Osho : What is the basic cause of addiction, any addiction
A D D I C T I O N
Question: What is the basic cause of addiction, any addiction?
"All around you there are people whose vested interest is that you should not live totally. It is surprising: why are they so interested that people do not live totally because their whole exploitation of humanity depends on it.
A man who lives totally will not drink alcohol, or take any other kind of drug. Naturally, the people who are earning millions of dollars out of alcohol and drugs cannot allow you to live totally. To live totally is so joyous that you don't want to destroy your joy by drinking alcohol. Alcohol is needed by miserable people, by people who are troubled, by people who want somehow to forget their problems, their anxieties — at least for a few hours. The alcohol is not going to change anything — but even a rest for a few hours seems to be an absolute necessity for millions of people.
If a man lives totally, his every moment is such a fulfillment that you will not see queues before movie halls — who wants to see somebody else making love? When you yourself can make love, why should you go to the movie house? When your own life is such a mystery and such a tremendous challenge to discover, who is going to be interested in third-class film stories?
The man who lives totally becomes unambitious. Because he is so happy right now, he cannot conceive that there is the possibility of more. The ordinary madness of man's mind — of desiring for more and more — is because you are not living totally. There is always a gap, something is missing. You know things could have been better. Out of this partial living all ambitions arise, and then the whole game of the society goes on: people want to become rich, people want to become famous, people want to become politicians, people want to become presidents and prime ministers.
Up to now humanity has depended on not allowing man to live totally, creating all kinds of barriers, because the total man will destroy so many vested interests in the world. The total man is the most dangerous man to the vested interests. You cannot enslave a man who is enjoying his life in its fullness, in its wholeness. You cannot force him to go into the army to kill people and to be killed. Your whole structure of society will collapse.
With the total man coming in, there will be a different structure of society: unambitious but immensely joyful — without great men. Perhaps you have never thought about it: great men can exist only because millions of people are not great; otherwise, who is going to remember Gautam Buddha? if there were millions of Gautam Buddhas, millions of Mahaviras, millions of Jesus Christs, who would bother about these people? These few people have become great because millions are not allowed to live totally. Who will go to the churches if people are not miserable . . . to the temples, to the synagogues, to the mosques? Who is going to be there? Who is going to bother about God, and heaven and hell? A man who is living each moment with such intensity that life itself has become a paradise, that life itself has become divine, need not be a worshipper of dead statues, dead scriptures, rotten ideologies, stupid superstitions.
The total man is the greatest risk in the world to your existing establishment."
Osho
The Razor's Edge
Chapter 29
Question: What is the basic cause of addiction, any addiction?
"All around you there are people whose vested interest is that you should not live totally. It is surprising: why are they so interested that people do not live totally because their whole exploitation of humanity depends on it.
A man who lives totally will not drink alcohol, or take any other kind of drug. Naturally, the people who are earning millions of dollars out of alcohol and drugs cannot allow you to live totally. To live totally is so joyous that you don't want to destroy your joy by drinking alcohol. Alcohol is needed by miserable people, by people who are troubled, by people who want somehow to forget their problems, their anxieties — at least for a few hours. The alcohol is not going to change anything — but even a rest for a few hours seems to be an absolute necessity for millions of people.
If a man lives totally, his every moment is such a fulfillment that you will not see queues before movie halls — who wants to see somebody else making love? When you yourself can make love, why should you go to the movie house? When your own life is such a mystery and such a tremendous challenge to discover, who is going to be interested in third-class film stories?
The man who lives totally becomes unambitious. Because he is so happy right now, he cannot conceive that there is the possibility of more. The ordinary madness of man's mind — of desiring for more and more — is because you are not living totally. There is always a gap, something is missing. You know things could have been better. Out of this partial living all ambitions arise, and then the whole game of the society goes on: people want to become rich, people want to become famous, people want to become politicians, people want to become presidents and prime ministers.
Up to now humanity has depended on not allowing man to live totally, creating all kinds of barriers, because the total man will destroy so many vested interests in the world. The total man is the most dangerous man to the vested interests. You cannot enslave a man who is enjoying his life in its fullness, in its wholeness. You cannot force him to go into the army to kill people and to be killed. Your whole structure of society will collapse.
With the total man coming in, there will be a different structure of society: unambitious but immensely joyful — without great men. Perhaps you have never thought about it: great men can exist only because millions of people are not great; otherwise, who is going to remember Gautam Buddha? if there were millions of Gautam Buddhas, millions of Mahaviras, millions of Jesus Christs, who would bother about these people? These few people have become great because millions are not allowed to live totally. Who will go to the churches if people are not miserable . . . to the temples, to the synagogues, to the mosques? Who is going to be there? Who is going to bother about God, and heaven and hell? A man who is living each moment with such intensity that life itself has become a paradise, that life itself has become divine, need not be a worshipper of dead statues, dead scriptures, rotten ideologies, stupid superstitions.
The total man is the greatest risk in the world to your existing establishment."
Osho
The Razor's Edge
Chapter 29
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