Question : PLEASE EXPLAIN MAN’S FREE WILL AND ITS RELATION TO BEING AND NON-DOING.
Osho : There is nothing like that, like free will. It is just an ego concept, there cannot be anything like that. I am not saying the opposite, that you are dependent and slaves. Mind moves into opposites very easily. It creates dichotomies: either you are a free agent (free will), or you are a slave. Both are untrue, both are false concepts, because YOU are not, so you cannot be a slave, and you cannot be a free agent, because for both, YOU will be needed.
Life is a vast interdependence. You are just an organic part of the whole, you are not separate, so how can you be free But I am not saying that you are not free, remember that, because how can you be not free, or free? You are NOT, you don’t exist at all. It is a vast interdependence, and this interdependence is the totality, the God. But the ego goes on finding its ways….
I have heard, once it happened, a great elephant was passing across a bridge. The bridge was very old, and it shook tremendously, and a fly was sitting on the head of the elephant, just near his ears, and when they had passed – they had almost destroyed the bridge, ALMOST I say – when they had passed the fly said to the elephant: Boy! Did we shake that thing! But the elephant didn’t hear. So the fly said: What is the matter? Are you stupid or something! Can’t you hear me? But the elephant didn’t hear.
The whole is VAST. We are not even flies. The proportion is very very, TREMENDOUSLY great. It is hot the proportion of a fly to an elephant – that’s nothing. We are almost nothing, and the whole is so VAST. But you go on trying, insisting that the bridge is shaking because of you. The fly was very considerate in a way; she said: Boy! We did shake that bridge! WE – that is much consideration.
If the fly had the mind of a man, ordinarily she would have said I. Flies are mote considerate. She at least included the elephant. But man says FREE WILL, he does not even include the whole, it is completely discarded. He says I. So two philosophies have existed in the world – one which says FREE WILL. But because this whole notion is wrong, absolutely false, it can be argued against, it HAS been argued against, so there is another side which says: Nobody is free. We are just puppets, and the threads are in some unknown hands, and whatsoever HE determines, happens. We are just slaves, nothing else.
Both parties are wrong. You are neither slaves nor free agents. This is a little difficult to understand: it is because YOU are not that you are part of the whole. But if you THINK yourself separate you will feel like a slave. If you understand yourself as part of the whole you become the master but you become master with the whole not against the whole. If you are against the whole, you become the slave. If you flow with the river, you become the master. You become the river! If you try to go upstream you become the slave.
Free will is not there, and neither is slavery. Dependence and independence are both false words. They should be dropped completely, they should not be used. It is interdependence. I exist in you, you exist in me. That is the way life is: we exist into each other, we PEOPLE each other. The breath that was in me just a moment before has now moved and has gone into you. Just a moment before I could have said: This is my breath – but where is it now? Somebody else’s heart is beating through it.
In your body the blood is flowing; just a few days before it was flowing as juice in a tree; it became a fruit, now it is flowing in your body. Again you will fall to the earth – dust unto dust, and again a tree will arise; you will become fertilizers; and again a tree will become alive, and a fruit will come, and your children’s children will eat it.
You have eaten your grandparents – you ARE eating them. And this goes on and on! The whole past is eaten by the present. And the whole present will be eaten by the future. Life is inter related, deeply inter-related. It is just like a net. You are just the crossing point of two threads, you are NOT, you are just a tie between two passing threads. When you understand that – you laugh, you really laugh! And you have been carrying so much burden!
That’s why Jesus says, Come follow me, my burden is light. Your burden is very heavy. Your burden is YOU. Jesus says, My burden is light, it is weightless – because when you are not, there is no weight, the gravitation doesn’t function then. You start to levitate. Wings grow out of you. You can FLY.
Drop dichotomies: independence, dependence; they are inter-related. If you try to be independent, you will feel you are dependent, if you try to be independent you will fail and you will be frustrated and you will feel that you are dependent. And both are wrong. Just look within: you are NOT; just cosmic rays passing, creating a web, a pattern…
A few days you are here and then you disappear; and then again you will be here – and disappear. Where do you come from? Where do you go again? Into the whole! You disappear to rest. Then again you are here. Spring comes, and trees start blooming, and birds start singing – a new life; and then it has gone, and everything is restful.
Again it will come. Many many times you have been here, many many times you will be here; but once you understand that YOU ARE NOT, that the whole goes on playing through you, once you understand – then there is no need to be thrown again and again back into the body, there is no need, you have become alert, conscious. Now there is no need for any manifestation; you rest in the whole – this we have called MOKSHA, NIRVANA. This we have called the ultimate freedom.
In the West it is very difficult to understand this because whenever you talk about freedom you think of free will, and whenever the East talks about freedom it talks of being free of all free will. Freedom means to be free from you. In the West it means freedom from every barrier, limitation, but YOU remain, it is YOUR freedom.
In the East when we talk about freedom YOU don’t remain in it – you are part and parcel of the bondage, you go with the bondage. Freedom remains, not YOU; that is MOKSHA. It is not that YOU become free, on the contrary you become free of yourself. There is no self. Self simply disappears – it was a false concept, an arbitrary concept. Useful, but not true.