"The yearning for a utopia is basically the yearning for harmony in the individual and in the society. The harmony has never existed; there has always been a chaos.
Society has been divided into different cultures, different religions, different nations – and all based on superstitions. None of the divisions are valid. But these divisions show that man is divided within himself: these are the projections of his own inner conflict. He is not
one within, that's why he could not create one society, one humanity outside. The cause is not outside. The outside is only the reflection of the inner man.
Man has developed from the animals.
This is profoundly supported by modern psychoanalysis, particularly Carl Gustav Jung's school, because in the collective unconscious of man there are memories which belong to animalhood.
If man is taken deep into hypnosis, first he enters the unconscious mind, which is just the repressed part of this life. If he is hypnotized even more deeply, then he enters into the collective unconscious, which has memories of being animals. People start screaming – in that stage they cannot speak a language. They start moaning or crying, but language is impossible; they can shout, but in an animal way. And in the collective unconscious state, if they are allowed to move or they are told to move, they move on all fours – they don't stand up.
In the collective unconscious there are certainly remnants that suggest that they have been sometime in some animal body. And different people come from different animal bodies. That may be the cause of such a difference in individuals. And sometimes you can see a similarity – somebody behaves like a dog, somebody behaves like a fox, somebody behaves like a lion.
And there is great support in folklore, in ancient parables like Aesop's Fables, or Panchtantra in India – which is the most ancient – in which all the stories are about animals, but are very significant for human beings and represent certain human types.
And man still carries much of the animal's instinct – his anger, his hatred, his jealousy, his possessiveness, his cunningness. All that has been condemned in man seems to belong to a very deep-rooted unconscious. And the whole work of spiritual alchemy is how to get rid of the animal past. Without getting rid of the animal past, man will remain divided. The animal past and his humanity cannot exist as one, because humanity has just the opposite qualities.
So all that man can do is become a hypocrite.
As far as formal behavior is concerned, he follows the ideals of humanity – of love and of truth, of freedom, of non-possessiveness, compassion. But it remains only a very thin layer, and at any moment the hidden animal can come up; any accident can bring it up. And whether it comes up or not, the inner consciousness is divided. This divided consciousness has been creating the yearning and the question: How to become a harmonious whole as far as the individual is concerned? And the same is true about the whole society: How can we make the society a harmonious whole – where there is no war, no conflict – no classes, no divisions of color, caste, religion, nation?
Because of people like Thomas Moore, who wrote the book Utopia, the name became synonymous with all idealistic goals – but they have not grasped the real problem. That's why it seems their idea of a utopia is never going to happen. If you think of society as becoming an ideal society, a paradise, it seems to be impossible: There are so many conflicts, and there seems to be no way to harmonize them.
Every religion wants to conquer the whole world, not to be harmonized.
Every nation wants to conquer the whole world, not to be harmonized.
Every culture wants to spread all over the world and to destroy all other cultures, not to bring a harmony between them.
So utopia became synonymous with something which is simply imaginary. And there are dreamers – the very word "utopia" also means "that which is never going to happen." But still man goes on thinking in those terms again and again. There seems to be some deep-rooted urge.... But his thinking is about the symptoms – that's why it seems to be never going to happen. He is not looking at the causes. The causes are individuals.
Utopia is possible. A harmonious human society is possible, should be possible, because it will be the best opportunity for everyone to grow, the best opportunity for everyone to be himself. The richest possibilities will be available to everyone. So it seems that the way it is, society is absolutely stupid. The utopians are not dreamers, but your so-called realists who condemn utopians are stupid. But both are agreed on one point – that something has to be done in the society.
Prince Kropotkin, Bakunin, and their followers would like all the governments to be dissolved – as if it is in their hands, as if you simply say so and the governments will dissolve. These are the anarchists, who are the best utopians. Reading them, it seems that whatever they are saying is significant. But they have no means to materialize it, and they have no idea how it is going to happen. And there is Karl Marx, Engels, and Lenin – the Marxists, the communists, and different schools of socialism, connected with different dreamers. Even George Bernard Shaw had his own idea of socialism, and he had a small group called the Fabian Society. He was propagating a kind of socialist world, totally different from the communist world that exists today.
There are fascists who think that it is a question of more control and more government power; just the opposite pole of anarchists, who want no government – all the source of corruption is government. And there are people, the fascists, who want all power in the hands of dictators. They say that It is because of the democratic idea that the society is falling apart, because in democracy the lowest denominator becomes the ruler. He decides who is going to rule; and he is the most ignorant one, he has no understanding. The mob decides how the society should be. So according to the fascist, democracy is only mobocracy, it is not democracy – there is no democracy possible.
According to the communists, the whole problem is simply the class division between the poor and the rich. They think that if all government power goes into the hands of the poor and they have a dictatorship of the proletariat – when all classes have disappeared, and the society has become equal – then soon there will be no need of any state.
They are all concerned with the society. And that is where their failure lies.
As I see it, utopia is not something that is not going to happen, it is something that is possible, but we should go to the causes, not to the symptoms. And the causes are in the individuals, not in the society.
For example, in seventy years, the communist revolution in Soviet Russia was not able to dissolve the dictatorship. Lenin was thinking that ten or fifteen years at the most would be enough, because by that time we would have equalized everybody, distributed wealth equally – then there would be no need for a government.
But after fifteen years they found that the moment you remove the enforced state, people are going to become again unequal. There will be again rich people and there will be again poor people, because there is something in people which makes them rich or poor. So you have to keep them in almost a concentration camp if you want them to remain equal. But this is a strange kind of equality because it destroys all freedom, all individuality. And the basic idea was that the individual will be given equal opportunity. His needs should be fulfilled equally. He will have everything equal to everybody else. He will share it.
But the ultimate outcome is just the opposite. They have almost destroyed the individual to whom they were trying to give equality, and freedom, and everything good that should be given to individuals. The very individual is removed. They have become afraid of the individual; and the reason is that they are still not aware that however long the enforced state lasts – seventy or seven hundred years – it will not make any difference. The moment you remove control, there will be a few people who know how to be rich, and there will be a few people who know how to be poor. And they will simply start the whole thing again.
In the beginning they tried... because Karl Marx's idea was that there should be no marriage in communism. And he was very factual about it: that marriage was born because of individual property. His logic was correct. There was a time when there was no marriage. People lived in tribes, and just as animals make love, people made love. The problem started only when a few people who were more cunning, more clever, more powerful, had managed some property. Now they wanted that their property, after their death, should go to their own children. It is a natural desire that if a person works his whole life and gathers property, land, or creates a kingdom, it should go to his children. In a subtle way, through the children, because they are his blood, he will be still ruling, he will be still possessing. It is a way to find some substitute for immortality, because the continuity will be there: "I will not be there, but my child will be there – who will represent me, who will be my blood and my bones and my marrow. And then his child will be there and there will be a continuity. So in a subtle sense, I will have immortality. I cannot live forever, so this is a substitute way." That's why marriage was created; otherwise it was easier for man not to have any marriage, because marriage was simply a responsibility – of children, of a wife. When the woman is pregnant, then you have to feed her.... And there was no need to take all that responsibility. The woman was taking the whole responsibility. But the man wanted some immortality, and that his property should be possessed by his own blood. And the woman wanted some protection – she was vulnerable. While she was pregnant, she could not work, she could not go hunting; she had to depend on somebody. So it was in the interest of both to have a contract that they would remain together, would not betray in any sense, because the whole thing was to keep the blood pure.
So Marx's idea was that when communism comes, and property becomes collective, marriage becomes meaningless because its basic reason is removed – now you don't have any private property. Your son will not have anything as an inheritance. In fact, just as you cannot have private property, you cannot have a private woman; that too is property. And you cannot have a private son or daughter, because that too is private property. So with the disappearance of private property, marriage will disappear. So after the revolution, for two or three years, in Russia they tried it, but it was impossible. Private property had disappeared, but people were not ready to drop marriage. And even the government found that if marriage disappears, the whole responsibility falls on the government – of the children, of the woman....
So why take an unnecessary responsibility? – and it is not a small thing. It is better to let marriage continue. So they reversed the policy; they forgot all about Karl Marx, because just within three years they found that this was going to create difficulty, and people were not willing. People were not willing to drop private property either – it was forcibly taken away from them. Almost one million people were killed – for small private properties. Somebody had a small piece of land, a few acres, and because everything was going to be nationalized.Although the people were poor, still they wanted to cling to their property. At least they had something; and now even that was going to be taken out of their hands. They were hoping to get something more – that's why they had had the revolution, and fought for it. Now what they had was going to be taken out of their hands. It was going to become government property, it was going to be nationalized.And for small things – somebody may have had just a few hens, or a cow, and he was not willing... because that was all that he had, a small house and he was not willing for it to be nationalized. These poor people – one million people were killed to make the whole country aware that nationalization had to happen. Even if you had only a cow and you didn't give it to the government, you were finished. And the government was thinking that people would be willing to separate... but this is how the merely theoretical and logical people have always failed to understand man. They have never looked into his psychology.
This was true, that marriage was created after private property came into being – marriage followed it. Logically, as private property is dissolved, marriage should disappear. But they don't understand the human mind. As property was taken away, people became even more possessive of each other because nothing was left. Their land has gone, their animals have gone, their houses have gone. Now they don't want to lose their wife or their husband or their children. This is too much. Logic is one thing... and unless we try to understand man more psychologically and less logically, we are always going to commit mistakes. Marx was proved wrong.
When everything was taken away people were clinging to each other more, more than before, because now that was their only possession: a woman, a husband, children.... And it was such a gap in their life; their whole property had gone and now their wife was also to be nationalized. They could not conceive the idea because their mind and their tradition said, "That is prostitution." Their children had to be nationalized – they had not fought the revolution for this.
So finally the government had to reverse the policy; otherwise in their constitution.... In the first constitution they had declared that now there shall be no marriage; and the question of divorce did not arise. Just within three years they had to change it.
And in Russia then marriage was stricter than anywhere else. Divorce was more difficult than anywhere else, because the government did not want unnecessary changes. That creates paperwork and more bureaucracy. So the government wants people to remain together, not to unnecessarily change partners. And divorce creates law cases about the children – who should have them, the father or mother; it is unnecessary. The government thinks of efficiency – less bureaucracy, less paperwork – and people are creating unnecessary paperwork, so it is very difficult to get a divorce. And as time passed, they found that there was no way to keep people equal without force. But what kind of a utopia is it which is kept by force? And because the communist party has all the force, a new kind of division has come into being, a new class of the bureaucrats: those who have power, and those who don't have any power.
It is very difficult to become a member, to obtain membership of the communist party in Russia, because that is entering into the power elite. The communist party has made many other groups – first you have to be a member of those groups, and you have to be checked in every way. When they find that you are really reliable, absolutely reliable, trustworthy, then you may enter into the communist party. And the party is not increasing its membership because that means dividing power. The party wants to remain as small as possible so that the power is in a few hands. There is now a powerful class. For seventy years the same group were ruling the country, and the whole country was powerless.
The people were never so powerless under a capitalist regime or under a feudal regime. Under the czars they were never so powerless. It was possible for a poor man, if he was intelligent enough, to become rich. Now it is not so easy. You may be intelligent, but it is not so easy to enter from the powerless class into the class which holds power. The distance between the two classes is far more than it was before. There is always mobility in a capitalist society because there are not only poor people and rich people, there is a big middle class, and the middle class is continuously moving. A few people of the middle class are moving into the super-rich, and more people are moving into the poor class. A few poor people are moving into the middle class; a few rich people are falling into the middle class, or may even fall into the poor class... there is mobility. In a communist society there is an absolutely static state. Classes are now completely cut off from each other. They were going to create a classless society, and they have created the strictest society with static classes.
( to be continued )
source : Osho, Light on the Path, Talk #11
With love and passion,
Amreish Siman
