All rebels are not enlightened, but all enlightened men are rebels. One can be rebellious without being enlightened. Lenin is a rebel, Marx is a rebel, Tolstoy is a rebel, Kropotkin is a rebel, but none of them is enlightened. And their rebellion will remain concerned with very ordinary social, economic and political situations.
The enlightened man is also a rebel, but his rebellion is not concerned with ordinary things, such as whether harijans should enter into a temple or not. His rebellion is of a very high nature. His rebellion is that all that is written is false, because the truth cannot be put into words. His rebellion is: "Don't look backwards, don't look forwards — just close your eyes and look in, and this very moment your wings open and the whole sky becomes available to you."
When I say that the enlightened man is always a rebel, I don't mean socially, politically, economically; I mean only existentially. He is a transformed man. He knows his own being and he knows his being's splendor. He is no more on any power trip, because he could not have more power than is blossoming within his own self. He is not afraid of death because he knows that death is a fiction.
So there are rebels who are trying to change social forms, societies; communists, socialists, anarchists — these are ordinary rebellious people. And there are buddhas who have transmuted their own being, who have found their own life source. Finding it, they have transcended all that seems to be so important to other people; all this nonsense of being Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian becomes so childish.
A buddha can simply laugh at human stupidities. His laughter makes him far more rebellious than your so-called great rebels.
OSHO