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Discourse 10
We Disown Our Past
We Disown Our Past
26 December 1987 am in Gautam the Buddha Auditorium
Question 1
BELOVED MASTER,
ARE IDIOTS BORN OR TRAINED?
Nirupa, it is a complicated question. Almost ninety percent of idiots
are trained. Ten percent are born. And the ten percent are born
because of those ninety percent who have been trained.
Man from his very beginning has lived a very weird life – weird in the
sense that it needs idiots. If you don’t have idiots you will not have
wise men; if you don’t have the idiots, you will not have the
so-called giants of intellect. It is almost a necessity that the category
of idiots should remain.
Nobody has looked into the deeper layers of how the society has
functioned up to now. But the way it has functioned can only be
described as utterly criminal. The society needs categories,
hierarchies.
It has been up to now a competitive society, and the very idea of
competition is dangerous to human beings. You call one man an
idiot only in comparison – in comparison to someone who seems to
be intelligent.
A small boy told me – I was a guest in his house; I was sitting in the
garden in the evening and he was the only child of the family. He
was not more than six years old. I asked him, ”What is your
name?”
He said, ”As far as my name is concerned, up to now I used to think
that my name was ‘Don’t!’ Now I have started going to school, and
there I discovered that that is not my name.” ....
Question 1
BELOVED MASTER,
ARE IDIOTS BORN OR TRAINED?
Nirupa, it is a complicated question. Almost ninety percent of idiots
are trained. Ten percent are born. And the ten percent are born
because of those ninety percent who have been trained.
Man from his very beginning has lived a very weird life – weird in the
sense that it needs idiots. If you don’t have idiots you will not have
wise men; if you don’t have the idiots, you will not have the
so-called giants of intellect. It is almost a necessity that the category
of idiots should remain.
Nobody has looked into the deeper layers of how the society has
functioned up to now. But the way it has functioned can only be
described as utterly criminal. The society needs categories,
hierarchies.
It has been up to now a competitive society, and the very idea of
competition is dangerous to human beings. You call one man an
idiot only in comparison – in comparison to someone who seems to
be intelligent.
A small boy told me – I was a guest in his house; I was sitting in the
garden in the evening and he was the only child of the family. He
was not more than six years old. I asked him, ”What is your
name?”
He said, ”As far as my name is concerned, up to now I used to think
that my name was ‘Don’t!’ Now I have started going to school, and
there I discovered that that is not my name.” ....
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