Osho,
What is the difference between the rebel and the enlightened one?
Is it possible to be a real rebel without being enlightened?

It is possible to be a rebel without being enlightened. It is also possible to be enlightened without being a rebel. But both will be half-hearted; something will be missing, something which is very essential. It will be almost like a corpse – the soul is missing.

A rebel who is not enlightened is living in blindness, unconsciousness, darkness. He does not know what is right and what is not right – he has no clarity of vision. He cannot open up other people’s hearts for the birth of a new humanity – he himself is not born yet. His rebelliousness is nothing but a kind of thinking in his mind.

He is a revolutionary thinker, he is a philosopher, but he does not know exactly what will end this night, and how we are going to bring the dawn; how the sun will rise, how the birds will sing again and the flowers will open. But he can dream, he can think. In the past there have been many philosophers who have been accepted as rebels, great rebels, but nothing has come out of them except some beautiful fragments of thoughts – unconnected, unscientific, non-pragmatic, impossible to be transformed into reality.

You must have heard the definition of a philosopher: a blind man, on a dark night, in an unlit house, searching for a black cat which is not there. But the trouble does not end here – there are many who have found it! They gave descriptions of the black cat, and because nobody else has seen it, you cannot refute them either. They don’t have any evidence – but neither have you! So whatever these blind philosophers go on saying is accepted without being refuted.

It is not refuted on other accounts either – because the establishment is not worried about these rebels and their rebellious thinking. They know perfectly well that their thoughts are nothing but soap bubbles; in their deep sleep, they have been chattering.

Mick and Joe are returning home from a tour of some vineyards in Italy, where they have been generously entertained by their hosts. “Mick, are we near the city yet?” asks Joe.

“Yes,” answers Mick, “we must be. We are knocking down more people.”

“Drive slower, then,” says Joe.

“What do you mean, drive slower?” says Mick. “You are driving.”