Topic

Osho Explains:

“There is no division in the flow of consciousness. It is only as a result of repression that there is a division between the conscious and the unconscious. It is important first to see this rightly.

“When a child is born its consciousness is one, undivided. There is neither a conscious mind nor an unconscious mind; there are no such divisions. But before long the process of compartmentalization begins – because we will start teaching the child what is right and what is wrong, we will preach what is good and what is bad, what he should do and what he should not do.

“When we go on teaching the child, ‘You are not to do this, this is bad,’ what is the child to do? Nothing dies just because we categorize it as bad. We tell him that anger is bad. The child hears and understands, but the anger in him is not going to cease to exist just because we say it is bad – because anger is a natural instinct. The child has not learned to feel anger, he is born with it. Anger is as much a part of him as his body, his eyes, his hands. Nature uses anger. Anger is energy. Without anger the child will not survive. Anger will give him the strength for struggle in his life, anger will give him strength to stand up against conflict, anger will give him the drive. Anger is an unavoidable feature of his life’s journey.”

We say, “Sex is bad,” but sex is not something that has been learned from the books and movies; otherwise, how would the birds and beasts learn it? They don’t go to movies – though our so-called saints blame the movies for spoiling people – nor do they read sex literature, but sex is there. So the child is born with it. We say that sex is bad, and those people who say sex is bad have given birth to this child through their sex. Had there been no sex, the child would not be here. Each child is a living symbol of sex. Each and every cell of his body is constructed of particles of sex. His whole body is a crystallized form of sex. And we say it is bad! What is the child to do?

Osho Continues:

“For the baby, nothing is bad and nothing is good – yet. He has not even thought about such things, we implant such thinking in him. And we are powerful. We reward him for doing what we call right, and punish him for what we call wrong. And it is not only we who are labeling things as bad, the whole society is calling it wrong. The child is alone. He is very natural, but he is alone, weak, helpless; and he is dependent on those who are labeling these impulses as wrong. It is they who feed him and clothe him; they can beat him and punish him. What is the child to do?

“If ‘wrong’ could be finished with just by saying so, the child could be finished with his wrong impulses. But no, it is not finished, so the child begins to repress it. Repression begins, and whatever the parents and society call wrong the child pushes into the basement of his mind. And it is all this hidden away stuff that becomes the unconscious. This is how the unconscious is born. Whatever is kept in the back cellar the child has no wish to see, because if it is seen the child will become restless and troubled. So the child begins to create an inner blindness so that he cannot see the bad things in himself….

“What is the child to do? We have no idea of the child’s dilemma. The things that he has been told are bad are now hidden within himself; he stops looking at them, turns his back on them. It is this turning of the back that gives birth to the unconscious.”

Osho, Nowhere to Go but In, Talk #3 – The One, Undivided

Osho Continues:

“This is a totally different phenomenon. For these people, religion means simply to be more alive. These people are not serious people because seriousness is a disease. These people are in search of delight. Naturally, the whole approach is different, and I am interested only in these people. They will be coming by the thousands soon. They will come from all over the world; they will have to come. Whosoever is in search of celebration will have to come….

“Loving the other, by and by you are thrown back again and again to yourself. One day you realize that the search for the other outside is meaningless; it is doomed from the very beginning. Loving the other, looking into the eyes of the other, you are reflected again and again. Through the other is self-knowledge: the other functions as a mirror. Once you have realized it, you start settling into your aloneness….

“In fact, a well-rooted tree waits for the storm to come because that will be a challenge, and when the storm comes, the well-rooted tree knows how well-rooted it is and feels the strength, the vitality. The storm is not the enemy but a challenge which takes away all dust, which takes away all frustration, which takes away all sadness. And the tree starts celebrating again, feels alive to the very roots, becomes young again. Each storm makes the tree younger, again and again young….

“All of humanity is stuck, everybody is stuck. A cul-de-sac has come. Now evolution is not going to help. You will have to take the reins in your own hands – that’s what revolution is. And when you start evolving on your own, naturally you are taking great risks; it is a great adventure.”

Osho, Tao: The Pathless Path, Series 1, Talk #12 – All of Humanity at Stake

Osho Continues:

“The word healing comes from the same root as from where the word whole comes. Whole, health, healing, holy, all come from the same root. To be healed means to be joined with the whole. To be ill means to be disconnected with the whole. An ill person is one who has simply developed blocks between him and the whole, so something is disconnected. The function of the healer is to reconnect it. But when I say the function of the healer is to reconnect it, I don’t mean that the healer has to do something. The healer is just a function. The doer is existence, the whole….

“And that’s the whole problem of healing and the whole art – how to nullify yourself, how to become a void. But it will happen…. Everybody can become a healer. Healing is something like breathing; it is natural. Somebody is ill; it means he has lost his capacity to heal himself. He is no more aware of his own healing source. The healer is to help him to be rejoined. That source is the same from which the healer draws, but the ill man has forgotten how to understand the language of it. The healer is in relationship with the whole, so he can become a via-media. The healer touches the body of the ill person and becomes a link between him and the source. The patient is no longer connected directly with the source so he becomes indirectly connected. Once the energy starts flowing, he is healed.

“And if the healer is really a man of understanding…Because it is possible that you can become a healer and you may not be a man of understanding. There are many healers who go on doing it but they don’t know how it happens; they don’t know the mechanism of it. If you understand also, you can help the patient to be healed and you can help him to be aware of the source from where the healing is happening. So not only is he healed of his present illnesses, he is prevented from future illnesses. Then the healing is perfect. It is not only curative, it is also preventative.

“Healing almost becomes an experience of prayer, an experience of godliness, of love, of the whole.”

Osho, Beloved of My Heart, Talk #19 – Learn to Become a Void

Osho Continues:

“As far as I am concerned, hypnosis is going to be one of the most significant parts of the mystery school. Such a simple method, which only demands a little trust, a little innocence, can bring miraculous changes in your life – and not in ordinary things only. Slowly it can become the path of your meditation.

“You meditate, but you don’t succeed. You don’t succeed in watching; you get mixed up with thoughts, you forget watching. You remember later on, “I was going to watch, but I am thinking.” Hypnosis can help you; it can make the watcher and the thoughts separate. For spiritual growth I don’t think there is anything more important than hypnosis.”

Osho, Beyond Psychology, Chapter 44, Q 2

Osho Continues:

“One cannot achieve bliss on one’s own. We can achieve misery but not bliss. We can do something to ourselves so that we fall sick. But healing does not happen through us, it happens through the whole, it comes from the beyond. Wounds we can create – that is within our power – but when the wound heals it is not you who is healing it. It heals by some mysterious energy. That mysterious energy is called godliness. It is only a name for all that is mysterious, and by mysterious I mean all that which is not comprehensible to reason.

“How a wound heals is a miracle, how the illness disappears and health comes back is a miracle. Even medical science accepts the fact that we can help the healing process but we cannot heal. We can remove the barriers, we can prepare the ground for the healing energy to function, but the healing energy does everything on its own….

“The function for you is to remove all hindrances. That’s the work of the sannyasin – not to create barriers for the healing energy. For example, when the sun rises you can keep your eyes closed. You will remain in darkness, although the sun is there, available. But you have to open your eyes, and opening your eyes is just removing a small hindrance; the eyelid is just a small hindrance. You can keep your doors closed and then even in the full light of the day you will live in darkness. But you can open the door, you can open all the windows, and then the sun and the wind and the rain come in.

“That’s what we can do: we can open up to existence, we can become available to all the energies that are showering on us, and then healing happens on its own. It is always existence that heals. And bliss is the ultimate experience when you are totally healed, when nothing is missing, when one has come home.”

Osho, Going All the Way, Talk #13

Osho Continues:

“The fear has reasons. The fear arises because it is always somebody else who dies. You always see death from the outside, and death is an experience of the innermost being. It is just like watching love from the outside. You may watch for years, but you will not come to know anything of what love is. You may come to know the manifestations of love, but not love itself. We know the same about death. Just the manifestations on the surface – the breathing has stopped, the heart has stopped, the man as he used to talk and walk is no more there: just a corpse is lying there instead of a living body.

“These are only outer symptoms. Death is the transfer of the soul from one body to another body, or in cases when a man is fully awakened, from one body to the body of the whole universe. It is a great journey, but you cannot know it from the outside. From outside, only symptoms are available; and those symptoms have made people afraid.

“Those who have known death from inside lose all fear of death. Instead of death being an ugly and fearful thing, it changes into one of the purest, most silent, and most sublime experiences. You experience yourself for the first time without your prison, the body, an experience of absolute freedom…unhampered, uncaged.

“This kind of death can be known in many ways. One is the usual way – but then you will not be here to report about it. You are gone. You have experienced, but the experience has also gone with you. Fortunately, there are other ways in which you can experience exactly what death is, and yet remain alive.

“Love is one. In total love, when you are not holding anything back, a kind of death happens. You are no more body, you are no more mind, you are pure spirit.

“In meditation, the same experience happens of bodilessness, mindlessness, and yet of absolute consciousness, of absolute aliveness.

“That’s why lovers never feel afraid of death.

“If a lover feels afraid of death, that indicates he has not known love. The meditators never feel afraid of death. If the meditator feels afraid of death it means he has not gone deep into meditation.

“There is only one depth that has to be touched, whether through love or through meditation or through creativity. The depth is that you are no longer your physical body, and you are no longer your mental body either – just a pure awareness, a pure sky without any clouds, unbounded. Even a simple glimpse into it and death becomes a glorious experience….

“This can be one of the greatest lessons: that if you want a glorious death, not an ugly and contemptible one, you should start living from this very moment. Totality should be your concern: living totally, burning your torch of life from both ends together. By the time you feel fulfilled, you will be able to die totally. You will not cling to life.

“I have seen many people die. They die like beggars, clinging; they don’t want to die because they have not lived yet, and death has come. But when there was life, they wasted it. Now that death has knocked on their doors they have become aware of the wastage of life.

“But a man who has lived totally will open the doors, will welcome death, because death is not your enemy. It is simply a change of house: from one body into another, from one form into another or, ultimately, from form to the formless life that surrounds the earth. A religious man not only lives religiously, he dies religiously. A man of art lives artfully, and lives not only artfully, but dies too with great art.”

Abridged from Osho, Zarathustra: A God That Can Dance, Talk #16 – Of Voluntary Death