Question – Beloved Osho, How can we Avoid being Authoritative?

Osho – It is very simple. The people who are authoritarian are the people who are suffering from an inferiority complex. To hide their inferiority they impose their superiority. They want to prove that they are somebody, that their word is truth, that their word is law. But deep down they are very inferior beings.

This is one of the reasons that all of the politicians suffer from an inferiority complex. Anybody who does not suffer from an inferiority complex will not go into politics at all. There are so many beautiful things in the world to do — to paint, to sing, to dance, to create literature, to make beautiful statues, to create a Khajuraho. There is so much creativity available, but that is available only to a person who does not suffer from inferiority.

So we have to make clear to all our sannyasins that nobody in the world is inferior and nobody in the world is superior. The whole idea is artificial and created by people who have a vested interest in it. They have created the same idea in many ways… man is superior, woman is inferior — on what criterion?

The woman lives longer than man, five years longer. The woman falls sick less than man. For one hundred boys born, only ninety girls are born, because by the time the boys will be marriageable, ten will have gone down the drain. At the time of marriage they will be equal, ninety of both. The girl has more stamina, more resistance to disease. She talks about committing suicide but she never does. Men commit suicide almost twice as much as women.

In what way is man superior? But the idea had to be created because it helped man to keep woman a slave. She is inferior, so inferior that in countries like China, woman has no soul. A husband can kill his wife — it is not a crime. It is just like you destroy your chair. It is your chair, you have paid for it: what crime is there? And men have convinced women that they don’t have any soul because they never allowed them to be educated, they never allowed them to move in society. Naturally, they could not argue.

Why is it so difficult to argue with a woman? Nobody thinks about it. If you argue with a woman she will start screaming, crying, throwing things; but she will not argue. And you, seeing this whole scene, will feel it is better to accept whatever she is saying; otherwise she will put the whole house on fire. And neighbors are watching, people in the street are gathering around your house. So it is better — whether you are right or wrong does not matter — to say she is right.

But who has put her in this condition? It is because you never gave her education, you never taught her logic. You never allowed her to be as intelligent as you are because you were always afraid. And you can see the fear in the universities. Women are always ahead of men, they top the list more than men. They always achieve more first class honors than the man. We have created this idea of superiority and inferiority for some vested interests.

The sudras are inferior. Nobody has proved why. There seems to be no reason that the brahmin should be superior and the sudra should be inferior, but you have managed for thousands of years to keep them uneducated. You have kept them doing things which need no intelligence, and you have not allowed them to do anything else.

A man who has been making your shoes — his family has been making shoes for thousands of years, generation after generation. Now there is no need of intelligence. There is no challenge — he has only to make shoes. These are all strategies of exploitation.

We have to explain to our sannyasins that nobody is superior, nobody is inferior, and nobody is equal either. Everybody is unique. That point has to be remembered, because if you say nobody is superior and nobody is inferior, people are certain to conclude that everybody is equal — which is not true.

Equality is psychologically wrong. Everybody cannot be an Albert Einstein and everybody cannot be a Rabindranath Tagore. But that does not mean that Rabindranath Tagore is superior because you cannot be him. Rabindranath cannot be you either.

My whole point is that everybody is a unique manifestation. So we destroy the whole idea of superiority and inferiority, equality and inequality, and we replace it with a new concept of uniqueness. And every individual is unique.

Just look lovingly and you will see that every individual has something which nobody else has. Once the idea of uniqueness spreads in the commune, there will be nobody who will try to enforce authority.

Source – Osho Book “Light on the Path”

Question – BELOVED OSHO, I HAVE HEARD IT SAID THAT SOME SANNYASIN THERAPISTS NOW IMAGINE THAT THEY ARE ON THE SAME PLANE AS YOU ARE, DOING THE SAME KIND OF WORK — IF PERHAPS ON A SOMEWHAT SMALLER SCALE. THEY NO LONGER EVEN MENTION YOUR NAME, AND APPEAR TO HAVE DISCARDED THE MALA AND RED CLOTHES ENTIRELY.
HAVE THEY ACHIEVED — OR WHAT IS REALLY GOING ON WITH YOUR THERAPISTS?

Osho – What is going on is hilarious.
These people think they have become individuals, they have attained freedom. But they don’t even see a simple thing… I said to them, “You can drop your malas, and you can drop your clothes, and you can be free” — and they immediately followed! They proved that they are followers — chronic followers! If I had not said that, they would have been wearing the mala and red clothes still. Their freedom is not their attainment, but just my joke!

Naturally when I said, “I am your friend,” they started thinking that they are my friends. These are two totally different things! When I say I am your friend, that does not mean that you are my friend. For the second to be real, you will have to travel long.

I say out of my compassion that I am your friend, and you say out of your ego that you are my friend. Naturally, when you are my friend, then you are doing the same work as I am doing. It is just out of humbleness that they are saying, “Perhaps you are doing it on a bigger scale and we are doing it on a smaller scale.” But deep down they may be thinking that they are doing it on a bigger scale — or a more personal and intimate scale.

They have been with me for years, but they have been less with me than with their patients. The people who have missed me most are the therapists.

Once I declared some people enlightened — and they became enlightened! And when I said it was just a joke, they became unenlightened again. I had told them, “You are now free.” So they are free! Tomorrow I can call them back and put them in red clothes and in the mala: “This much freedom is enough; more than that is dangerous. Just come back and be your old self!”

If you are really understanding me, you will see the point: I give you chances to show your ego to yourself, to show your reality to yourself. And that’s what is happening, and it is really hilarious. I saw one therapist who has even shaved his beard and mustache. Perhaps he thinks by shaving the beard and mustache, he has shaved himself spiritually too. And all that he looks like is like a well-shaved ape — just stupid.

It is unfortunate but it is true that the therapists have missed me most, for the simple reason that in the commune they were working on people’s psychology and they started getting a subtle ego that they are helping my work. They forgot completely that they have not even started working on themselves.

They had a certain knowledge of therapy; they were useful for people and they helped to bring people close to me. Their patients became more intimate to me, more open to me, became more understanding of my work than the therapists. Because they were therapists and they were answering questions from people, running groups, they would not ask questions to me about themselves.

They had come for themselves, but they got lost because they had brought a load of knowledge. It was useful for others, and I told them that they should help people. But all their knowledge was not able to indicate a simple small thing to them, that “we have come here to realize ourselves. We can do the therapy, but that is not what we have come here for.”

They went on doing therapy, and when the commune dispersed, they went back to their countries thinking that now they are doing exactly the work I am doing — and they don’t know even the ABC of my work. They were the most blind and the most deaf, because they were the most knowledgeable people.

They have missed the first opportunity. Now in the second opportunity, all those therapists who are just behaving like buffoons will be called back and put to some other work — not therapy. They have to be completely removed from their knowledge; otherwise it is very simple for them to think like this.

They are afraid to mention my name because that may create the feeling in people that they are still not free of me. Their fear shows that they are not free of me. If they were really free of me, there would have been gratitude. They would have taken my name to different parts of the world with great respect and love if they were really free.

But they know they are not free; hence the fear. If somebody discovers that they have been my sannyasins, then what will happen to the sudden mastery that they have attained? A few of them have become “enlightened,” a few of them have become “liberated” — and they are simply proving one thing, that they are utter fools. And the sooner they realize it, the better!

Source – from Osho Book “Beyond Psychology”

Osho – One thing is: you should not be too much burdened with your own problems. That is happening – you are not burdened too much with your own problems. They are there, they have not disappeared, but you have become alert about them and a distance has arisen; you can look at them. The second thing: to help people you need to be in a very deep flow of energy, otherwise people’s problems, their anxieties, their tensions, will start entering in your being.

If you are not flowing towards them, they will start flowing towards you, and that tires a leader very much… that kills the therapist! So it is not just accidental that in theWest psychotherapists go mad more than any other professional people, because they treat mad people and they themselves are not ready. So rather than flowing towards the patient, the patient starts flowing towards them. You should not be in a lower energy than the people you are helping.

You should be on a higher point from where things can flow towards them but nothing can flow from them towards you. So you are just a little higher, not enough yet – you have to go higher a little more – otherwise rather than helping, you will get into trouble. It will be very tiring and very puzzling, and you will get stuck many times, you will not know what to do. So for this I will give you one meditation – start doing it.

The third thing that is needed in the therapist, which is a must, is impersonal love – not towards
anybody in particular, just a loving quality. It is not the therapy that helps; it is love that helps. That you have, and it can grow more. In fact, women can become better therapists than men.

In a future world therapy will become absolutely feminine. Right now just the opposite is the case: the therapists are ninety-nine percent men and the patients are ninety-nine percent women! Now it is just topsy-turvy: ninety-nine percent of therapists should be women and ninety-nine percent of patients should be men… because man needs more love – he lacks many things which a woman can give.

So this is the method which you can start; start it from tonight, mm? You have a box with you?… Good. So keep the box under the pillow and lie down on the bed. You can have one pillow
underneath your feet to make it more comfortable; you can have a small pillow just underneath
your back so you are perfectly at ease. Mm? – feeling at ease is very essential, the body should be in perfect rest. Then close your eyes and start relaxing, just have the feeling that you are relaxing – nothing special, just the feel that you are relaxing.

Just go on repeating ’I am relaxing, relaxing, relaxing…’ and make the word ’relaxing’, longer and longer and longer: r-e-l-a-x-i-n-g, r-e-l-a-x-i-n-g’. Make it as long as possible, and very silently repeat inside, ’relaxing’. You can do it in [your own language], mm? that will go deeper….
And always remember, whenever you are suggesting anything yourself, suggest it in your mother tongue. Never suggest anything with any other tongue that is not your mother tongue because it never goes deep. All other languages we learn later on, so they are superficial. Always suggest in the same language in which you dream – then it will go deep. And we almost always dream in our mother tongues. That is our deepest core, our first language; our first language remains our deepest language.

So for just two minutes feel that you are relaxing, suggest to yourself that you are relaxing the body. Then start feeling one thing…. From inside move to your feet – from the inside. Close your eyes and start moving inside your body from the belly to the feet. Go to the feet and feel where the feet are, then start feeling that the feet are growing, becoming bigger, longer – two inches longer.

When you feel now they are two inches longer, stop for one minute, then bring them back again to their normal size, then again two inches, then again back to their normal size – do that three times. After three times, leave the feet two inches long, and now move towards the head and feel that the head is growing two inches longer. Do it three times, and then leave the head also… so now you are four inches longer.

This is only for the beginning – after two, three weeks, start growing longer: four inches, six inches, twelve inches. Two feet is the perfect height – two feet from one end, two feet from another end, that means four feet. When you have come to four feet and you can almost visualise that it has happened, then the meditation will start working.

With that extra height of four feet you can do miracles. Then you can imagine anything and that will happen. Once this has happened – this is a basic requirement – once you have learned this, then everything can happen. Then in a single jump you can say ’I am bigger than the house’ –and you will be bigger than the house! Only up to four feet does the mind resist. Beyond four feet the mind relaxes, the mind says ’Now you are mad. Go to whatsoever height you want!’ Four feet or forty feet, then it makes no difference. Up to four feet it goes on resisting, ’This is nonsense – what are you doing?’

Mm? The mind goes slowly, slowly – it is very stubborn up to four feet. Once the four feet boundary has been touched, the mind says ’It’s okay – now you are incurable, you can do whatsoever you want. You can feel bigger than the house, you can feel bigger than the earth, you can feel that you are filling the whole sky!’ Always fall asleep filling the whole sky. And in the morning you will feel more love for the whole existence than you have ever dreamt. You will feel more love than you ever felt for your beloved – even for an ordinary tree you will be full of love. You will be almost in a romantic love with an ordinary pebble.

But this method will take at least ten minutes, mm? And then for ten minutes you remain as big as the whole sky, and then fall asleep in that state. Continue this and start the tao group. Whenever you feel stuck just close your eyes and feel that you are filling the whole room and that all these people are inside you. Immediately you will be able to help them, because then you become a mother and they are all in your womb. Then suddenly, intuitively, you know what their problem is, where their problem is.

That is the right way to become a therapist – to become a mother, to feel people inside you. Then there is no problem at all. You can simply see where their problem is and then you can find a solution. This will be intuitive, and tao is an intuitive group – it is not intellectual. Perfectly good!

Source: from Osho Book “This Is It”

[The new sannyasin says she is a doctor.]

Osho – You will become capable. You just need a little more love flowing. It works more than any medicine. Up to now medical science has not been able to find anything more potent than love. If you can be loving to the patient, you will be tremendously successful, because medicines are secondary. They are still not primary. Therapy is a function of love. Love is therapeutic.

You can even sometimes just give water to the patient with deep love, deep compassion, and it will function. There have been many experiments in which the proportion is almost the same. You give the medicine; it works. You give water; it works the same way – what you call a placebo. But if it is given with love and the patient trusts, it functions. When you love, you create trust. And it is one of the most beautiful professions to choose because it allows you to be loving.

It becomes ugly, it has become ugly, because it has become a sort of exploitation. You are exploiting people’s diseases, illnesses. That’s why one feels it is a little heavy. Otherwise it is one of the most beautiful professions – if you love. You may not become very rich if you love, but you will feel tremendously enriched inside.

So if you don’t bother about money too much, there is no problem. Then you can help many people to be healthy and whole. Their prayers will be for you,. and their hearts will be for you and you will be tremendously fulfilled. But if you make money the consideration, then it is one of the worst professions. In a better world, money should not be a relationship at all between the doctor and the patient because it destroys love.

Money is the most anti-love thing in the world. And when you are treating a patient for money, of course the patient becomes irrelevant. He is just a number; he has no being in him. Because he pays you, you treat him, but you become impersonal, indifferent. In fact, deep down, if the patient is very rich, in your unconscious you want him to remain ill a little longer. It creates guilt also, because if a rich patient is cured easily, he will not be paying too much.

So if the patient is rich, the unconscious desire remains in the doctor to let him linger a little. This is very dangerous, but it is so. So make it more meditative, make it more loving. Whatsoever time you are here for, meditate as deeply as possible. Your meditation has started. I have started working on you. Forget everything, and let your love grow.

By the time you go back, you will be able to have a totally different outlook about your profession. I cannot guarantee that that will help you to earn much money, but money is not a consideration. You can always get enough for your needs, but that’s all… more than enough.

But make it a function of your loving heart. Let it be a service, and then you will see that it is helping you. It will help you to grow. What more can you expect? If you are serving human beings, you are doing one of the best things that can be done.

Somebody is painting on the canvas, somebody is writing a poem, and somebody is playing on a musical instrument – you are playing on human beings, you are painting on a human canvas. You are doing something with the most evolved phenomenon in the world. One should be happy. But a different vision is needed, that’s all. It will come….

Source: from Osho Book “The Passion for the Impossible”

[The sannyasin therapist says: But between groups it seems that I don’t seem to be able to find a comfortable space to be in. I don’t have the same relationship with myself that I have in the groups.]

Osho – It is very indicative and has to be understood. When you are working with people, you are so much involved in the work that you forget the sense of self. That happens to many reative people. They forget their work. A painter painting, a singer singing, a dancer dancing… here come moments when their whole energy suddenly is flowing into the work, has become a reative rush, and the self is no more there, because the self exists only when the energy is tagnant.

The stagnant energy becomes the self. When the energy is like a river, you have no self. So self is a sort of a block. Whenever there is no flow, energy is not going anywhere, suddenly the block is there; one feels confined. Then you will feel negative. You will feel a little restless because this self is like a rock on the chest. But this happens only to creative people. For uncreative people just the reverse is the rule.

If an uncreative person forces himself into any creativity, he becomes very self-conscious. He becomes very anxious, worried and tense, restless. When he is out of the work he is okay; he is at home. So the difference between a creative and a non-creative person has to be understood.
And it is good that one is a creative person. Your meditation, your growth is through creativity.

These groups are not just groups – these are your canvases on which you are painting. These are your poems that you are composing. When you see somebody flowering, somebody radiant, a poem is born and you feel fulfilled. You suddenly feel enhanced. You recognise, you realise your worth, mm? – this man has flowered, this woman is smiling so beautifully. Then you are happy. This is the happiness of a creative person.

A creative person is happy only when something beautiful is created. A creative person’s heaven is in creativity. If you throw Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci into heaven – the heaven of the uncreative people, who are just sitting there doing nothing – they will run out of it! They will say, ’What is this? This is hell!’ They may even like to go to hell if some creativity is possible – somewhere where their energies can stream, flow, can create new patterns of life; where something can be invented, discovered; where something can be added to existence as it is.

Maybe it is a very small thing, it doesn’t matter. A creative person feels good, fulfilled, arrived, when he can make this world a little more beautiful… just a small touch somewhere. So that simply shows your state of energy and your type. So whenever you are not creative, you will
feel a little restless, because the same energy that was moving into creativity will not find anywhere to move or anything to do. Your rest will become restless. In fact, when you will be tremendously deep in your work – howsoever hard – you will be resting. So rest is not always rest for everybody.

For a creative person, his creativity is his rest. Maybe sometimes he can change. He has been
painting for the whole week. For one day he simply writes poems, or just goes into the garden and starts working there. A change of activity is his rest. His rest is not no-activity. So if you really want to be rested, change the activity. Rush from one activity to another, and let your river tumble from one place into another. When you are alone write poems, paint, sing, play the guitar, dance – any crazy thing will do – but something; just don’t sit there. Sitting there won’t be of much help to you.

You will come out of it more tired than rested. Change of activity – that’s your rest – and losing yourself in creativity is your meditation. This is something very complicated. In the East meditation has existed for thousands of years, but it seems that only non-creative people became interested in it because it doesn’t give one any creative channel. So science never arose. Everything creative lagged behind. Only people who could sit silently and could lose themselves in non-activity moved into this meditative dimension.

And because of them the whole East became a little uncreative. In the West creative people have never tried meditation because they think it is not for them. Their instinct says to them ’This is not for you. You have to be creative. This will be an escape.’ So they become more and more tense, more and more worried.

Now it is possible that East and West can meet. The human consciousness has come to a point where vision is more clear, where we can look at the past as a total perspective. For the creative person, meditation has to become a part of his creativity, then only can it be meditative. And for a non-creative person, his silence is his only creativity; his inactivity is his only creativity. He creates himself in that inactivity. Both come to a realisation, but their paths are very different.

So simply go on working, and now work knowing more that this is your meditation. While working don’t simply think that you are helping the group, and that after the group you will rest and meditate for one week. That’s a wrong idea. While working, remember that this is your meditation. And you are not only working on the group and on other people; simultaneously, side by side, you are working on yourself. This is your way of working on yourself. This is just a technique for you to work on yourself.

Source: from Osho Book “The Passion for the Impossible”

[A sannyasin who is leaving said: Two months ago, you said you might give me a special healing meditation. I’ve been going to all the divine healings (that happen at each monthly camp) and they did much.]

Osho – You would like to become a healer? … You will be able. It will be good for you. It will be good for others. Healing is a beautiful communication, deeper than any other communication. You can talk verbally, you can say to somebody, ’I love you,’ but words are just words empty. If you can simply shower your energy on the other person, you say in a very much deeper way ’I love you’. That really heals. That’s what I mean when I say that compassion is therapeutic.

So just start… and there is no need to be worried about technique. Whenever you feel that you have the energy to share, just share. A few things to remember…. The person should be lying down whenever you heal, because when a person is in a lying posture there is more possibility of entering his deepest core. When a person is lying down, he is more like a child. When he is sitting, he is less like a child; when he is standing, even less like a child.

When he is lying down he feels relaxed automatically, because lying down is associated with sleep and with childhood when he was not capable of sitting, not capable of standing. So sleep and childhood – these two things are deeply associated with lying. So let the person lie down and tell him to relax. The best way to help him to relax is to tell him to first do the opposite – to become as tense as possible, to tense all over the body so that he deliberately becomes tense and every fibre of the body is stretched.

Tell him to come to almost a mad climax of tension, and then when he cannot go any more, tell him suddenly to relax. Then he will fall into deep relaxation. Ordinarily if you say to somebody to relax, he listens to the word, he tries, but nothing happens, because how to relax? In fact if you say to a person to relax he becomes more tense than hewas before because now he tries to relax. He does not know what to do – because you cannot relax. You can become tense, but you cannot relax. Relaxation is a by-product, is an after-effect, a consequence of utmost tension.

So tell him to tense; that he knows how to do. That is not a problem – everybody knows how to become tense. Tell him that he is facing his enemy or facing death and he has to escape, so become tense. Tell him to let his whole body become tense, vibrating with tension, and then suddenly tell him to relax. With this created tension, he can relax now. He will fall into deep relaxation. Just two, three minutes of great tension will help him to relax. And when he is relaxing, start pouring your energy on him.

It is good not to touch the body. In the beginning it is good not to. Just keep at least two inches away from the body, because if you touch the body suddenly, the modern mind has become afraid of touch so much that it becomes tense. People are very touchy about touch. If you touch them they become tense. The modern mind knows only one touch, and that is sexual. All touch has disappeared. We don’t touch people ordinarily.

If you see two men holding hands, you think they are gay, queer or that something is wrong with them. Foolish! They may be just friends. Nothing is wrong in touching each other’s body, but two men touching each other become afraid. You feel embarrassed if somebody embraces you. If he is a man you feel embarrassed. If she is a woman you feel sexually aroused. But in both the ways touch loses security, innocence.

Even fathers and mothers don’t touch and cuddle and hug their children. The only touch that children have come to know and associate with is when the father becomes angry and hits and slaps. That is the only touch. So when you touch somebody, you touch wrong associations – sexual, homosexual, or somebody slapping and the other becoming afraid, scared, defensive, tense. So in the beginning, never touch.

When you are healing a person, so much energy is pouring out that if you touch, it will be almost as if you are touching him with a live wire, a live electric wire He will become so afraid that his doors will close – and if the doors are closed, you can go on showering and nothing will happen. Healing is possible not only because of your energy – it is possible only when your energy enters the other person and becomes his energy. If it comes up to the door and returns, no healing happens.

That’s why if a person does not trust you, never try healing – never try, because it is not possible. If a person has doubts about you, forget about him. It is possible only in deep trust, and if you try on persons who won’t trust you, you will become unconfident about your own energy. If you fail many times, then by and by you will think ’Nothing is happening. I don’t have the energy.’

In fact every person has the energy to heal. It is something natural. It is not that a few people are healers and others are not, no. Every person born is a healer but has forgotten the capacity, or has never used it, or has used it in wrong associations and has come to feel that it never works. So in the beginning never try on just anyone. It is a very tempting thing, because people who don’t believe say, ’Okay, now try on us. We are ready. You can show us how you can heal.’

Never make it an argument, because that will be very destructive to you, and when the person is not receptive, you will feel very tired. When the energy comes back, unwelcomed, unreceived, and falls back on you, you will feel very tired because you have exhausted your energy with no result, with no fulfillment. You have exhausted the energy but it has not been creative.

So never try it on somebody who challenges you. It is not a challenge. If somebody is ready to participate, to go with you, then it is a beautiful experience. So in the beginning never touch. When the person is relaxing more and more and you feel… and I am saying feel – not that you think. If you feel an urge arises to touch the person – for example he has a stomach ache or a headache or something and you feel that just touching the head will be helpful – then touch, but first let him get in tune with you.

First just give an energy massage, not touching the body. Keep about two inches distance, because the person’s body aura is about six inches away from his body. Keep about two, three inches away, so in a way you are touching his energy aura. You are not touching his or her physical body, but you are touching his subtle body – and that’s enough. For the energy to penetrate, that’s enough. You have really touched him, but he will not be afraid about that.

When you feel that the person is participating tremendously, when his trust is immense and you can see that he is flowing with you, and you can feel that your energy is being absorbed – it is not rejected; he has become like a sponge and is soaking it up – then you can touch. Then the touch becomes very very helpful; then it becomes a pinpoint. On that point the whole energy showers and enters deepest.

After each healing it is better that if you can take a shower, do so. If it is not possible, then at least wash your hands immediately and shake them. It always happens that when you are passing your energy into the other person
, his or her energy also sometimes passes into you; they overlap. Sometimes the person can be very very strong, even stronger than you.

Sometimes the person may not be strong, but his illness may be very strong, so those vibrations of illness can enter you and can be destructive. They can make you m, tense. Healing is good but not at your own cost, because then it is foolish and you cannot heal much. Sooner or later you will become ill, badly ill, and your body will be confused very much.

So it you can take a shower, good. If it is not possible, then just wash your hands immediately. Cold water is very good – it helps your energy to shrink back, and then the contact is lost from any influences, impressions, vibrations, that could get into it. Then shake your hands. If you feel sometimes that you are really too full of the energy of the other person, jog, jump. Two or three minutes jogging will do. Then all the impressions and vibrations will fall away from you. Only this much… and you will be able, mm? Good.

Source: from Osho Book “The Passion for the Impossible”