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.

It is almost a repetition of Hinduism.

What Manu did five thousand years ago, communists did in Russia. Manu
made Hindu society into four classes. There is no mobility. You are born a
brahmin, that is the only way to be a brahmin. And that is the highest
society, the topmost class. Then number two is the warriors, the kings - the
chhatriyas. But you are born in that caste, it is not a question that you
can move. Then third is the class of the vaishyas, the business people; you
are born in it. And the fourth is the sudras, the untouchables.

All are born into their caste. That's why, until Christianity started
converting so many Hindus, particularly the sudras, who were ready, very
willing to become Christians, because at least they would be touchable....
Amongst Hindus, sudras are untouchable, and there is no way to get out of
the structure.

For your whole life you have to remain the same as your forefathers
remained for five thousand years. For five thousand years there has been a
stratified society. If somebody is a shoemaker, his family has been making
shoes for five thousand years. He cannot do any other work, he cannot enter
into any other profession. That is not allowed.

Hindus were not a converting religion, because the great question was,
if you convert somebody, in what class are you going to put the person?
Christianity is a converting religion because it has no classification; you
simply become a Christian. If Catholics convert you, you become a Catholic;
if Protestants convert you, you become a Protestant.

But in Hinduism you cannot be converted, for the simple reason: Where
will you be put? Brahmins won't allow you, and you would not like to be put
with the sudras, the untouchables. So then what is the point of coming to a
religion where you will not be even touched? Even your shadow will be
untouchable. And a brahmin has to take a bath if the shadow of a sudra falls
on him. The sudra has not touched him, but his shadow is also untouchable.

Being the ancientmost religion, still Hinduism has not been spreading;
it has been shrinking. Buddhism spread all over Asia, and it is only
twenty-five centuries old. Hinduism is at least ten thousand years old, or
more, but it could not spread, for the simple reason that birth is decisive.
You can be a Hindu only by birth, just as you can be a Jew only by birth -
and these are the two most ancient religions.

These are really the two basic religions.

Christianity and Mohammedanism are offshoots of Judaism; and Jainism
and Buddhism are offshoots of Hinduism. Jainism and Buddhism are both the
rebellion of the second class - the chhatriyas, the warriors - because they
had the powers. They were the kings, they were the soldiers, they had the
power - and yet the brahmin was on top of them. So naturally, sooner or
later they were going to revolt, and finally they did revolt. Gautam Buddha
and Mahavira are both from the second class. They wanted to be first class,
they had the power, and the brahmins had nothing: Why should they be the
highest class? So it was a rebellion.

But it was a strange thing that although these two religions got out
of the Hindu fold, only Buddhism could spread all over Asia. Jainism could
not spread out of India. Buddhism managed to spread out of India: from India
it disappeared, but it took over the whole of Asia. And the reason was that
it was through Gautam Buddha's very compassionate mind that he allowed
anybody to enter into Buddhism.

Jainas, although they had also rebelled against the brahmins, remained
of the same mind - that they are higher than the other two classes. They
wanted to be higher than brahmins too, but they never started converting
anybody, because who would they convert? Brahmins will not be ready to be
converted - they are already higher than everybody. Only sudras can be
converted because they will be raised on the evaluation scale. But Jainas -
Mahavira and his group - were not so compassionate as to take them in.

So Jainism is not a complete culture - it has to depend on Hinduism
for everything - it has remained only a philosophy. No Jaina can make
shoes - some Hindu sudra has to make the shoes. No Jaina can clean the
toilets - some sudra has to do that work.

Although they rebelled against brahmins, their rebellion was just
against the superiority of the brahmins, and they wanted themselves to be
higher than the brahmins. But they were also not in favor of the lower
classes being taken higher.

And the ultimate result was that Jainas have remained a very small
religion, confined in numbers. And because they left Hinduism, rather than
rising higher than brahmins, they even fell from the second category.
Because they left Hinduism, they were no longer chhatriyas. They were no
longer considered to be warriors, and they could not be because of their
nonviolence. They had to drop the idea of fighting, so the only way was to
become business people.

Lower you can go - nobody prevents you - so they had to go from the
second class to the third class, and they all became business people. So the
rebellion failed very badly. Jainas wanted to become higher than the first
class; the outcome of their revolution was that they went from the second
class to the third class.

And they are absolutely dependent on Hindus. For their manual work
they need workers - they cannot work. And because they became business
people, slowly, slowly the Hindu vaishyas, the Hindu business people, and
the Jaina business people came closer. Even marriages started happening
between them.

By and by they even had to ask brahmins to do their worship work - and
they had money to pay for it. So brahmins worshipped for the Jainas - who
are against brahminism, against Hinduism; but they had to use Hindus for
everything.

Their shoes are made by the sudras; their toilets are cleaned by the
sudras. Their properties have to be protected by the chhatriyas, because
they cannot take the sword in their hands. They cannot kill, so they cannot
fight, they cannot go to war; they have their security force in the warrior
race. And finally their priests - the brahmins came in from the back door as
their priests.

Manu tried this immobile society - which is still the same - five
thousand years ago. That too was a kind of utopia, because he was thinking
in terms of there being no class struggle this way.

The class struggle can be dropped in two ways. Either there should be
no classes; then there will be no class struggle.... That's what communism
is doing, but it has failed because a new class has appeared. The other way
is that the classes should be so stratified that there is no question of one
person moving into another class. No struggle will be there, so there will
be no competition. The brahmin will remain a brahmin. He will remain on the
top, whether he is poor or rich does not matter. The businessman will remain
a businessman. Just because he is rich he cannot become a brahmin, he cannot
purchase the caste. He cannot rise; he will remain third class, however rich
he is. The sudras will remain sudras: they have to do all the dirty work and
they cannot move from there.

This was also a utopia. The idea was that if the classes are
completely static, there is not going to be any struggle, competition. In a
way Manu succeeded more than Marx, because for five thousand years his idea
has remained in practice, and in India the Hindu society has never been in a
class struggle. The poor are there, the rich are there, but that is not the
real problem for the Hindu. His real problem is those four classes, which
are absolutely static. But that is very dangerous because you prevent people
from moving in a direction where they can find their potential fulfilled. A
sudra may prove to be a great warrior, but he will never be allowed. A
brahmin may prove a great industrialist, but he cannot lower himself.

So it saved the society from class struggle, but it destroyed the
individual and his potential completely. The genius was ruined. In just the
same way it is happening in communism: the individual is destroyed, his
genius is ruined. He cannot move upwards even if he has the capacity.

There have been attempts all over the world to make a harmonious human
society, but all have failed for the simple reason that nobody has bothered
why it is not naturally harmonious.

It is not harmonious because each individual inside is divided, and
his divisions are projected onto the society. And unless we dissolve the
individual's inner divisions, there is no possibility of really realizing a
utopia and creating a harmonious society in the world.

So the only way for a utopia is that your consciousness should grow
more, and your unconsciousness should grow less, so finally a moment comes
in your life when there is nothing left which is unconscious: you are simply
a pure consciousness. Then there is no division.

And this kind of person, who has just consciousness and nothing
opposed to it, can become the very brick in creating a society which has no
divisions. In other words, only a society which is enlightened enough can
fulfill the demand of being harmonious - a society of enlightened people, a
society of great meditators who have dropped their divisions.

Instead of thinking in terms of revolution and changing the society,
its structure, we should think more of meditation and changing the
individual. That is the only possible way that some day we can drop all
divisions in the society. But first they have to be dropped in the
individual - and they can be dropped there.

It is almost like the fourfold division as Manu conceived the society.
You have the conscious, you have the unconscious, you have the collective
unconscious, and you have the cosmic unconscious. These are the four
divisions within you; as you go deeper you go into darker spaces. Manu also
divided society in four. The most conscious part is the brahmin - he makes
up the topmost, the wisest part. But he starts with the society.

When Manu first divided the society, somebody may have been a wise
man, but it is not necessary that his sons and daughters will also be wise,
that generation after generation the wise man will create only wise people -
that is a stupid idea. So the first division may have been very accurate. He
may have sorted out people correctly: the conscious people on the top, then
less conscious people, then more unconscious people, then absolutely
unconscious people.

And if Manu calls absolutely unconscious people "sudras,"
untouchables, there is nothing wrong in it; philosophically it is absolutely
right. But practically he went wrong because he did not think that it would
not always happen that the unconscious people would produce unconscious
people.

It happened that all the enlightened people came from the second
class - that is from the warriors - not from the brahmins, which were the
topmost class. It is very strange. Even Hindu incarnations - Rama and
Krishna - they all belonged to the second class; they were not brahmins.
Buddha and Mahavira - they were not brahmins.

So the brahmin class has not produced a single enlightened person,
because they became very self-satisfied. They were on the top - what more do
you need? Everybody was going to touch their feet; even the king had to
touch their feet. They were the purest people, so there was no urge to find
more; it was enough. It was very satisfying and gratifying to their egos.

Why did it happen to the chhatriyas, the second class? My
understanding is, because they were second class, there was an immense urge
for them to surpass the brahmins, and the only way they could find to
surpass the brahmins was to become enlightened. Then only could they surpass
the brahmins; otherwise they could not.

The brahmins are the most learned scholars. The chhatriyas had to
attain something which is higher than learning and scholarship. They had to
attain something which is not given by birth, so brahmins cannot claim it.
Just by birth nobody can claim enlightenment.

And it only happened in the second class because it is part of human
psychology that the closer you are to the highest class the more
competitiveness is within you. The more distant you are the less hope you
have that you can manage to compete with the brahmin. The businessman cannot
think he can manage to compete. The sudra of course cannot even imagine or
dream that he can manage anything. He is not allowed even to read; he is not
allowed to be educated. He is kept completely enslaved in his
unconsciousness, so there is no question of a sudra becoming enlightened.

The businessman has another competition, and that is of money. That is
a horizontal competition amongst businessmen. He is trying to compete to
have more money, and he knows he cannot compete with the warriors: a
businessman is not a soldier. And he cannot compete with the priest because
a businessman is not a scholar.

And the brahmins kept a complete hold on all the great ancient
scriptures and literature. They were only to give those books to their
children, to their descendants. And for thousands of years those books were
not printed, although printing started in China three thousand years ago,
and it could have come to India without any difficulty. People must have
been aware - they were constantly coming and going to China. If Buddhism
could spread all over China, it is impossible that they could not have
brought back the mechanism and understanding to print.

But brahmins were against printing. They were even against printing
their scriptures when the Britishers came - three hundred years ago - and
took over India from the Mohammedans. It was against their will that the
scriptures were printed, because they were afraid that once they are
printed, they become public property. Then anybody can read them, and
anybody can become a scholar. They wanted to keep them to themselves, so
there were only handwritten copies which were kept as a family tradition: so
each family has its own handwritten copy of certain scriptures. The brahmins
monopolized it.

The chhatriyas, the second class, tried - and that was a great
effort - to become enlightened to surpass the brahmins. But it is very
significant to understand that by becoming enlightened they became
divisionless, their being became one. And certainly they became higher than
any human being who was divided. There was no question about their
superiority.

So even brahmins would come to the enlightened people without
bothering that they came from the second class. So brahmins have touched the
feet of non-brahmins - which would have been impossible. But once the
non-brahmin has become enlightened then the brahmin knows that what he knows
is only parrot-like. What this man knows is not parrot-like. He is not a
scholar, he is really a knower. So hundreds of brahmins were disciples of
Buddha, hundreds of brahmins were disciples of Mahavira.

The world can come to a harmony if meditation is spread far and wide,
and people are brought to one consciousness within themselves. This will be
a totally different dimension to work with.

Up to now it was revolution. The point was society, its structure. It
has failed again and again in different ways. Now it should be the
individual - and not revolution, but meditation, transformation.

And it is not so difficult as people think. They may waste six years
in getting a master's degree in a university; and they will not think that
this is wasting too much time for just a degree which means nothing.

It is only a question of understanding the value of meditation. Then
it is easily possible for millions of people to become undivided within
themselves. And they will be the first group of humanity to become
harmonious. And their harmoniousness, their beauty, their compassion, their
love - all their qualities - are bound to resound around the world.

My effort is to make meditation almost a science so it is not
something to do with religion.

So anybody can practice it - whether he is a Hindu or a Christian or a
Jew or a Mohammedan, it doesn't matter. What his religion is, is irrelevant;
he can still meditate. He may not even believe in any religion, he may be an
atheist; still he can meditate.

Meditation has to become almost like a wildfire. Then there is some
hope. And people are ready: they have been thirsting for something that
changes the whole flavor of the society. It is ugly as it is, it is
disgusting. It is at the most, tolerable. Somehow people have been
tolerating it. But to tolerate is not a very joyful thing.

It should be ecstatic.
It should be enjoyable.
It should bring a dance to people's hearts.

And once these divisions within a person disappear, he can see so
clearly about everything. It is not a question of his being knowledgeable,
it is a question of his clarity. He can look at every dimension, every
direction with such clearness, with such deep sensitivity, perceptiveness,
that he may not be knowledgeable but his clarity will give you answers which
knowledge cannot give.

This is one of the most important things - the idea of utopia - which
has been following man like a shadow for thousands of years. But somehow it
got mixed up with the changing of society; the individual never got looked
at.

Nobody has paid much attention to the individual - and that is the
root cause of all the problems. But because the individual seems to be so
small and the society seems so big, people think that we can change society,
and then the individuals will change.

This is not going to be so - because "society" is only a word; there
are only individuals, there is no society. The society has no soul - you
cannot change anything in it.

You can change only the individual, howsoever small he appears.

And once you know the science of how to change the individual, it is
applicable to all the individuals everywhere.

And my feeling is that one day we are going to attain a society which
will be harmonious, which will be far better than all the ideas that
utopians have been producing for thousands of years.

The reality will be far more beautiful.

Osho,
Light on the Path, Chapter 11

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