Osho,
Is there any relationship between gnosticism and anarchy?

The word anarchism has tremendous implications.

It means that the people are so inwardly disciplined that they don’t need any government. They are so deeply in order within themselves that no order outside is needed.

Anarchism is basically the transformation of the individual in such a way that the government becomes superfluous. He lives in the light of his consciousness, fully aware of what he is doing, fully aware of its consequences, aware that it is not his right to interfere with any individual’s life, or to trespass – even in very subtle matters like conversion. Making an effort to convert somebody to your ideology is a trespass of that individual’s consciousness. Unless he invites you, it is aggression.

So individuals have to be so conscious that no aggressive activity on any level – bodily, mental, emotional – is possible for them. Then the government is absolutely useless, a burden. And certainly the idea is that, if people can live without a government, then only are they people. If they need a government that means they are still coming out of animality. They have not yet become human. They need masters, governors, they are not capable of being on their own. They are basically asking to be slaves. The existence of a government of any kind means that the people are asking for slavery; and to ask for slavery and then to ask for democracy, freedom, freedom of expression, and individuality, becomes contradictory.

So the governments go on promising all these things but in the very existence of the government they are denied. Hence all governments are frauds. They can only promise but they cannot perform. It is existentially impossible. If they can perform then they are not needed. If they cannot perform that is why they are needed. So every government is more or less symbolic of the fact that human beings have not grown up to their full height, to their full potential.

You are asking, “Are gnosticism and anarchy in some way related?” They are…because gnosticism means knowledge of your own. There are two kinds of knowledge. One is borrowed, either from books or from teachers, or from parents, or from the environment, the society in which you live. Unconsciously you go on absorbing so many things.

This is not knowledge in the sense of gnosticism. This is a false substitute for true knowledge, and it is a hindrance. True knowledge is the discovery of truth, of love, of compassion, of all that is great in human life – by yourself.