Can affirmations be helpful for deconditioning the mind?

Osho, can affirmations be helpful for deconditioning the mind?

Ultimately it can happen that there is no need to have your own small boxes. Just in every country's capital -- in New Delhi, in Washington, in London -- the prime minister or the president holds the key. And every once in a while he pushes the button and the whole country goes into an orgasmic joy! Then everybody will be obedient. Nobody will break any commandments, nobody will go against them. And the whole country can be punished just by pushing a button, because just as there is a pleasure center in the brain there is a pain center in the brain. Just push the pain center and you are in such agony, you are in hell. But this is not going to bring freedom to humanity. This will be the destruction of all freedom and all possibility of freedom. It has to be stopped. Anne Halpa, affirmations, whether…

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…

Beloved Osho, is it possible that while sannyasins might be cleaned of society's conditioning, they can adopt certain facets of your teaching as another kind of conditioning -- such as the need to be total, to doubt unless we know something from our own experience, not to be jealous, and so on? Could you explain how your way of working with us is not simply the exchanging of one set of values -- and thus conditionings -- for another?

In the first place, what I am teaching are not new values, not a new set of values in place of old values. For example, there are people who believe in God -- that is one set. There are people who do not believe in God -- that is another set. I am saying to people that there is no question of believing. Changing from one belief to another belief is changing the conditioning, but you remain conditioned. I am saying you have to remain without any belief system, and you yourself enquire into reality -- and whatever you find is your own truth. There is no need to believe in it because once you know it, the question of belief does not arise. You believe only in things which you do not know. When you know them, you know: belief is irrelevant. So I am not giving you another…

Beloved Osho, in america, many people -- from meditators to managers -- are using a technique called "positive thinking." they are trying to change destructive thoughts and conditionings about themselves, others, and existence, into positive ones, and in this way hope to be more successful on the level of their lives that they are concerned with. Picturing their minds as a cage, I wonder whether this technique is just like painting the cage golden. Osho, is the technique of positive thinking helpful for awakening? Or does it dull the awareness of being imprisoned and the desire to become free?

He found out that this was Napoleon Hill, a great writer, and his new book was just published. "He will be very happy to be introduced to you." So Henry Ford went to him. The publisher introduced Napoleon Hill, saying, "He has written this book, THINK AND GROW RICH." Henry Ford looked at the cover, at the title, and asked Napoleon Hill, "Have you come in your own car, or in a public bus?" It seemed so irrelevant, but when Henry Ford was asking, Napoleon Hill had to say, "Yes, I have come in a public bus." Henry Ford returned the book and told him, "When you have thought enough about a beautiful car and it appears in your porch, then bring this book to me. I am Henry Ford -- I don't need this book. I know you cannot grow rich by thinking. You can cheat poor people by…

I am a professor of psychology. I have studied and taught conditioning. Can anybody avoid conditioning? Aren't we being conditioned by you?

IT DEPENDS on you. You can be conditioned by me -- but am not conditioning you. Let that be absolutely clear! You can be conditioned by me. If you are listening only through the mind you will be conditioned, because the mind goes on gathering knowledge. The mind is very suggestible, corruptible, vulnerable. If you are listening to me through your mind, through your reason, through your argumentative faculty, through your intellect, you will be conditioned. Even if you are not convinced by me, even if you go thinking that you are not convinced by me, still you will be conditioned. Maybe against me, but that too will condition you. For or against does not matter: if you listen through the mind you will be conditioned -- because mind is the faculty of conditioning. But there is another way to listen also -- and it is not of the mind,…