Birthday of German Philosopher Schiller
10th November is the birthday of the famous German philosopher Friedrich Schiller. He was a philosopher, physician, poet, painter and playwright. Born in 1759 in a very religious family, Schiller’s parents wanted him to become a cleric, but he became a military doctor like his father.
Schiller is considered Germany’s most important classical playwright. There is an interesting anecdote about Schiller’s first tryst with fame. As a schoolboy, he wrote a play The Robbers which became an overnight sensation. While posted as a regimental doctor in Stuttgart, Schiller left without permission to attend the first performance of his play in Mannheim. Caught AWOL, Schiller was arrested and sentenced to 14 days’ imprisonment! So much for being a phenomenal playwright!
On Schiller’s poetry, Beethoven is known to have said – a great poem is more difficult to set to music than a merely good one because the composer must rise higher than the poet – “who can do that in the case of Schiller?”
Osho has spoken on Schiller in His discourses. Osho says Germany was the country of great logicians, philosophers, scholars – Feuerbach, Hegel, Kant, Leibnitz, Marx, Nietzsche – and Schiller is one of them. Science grows out of doubt. Religion grows out of wonder. Between the two is philosophy; it has not yet decided – it goes on hanging between doubt and wonder. Sometimes the philosopher doubts and sometimes the philosopher wonders: he is just in between. If he doubts too much, by and by he becomes a scientist. If he wonders too much, by and by he becomes religious. And when one is full of wonder, praise arises; and in your praising, prayer arises!
Osho Says…..
What is personality? Personality is a PERSONA, a mask. It is needed. The child has no mask, that’s why he looks so animal-like. The collective mind has a mask, but imposed from the outside; it has no interior definition of its being. The egoist, the individual mind, has an interior definition; he knows who he is, he has a kind of integration. Of course, the integration is not ultimate and will have to be dropped, but it can be dropped only when it has been attained. ‘We must be willing to discard personality. God is no respecter of persons.’ That’s true.
God loves individuals, but not persons. And the difference is great. A person is one who has an ego definition. An individual is one who has dropped his ego, and knows who he is. A person is a circle with a centre; and the individual is a circle without the centre — just pure space. ‘The personality is only a mask, it is a theatrical creation, a mere stage-prop.’ The longing for freedom, salvation or NIRVANA, means simply the wish to be relieved of your so-called personality and the prison that it creates.
‘The trouble with the self is that it is derived from others.’ Your ego is also derived from others. You depend for your ego on the others. If you go to the Himalayas and sit in a cave, what ego will you have? By and by the ego will start disappearing. It needs support. Somebody needs to appreciate it. Somebody needs to say to you that you are a beautiful person. Somebody needs to go on feeding it. The ego can exist only in society. Although it tries to get rid of society, in a subtle, unconscious way it remains dependent on the society. ‘The trouble with the self is that it is derived from others. It is constructed in an attempt to live up to the expectation of others. The others have become installed in our hearts, and we call them ourselves.’
The self is not you. It belongs to others who surround you. It exists in you, but it is possessed by others. That’s why it is so easy to manipulate an egoistic person. That’s what flattery is: flattery is a trick to manipulate the egoistic person. You go and say to him that he is the greatest man in the world, and he is ready to fall at your feet; you are manipulating. He knows, you know and everybody else knows that this is just false. He also knows that he is not the greatest man in the world, but he will believe it. He would like to believe it. And he would like to do anything that you want him to do. At least one person in the world believes that he is the greatest person. He cannot afford to lose you.
The ego exists in you but is possessed by others. It is the subtlest slavery yet invented by the priests and the politicians. It is like a Delgado electrode inserted in your head and manipulated by remote control.
The society is very clever. First, it tries to keep you at the second level. If you go beyond that, then it starts manipulating you through flattery. You will be surprised that in India there has never been a revolution. And the reason? The reason is that the BRAHMIN, the intellectual, was so much flattered down the ages that he was never angry enough to revolt against the society. And only intellectuals revolt — only intellectuals, because they are the most egoistic people. They are the most independent people — the intelligentsia. And because in India the BRAHMIN was the highest… There was no one higher than him — even the king was lower than the BRAHMIN. A beggar BRAHMIN was higher than the emperor, and the emperor used to touch his feet. Now there was no possibility of revolution because who would do the revolution? These are the people, these intellectuals, who create trouble. Now they are respected highly, they are flattered highly… The revolution could not exist — it was not possible.
It has been the same thing in Soviet Russia.
For these fifty years in Soviet society, the intellectual has been praised as much as anything. The academician, the writer, the poet, the professor — they are the most highly respected persons. Now who is going to do the revolution? Revolution is not possible, because the revolutionary has much investment in the conventional mode of the society, in the traditional society. In India revolution didn’t happen, and in Russia it cannot happen. Revolution is possible only through the egoist. But the egoist can be manipulated very easily. Give him the Nobel Prize, give him a doctorate, and he is ready to do anything.
This third state of mind is now prevalent all over the world. If it is satisfied, then you are stuck in it. If it is not satisfied, then you fall back and become mad. Both are not healthy situations. One has to go beyond it, and the fourth state, the universal mind, has to be created. The separation with the cosmos has to disappear.
You have to become one with the whole. In fact you ARE one, you just think that you are not. That barrier of the thought has to be dissolved. Then there is relaxation, peace, non-violence. In India we say: SATYAM, SHIVAM, SUNDERAM: Then there is truth, there is good, and there is beauty. With the universal mind these three things flower: SATYAM — truth, SHIVAM — good, SUNDERAM — beauty. With the universal mind these three flowers come into bloom, and there is great joy. You have disappeared, and all the energy that was involved in the ego is freed. That energy becomes beauty, good, truth. This is the state of matriarchy.
The collective mind is patriarchy; the individual mind is fraternity; and the universal mind is matriarchy. Mother love is non-demanding, so is the love of the universe towards you. It demands nothing, it is unconditional, it is simply showering on you. It is for you to take or not to take, but it is showering on you. If you have the ego then your doors are closed and you don’t take it. If the ego has disappeared, then it goes on and on showering on you, goes on nourishing you, goes on fulfilling you. The first stage was chaotic, the second was intellectual, the third was intelligent. The fourth is emotional: it is of love, of the heart. With the third, intellect comes to its peak; with the fourth, love starts flowing. This state can be called ‘God as mother’.
When God as father has died, God as mother has to arise. This is a higher stage of religion. When father is important, the religion is more institutional, formal — because father himself is formal, institutional. Mother is more natural, more biological, more intrinsic. Father is external, mother is internal. The universal mind brings the matriarchy. Mother becomes more important. God is no more a he, but becomes a she. Life is thought about, not according to logic, but according to love.
The poet Schiller has called it ‘the universal kiss’. If you are available, the universal mother can kiss you, can embrace you, can take you again into her womb. Yes comes again into existence, but it is no more imposed from the outside, it comes from your innermost core. This is trust. The collective mind lives in faith. The individual mind lives in doubt, the universal mind lives in trust — SHRADDHA. It is not belief, it is not that somebody has forced you to believe; it is your own vision, it is your own experience.
This is true religion: when you can become a witness of God, of SAMADHI, of prayer; when you are the witness; when you have not taken it as borrowed — it is no more knowledge, no more belief — it has become your own existential experience. Solidarity again enters, but it is solidarity with existence itself, not with society. Creativity again comes, but it is no more the egoistic creativity. It is not you as doer — you become instrumental — God is the doer. Then God flows through you. You may create great poetry. In fact, you cannot create great poetry before it. The ego will create a shadow, the ego can never be transparent. The real creativity is possible only with the universal.
Source:
This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.
Discourse Series: I Say Unto You, Vol 1
Chapter #5
Chapter title: Pray to Thy Father in Secret
27 October 1977
References:
Osho has spoken on eminent philosophers like Aristotle, Berkeley, Bukharin, Camus, Confucius, Descartes, Feuerbach, Hegel, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Huxley, Jaspers, Kant, Kierkegaard, Marx, Moore, Nietzsche, Plato, Pythagoras, Russell, Sartre, Schiller, Socrates, Voltaire, Wittgenstein and others in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:
- A Sudden Clash of Thunder
- Be Still and Know
- Dang Dang Doko Dang
- Beyond Psychology
- The Rebel
- Philosophia Perennis Vol.1-2
- Isan: No Footprints in the Blue Sky
- The Invitation
- Just Like That
- One Seed Makes the Whole Earth Green
- Light on the Path
- The Empty Boat
- What Is, Is, What Ain’t, Ain’t
- From Personality to Individuality
- From Death to Deathlessness
