27/11/2020
"My notion about the rebel and rebellion is very simple: a man who does not live like a robot conditioned by the past. Religion, society, culture... anything that is of yesterday does not in any way interfere in his way of life, in his style of life.
He lives individually – not as a cog in the wheel, but as an organic unity. His life is not decided by anybody else, but by his own intelligence. The very fragrance of his life is that of freedom – not only that he lives in freedom, he allows everybody else also to live in freedom. He does not allow anybody to interfere in his life; neither does he interfere in anybody else's life. To him, life is so sacred – and freedom is the ultimate value – that he can sacrifice everything for it: respectability, status, even life itself.
Freedom, to him, is what God used to be to the so-called religious people in the past.
Freedom is his God.Men have lived down the ages like sheep, as part of a crowd, following its traditions, conventions – following the old scriptures and old disciplines. But that way of life was anti-individual; if you are a Christian you cannot be an individual; if you are a Hindu you cannot be an individual.
A rebel is one who lives totally according to his own light, and risks everything else for his ultimate value of freedom. The rebel is the contemporary person. The mobs are not contemporary.
Hindus, muslims, Christians believe in scriptures which are one orfive or ten thousand years old. Such is also the case with other religions too the dead are dominating the living.
The rebel rebels against the dead, takes his life in his own hands. He is not afraid of being alone; on the contrary, he enjoys his aloneness as one of the most precious treasures. The crowd gives you security, safety – at the cost of your soul. It enslaves you. It gives you guidelines on how to live: what to do, what not to do.
All over the world, every religion has given something like the ten commandments – and these were given by people who had no idea how the future is going to be, how man's consciousness in the future is going to be. It is as if a small child were to write
It is as if a small child were to write your whole life's story, not knowing at all what youth means, not knowing at all what old age means, not knowing at all what death is.
All the religions are primitive, crude – and they have been shaping your life. Naturally the whole world is full of misery: you are not allowed to be yourself.
Every culture wants you to be just a carbon copy, never your original face.
The rebel is one who lives according to his own light, moves according to his own intelligence. He creates his path by walking on it, he does not follow the crowd on the superhighway.
His life is dangerous – but a life that is not dangerous is not life at all. He accepts the challenge of the unknown. He does not meet the unknown that is coming in the future, prepared by the past. That creates the whole anguish of humanity; the past prepares you, and the future is never going to be the past. Your yesterday is never going to be your tomorrow.
But up to now this is how man has lived: your yesterdays prepare you for your tomorrows. The very preparation becomes a hindrance. You cannot breathe freely, you cannot love freely, you cannot dance freely – the past has crippled you in every possible way.
The burden of the past is so heavy that everybody is crushed under it.
The rebel simply says good-bye to the past.
It is a constant process; hence, to be a rebel means to be continuously in rebellion – because each moment is going to become past; every day is going to become past. It is not that the past is already in the graveyard – you are moving through it every moment. Hence, the rebel has to learn a new art: the art of dying to each moment that has passed, so that he can live freely in the new moment that has come.
