Osho Teachings Osho Discourses Osho Quotes

Question – Beloved Master, The west is overpopulated with psychotherapists and their patients, but why does no one seem to be helped?

Osho – Patrick, the help is possible only through a buddha. The help is possible only through the awakened one.

The psychotherapists are as asleep as you are; they are in the same boat. There is no qualitative difference between you and them — in fact they may be crazier than you are. They may be more in a mess than you are because they constantly deal with mad people; day in, day out, they are surrounded by mad people. Rather than helping the mad people to become sane, just the opposite happens: being constantly in contact with mad people, slowly slowly they become mad themselves.

This is natural. They don’t have yet that awareness which can remain aloof, unaffected. They don’t have that distance, that coolness, that detachment. They are not living on sunlit peaks; they are groping in the same dark valley where you are groping. They are as blind as you are, but they have to pretend that they are not blind — and that is more dangerous.

If a person is blind and knows that he is blind and never pretends otherwise, there is every possibility he will walk more cautiously. If he pretends that he is not blind, if he projects that he is not blind, if he convinces others that he is not blind, slowly slowly he will be hypnotized by his own sayings, auto-hypnotized. He will start believing that he is not blind and he will start walking less cautiously. And that is more dangerous.

I have heard:
Once a blind man came to visit a Zen master. When he was leaving — it was night, a dark night, no moon, and so many clouds — the master said to the blind man, “Please take this lamp with you.”
The blind man laughed loudly. He said, “Are you joking? What can a lamp do for me? I cannot see! It is all the same to me whether I have a lamp or not.”

But the master said, “That I know, that you cannot see, but at least others will be able to see in the darkness that you are coming so they will not stumble into you.”
The argument appeared right. The blind man took the lamp, went away. He had just walked only a hundred yards and a man just walked into him. He said, “What is the matter? Are you too blind? Can’t you see this lamp?”

And the man said, “I am not blind. Excuse me, but your lamp is no longer lit; its flame has gone out.”
The blind man went back to the Zen master and said, “Look, never give a lamp to another blind man again. If there was no lamp I would have walked more cautiously. I always walk cautiously. Because of the lamp I walked as if I were no longer blind — and the lamp went out. But how was I to know that the lamp went out? Because of this lamp, for the first time I have been hurt by a man. Otherwise, I have walked my whole life in every possible situation, but because I was so cautious, always making noise with my stick on the road so people can feel that some blind man is there, always groping with my stick in the darkness so I know where I am, whether I am facing a wall or a door…. It was the first time that I walked without any fear.”

And that’s what is happening to your psychotherapists, Patrick. They think they know — they know nothing. They are more informed, but information is not knowing. They are well educated, but they have not a higher being than you. And help is possible only when somebody higher than you gives you a hand.

More psychotherapists go mad than any other profession and more psychotherapists commit suicide than any other profession. And it is natural. Living with mad people, one can understand — they become affected.

A few scenes will be helpful to you….
The first scene:
A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office.
“You must help me!” he exclaims.
“What do you do for a living?” asks the shrink.
“I am an automobile mechanic.”
“Get under the couch!”

The second scene:
First psychiatrist: “Hello!”
Second psychiatrist: “I wonder what you mean by that?”

The third scene:
The patient: “Of course I am upset, doctor. I have eleven children and I find out my husband does not love me.”
The doctor: “You are very lucky. Imagine if he did!”

The fourth scene:
“Doctor, my wife accuses me of being a compulsive card-player.”
“That’s ridiculous. Now shut up and deal!”

And the fifth scene:
“Doctor, now that you have cured me of my homosexual tendencies and since this is our last session, may I kiss you goodbye?”
“Don’t be ridiculous — men don’t kiss. I shouldn’t even be lying on the couch with you!”

You ask me, Patrick, “The West is overpopulated with psychotherapists and their patients, but why does no one seem to be helped?”

Help is possible only from higher sources. A person who is on the same ground as you cannot be of any help to you. Help is possible only when a fully conscious man tries to help the unconscious. It is as if you are asleep; do you think somebody else asleep can help you in any way? Only somebody who is awake can wake you. If you want to be awakened at a particular hour, you don’t say to somebody else who is asleep, “Please wake me up at five o’clock in the morning. I have to go for that goddamned Dynamic Meditation!” You have to ask somebody who is awake. Only somebody awake can wake you up. In fact, the person who is asleep may help you to fall into a deeper sleep.

You may have watched it happen. If a few people are sitting just by your side yawning, you start feeling sleepy. They create a certain vibe; they create a certain atmosphere in which anybody vulnerable will start feeling it is better to go to sleep. The same happens with awakened people: a buddha creates a totally different vibe. He shakes you up, he wakes you up. He goes on shocking you in many ways; he finds devices to shock you.

Kavita has asked, “Beloved Master, sometimes you use such words that I feel shocked — and I used to think that no word can ever shock me. Don’t you have any couth?”

Kavita, I will go on using these words unless you wake up. You would like to listen to lullabies — but lullabies are not going to help. What appeals to you, what you like is not going to help. Something that shocks you…. I am going to use rough words till you stop yawning.

Whenever I see somebody yawning somewhere, immediately I have to say something which shocks you — and I can see his yawning disappears. The moment I say “bullshit” — immediately I say it he stops yawning! His spine is erect, his kundalini is rising upwards! Unless you all become awakened I am not going to leave you at ease; I will go on hitting you in every possible way.

Help is possible, Patrick, only from the awakened ones. You don’t need psychotherapists, you need buddhas. Secondly: you go to the psychotherapist, but you don’t really want to be helped. You have great investment in your pathology.

A few scenes again.

First:
“Doctor, my wife thinks she is a refrigerator.”
“Why don’t you divorce her?”
“I would but I need the ice.”

Second scene:
“Doctor, my girlfriend thinks she is a rabbit.”
“Bring her in. I will see what can I do.”
“Okay, but whatever happens, I hope you don’t cure her.”

Nobody wants really to be helped. People are only playing games. They go to the psychiatrist in the hope that he can’t do anything, that he is not going really to change them. Nobody wants to be changed; everybody wants to remain the same as he is. You have become so accustomed to your misery, to your pathology… it is your life, it is your way of life. If you want to be changed you will seek a master, not a psychotherapist.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol 10″

Question – Bhagwan, Why have you been Misunderstood?
Osho – It is absolutely natural. If you support people’s old mind you are never misunderstood because you are saying exactly what they believe, you are supporting them, they feel very happy with you, you gain respectability, you support their ego.

I have been doing just the opposite. I have been trying to show you that your old mind is out of date, that you need a new mind, that your old ways of thinking and living, social behavior are all rotten and they need to be changed. Naturally, there are only two possibilities: if you are very intelligent, open, clear, straightforward you will agree with me. If you are not that intelligent, not open, not straightforward you will disagree with me.

But to disagree also needs intelligence. You have to argue against me if you want to disagree. In that way agreement is easier but disagreement means you have to fight against me, argue against me and you don’t have that intelligence. So the only way is: you cannot fight against what I am saying but you can distort what I am saying and then you can fight with it, with the distortion which I have never said. First create a misunderstanding then fight with it which is easier. You have already put loopholes in it and you are fighting with a bogus thing. I have never said it.

So the people who don’t have enough intelligence and yet want to disagree naturally try to change the statements, make them according to their own ideas so that they can easily fight with them. For example, I have been speaking on sex that how it can be transformed into superconsciousness; and so much has been written about it. But everybody condemns about my statements on sex. Nobody talks about superconsciousness. And sex was not my purpose at all.

I was saying that the sex is a basic energy. Either it can reproduce children or it can create a new consciousness in you. It is a creative force. If it goes downwards it creates children, if it goes upwards it creates the highest consciousness for which we have been for centuries searching. We have called it buddhahood, enlightenment, awakening, illumination, samadhi, sambodhi… whatever the name, but it is the sexual energy that moves upwards. It is a creative force.

But strange that my basic point was not discussed at all. Those who have criticized me have criticized not me at all. They were criticizing their own imagined idea which has nothing to do with me. But this is how lower class of intellectuals will do. First they will make the argument in such a way that it can be uprooted, dissolved. They do both the things: they make the argument and then they destroy it, but it has nothing to do with me.

One of Hindu leaders, Karpatri Maharaj has written a book against me and he goes on making statements which I have never made. I wrote him a letter that `I simply want that wherever you make a statement as mine, at least give the source from where you got it; in which of my books, on what page that statement is because I have read your whole book. All your statements are just made up by yourself.’

Now ordinary people will never be able to find. They will not bother to go, and I have four hundred books, that they will look into those books and find whether this statement is true or not. They will simply think that Karpatri Maharaj has done great work. He has demolished every statement and all those statements are his own. He is demolishing himself. It has nothing to do with me, the whole book. And it propounds to be an argument against me. So it is very natural. I don’t feel any grudge or any complaint, I understand that whatever I have been doing is bound to be misunderstood, misquoted. But how long?

It takes just patience — go on fighting, somebody somewhere who is intelligent and who has a heart to understand will understand. And I don’t need crowds to understand me, I need only few people of guts because it is always few people of courage who bring revolutions in the world; it not the masses.
And I have not been misunderstood by people of intelligence, by people of heart. They have loved me. I have received more love than perhaps anybody else in the world has ever received.

Source – Osho Book “The Last Testament,Vol5″

Osho – Even to cut a flower is uncivilized behavior, what to say about people like Genghis Khan, who killed forty million people; Tamerlane, who killed thirty million people; Nadir Shah, he again killed forty million people, and statistics are not available about many others. Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, Ivan the Terrible … no data is available, but they must have killed more people than Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah. Data is available on Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and they were not very far away from our present time, just forty years ago. They killed millions of people for no reason at all.

This destructiveness is a death-oriented ideology and it is so deeply rooted in our minds that it keeps us below the animals. Man, Milarepa, is not yet civilized. His civilization will begin by dropping war, by dropping nations. What is the need of nations if you are not going to fight? Nations are needed for wars. Why create these stupid lines on the map of the world?

The world is one. There are no natural lines dividing nations. Then why do you go on? There is a deep desire to dominate and there are so many people in the world to dominate: they need many nations. Otherwise just a single government, a functional government for the whole world will be enough. What is the need of so many laws, if man is civilized? What is the need of so many courts, jails, so many legal advisers, if man is civilized? A civilized man will not commit murders, a civilized man will not rape women … but we keep this whole paraphernalia of courts, laws, constitutions, legal experts; for whom?

Man is still a criminal. And these jails, these judges and these laws prevent nothing. Jails go on growing, judges go on increasing — more and more of them; more courts, more legal experts, thousands of colleges around the world producing legal experts every year. But even they cannot manage, for the criminals increase at a faster rate, and they don’t have a college, they are not educated.

Something is basically wrong, something is missing. What is missing? I call it meditation. Only meditation can make humanity civilized, because meditation will release your creativity and take away your destructiveness. Meditation will bring your compassion and will take away your cruelty. Meditation will make you responsible to your own being and then you cannot be a criminal.

To be a criminal needs great unconsciousness. Meditation destroys your unconsciousness, opens the doors of light and suddenly what you were doing in the darkness starts disappearing.

A civilization can be based only on meditation. The only people who have been civilized were people who were in touch with their own being: a Gautam Buddha, a Socrates, a Pythagoras, a Lao Tzu; these people are civilized. Only individuals once in a while have been found civilized, but the collective mass is still far below the standard of civilization.

It has to happen! And Milarepa, those who are with me, they have to create the foundation for a civilization, for a civilized humanity, by becoming themselves civilized.

Source – Osho Book “Sat Chit Anand”

Osho – All politicians are chimpanzees — without exception. They look like men, but they behave like chimpanzees. You should not go by the looks, you should watch their actions — and all their actions are idiotic. And it is not only today; it has been so for the whole history of man.

Unless we get rid of politicians and create a humanity where politicians are not needed — and, in fact, there is no need for them — we will not be able to survive long.

The politicians are seeing clearly that they cannot exist anymore. Their futility is becoming clear, so they are planning to destroy the whole planet. Rather than being thrown out of their jobs, their great presidentships, prime ministerships, they would destroy all life on this planet. It is in the hands of the intelligentsia of the world not to let them do this suicidal act.

All scientists of the world should stop creating any war material. They should make it clear to their governments that they are ready to work, but they will work only for life, not for death. The same nuclear energy can make this earth again young, can destroy all poverty, can make humanity live for the first time in real comfort, luxury, can allow people to develop their talents, their potentials to the highest peak possible.

And it is a very simple thing: all the scientists who are serving the governments and creating more and more death weapons, should just stop, and start creating more and more life-enhancing energies. The same energy, nuclear energy, which can make this earth a dead planet, can make this earth the most glorious and the richest planet in the whole universe.

Politicians want war. That is their vested interest. Without war, what are they going to do? You can see it in a simple fact: all your great politicians are born in times of war. If any politician wants to be a great leader, a great hero, then war is a necessity. Just look: from Genghis Khan to Tamerlane to Nadirshah to Alexander the Great to Ivan the Terrible to Napoleon Bonaparte to Adolf Hitler to Benito Mussolini to Joseph Stalin to Churchill to Roosevelt — what makes these people great heroes? It is war. If there had been no wars there would not have been great heroes.

Politicians live on war. And now the game has come to its ultimate peak. The old wars, those bullock-cart wars, were okay. A few people died, somebody became victorious, somebody was defeated. But now war has lost all meaning. Nobody can be defeated and nobody can be victorious. With war losing all meaning, politicians have lost their greatest vested interest.

And if politicians disappear, there is no need for nations. I cannot conceive why nations should exist. Science has turned the whole world into a small global village. Yes, there can be a functional world government. But there is no need of armies — millions of people just sitting stupidly polishing their guns for years, doing “left turn, right turn,” and then creating Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For all that is ugly, the whole credit goes to the politicians.

Just a general raising of consciousness is needed, and the politicians will melt like snowflakes. And with them will go nations, national boundaries, stupid ideas of some nations being special, just born to rule over the world. And all the energies which are being wasted in creating war materials — and that is not a small amount: seventy-five percent of the energy of the whole of humanity is being diverted into war. We are living on only twenty-five percent of our energy.

Just think: if one hundred percent of our energy is available, there is no need for any Ethiopia to happen. There is no need for anybody to remain uneducated, poor. We can make this world a paradise — the politicians just have to go on a long, long weekend.

Source – Osho Book “From Bondage to Freedom”

Question – Beloved Master, You told us the story of Krishna and Arjuna. But is there no value in resisting war in a time where a handful of madmen play with atomic bombs?

Osho – Peter Bohm, how can you resist these few madmen who are playing with atom bombs? What will be your strategy of resistance? In fact, your resistance may bring the war sooner than otherwise; your resistance is not going to prevent it.

The only thing that can prevent the world war is that you start a totally new consciousness, that you start a new kind of humanity… a man who is capable of love, a man who is capable of meditation. Let love and meditation spread far and wide. Let meditation reach to as many people as possible. Except that, all your efforts at resistance are impotent.

You can protest and you can go on a long march, but have you ever watched the protesters, the people who are against war, the pacifists? Have you watched their processions? They look so aggressive, they themselves look mad! If they had the atom bombs, just to protect peace they would be the first to drop the atom bombs. They are as mad as the other party; there is no difference at all. Their minds are as political as the people who are in power; the only difference is that they are not in power. And their anger, their pent-up anger, you can see on their faces, in their slogans.

Every peace protest ends in a fight with the police, with the military. It ends in burning buses, post offices, police stations, cars. What kind of love is this and what kind of resistance is this? It is impotent! But they are feeling they are doing something great. It is an ego trip and nothing else.

The meek little bank clerk had his suspicions. One day he left work early and sure enough, when he arrived home, he found a strange hat and umbrella in the hallway and his wife on the couch in the arms of another man.
Wild for revenge, the husband picked up the man’s umbrella and snapped it in two across his knee.
“There, now, I hope it rains!”

What can you do? Yes, you can shout and you can go for a long march with great posters, and it will give you a certain satisfaction because your pent-up energies will be released. It is a kind of catharsis. Unknowingly, you are doing Dynamic Meditation — but it would be better if you do it knowingly.
Yes, war has come to a point where it can destroy the whole humanity, and not only humanity but the whole earth. Life as such can be destroyed. What can we do?

Scientific knowledge has gone far ahead of man’s spiritual growth; that is the problem, the real problem. Who are these madmen you are talking about? Are they any different from you, Peter Bohm? Richard Nixon, Brezhnev, Ayatollah Khomeini — are these different people from you? Maybe there is some quantitative difference, but there is no qualitative difference. If YOU come in power you will prove the same. And one day these people were not in power; they were also just like you. When they are in power, then their real faces show up.

Lord Acton says: Power corrupts. It is not true. Power never corrupts, but corrupted people are attracted towards power. Of course, without power they cannot show their real faces. Power only gives them the right context in which they can reveal their heart’s reality. Power does not corrupt, it only reveals the truth. Powerless people may not look mad because they cannot afford to be mad. Give them power and then you will see: they are as mad as anybody else.

I don’t see any difference between warmongers and pacifists; they are the same kind of people. They appear to be polar opposites but they belong together. Deep down they are one; two ends of the same stick. Yes, I would like the earth to become a paradise and not a cemetery… but what kind of resistance?

Even if Krishna was here, at THIS juncture he would not have suggested war. I am absolutely certain about it. I say categorically that Krishna would not have said to Arjuna to fight at this moment, because this is global suicide. Five thousand years have passed since Krishna and much has changed.
We have come to the point where total war is possible. Nobody is going to be the winner, so what is the point of war? War has been significant in the past because somebody would win and somebody would lose. Now there is going to be no winner; all are going to be the losers. War has lost all significance — war is absolutely stupid today. It may have had some meaning in the past; it has none anymore.

Krishna’s message is irrelevant today; Buddha’s message is more relevant. Krishna’s message is out of date; Buddha’s message is very contemporary. But what is his message? His message is: If you really want peace on the earth, create peace in your heart, in your being. That is the right place to begin with — and then spread, radiate peace and love.

If more and more people become peaceful, joyous, if more and more people can dance and sing, if more and more people can say “Alleluia!” from their very innermost core, it will become impossible for these few mad people to create a war. Then we can put these mad people into mental asylums very easily. We can convert our capitals into mental asylums; that is not a big problem, once many many people’s inner consciousness is transformed.

Be a meditator.
Be a lover.
Be a celebrant.

Create the whole existence with as much bliss and joy as possible. Make life so beautiful that nobody wants to die. Right now, the situation is just the opposite: life is so ugly that who cares? If war happens, in fact, people will feel relieved. They don’t have to commit suicide and still the war is going to do the work for them they always wanted to do themselves.

Psychologists say it is very difficult to find a man who has not thought at least four times in his life of committing suicide. But to commit suicide is not easy; it goes against the life instinct. But if somebody else can take the responsibility and somebody else can drop an atom bomb or a hydrogen bomb, then we are freed of the responsibility of committing suicide and still the suicide happens. And not only WE are dying but everybody else with us.

We have to change people’s suicidal mind. Why do people think of suicide? — for the simple reason that life is ugly and they don’t know how to beautify it, how to make a song out of it. It is just sadness, a long long anguish, a nightmare. That’s why people become interested in war and they support war — for any stupid cause, for any excuse they are ready to kill and be killed.

And in fact, all political causes are stupid, all so-called political revolutions are stupid. The only revolution which is not stupid is spiritual, is inner, is individual.

If you really want a world without war, create this individual revolution I call sannyas. This is real resistance. Without resisting anybody you create a different space, a different context, in which life starts blooming, life becomes creative. And if people are creative, blooming, joyous, politics and politicians will be things of the past. Yes, you can save a few politicians to keep them in the zoos for future children to come and see: “Look, this is Morarji Desai!” You can stuff them with straw — they are already stuffed with straw and nothing else; they won’t need much more straw, just a little bit will do. And this is possible now. It was never possible before because war was never such a danger. Politics is now the most stupid game, mad, utterly mad.

These are tremendously significant moments, because we can change the whole human consciousness from being political to spiritual.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol8″

Osho – The last statement of Gautama the Buddha to his disciples was: Be a light unto yourself. They were crying and weeping, naturally — the master was leaving and they had lived with the master for almost forty years; a few older disciples had lived with him the whole time. These forty years were of tremendous joy, of great experiences. These forty years had been the most beautiful time possible, humanly possible. These forty years had been days of paradise on earth. And now the master is leaving! It was natural, they started crying and weeping.

Buddha opened his eyes and said, “Stop crying and weeping! Have you not listened to me yet? Why are you crying?”
His chief disciple, Ananda, said, “Because you are leaving, because our light is leaving. We see, we feel darkness descending upon us. I have not yet become enlightened and you are leaving. If I could not become enlightened while you were alive, what is the hope for me now when you will be gone? I am in great despair, my anguish is incalculable, I have wasted these forty years. I have been following you like a shadow, it was tremendously beautiful to be with you, but now you are leaving. What is going to happen to us?”

Buddha said, “You are crying because you have not heard me yet. I have been telling you again and again: Don’t believe in me — but you have not listened. Because you have believed in me, and now I am dying, your whole structure is falling apart. Had you listened to me, had you created a light into your being rather than becoming knowledgeable through me, if you had experienced your own self there would have been no need to cry.

“Look at Manjushree!” he said — Manjushree was another disciple of Buddha, one of the greatest. He was sitting under a tree just close by, with closed eyes, so serene, so quiet, so utterly blissful, that Buddha said, “Look at Manjushree! Go and ask him why he is not crying.”

They asked Manjushree. He laughed and said, “What reason is there to cry? Buddha has helped me to know my own light. I am thankful, I am grateful, but there is no darkness descending. And how can Buddha die? I know I cannot die — how can Buddha die? He will be here. Just as a river disappears in the ocean he will disappear into the cosmos. But he will be here! He will be spread all over the cosmos. It is going to be something tremendously beautiful. Buddha was confined to a small body; now his fragrance will be released, he will permeate the whole of existence. I am tremendously happy that now Buddha will be spread all over space. I will be able to see him rising in the sun and I will be able to see him flying in a bird and I will be able to see him in the waves of the ocean… and I will be able to see him everywhere.

“He is simply leaving his body. It was a confinement. And how do I know it? I know it because I have known my own soul. I listened to him and you have not listened to him — that’s why you are crying.”

Buddha said, “Let me repeat again: APPA DIPO BHAVA — be a light unto yourself.” Then he closed his eyes and disappeared into the cosmos. But his last statement was also his first statement. In fact that was his whole message — the whole of his life he was repeating the same message again and again and again.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol3″

Osho – The only thing that has to be learned is watchfulness. Watch! Watch every act that you do. Watch every thought that passes in your mind. Watch every desire that takes possession of you. Watch even small gestures — walking, talking, eating, taking a bath. Go on watching everything. Let everything become an opportunity to watch.

Don’t eat mechanically, don’t just go on stuffing yourself — be very watchful. Chew well and watchfully…and you will be surprised how much you have been missing up to now, because each bite will give you tremendous satisfaction; if you eat watchfully, it will become more tasteful. Even ordinary food tastes if you are watchful; and if you are not watchful, you can eat the most tasteful food but there will be no taste in it, because there is nobody to watch. You simply go on stuffing yourself.

Eat slowly, watchfully; each bite has to be chewed, tasted. Smell, touch, feel the breeze and the sunrays. Look at the moon and become just a silent pool of watchfulness, and the moon will be reflected in you with tremendous beauty. Move in life remaining continuously watchful.

Again and again you will forget. Don’t become miserable because of that; it is natural. For millions of lives you have never tried watchfulness, so it is simple, natural, that you go on forgetting again and again. But the moment you remember, again watch.

Remember one thing: when you remember that you have forgotten watching, don’t become repentful, don’t repent; otherwise, again you are wasting time. Don’t feel miserable: “I missed again.” Don’t start feeling, “I am a sinner.” Don’t start condemning yourself, because this is a sheer waste of time.

Never repent for the past! Live in the moment. If you had forgotten, so what? It was natural — it has become a habit, and habits die hard. And these are not habits imbibed in one life; these are habits imbibed in millions of lives. So if you can remain watchful even for a few moments, feel thankful to God — feel thankful. Even those few moments are more than expected.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol1″