presents
The compulsion to reach power and prestige
Why do most people have such a compulsion to reach power and prestige and so on, rather than just being simple human beings?
One:
you have never been accepted
by your parents,
teachers, neighbors, society,
as you are.
Everybody was trying to improve upon you,
to make you better.
Constant conditioning
against you
has created in you
the idea, "I am not enough as I am,
something is missing.
And I have to be
somewhere else not here.
This is not the place I am supposed to be,
but somewhere higher,
more powerful, more dominant,
more respected,
more well known.
"This is half the story
which is ugly,
which should not be the case. This can be simply removed
if people are a little bit more intelligent
about how to be mothers,
how to be fathers,
how to be teachers.
You are not to spoil
the child,
his self-respect,
his acceptance of himself;
you have to help it to grow.
But the second part
is tremendously important.
Even if all these conditionings are removed
you are deprogrammed,
all these ideas are taken out of your mind
then you will still feel
you are not enough;
but that will be a totally different experience.
The words will be the same,
but the experience will be different.
You are not enough
because you can be more.
It will not be any longer a question of becoming famous,
respectable,
powerful,
rich.
That will not be
at all your concern.
Your concern will be
that your being
is only a seed.
With birth you are not born
as a tree,
you are born only as a seed,
and you have to grow
to the point where you come to flowering,
and that flowering will be your
contentment,
fulfillment.
This flowering has nothing to do with power,
nothing to do with money,
nothing to do with politics.
It has something to do absolutely with you;
it is an individual progress.
A seed
has to travel far
to become flowers.
It is a pilgrimage.
The urge is beautiful. It is given by nature itself.
But the society,
up to now, has been very cunning;
it turns,
deviates,
diverts
your natural instincts
into some social utility.
These two are the
sides
that are giving you the feeling
that wherever you are,
something is missing;
you have to
gain something, achieve something,
become an achiever,
a climber.
Now your intelligence is needed
to make it clear
what your natural urge is, and what is social conditioning.
Cut the social conditioning, it is all crap
so that nature remains pure, unpolluted.
And nature is always individualistic.
You will grow and you will come to blossom,
and you may have rose flowers.
Somebody else may grow
and
will have
marigolds.
You are not superior because you have rose flowers;
he is not inferior because he has marigolds.
You both have come to flowering, that is the point;
and that flowering
gives a deep contentment.
All frustration,
all tension
disappears;
a profound peace prevails over you,
the peace that passes
understanding.
But first you have to cut the social crap completely;
otherwise it will go on distracting you.
You have to be rich but not wealthy.
Richness is something else.
A beggar can be rich,
and an emperor can be poor.
Richness is a quality of being.