Osho - You Are in Prison and You Think You Are Free

Osho,
George Gurdjieff has said: You are in prison. If you wish to get out ofprison, the first thing you must do is realize that you are in prison. If youthink you are free, you cant escape.
What are the prisons that I call home?

George Gurdjieff is one of the most significant masters of thisage. He is unique in many ways, nobody has said things in the contemporaryworld the way Gurdjieff has said them. He is almost like another Bodhidharma orChuang Tzu, apparently absurd but in reality giving great pointers towards theliberation of human consciousness.

You are asking about one of his significant statements. He oftenused to say, You are in prison. Sometimes he went even more deeply into thereality of it, and instead of saying, You are in prison, he would say, You arethe prison. That is more true.

If you wish to get out of prison or better to say, if you dontwant to be a prison the first thing you must do is realize that you are inprison, or that you are the prison. For any seeker of truth, this is somethingto always remember as one of the first principles.

The tendency of the human mind is to deny those things which areugly, to hide those things which he does not want others to know and to hidethem in such a way, in such depths of the unconscious that even he himselfbecomes unaware of them. This way he maintains his superficial personality.

Gurdjieff had a story about it

There was a magician who used to live in faraway deep forests. Hehad many sheep because they were his only food. He kept all the sheep in thedeep forests just to kill them day by day, one by one. Naturally, the sheepwere very afraid of the man, and they used to run off into the forest, afraidthat any day can be their day. Their friends were gone there is nocertainty tomorrow they may be gone. Out of fear they used to go faraway, deep into the forest. And to find them every day was a tedious job.

Finally, the magician did a trick. He hypnotized all the sheepand told them, You are an exception, everybody else may be killed but you cannever be killed. You are no ordinary sheep, you have a divine privilege. Tosome he said, You are not sheep at all: you are lions, you are tigers, you arewolves; only sheep are killed. You need not hide yourself in the forest thatis very embarrassing, a lion hiding himself in the forest out of fear that hewill be killed only sheep are killed. And in this way he managed tohypnotize all the sheep, in different ways.

He even said to a few sheep, You are men, human beings, andhuman beings dont kill each other. You are just like me. Never be afraid andnever escape out of fear. Since that day, no sheep escaped or hid in theforest, although they all saw every day that one sheep was being killed,slaughtered. But naturally everybody thought, That must be a sheep: I am atiger, a lion, a human being. I am special and exceptional, I have a divineprivilege. So many different stories he put into their minds.

Gurdjieff says that unless you realize the first thing: that youare in prison, that you are the prison, then there is no hope for freedom. Ifyou believe that you are already free, you are a hypnotized sheep who believeshe is a lion exceptional, with no need to be afraid who even believes he isa human being. He goes on seeing other sheep being killed, and still remains ina hypnotized state, never aware of his actual situation. To be free, if youalready know that you are free, there is no problem.

All the religions together have, perhaps unintentionally, createda tremendous hypnotic state. People believe they have immortal souls. I am notsaying that they dont have, I am simply saying that they dont know what theyare believing. And because they believe they have an immortal soul, they neverdiscover that they already have it. They have been told, You are the verykingdom of God, and it is so comfortable and so consoling to believe. But thenthere is no way to seek and search and find whether your hypothetical beliefhas any truth to it, or is just a hypnotic trick used by the society to keepyou unafraid of death, to keep you unafraid of disease, old age, to keep youunafraid of your loneliness.

Your God may just be a psychological hypnosis. It is not your discovery that is true, that much is absolutely true. It has been implanted in yourmind, and because you go on believing in it, your belief prevents any adventurein seeking the truth.

Ordinarily, you have been told continually that unless youbelieve, you will not find. But the truth is just the opposite. Belief is abarrier, it is not a bridge. Those who believe never find because they nevereven begin the search, there is no need.

You are in prison and you think you are free. You are in chainsbut you think they are ornaments. You are a slave but you have been told thatyou are humble, that you are simple, that this is the way a religious personshould be. You are surrounded by many hypnotic strategies society has developeddown the ages. And those hypnotic strategies are the root cause of yourignorance, of your misery, of your unenlightened state.

So the first thing to realize is that you are in prison. Themoment you recognize that you are in prison, you can no longer tolerate theprison. Nobody can tolerate it, it goes against human dignity. You will startlooking for ways to get out of it. You will start looking for people who havealready got out of it. You may start seeking and searching for outside helpbeyond the walls, because beyond the walls there are people ready with everykind of help. But they are absolutely helpless if you believe that you areliving in absolute freedom.

If you believe this imprisonment is your home, then of course itis absolute nonsense even to think of getting rid of it. The wall that keepsyou a prisoner, you think is a protection. Then there is no question of makinga hole in the wall and getting out, or finding a ladder, or taking some helpfrom the outside. A rope can be thrown from the outside, a ladder can be arrangedfrom the outside, but this is possible only if the basic thing, that you are inprison, is recognized. George Gurdjieff consistently insisted, This is a basicrealization. Without it there is no progress towards enlightenment. If youthink you are free, you cant escape.

What are the prisons that I call home? All so-called homesare nothing but prisons because they dont give you freedom, they only give yousecurity, safety, and instead they take away your very being, your freedom,your joy, your dance. But certainly they give you security, safety andnaturally you have to pay for it.

The price you have to pay is immensely high in comparison to whatyou get. You have to sell your very soul. But then what is the point of safetyand security? You were searching for security and safety for your being, and inthe very search you have sold your being. Now you are secure and safe, but whatis the point? For whom is the safety and security? It does not serve you, itserves those who have managed to convince you, If you give your soul, yourbeing, we will take care then you need not be worried, then we areresponsible for your safety and security.