Communism: The First Step

Osho on Communism


Communism simply means moving private property into the hands of the collective  —  because private ownership of property creates classes, the oppressed and the oppressors. Money brings more money, attracts more money; poverty attracts more poverty. And a man who sees all around him people having money, beautiful houses, cars, and he has not even food to eat… his dignity as a human being is destroyed. He starts feeling subhuman, inferior, unsuccessful, and to create this feeling in millions of people just for the sake of a few who will be rich is against the whole of humanity.

Communism brings dignity to everybody because all the properties, the land and everything, belong to the collective. Nobody can be richer than you and nobody can be poorer than you. Equality is equivalent to communism, and equal opportunity for everyone to blossom into whatsoever he has hidden in his potentiality.

Communism is only the first step of a great experiment. Once people are without inferiority complex, once religions are removed  —  that is part of communism, that there is no god and the so-called religions are just the opium of the people. Once religions are removed, soon a tremendous vacuum will be felt by everybody, because these religions have been stuffing you with systems of belief which are all fiction.

But they help you to feel that you are full…

Communism means removing all fictions from the human mind, giving it a good cleaning of all the past that has filled it with rubbish. Marx’s vision never reached beyond that, but my understanding and my vision is far more perfect. To me, communism is only the first stage  —  not the last.

And as communism succeeds, people will drop the inferiority complex  —  which is needed by the priests, which is needed by the people who are driving humanity into different kinds of slavery. And when there is no God, there is no guilt  —  without guilt no organized religion can live. It is guilt that takes people to the churches, because they become afraid: they have committed sins, now they will suffer hellfire for eternity. So something has to be done to remove the guilt. All religions provide fictions…

This God is an absolute fiction created by the priests. Communism dissolves these priests, dissolves organized religion, takes away all the opium that they have been giving to the people.

Marx was not aware that this was not going to be the complete phenomenon. I can see with more clarity than any Karl Marx or Lenin or Stalin…

Communism creates a vacuum  —  that is why I support it. My whole vision is that that vacuum can be only filled by meditation.

And I am against Gorbachev because he is filling it with Coca-Cola, bringing the priests back, opening the churches. I have some fundamental reason to oppose him because he is opening the doors to all the rubbish that took the communists seventy years to finish. Now is the time that meditation should be introduced in the Soviet Union. The door should be opened only to the people who are awakened, enlightened  —  the buddhas  —  because they can fill the vacuum, not with any fiction but with your own potential growing into the vacuum and blossoming into lotus flowers.

So communism is a first step. The second step is spiritualism, and the third step is anarchism. Anarchism is not possible unless people are really, authentically spiritual. Prince Kropotkin, Tolstoy, Bakunin  —  all were unaware of the fact that they were talking about the flowers but they had forgotten about the roots and the trunk. You cannot create flowers without roots, without a trunk. Communism is just the roots, and the trunk will be meditation. And the flowers will be a world without any domination, without any interference with individual growth  —  a world without states, a world without boundaries. Just a world consisting of individuals  — not organizations, not nations, not races. These are the three steps, and I can see them clearly because I have no identification with any  — neither communism nor spiritualism nor anarchism. I am just a witness.


So don’t think that I am a communist. I don’t identify with anything. Don’t think that I am an anarchist. I don’t identify with anything. Don’t think that I am a spiritualist. I don’t identify with anything. I am just a pure awakened being, just a mirror who reflects  —  who has no involvement, no commitment to anything. I don’t belong to any organization, I don’t belong to any party, I don’t belong to any ‘ism’. You have to understand clearly:



My only interest is to bring out your buddha as a fully-opened lotus in the early morning sun, with small dewdrops shining so beautifully that even real pearls cannot compete with them. I am not a politician, but that does not mean that I am not interested in human welfare. And I will say things which may hurt your prejudices. I want to destroy your prejudices completely. I want to create a vacuum. That vacuum is absolutely needed; otherwise you don’t have space to grow your potential. You are filled with religious rubbish, you are filled with political rubbish, you are filled with economic rubbish, all kinds of ideas that you have borrowed. You are not having your own insights  — that rubbish prevents it, it keeps you blind, it gives you a sense of fulfillment which is false.

So remember it. It will be very difficult for outsiders to understand me, almost impossible. Misunderstanding is the only possibility for me as far as the outside world is concerned. But at least you should not misunderstand me. I have no interest in Stalin, and I have no interest in Gorbachev. My interest is in you! And when I see that you are filled with a certain prejudice I have to bring that prejudice to the surface so you can see it. All kinds of moral, puritan programming  —  I have to fight so many enemies that you are nursing within you! But my whole concern is to make you utterly empty. So I am not preaching anything; I am not supporting anything.

I don’t have any doctrine, no philosophy, no cult, no creed. My whole effort is to clean your inside completely from all that the society, the education, the religion, the family, have forced into you. Unless you get rid of it you cannot grow in meditation. You cannot become a buddha.

Communism is a better opportunity than any other kind of social structure because it is negative, because it is without God, without heaven, without hell, without the idea of reincarnation. And it creates a certain equality of opportunity for man and woman…Communism, to me, is a very significant step towards the ultimate buddhahood.



Discourse Series: Communism and Zen Fire, Zen Wind

Chapter #7

Chapter title: My interest is in you

5 February 1989 pm in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium


Osho has spoken on ‘individuality, diversity, personality, freedom, liberty, democracy, socialism, capitalism, communismin many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

  1. Beyond Psychology
  2. The Book of Wisdom
  3. From Bondage to Freedom
  4. From Darkness to Light
  5. From the False to the Truth
  6. Guida Spirituale
  7. Zen: Zest, Zip, Zap and Zing
  8. The Secret
  9. Come, Come, Yet Again Come
  10. The Great Pilgrimage: From Here to Here
  11. I Am That
  12. Philosophia Ultima
  13. Guida Spirituale

Leave a comment