Osho on Freedom

Freedom from is not true freedom. Then there is another kind of freedom: freedom for — the second kind of freedom, which is far better than the first. The first is negative. The second is positive: one wants to be free to do something. For example, you want to be free of your family because you are in love with music. You are not really against the family. You are for music, and the family creates a hindrance, so you escape from the family. You are not against the family, against the parents, but they want you to become an engineer and you want to become a musician.

And it is good to be a musician even if you have to suffer for it. It is better to be a musician if you really want to be a musician, if you have a passion for it, than to be a successful engineer, rich, comfortable, safe. You can be safe, rich, comfortable, secure, but you will be dead if you do something which you never wanted to do. If you want to become a musician or a dancer or a poet and that is your passion, then go for it. You may be a beggar, you may never become known, you may never be rich — because the society does not need much poetry…

And this is a second kind of freedom:

you will be at least happy that you are doing your own thing, not somebody else’s thing. And this is my experience: that to be doing one’s own thing is the greatest joy in the world – whether that thing is appreciated by the society or not, valued by the society or not, whether it can be sold in the marketplace as a commodity or not. If it is the thing that you passionately desire, intensely desire, then do it; and whatsoever the cost, sacrifice yourself for it.

This is the second kind of freedom: freedom for. This is a positive approach, better than the first. The first type of person becomes a politician. The second type of person becomes a poet, a painter, an artist. The first freedom is negative, the second freedom is positive — but remember, they are aspects of the same thing.

Even the first type of freedom at least pretends that there is some goal. Even the politician says, “We are fighting to be free — from this kind of society, this kind of structure, this kind of politics. We are fighting to be free from this society just to create another society. We are fighting for some goal, some value, some utopia, some ideology.” Even he has to pretend that, because the negative cannot exist alone; at least the positive has to be talked about. So communism talks about a classless society, utopia, where everything will be beautiful, where paradise will have descended on the earth. It will take infinity, but that goal has to be given. Otherwise people will not fight for a negative freedom. So the negative implies the positive; and vice versa, the positive implies the negative. When you want to become a painter and your parents are not agreeing and your society thinks it is foolish, you have to fight with them. So freedom for will have something to do with freedom from; they both are together.

The real freedom is the third kind, the transcendental freedom. What is that? It is neither from nor for; it is simply freedom. It is just freedom. That is moksha: just freedom. Neither against anybody — it is not a reaction; nor to create some future — there is no goal. One simply enjoys being oneself, for its own sake; it is an end unto itself. Freedom from creates the politician, the reformer, the social servant, the communist, the socialist, the fascist. Freedom for creates the artist, the painter, the poet, the dancer, the musician. And just freedom for its own sake creates the sannyasin, the spiritual person, the truly religious.

Pagal, your question is, “We must be free. Yet where does freedom end and selfishness begin?” The first two are selfish, ego-oriented. The first, freedom from, is very egoistic because it has to fight against. It is violent; it has to be very egoistic. It has to disobey, it has to destroy, it has to conspire against the status quo. It needs great ego. The politician is nothing but pure ego. The second, freedom for, also has ego, but more delicate, more subtle, not so gross as the politician’s. The musician also has the ego, but more delicate, softer, more gentlemanly. The poet also has the ego, but nice, sweet, not so bitter as the first. They both are ego expressions. Only in the third, pure freedom — neither against nor for — is there no ego and is there no selfishness, because the third freedom happens only when the ego has evaporated. If the ego is still there, the freedom may be either the first or the second. The third requires as basic the phenomenon of the disappearance of the ego: FANA. One has to understand the ego to attain the third freedom.

Watch the ways of the ego. Go on watching. There is no need to fight for, no need to fight against; there is only just one need: to watch and be aware of how the ego functions, its mechanism. And slowly, slowly out of that awareness, one day the ego is found no more. Because the ego can exist only in unawareness. When awareness comes and the light comes, the ego disappears like darkness. And then there is freedom. That freedom knows no ego. And that freedom is love, and that freedom is God. That freedom is nirvana, that freedom is truth. In that freedom you exist in God, God exists in you. Then nothing wrong can ever happen through you. Then your life is virtue. Then your very breathing is meditation. Then you walk and it is poetry. Then you sit silently and it is dance. Then you are a blessing to the world. You are blessed.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune. 

Discourse Series: The Secret

Chapter #6

Question 7

Chapter title: Life Is An Empty Canvas

16 October 1978 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘Awareness, Consciousness, Ego, Freedom, Meditation, Moksha, Nirvana, Truth, Virtue’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourse titles:

1. Beyond Psychology
2. From Bondage to Freedom
3. The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here
4. The Path of the Mystic
5. That Art Thou
6. Zarathustra: The Laughing Prophet
7. Zen: The Solitary Bird, Cuckoo of the Forest
8. The Razor’s Edge
9. From Death to Deathlessness
10. The Messiah
11. The Zen Manifesto: Freedom From Oneself
12. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
13. The Book of Wisdom
14. Vigyan Bhairav Tantra
15. Bodhidharma: The Greatest Zen Master