Except you, there is no world.

[Guest guest]

The world is only a name; the individual is the reality. You can go on trying to

find the world all over the world, and you will not find it; you will always

find the individual. Words like the `world', the `society', the `religion', the

`nation', are mere words with no content behind them -- empty containers.

 

Except you, there is no world.

 

This is one way of understanding the statement: that the individual is the only

reality. And the world is nothing but the collectivity of individuals, so

whatever it is, it is a contribution of individuals. If it is ugly, you have

contributed to its ugliness. If it is full of hate, jealousy, anger, greed,

ambition, you have contributed to this whole hell in which we are living. You

cannot throw the responsibility on somebody else; you have to accept the

responsibility on your own shoulders. That is another way of understanding the

statement, "You are the world."

 

We are continuously shifting the responsibility. If there is war, if there is an

Adolf Hitler, a Ronald Reagan, it becomes easy for us to point to these people

and say that they are responsible. But who creates them?

 

Adolf Hitler is our contribution. Without us, he is nobody. Ronald Reagan is

nothing but our opinion. It is our vote, it is our support. So the moment you

condemn anybody, remember: you are condemning yourself. However indirect your

contribution may be, your contribution is there.

 

IT IS POSSIBLE TO LIVE like a Jaina monk or a Buddhist monk or a Catholic monk

in a monastery, completely closed as far as the world is concerned. There are

monasteries in Tibet... there used to be many in China before the communist

revolution. There are a few in Europe with a strange and long history.

 

The monastery at Athos in Europe is one thousand years old. In one thousand

years, whoever has entered the monastery has not come out living. You only

enter: once a monk, forever a monk. And the monastery does not allow its inmates

to come out into the world; they are brought out only when they are dead.

 

Do you think they are not responsible for Adolf Hitler? they are not responsible

for world wars? Apparently it looks... How can you make these people

responsible? -- who have left the world, who have never looked back, who have

disconnected themselves with the world. But still I say to you they are

responsible. They are responsible by escaping -- they escaped their

responsibility. It does not make any difference.

 

The Buddhist monks, the Jaina monks, the Hindu monks are not participating in

worldly activities. But you can contribute in a positive way or you can

contribute in a negative way. You can set fire to this house -- that is the

positive way, the active way. You can stand by the side of the road and not do

anything to put the fire out -- that is the negative way. But both are

responsible.

 

The negative person does not look so responsible, but his responsibility is

absolutely equal -- because in life there is a balance.

 

YOU MAY BE AGAINST war, you may be a pacifist, you may be a chronic protestant

-- always with a flag protesting against war, against violence. Naturally you

can say, "How can I be held responsible?" But life is a complex phenomenon. Your

protests, your pacifism, your fight against warmongers is still part of war; you

are not a man of peace. And you can see it when people protest -- their anger,

their violence is so obvious that one wonders why these people are protesting

against war. They should join some camp in the war -- they are full of anger,

rage. They have just chosen to have a third camp behind a beautiful name --

"peace". A good mask, but inside is the same anger, the same rage, the same

violence, the same destructiveness against anybody who does not agree with them.

They are contributing as much violence to the atmosphere as anybody else. They

may be talking about love, but they are also saying that you have to fight for

love. You can choose beautiful words, but you cannot hide the reality.

 

J. Krishnamurti's statement that "You are the world" simply emphasizes the fact

that every individual, wherever he is, whatever he is, should accept the

responsibility of creating this world that exists around us. If it is insane,

you have contributed to that insanity in your own way. If it is sick, you are

also a partner in making it sick.

 

And the emphasis is important -- because unless you understand that "I am also

responsible for this miserable and insane world," there is no possibility of

change. Who is going to change? Everybody thinks somebody else is responsible.

 

ONE OF INDIA'S GREAT EMPERORS was Akbar. There is an incident in his life

recorded in Akbar Namaz -- "the biography of Akbar."

 

One day he was just chit-chatting with his friends.... And he had around him the

very best, wisest, most creative people chosen from every part of the country.

His court jester was standing just by his side....

 

By the way, you should understand it: in all the courts of all great emperors

there used to be a jester, whose whole function was to keep the court from

becoming too serious, to keep the court light, playful -- once in a while, an

explosion of laughter. It was a great insight to have a court jester, and he

used to be one of the wisest men of those days -- because it was not an easy

phenomenon. Birbal was Akbar's court jester. And as they were discussing, Akbar

slapped Birbal -- for no reason at all. Now you cannot slap the emperor back,

but the slap has to go somewhere -- so he slapped the person who was standing

next to him.

 

Everybody thought, "This is strange!" There was no reason in the first place.

Suddenly, as if a madness had got hold of Akbar, he slapped poor Birbal. And

that man is also strange. Rather than asking, "Why have you slapped me?" he

simply slapped the man who was standing by his side! And that man, thinking

perhaps this was the rule of the court, slapped the next person. In a chain, it

went all over the court.

 

And you will be surprised: that night, Akbar's wife slapped him! And he said,

"Why are slapping me?"

She said, "That is not the question; a game is a game."

He said, "Who told you that this is a game?"

She said, "We have been hearing the whole day long that a great game has started

in the court. The only rule is you cannot hit the person back, you have to find

somebody else to hit. And somebody has hit me -- so your slap has come back to

you, the game is complete!"

 

In this big world, thousands of insane games are going on, and you are all

participants -- of course in very small measures, according to your capacity.

But remember, the slap is going to come back to you sooner or later. Where else

will it go?

 

Whatever comes to you, remember, it is your doing.

 

Perhaps you have forgotten when you started it. The world is big, it takes time.

But everything comes back to its source -- that is one of the fundamental rules

of life, not a rule of a game.

 

So if you are suffering, if you are miserable, if you are tense, full of

anxieties, anguish, don't just console yourself that this whole world is ugly,

that everybody else is ugly, that you are a victim. J. Krishnamurti is saying

you are not a victim, you are a creator of this insane world; and naturally, you

have to participate in the outcome of whatever you have contributed to it. You

are participating in sowing the seeds, you will have to participate in reaping

the crop too; you cannot escape.

 

TO MAKE THE INDIVIDUAL aware so that he stops throwing responsibilities on

others -- on the contrary, he starts looking inwards to see in what way he is

contributing to this whole madness -- there is a possibility he may stop

contributing. Because he has to suffer too. If he comes to know that the whole

world is nothing but his projection on a wider scale....

 

Because millions of individuals have contributed the same anger, the same

hatred, the same competitiveness, the same violence, it has become mountainous.

You cannot conceive that you can be responsible for it: "I may have contributed

just a small piece..." But an ocean is nothing except millions and millions of

dewdrops. A dewdrop cannot think that it is responsible for the ocean -- but the

dewdrop is responsible. Without the dewdrop there is going to be no ocean at

all. The ocean is only a name; the reality is in the dewdrop.

 

To accept your responsibility will change you, and your change is the beginning

of the change of the world -- because you are the world. However small, a

miniature world, but you carry all the seeds.

 

If revolution comes to you, it heralds the revolution for the whole world.

 

And when J. Krishnamurti says "You are the world" he is not saying it only to

you; he is saying it to everybody:

 

You are the world.

 

If you want to change the world, don't start by changing the world -- that is

the wrong way humanity has followed up to now:

Change the society, change the economic structure.

Change this, change that.

But don't change the individual.

That's why all revolutions have failed. Only one revolution can succeed, which

has not been tried up to now -- and that is the revolution of the individual.

You change yourself.

Be alert not to contribute anything that makes the world a hell. And remember to

contribute to the world something that makes it a paradise.

This is the whole secret of a religious man.

And if every individual starts doing it, there will be a revolution without any

bloodshed.

 

IN AKBAR'S LIFE there is another incident.

 

He had built a very beautiful marble pond. He was bringing swans from

Mansarovar, from the Himalayas. And he decided that in the pond there should not

be water. This is the emperor's pond -- instead of water, there should be milk.

Everybody in the capital was to be informed that just one bucket of milk, not

much, from every house had to reach the palace early the next morning, before

sunrise.

 

Birbal told Akbar, "You don't understand human mind at all. Your pond will be

full of water."

He said, "What nonsense...? It is my order!"

Birbal said, "Your order, or anybody's order -- I understand human mind."

Akbar said, "Let us wait; tomorrow morning it will be decided who is right."

And the next morning both went to the garden, and the pond was full of water.

 

Akbar said, "This is strange. How did it happen? Catch a few people from the

street, whoever is available, and ask how it happened." And the people were

threatened: if they spoke any lie, their life would be at risk; if they said the

truth, they would be set free.

 

They said, "The truth is, we thought the whole capital would bring buckets of

milk. One bucket of water would be completely overlooked, nobody would ever

know. But now I see that the pond is full of water; it seems that everybody had

the same thought -- the whole capital! Not a single man was different."

 

The human mind functions exactly the same.

 

So if the world is such a tragedy, it is our human minds which are creating it;

we are contributing our bucketful of misery.

 

No revolution can be successful unless the human mind is understood by human

beings and they start behaving in a different way -- not hoping that "My

bucketful of water is not going to be noticed at all." If everybody understands

that this idea is what will come to every human mind, and decides, "At least I

should bring a bucketful of milk. I should not behave in such an unconscious way

as all human beings are behaving...."

 

It is possible to have the pond full of milk.

 

"YOU ARE THE WORLD" simply means: whatever it is, we cannot save ourselves from

responsibility.

 

Our monks, our saints have tried only this. What they were trying to do, if you

go deep into their psychology, was to say that, "We are no longer responsible

for all this nonsense that is going on in the world." But they depended on the

same world. For their food they were dependent on the same people; for their

clothes they were dependent on the same people. They were not in any way

separate from the world; they had only stopped being active in the world. They

were silent partners in the whole insanity that is going on.

 

And they should be condemned more, because they were more intelligent people,

wiser people. Still they could not see the point that just standing aside is not

enough; you have to do something against the normal human mind. Escaping to the

Himalayas is not going to help, because even in the Himalayas your mind will

remain the same, just you will not have the opportunity to know it. And it is

better to know the enemy than not to know it, because by knowing there is a

possibility to change.

 

Not knowing is very dangerous.

 

When a disease is diagnosed, it is half cured. When a disease is not diagnosed,

then comes the real problem. Medicine is not the problem; diagnosis is the

problem.

 

Osho, Sermons in Stones,Chapter 2

 

 

 

 

 

Tax Center - forms, calculators, tips, and more