no distance between the future and the past of a beast. There is no difference in being a beast and in the possibility of what it can be. The beast is what it can be. That which is possible, is actual. There is no distinction between the actuality and possibility of beasts. The whole matter is different in the case of man. Man can be different from what he is The actuality of man is not his possibility. He can be something else tomorrow from what he is really today. So we can't tell any dog that you are something less of a dog, but we can tell a man, you appear to be something less of a man. To tell any dog that you are something less of a dog is completely an absurd statement. It doesn't have any meaning. All dogs are complete dogs. There may be weak dogs, there may be strong ones also but there is no difference in their doghood. But there is a difference of degrees in manhood. We cannot tell any Krishna that there is no difference in manhood - gentlemanliness - between you and Hitler. We cannot tell any Buddha that there is no difference between you and Ravana. It so happens at times, That we have to say about someone, there is hardly any gentlemanliness in him, and we have to say about some other person that there is not much of humanity in him that he can be called divine-god. Whenever we use the word God for some person, it means that there is so much humanity in them that it is found insufficient to call him man. What a man is, is not everything; much more can happen to him. There is a very great potentiality in him. His past is linked with his journey through beasthood, that condition is that of violence. And what he can be is his nonviolence.
The nature of man is that which it will be when it will evolve itself fully. The reality about man is what
The Perennial Path: The Art of Living
9
Osho
