Osho – The idea of ”the work” has been imposed on you for centuries, that you are here for a certain ”work” to do. Naturally, people wanted you not to be just lazy and enjoy. They wanted ”work” because your work is going to create wealth, your work is going to create Alexanders, your work is going to create wars. Everything depends on you. So every culture, without exception, has been from the very beginning imposing the idea on the child that ”you have a certain work, a certain purpose to fulfill in this life.”

It appealed to people, although it was absolutely absurd. What work are trees doing, and what work are birds doing? And what work are the sun and the moon and the stars doing? Except man, nobody is so insane to think that you have a certain great work to complete. This is how they have created the achieving mind.

And for thousands of years you agreed with the idea because it was very ego-fulfilling. If you are not here to do any special work, then you are accidental. You may be here, you may not be here, it doesn’t matter. That hurts the ego. The ego wants you to be indispensable to existence, that without your work, existence will not be complete.

The same teaching was given to me by my parents, by my teachers, that ”you have to do some work in your life; otherwise your life is just the life of a vagabond, a bum.” I said, ”Perhaps that is the work I am here for, to be a vagabond! Anyway, a few people are needed to be vagabonds…”

The teacher who was telling me about the work said, ”It is very difficult to discuss with you.” And I said to him, ”This is a very psychological trap to enslave people into some work by giving nourishment to their ego, to say that by fulfilling this work you will have fulfilled your destiny.”

I said to the teacher, ”I don’t have any destiny, because I cannot conceive that existence has any destiny. What destiny could existence have? When the work of existence is complete, that will mean an absolute death, because nothing more is there to be done. Everything has been done, so drop the curtain.” I said, ”I cannot see any purpose in the flowers, any purpose in the trees, any purpose in the oceans, any purpose in the stars…”

Existence is not a work, it is a celebration – a sheer dance of energy which will go on and on forever in different forms, but cannot disappear. The energy is eternal. And I said to the teacher, ”Never again mention work to me. Celebration is okay, but work? It is destroying the whole beauty of life. And I am in tune with existence, not in tune with you. You can go on doing your work. What work are you doing? Just being a geography teacher. I cannot conceive why existence needs a geography teacher. The whole geography is of the existence; what is the need of a teacher?”

It is a very wrong conditioning that has created a workaholic society, which condemns people who are not participating. Yes, there are needs: you need food, you need clothes, you need some shelter. Naturally, you will have to do something to create these small things. But this is not the destiny of existence that you created a house, that you produced a few children, that you are fighting with your wife. I cannot see that against the vast panorama of existence, your small stupidities are fulfilling any destiny.

I want it to be emphatically understood by my people: we don’t have any work here. We have to join in the celebration of existence. Those small needs are only survival measures. Don’t brag about how big a bank balance you have; existence has no need of it. Don’t brag about how great a politician you are, a prime minister or a president; existence simply knows nothing about you. Existence is more in tune with these small birds who for no reason start singing, out of sheer energy.

I want to destroy the achieving mind.
That is your disease.
I want you to relax and enjoy.

Just do a few things which are needful, or manage somebody else to do them for you. It all depends on your intelligence. I have never done anything, but I have a strange insight into people who will do things for me. And they do! And my needs are fulfilled and their doing gives them immense joy. It is not easy to be chosen by me, I am a very fussy person. I simply make you happy by your doing something for me. And I don’t think… If I could manage it for more than half a century, a few years more I will manage. In fact, I don’t do anything as far as management is concerned; that too is done by others. I am simply enjoying.

I am not a messenger to tell you that you have to do this and you have to do that. I don’t have any discipline for you except freedom. I don’t have any commandments; they have all destroyed the dignity of man. I want to give you the dignity of the trees and the dignity of the birds and the dignity of the oceans and the dignity of the Himalayan peaks; the dignity of the stars. But they are all in celebration – dancing, rejoicing, overflowing with energy. Nobody is working except human beings.

I want to transform even your small work that you do. Make it more aesthetic, make it more creative. Make it a great joy, because it is your life. It is going to give you food, it is going to give you clothes; so whatever you do, it is not work, it is simply to remain as long as possible in this body and celebrate existence.

I have loved only one American in my life, and that man is Walt Whitman. And the reason I loved him is one of his small poems. The title of the poem explains everything. The title of the poem is ”I Celebrate Myself”. Only when you can say, ”I celebrate myself” – then your work is transformed into celebration and your life becomes a non-achieving, non-ambitious journey of beauty.

Source – Osho Book “Om Mani Padme Hum”

[A sannyasin who bakes said that because of his work he was unable to do the meditations, and should he do anything else. Osho said that when he had time he could meditate alone... ]

Osho – Baking is a good meditation. Put your love into it, your whole awareness into it. Just don’t do it for the money – do it for love also. Do it with care, and then there is no need for any other meditation. If you can change your work into meditation, that’s the best thing. Then meditation is never in conflict with your life.

Whatsoever you do can become meditative. Meditation is not something separate; it is a part of life. It is just like breathing: just as you breathe in and out, you meditate also. And it is simply a shift of emphasis; nothing much is to be done. Things that you have been doing carelessly, start doing carefully. Things that you have been doing for some results, for example, money…. That’s okay, but you can make it a plus phenomenon. Money is okay and if baking gives you money, good. One needs money, but it is not all. And just by the side if you can reap many more pleasures, why miss them? They are just free of cost.

You will be doing your work whether you love it or not, so just bringing love to it you will reap many more things which otherwise you will miss. So that is the plus thing. And it depends on you how much you can reap out of it. A very small work like baking can be of tremendous joy because food is very deeply connected with love. Love is food, and food is symbolic love. When a child starts his life, food and love start together. From the same breast of the mother flows love and food. In fact, it is very difficult to divide them, and the child knows love as food and food as love.

That’s why all over the world, whenever you love a person, you like to invite him for food, because it is a love gesture. The host becomes the mother, he becomes motherly. It is very easy to approach people’s hearts through food. Mm? business people understand it – so the business lunch. It is easy to convince the person, it is easy to sell something, very easy, when you invite a person for food. Things happen easily. He is no more defensive. He is no more argumentative… a sort of rapport, mm? because the very food reminds him of his mother; unconsciously he again becomes a small baby, more innocent, more vulnerable.

When a woman loves you she will prepare food for you with tremendous care, and that food will have a spiritual value to it. It may not be possible scientifically to make any distinction between food prepared by love and food prepared carelessly, but spiritually there is a distinction. So when you are eating food that has been prepared with love, you will feel a certain rhythm between you and the food, a rapport. It somehow synchronises with you; it somehow melts easily and becomes one with you, it cooperates with your system. Food prepared carelessly is cold, it will take a longer time to absorb it, and food prepared with anger, hatred, jealousy, is already poisoned.

So do one thing: prepare whatsoever you are preparing – cakes and that – with deep love. Money is secondary. It comes anyhow, that’s not the point at all. By the way there are beautiful flowers to be plucked; why waste the whole scene? People become too narrow in their vision and they simply look for results. There are many things just by the side, freely available, nobody asking any price for them, but people are so narrow they cannot see. They go on running like horses with blindfolds. If you can make that, it is beautiful. So make it your meditation. Good!

Source – Osho Book “Dance Your Way to God”

[A sannyasin mother and daughter are leaving for the west. The mother says that up to now she’s been working as a pharmacist... she has to give medicine which may harm people rather than help them. Some of it is healing but she is not entirely happy about the whole of it.]

Osho – I understand… but nobody is constantly happy in any kind of work. It is not concerned with the work as such; it is more concerned with our mind, with our attitudes, with our moods, with our lows and highs. So nobody is always happy, and by changing the work, nothing will be changed: you have to change yourself. That is a very easy thing to do, to change the work. People start doing that, then they start moving from one kind of work to another. But every kind of work will be frustrating unless your mind changes.

So a few things: whenever you feel that you are not in a good mood and you don’t feel good in the work, before starting work just exhale deeply for five minutes. Feel with the exhalation that you are throwing your dark mood out. And you will be surprised: within five minutes you will suddenly be back to normal, the low will have disappeared, the darkness will be there no more.

I can understand your problem, but life is complicated; one never knows what is going to help and what is going to harm. It is not only with allopathic medicine; it is so with everything. One never knows what is going to help and what is going to harm. All that we can hope is that we don’t do any intentional harm, that’s all; and that you are not doing.

If we start thinking in that way – that we should do only that which is absolutely certain to be beneficial – then nothing can be done at all, nothing can be done at all, and that will be more harmful. For example, if you give medicine to a hundred patients and to ten, it is harmful and because of them you stop giving the medicine to a hundred, then it will be harmful to one hundred percent of people. So we have to choose the lesser evil; the lesser evil is this.

And sometimes it happens… for example, in homeopathy, the medicine doesn’t harm but it doesn’t help either. It is just your gullibility that helps, not the medicine at all. A medicine which is not harmful at all cannot be helpful. Only a medicine that can help, can harm, because it has power. So one can go on distributing homeopathic medicine and can feel very good, but then too one is harming in a very indirect way.

For example a patient with cancer comes to you and you give him homeopathic medicine. It is not going to harm him but he could have taken some other medicine which could have helped him, and now he will depend on homeopathy; if he dies, you will be responsible. You have harmed him – not by homeopathic medicine but by delaying. So it is complicated. If you start getting into this, you will go mad. Simply relax. Just don’t do intentional harm, that’s all.

In the East we have thought very much about these things because we got into it too much and became almost crazy. Now there is a sect of Jainas in India which don’t eat in the night because some insects may fall in the food and may die and they may be responsible. They don’t drink water in the night. But they are torturing their body, and in that very torture many cells will die inside. So they are killing those cells.

Now Jaina monks go on fasting for long periods of time, thirty days, and they think it is very auspicious and very virtuous because in not taking any food for thirty days you have not harmed anybody. Mm? by taking food you harm something or other, even if it is vegetarian: so many plants have been cut for you, those plants have died; you are responsible for their life. They would have lived; now you have eaten them.

They fast. But then you are eating your own flesh; that’s why about two pounds is lost in weight each day. Where has it gone? Then rather than being a vegetarian you have become a non-vegetarian,: you have eaten your own meat! These are complicated problems and one can try to go on avoiding them but one cannot avoid them absolutely. All that we can do is not to do intentional harm… the least, that’s all, but don’t try to be perfect. So just be in your work, help. And you know about it, you have had twenty years’ experience; do whatsoever you can do.

Drop these problems and these worries, otherwise you will become more and more tense. Leave everything to god, mm? That’s the beauty of being a sannyasin: you can leave everything to god. Now it is his problem: whether to save this man or to kill him. Finally he is responsible, nobody else.

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

[Another sannyasin is returning to his farm in the west.]

Osho – Come back whenever you can find time. To be on a farm is beautiful. Make your work your meditation. Farming is the only work that is worth doing. Whenever you are with things which grow, you grow. That is the difficulty with machines: they don’t grow, so if you work with machines you are stuck. They don’t keep the growing energy flowing around you. So people who work with machines, by and by, slowly slowly become mechanical. Machines reduce man to a machine.

To be with trees and plants is beautiful because they go on growing, they become an impetus, an inspiration, and the whole energy is flowing upwards with the growth. You cannot remain low, you have to go high. If you are alert, then farming can turn you on as no drug can ever do. Mm? just the smell of the wet earth, the smell of the growing plants, the joy of the birds and the sun – all that becomes a milieu for spiritual growth. To be close to nature is to be close to god. So perfectly good – continue. Even if it is not very economical, even if it is not very paying, don’t be worried; that is irrelevant. And whenever it is possible, come, mm? Good!

Source – Osho Book “Don’t Bite My Finger, Look Where I’m Pointing”

[A sannyasin says she has been working as a prostitute in the West. Returning there now to earn money to return here, she wonders whether to return to prostitution or not. A voice inside her says no – on the other hand it is a quick way to make money.... ]

Osho – Then do something else, mm? do something else… because prostitution is a betrayal of the body. There is nothing morally wrong in it but spiritually much is wrong in it. You are allowing your body to be used like a thing – that’s a great insult to the body.

When the other so-called religious leaders say they are against prostitution their reasons are different. When I say that it is not good my reasons are totally different. My first reason is that one needs to be in deep reverence with one’s own body, one needs to be in love with the body, so how can one allow somebody to use it as a thing? It is a sacred thing! Yes, you can share when you love a person, but for money it is ugly. It is one of god’s gifts to you – you can give it as a gift, but don’t sell it. You have not purchased it, so you have no right to sell it!

Mm? – it is a gift: we should be grateful to god that he has given us such a beautiful body. It is a temple. So when I say not to go into prostitution, my reasons are just the opposite to those other religious people will give. They are against sex, they are against joy. They are against anything that makes people delighted – that is their reason. They are sex-repressive people: they want everybody to be very limited in their sexual relationships.

And a prostitute brings a freedom, that’s why they are against them. They want a very rigid monogamy in the world: man possessing woman, woman possessing man, one-to-one. They are all for man being used as property and woman being used as property. To me, that too is prostitution. What they call marriage, to me is nothing but a permanent prostitution.

Yes, you prostitute yourself to the same man again and again, that’s all. You don’t change the man, but it is prostitution because it is based on money – it is a permanent license. To me the so-called marriage is nothing but a sort of prostitution. I am all for love and I am completely against marriage. Because I am against marriage, I am against prostitution too. Try to understand me: to me prostitution is just a by-product of marriage. The day marriage disappears from the earth, prostitution will also disappear.

Where will you find a woman or a man to share his body with you because of money? It will be impossible. People will love and respect their body so much that will it be impossible. Yes, they can share their love energy with you but only when they love. . .there will be no other kind of relationship. Right now the marriage is a prostitution; there is no love. The wife goes on yielding to the husband because she has to, and the husband can force sex – legally! He can threaten that he will throw her out of the house, that he will not take any financial responsibility; then she will be on the streets.

To avoid the streets she chooses this permanent kind of prostitution, otherwise she will be with many people. And one man is so ugly – how much more ugly will it be with so many men? So it is better; it is the lesser evil. Never treat your body as a thing. It is divine, it is divine energy. Yes, if you love a man give your total heart, give your total body, being, all that you have. But when the love disappears, or if the love is not there, then there is no other way. The body can be shared only in love: don’t share even with your husband if the love is not there.

If today you find that you are not in a love mood with your husband, say simply that it will be prostitution! When love is there, love makes everything beautiful. When love is not there, everything becomes a nightmare, ugly. So it may take a little longer for you to work, but that’s good. Go, do something else – be respectful about your body. It is a god’s gift, and you are responsible! God will ask you finally what you did with your body. So go, mm? and go with tremendous trust – there is no problem in it. It will take a little longer to come back, but that’s not a problem. Avoid the old trap. It will be easier for you to fall into the trap because easy money always can have an appeal, but that is dangerous. And you are strong enough now – nothing to be worried about.

Source: from Osho Book “This is it”

Osho – My feeling is that you should complete it; and it can be used in many ways…. Sociology can become of great importance if you know how to use it creatively. It will give you a background to understand man, to understand the human mind, to understand how the human mind has been functioning in the past. It is your past, it is man’s biography, and if one does not want to repeat the past again, one has to understand it, otherwise one goes on repeating. It can be of great significance if you study it with the right perspective.

Don’t be bothered about it only as a subject and don’t be too much concerned about the degree – that is secondary. The primary thing should be an effort to understand man… and in understanding man everything comes in. Man is his science, man is his religion, man is his art – man is all! We live in a human world! Without the human mind you will not be in the same reality. Humanity has created a special world of its own… and we live in it. It is like an ocean and we are like the fish in it.

To understand that ocean is very very helpful in understanding yourself. And if you want to be free of this society, then to understand sociology is very very important. If you want to get out of the prison, you will have to understand the prison, its laws, the gaolers, the guards, how it functions and who manages it, how it is ruled, and what the loopholes are… from where you can escape, which the weakest links are in it.

No, I would like you to finish it. Don’t be negative about it. And side by side be creative, meditate, but finish it. It will give you a good foundation to start with and much can be done, so don’t think in those terms. And always remember that even if something looks futile it can be used. The question is not whether something is useless or not – the question is whether you are capable of using it or not. You may have one of the most precious things and you may not be able to use it.

For example, you can have the best brush and the best colours and the best canvas and your painting may be just third rate, while a great painter may not have the best brush in the world, may not have the best canvas, may not have the best colours, but still creates a great painting. It does not depend much on the materials you use; it depends more on you and how you use them.

We produce better paint now – better brushes, better canvases and everything – but still, a
michelangelo is a michelangelo; we cannot produce a Michelangelo. He has done something with
colour – those colours were not as good as our colours are, but he has created poetry out of those ordinary colours.

Our greatest painters – Picasso and Salvador Dali and others – are just childish before him. Howsoever skilful they are – our modern painters – they just look like school children. Michelangelo remains the master. He does something to the colour which is not in the colour; that’s the whole art. He brings into the colour some new quality which is not a chemical component. It was not there; it is he who brings it.

So always remember: it is finally you who will do whatsoever you are going to do, and all that
you learn will be used if you move in the right direction, with the right perspective, with the right understanding. Then everything that you have lived, known, experienced – good and bad – all can be used. And my feeling is that nothing is useless in that way.

So continue, mm? but continue with this idea: you are not only studying sociology, you are studying your own past. You are studying the past of man and how to get rid of it, how to get out of it, how to get out of sociology and become an individual, how to go beyond sociology, how to really create a psychology. People have sociologies – they don’t have psychologies.

Gurdjieff used to say that psychology does not exist yet because man does not exist yet – only
society exists. So at the most, in the name of psychology, we try to understand the science of
behaviour, not the science of the mind. Because the mind is not there, so how can you study that
which is not there? You can study Gurdjieff and then there will be psychology.

You study Richard Nixon – it will be just sociology, it cannot be psychology… or Jimmy Carter – it will be sociology, it cannot be psychology. Only by looking into a buddha can you see what psychology is. So study it with the view that you have to go beyond it, and all this knowledge will be helpful.

Source: from Osho Book “This is It”

[A sannyasin who is a photographer said she was feeling low energy and disinterested in photography.]

Osho – This comes again and again in everybody’s life: whatsoever you are doing you get tired of, you get fed up, you get bored with it. It is very easy to be interested in a new thing – it needs great guts to remain interested in an old thing. That’s what makes a person a genius. Otherwise everybody will become a genius. The only difference between a genius and an ordinary person is that the genius has the guts to stick at something even when he is feeling bored, fed up.

These are plateaus that come. Mm? you work with great joy because something is new – there is a great exploration, new territory and you are enchanted… it is like a romance, a honeymoon. But by and by you become acquainted with the territory; you have looked into all the corners of it and there seems to be nothing new. Now you know all about it so the sensation is no more there, the thrill is no more there.

Now, it is at this point that if you can stick at it and make efforts to find something new in it, you will break through one plane, and on another plane the exploration starts again. If you simply listen to this boredom and you drop out, then those seven years will have gone down the drain.

That’s how many people lose their life energy: they don’t stick at things. It really needs courage to remain with the old, because when the plateau comes and everything seems to be just a repetition, doing the same thing again and again and again, one feels to change – change the wife, change the husband, change the job, change the friend, change the town, go somewhere else, do something new. But with the new again after seven years the same will happen!

You can change ten times in your life and after each seven years the same will happen, so the whole life will be a wastage. If you go on digging on the same spot for seventy years you will reach to some depth – and it can be reached from anywhere.

Now photography is such a creative thing and it is going to be more and more creative in the future because more sophisticated instruments will be available – they are available. You can do a thousand and one things with photography now; just a few years ago they were just impossible to do. One has to be creative, inventive… one has to look for new ways, new visions, new dreams. And sometimes this is natural, this is part of nature: one feels stuck.

Those who drop out are the rolling stones: they don’t gather any moss. And it has nothing to do with the work itself – it is just the tendency of the mind. Photography or painting or music, or dancing – anything – will come to the same point, and once you have made a pattern it will be repeated. This is really a sheer wastage of energies.

Go on working in it. If you are feeling stuck, that simply means that you have to explore new ways, new directions, new dimensions in it; and they are always there! Life is so mysterious that it is never finished. A man can go on working with a small thing and can devote his whole life to it and still there will be much to be explored after he has died.

This is the whole art of being a genius. The genius is just a little more stubborn than ordinary people, that’s all. He does not listen to the mind – he goes on hammering: he digs a hole. A sufi master – Jalaluddin Rumi – once took his disciples to a field. There were eight holes in the field and no hole had any water; the whole field was wasted. The disciples asked, ’Master, why have you brought us here?’

He said, ’To teach you something. This farmer wants to dig a well. He digs eight feet, ten feet, then he gets fed up with it and he thinks that this place is not right; he is bored so he starts digging at some other place. He has done this work the whole year round – he has destroyed the whole field and not a single hole has become a well. Now if he had dug at the same spot that well would have been one hundred feet deep.’ Jalaluddin said to his disciples, ’Remember this – the same applies to the inner world too.’

Just gather yourself together and don’t try to find excuses – simply start working with your total energy. From tomorrow morning start without thinking about it! Just go ahead, and within a few days it will be broken… and when it is broken, you will feel so thrilled. Whenever any plateau is broken, life takes on such a beauty and the work becomes such a joy. Then it is a second honeymoon and on a deeper level. And I am saying this to you to be remembered as a golden rule – it is so in every way, in every direction of life.

If you love a man, one day you will feel finished; that is the right moment to go on loving, to gather your energies and to explore the man again. If you can break that plateau you will see a new man arising before you… fresher than ever, younger than ever, more beautiful than ever. In fact you had never known such beauty and such depth. You have broken one more screen – the man is more available to you… again one day you will feel stuck! And remember: those who lose heart and escape, are great losers. Be a little more stubborn, stick to it. For three months do all that you can do with effort and then you tell me, mm?

Source: from Osho Book “This Is It”

[A sannyasin expresses concern about being a sannyasin in the West. She works in a personnel at a university. Osho says that is good work, and love is needed more than expertise.... ]

Osho – The therapist, the counsellor, has to love the patients so deeply, so totally, that in his love something starts in the patient. Under that impact of love he also can see the problems in their true perspective.

Problems are not really problems: the only problem is that people have become blind. They live with the problems for years and they can’t see it. Expertise can help you to dissect the problem, to analyse the problem, to go to its roots, to its causes, implications, and you can make the person intellectually understand, but that is not going to help really. It may make the person a little more adjusted but nothing much else. The problem will start asserting itself from somewhere else. It will find some new way to surface, in a new name it will continue, because the man has not really attained to insight.

If you attain to insight then solving one problem is solving all problems, because then you always have that insight with you: you can focus that insight on any problem and it starts disappearing. By becoming a sannyasin you naturally become more loving. My sannyas is sannyas into love, initiation into love… and with love you can see the problem of the other person.

So don’t sit there like an inhuman expert: come closer, more personally to the person, because his problems are your problems – they are everybody’s problems, they are human problems. There is not a single problem which cannot be your problem, and you cannot have any problem which cannot be anybody else’s problem… we share.

So don’t let the patient feel that it is his problem and he has come to a computer, an expert. Let him feel he has come to a human being – as frail, as limited, as prone to mistakes as he himself. Then an understanding arises, the person starts opening, and in the light of your love and care, he can start seeing something which he was not able to see before.

Help people to attain a loving insight into their lives, help people to love themselves, and problems will start disappearing: They have been taught to hate themselves, they have been taught condemnation and nothing else, hence so many problems. Help them to accept themselves, help them not to be perfectionists. That’s how millions of problems arise….

The perfectionistic mind is a neurotic mind. The perfectionist hankers for the impossible, so he always falls short. He cannot reach the goal, he is frustrated; then he starts thinking that something is wrong. He asks the impossible – it cannot happen by its very nature. Then he feels he has some defects. He loses self-confidence, and then small problems look like big problems; he cannot tackle them, he becomes nervous. He starts avoiding the problems, he goes on putting them aside. He hopes time will do something, and it never does anything.

The problems put aside become bigger and bigger; as time passes they become more bigger and more rooted. Perhaps if they were tackled in the very beginning they would not have been such a great nuisance. Later on they become very very difficult because they go deep into the blood; they start poisoning the whole system.

So bring people to love and accept themselves and tell them whatsoever they are is perfect… it is absolutely blissful the way they are! Once this feeling arises in a person – that he is absolutely okay – ninety-nine percent of problems have disappeared, and only one problem remains, and that problem nobody can dissolve. That problem is something which is existential – that is the problem of ’Who am I?’ For that problem the person has to go into the deepest core of his being. Help people to meditate, talk about meditation, help them to become more aware of dynamic methods of meditation.

America has become alert about the passive methods of meditation. They cannot help much because america basically is an active country. Passive methods cannot help america – they may give a little solace, consolation, but finally they will prove to be like tranquillisers, nothing more. Only very very active and creative methods can be helpful. And tensions have not to be dissolved; tensions have to be transformed.

If a person simply dissolves tensions he will become uncreative. That’s what happens through ’TM’ and other methods. They talk about it being very creative – it is just nonsense: it cannot be creative! Take away tension, then who bothers about creativity? The person becomes relaxed, but with relaxation he becomes detached too; with relaxation he starts looking at life as useless, meaningless. Tensions have to be transformed, tensions have to be used in a creative way so that they don’t destroy you – rather they create something.

India has suffered very much from these methods, in-active methods of meditation. The whole poverty of this country is because of these methods. For thousands of years we have been just drowning in ourselves, not thinking of anything else – not thinking of the society, not thinking of better roads, not thinking of better housing, not thinking of better food, not thinking of better hygiene – nothing! If a person can just close his eyes and be silent, we think enough is achieved.

Yes, this person will not go mad, that is certain, but just not going mad is not enough. It is not a qualification that you are not mad, that you sleep well, that you are not very tense. Good, but nothing to brag about. Something creative should be born out of your silence. So my emphasis is basically on active methods. Silence should come but through activity, creativity – through painting, dance, music… it should remain continuously joined with action so it does not annihilate action; on the contrary it enhances it.

So help people – your work is beautiful! Wherever people come in contact with people it is a beautiful work. When people work only with tools, mechanical tools, it is not very happy work because if you work too long with machines you become… you tend to become a machine. If you work with people you remain alive.

Source: from Osho Book”This Is It”

[A sannyasin asks about becoming a Primal therapist.]

Osho – It is always good to find something that you like – because it is your life; it should not be wasted in any way. And if you have the feeling that you don’t like any job and that you have to do it, it becomes destructive. Then you are pushing somehow, dragging yourself… and any kind of dragging is destructive. When there is no joy, there cannot be any creation.

When you are simply doing it for the sake of doing and your heart is not in it, then so much time is wasted. One should not do a job only for a living. A living is a consideration, but is only secondary; life is the most primary consideration. And a job should be such that it gives you a living and life too.

One should not sell one’s life for a living. Otherwise one day or other One is bound to be in deep misery about it, and then nothing can be done when the time is lost. Change your work! There was no need to remain in it so long if you were not liking it. It is not too late yet change it.

It always happens: the mind clings to the known, to the familiar, to the secure. Now that your job is secured, changing a job means moving into new difficulties, new situations. One never knows whether one will be able to cope with them or not. Maybe the new job will not pay so much – but these things should never be considered. A little less pay will do, a little more inconvenience will do, but if you are happy doing it then everything should be sacrificed for happiness.

And the work that you do is a major part of your life. It is not only that you do it; by and by it shapes you into a certain pattern. You do it and at the same time it is creating you. So people who are in certain jobs which they don’t like – in fact which they hate – by and by become full of hatred towards life itself. So get out of it. There is no need to be in it any more! And Primal therapy is good….

Osho : When I graduated from the university I immediately went to the education minister of Madhya Pradesh. He was also the chancellor of the University of Sagar, where I had postgraduate degrees in psychology, in religion, in philosophy. Now that same person is the vice-president of India.

I went directly to him. I told his secretary, “I am going to meet the chancellor of my university, not the education minister, so don’t come in between me and the chancellor. He knows me, he has been coming to the university every year for the convocation address. He has even addressed under my presidency the philosophical department of the University of Sagar. He knows me.”

He informed the education minister, who called me in. He said, “What is the matter?”
I said, “I have passed from your university, and I have topped the whole university. This is the gold medal. I need a teaching job in any university.”

He said, “You qualify absolutely. All the way you have been a first-class first, and finally you have topped the university, so you will get a place. And I know you personally, and I have always loved and respected you. Because you have been presiding over the meetings in the university where I was a guest speaker, I have heard you.”

So he looked at my papers, the application, and then he said, “One thing is missing, your character certificate.”

I said, “I know it. But do you want me to have a character certificate from someone to whom I cannot give a character certificate?”

He scratched his head. He said, “Perhaps you are right. What about your vice-chancellor? What about your head of the department of philosophy?”

I said, “You know perfectly well my vice-chancellor is a drunkard. Do you want me to get a certificate from a drunkard about my character? I cannot certify my vice-chancellor for his character.

“My head of the department of philosophy has never lived with his wife, has been living with another woman. He keeps his wife and children in Delhi just to avoid them, so that he can have all the women he wants. Do you want me to get a character certificate from him? I know him better; perhaps you don’t know him that well.”

He said, “It is a difficult problem.”

I asked him point-blank, “Do you want to give me a character certificate? Do you think you are qualified? No politician in this country is qualified to give me a character certificate. Either you accept my application without the character certificate, or you refuse it. And I am here and you are asking for a character certificate. Look into my eyes! Look into my face! And do you have any understanding? Then don’t ask foolish questions.”

He immediately gave me an appointment in a college. I took the appointment order from his hand. He said, “This is not the right way, it has to go through the post.”

I said, “When I am going to the college myself, why unnecessarily waste postage stamps?”

He said, “You are a strange fellow.”

I said, “That’s correct. But to be a strange fellow does not mean a man without character.”

So I took the appointment order, and the next day I appeared in the college where he had appointed me.