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The Mind Is the Real Extremist
Our human minds are by definition extremist organizations.
A quick check of our own mind will show how the thoughts and emotions swing from one extreme to the other — from “for” to “against” and from “love” to “hate” — on a dime.
George W. Bush’s dictum for his crusade against “terror,” that, “You’re either with us or against us” was the perfect example of this extremist phenomenon at work.
As Osho explains:
“Mind exists like the pendulum of a clock: it goes from one extreme to the other extreme.
“And you cannot get out of the vicious circle by moving to the other extreme, because the other extreme is part of the vicious circle. When the pendulum is going to the right, in fact it is gathering momentum to go to the left. When the pendulum is going to the left, it is gathering momentum to go to the right. This is the vicious circle.” 1
If we look at the male-dominated, white Christian history, the only surprising thing about Donald Trumps’ extremism is that everyone finds it surprising.
There were the repeated crusades against the Muslims hundreds of years ago, before the Europeans set out to subjugate the world and plunder their resources, using whatever violence was required, including “discovering”…