It’s good to clean out bad ideas and love being aware, so your mind stays clean and can’t be filled with junk again.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, for more than ten years I have been following you from place to place. I can't believe that I am back in india. Am I brainwashed, addicted, or what?
You are certainly brainwashed. I use a dry cleaning machine, I am not old-fashioned. And naturally you are addicted. Who will not be? Addiction is not always bad. If you are addicted to beauty, to poetry, to drama, to sculpture, to painting, nobody tells you to drop the addiction. Addiction has to be dropped only when it makes you unconscious. Alcoholics are told to drop the addiction, but here my teaching is of consciousness -- be addicted to it more and more. And what is wrong in being brainwashed? -- wash it every day, keep it clean. Do you like cockroaches? When I brainwash people, I find cockroaches. Cockroaches are very special animals. It has been found scientifically that wherever you find man you find cockroaches, and wherever you find cockroaches you find man. They are always together, they are the oldest companions. What have you got in your brain?…
Before I thought I knew about life, but then I realized that it was just beliefs. The more I get into it, the more I come to know that I don't know. I came with almost no doubts about you, but now doubts arise. I had a talk with somebody who knows a lot about the mind: he said that most of your ways are ways of brainwashing. But I love you, Osho, and I often say to myself, "take the risk. You may succeed, you may fail, but don't get stuck.... Be courageous... That is the price you have to pay." I am confused Osho, but I will fight my fear and hopefully take the jump... The real jump. Are you r
Why are you so afraid of brainwashing? Washing is always good. Are you some kind of hippie or something? I have heard two stories. One: Two hippies were sitting before a church. And then came an ambulance and the priest was brought out on a stretcher. One hippie asked the other, "What is the matter? What has happened to this old cat?" The other said, "When he was coming out of his bath, he slipped, fell down, and he has broken his leg." There was silence for a few moments. Then the other asked, "But what is a bath?" And the first one said, "How am I to know? Am I a Catholic?" The other story: A father was very angry with his son. In his anger he dragged him to the haircutters, he forced him. His hair, his beard, were removed. And then the father said, "My God! So…
People from the outside looking at you and your friends are confused. They talk about brainwashing, while you are talking about deconditioning. If the surrender of your people to you is not escapism into a hedonistic dream, what is it then?
I am not brainwashing anybody. Everybody is washing his own brains -- and everybody has to wash his own brain. The washing gives you such freshness, such newness, such perceptiveness, such clarity about things -- about your relationships, about yourself and the world -- that it is not a loss, it is an immense gain. People on the outside may be thinking that I am brainwashing people; they should come here and see that I am not brainwashing anybody. I don't wash even my own clothes... poor Chetana has to do it. And I have one million sannyasins; how can I manage to brainwash so many people? And there is no need when you can do the job perfectly well. I simply show you the way to get out of your mind and then everything else is left up to you. If you are some kind of a psychological hippie…
It is natural, mm? It is natural. It is such a different place. It will take at least two, three weeks for you to settle. And I can see that you cannot escape for two, three weeks, mm? If somebody wants to escape, the first week is the time to escape. If you can survive two, three weeks here, you will be drowned; then there will be no problem. It is only a question of two, three weeks. And for everybody, it is such a change, such a different world, a different milieu, that you have to reorient yourself to it. You have to learn a different language of being, and nobody wants to learn. Learning seems so arduous and hard; that's why people start becoming stuck in their old pattern. No need to learn -- just go on moving around and around.
Beloved master is there any state of mind which has never been programmed at all? Or are there any techniques to de-condition our brain?
There has never been any consciousness which has not been programmed. In the very upbringing comes the programming. Even if the child is brought up not by you but by wolves in the wild, the wolves will program the child. There have been cases... Just a few years ago a child twelve years old was found who had been brought up by the wolves in the forest in north India. He could not stand even on his two feet. He ran like a wolf; even the best runner could not manage to keep pace with him. He had been programmed by the wolves. The problem is, you have to bring the child up, and somebody has to take care, and whoever is going to take care is going to, knowingly or unknowingly, condition the mind of the child. It is not a question that you have to program consciously. But…