According to Osho, insensitivity is a learned survival bargain: in childhood we suppress bodily and erotic sensitivity to please authority, and later we build security walls to avoid vulnerability. To remove it, see this conditioning, drop the bargain, and gently reclaim feeling—especially innocent bodily joy—without guilt. Look, feel, relate, and risk vulnerability; awareness dissolves the protective facade and restores natural aliveness.
Notice how you numbed yourself to stay safe, then stop fighting your feelings—especially body joy—and gently allow yourself to feel and connect again.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What are the reasons for man's insensitivities and how to remove them?
That is why insensitivity sets in. It helps you to be in this ugly world without being disturbed; but there is a cost -- and the cost is very much. You are at ease in this world without being disturbed, but then you cannot enter into the divine, into the total, into the whole. You cannot enter the other world. If for this world insensitivity is good and for that world sensitivity is good, that creates the problem. If you are really interested in entering that world, you will have to create sensitivity, you will have to throw away all these walls, these securities. Of course, you will become vulnerable. You will feel much suffering, but that suffering is nothing in comparison to the bliss you can reach through sensitivity. The more sensitive you become, the more you will feel compassion. But you will suffer because all around you there…
Beloved Osho, why do I get so sensitive? Where does it come from and is it possible to share sensitivity?
And President Truman said, "Of course! I slept as deeply as possible for the first time in a few months. The work is done perfectly. Now Japan is bound to surrender. When I received the news, I was so contented that for once I slept the whole night without even waking up." These are the insensitive people -- and his name is "True Man!" Since that day I have started calling him President Untrueman. But from the very childhood, the head is trained and the heart is left absolutely untrained. Ernie was talking to Ronnie, the little boy from next door. "How old are you?" asked Ernie. "I don't know," replied little Ronnie. "Do women bother you?" inquired Ernie. "No," said Ronnie. "Then," said Ernie knowingly, "You are four." Prem Anugita, my final suggestion to you is, keep climbing upwards. You may never reach the top, but it is definitely…
Beloved Osho, with meditation sensitivity increases, making life more difficult because one's reactions are so sharp and intense, and at every step it feels as though one's very life is at stake. How to attain the golden mean, the balance point, in this situation?
A very rich industrialist in Japan has erected a statue of himself outside his office. A very clever man! His psychologists counselled him to keep a statue of himself opposite his office. In his factory there are some ten thousand employees, and it has been announced to them that they should all feel free to maltreat the statue any way they choose! And it is an easy matter for anyone -- especially an employee -- to get angry. He does not need a reason. To have to serve someone else, to be someone's paid slave, is enough in itself to provoke anger. The workers, and even sometimes the managers, habitually abuse and mistreat the statue before they enter the factory, and this has had important results. What it has done is to create a psychological equality between the owner and his employees. We all behave like this. Even today we…
Kill out desire for sensation.... Learn from sensation and observe it, because only so can you commence the science of self-knowledge, and plant your foot on the first step of the ladder.
When you are looking at something -- a flower or a beautiful face or the stars -- become the eyes. Forget everything else, as if the whole rest of your body has gone out of existence and your consciousness has become just eyes. Then your eyes will be able to look more deeply, and you will become capable of looking at the invisible also. The invisible can also be seen, but you need more penetrating eyes to see it. KILL OUT ALL DESIRE FOR SENSATION, and grow in sensitivity. Think about the world less and about your senses more. Purify them. When you don't ask for sensations they become purified. When you ask for more and more sensations, you are killing your senses. The man who finds the divine is the man whose senses are totally alive. to their maximum capacity Then it is not only that you can see…
You said that to be sensitive is to be religious. But it seems that sensitivity leads me to sensuality and indulgence. What is the way for me?
Then indulge! Then be sensual! Why are you so afraid of life? Why do you want to commit suicide? What is wrong with indulgence and what is wrong with being sensual? You have been taught so, and this is what I am saying. Then you become afraid of being sensitive because if you are sensitive, then everything will grow with sensitivity. Sensuality will grow -- it is beautiful, nothing is wrong with being sensual. An alive man will be sensual. What is the difference between a dead man and an alive man? The dead man is no longer sensual; you touch and he doesn't feel, you kiss and he doesn't respond. I have heard one anecdote about Picasso. A lady was appreciating Picasso's pictures and she said, 'Yesterday I went to a friend's house and there I saw your self portrait. And I loved it so much, and I was…