The Empty Boat - Osho.pdf - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 3. THE OWL AND THE PHOENIX
And if the world is to become a sane, normal world, then two types of persons have to be cured:
madmen and politicians. Both are ill. One has gone the long route round, one has taken the shortcut.
And remember well that the madman is less harmful than the politician, because he simply declares
his superiority, he doesn’t bother to prove it; the politician bothers to prove it – and the proof is very
costly.
What was Hitler trying to prove? That he was the most superior, the suprememost Aryan. It would
have been better for the world if he had gone mad, used the shortcut; then there would have been
no second world war.
Politicians are more dangerous because they are madmen with proofs. They are madmen working,
reaching, achieving a goal, just to hide the inferiority in them. Whenever somebody feels inferior, he
has to prove or simply hypnotize himself into believing that he is not inferior. You cannot be religious
if you are mad. Not mad in the way a Saint Francis is mad – that madness comes through ecstasy,
this madness comes through inferiority. The madness of a Saint Francis or a Chuang Tzu comes
out of superiority, comes out of the heart, comes out of the original source. This other madness
comes out of the ego. The soul is always superior and the ego is always inferior.
So an egotist has to become a politician somehow or other – whichever profession he chooses,
through it he will be a politician.
What do I mean when I say politics? I mean the conflict between egos, the struggle to survive. When
your ego and my ego are in conflict then we are politicians. When I am not in conflict with anybody’s
ego, I am a religious man. When I don’t try to be superior, I am superior. But this superiority is not
in opposition to inferiority, it is absence of the feeling of inferiority.
This distinction has to be remembered. There are two types of superiority. In one you have just
hidden the inferiority, covered it, you are using a mask – behind the mask the inferiority is there.
Your superiority is just superficial, deep down you remain inferior, and because you go on feeling it
you have to carry this mask of superiority, of beauty. Because you are aware that you are ugly you
have to contrive to be beautiful, you have to exhibit, you have to show a false face. This is one type
of superiority; it is not real.
There is another type of superiority, and that superiority is the absence of inferiority, not the opposite
to it. You simply don’t compare. When you don’t compare, how can you be inferior? Look: if you are
the only one on earth and there is nobody else, will you be inferior? With whom will you compare
yourself? Relative to what? If you are alone what will you be, inferior or superior? You will be neither.
You cannot be inferior because no one is above you; you cannot declare yourself superior because
there is no one beneath you. You will be neither superior nor inferior – and I say to you that this is
the superiority of the soul. It never compares. Compare, and the inferiority arises. Don’t compare,
and you simply are – unique.
A religious man is superior in the sense that the inferiority has disappeared. A politician is superior
in the sense that he has overcome his inferiority. It is hidden there, it is still inside. He is just using
the garb, the face, the mask of a superior man.
When you compare, you miss; then you will always be looking at others. And no two persons are the
same, they cannot be. Every individual is unique and every individual is superior, but this superiority
The Empty Boat 50 Osho