In what way was Wilhelm Reich limited in his ideas about energy and life?

Osho, you said recently that you loved wilhelm reich. I have studied and written about him for years. While your ideas -- sex equals energy, living in the now and god is life -- agree with his, you go far beyond him. In what way was he limited?

He lived in the bottle. The goose could not come out. And he became too attached to the bottle -- his ideology, his philosophy. And this constant fear of persecution, suspicion drove him mad. You say: ... YOUR IDEAS -- SEX EQUALS ENERGY, LIVING IN THE NOW, AND GOD IS LIFE -- AGREE WITH HIS... They only appear to agree. Living in the now, how can you feel persecuted? Persecution is always going to be tomorrow. Right at this moment how can you feel persecuted? It can happen only in the next moment. His whole life he was talking about living in the now, but it was only talk, mere talk; he never lived in the now. He was thinking of himself in the old foolish pattern, as being a prophet. This stupid Judaic idea of being a prophet has tortured many people in the West. Christians, Mohammedans, Jews --…

Beloved Osho, the german psychologist, wilhelm reich, stumbled upon some inner secrets of bio-energy. He also started practicing these on his patients but he was declared anti-social, was imprisoned and pronounced mad. Osho, what is it that reich was working on and where did he go wrong. What was he missing?

I suspect he was forced to go into madness. It is very easy to drive anybody mad when all the powers are in your hands and the person is made absolutely helpless. When he became mad.... This is the world: when he was at the peak of his fame, there were friends, there were colleagues, there was a beautiful woman who loved him. But when he came out of jail, the woman divorced him, the friends disappeared, the colleagues made it clear to him that they didn't want any more connection with him because even to be connected with him created suspicion. It is sad that he died, but I will say he was forced to die. If you boycott a person in such a way that he becomes an island in the great ocean of humanity -- separate, isolated, cannot communicate with anybody, everybody thinks he is mad --…

Maneesha's question: beloved Osho, wilhelm reich says, in his book, `listen, little man,' that he found that man reaches out with his life energy when he feels well and loving; that he retracts that energy when he is afraid. Reich says that he found that this life energy -- which he termed "orgone" -- is "found in the atmosphere," outside the body. He says he succeeded in seeing it and devised apparatus which magnified it. Is what he observed so?

Maneesha, Wilhelm Reich was one of the unique intelligences born in this century. What he has found has been known to the East as aura. You must have seen around the statues of Buddha or Mahavira or Krishna -- a round aura around the head. That round aura is a reality. What Wilhelm Reich said was authentically true, but the people to whom he said it were not the right people to understand it. They thought he was mad because he described life as an energy surrounding the body. It is exactly true. Life is an energy that surrounds your body. Not only your body, but flowers, trees... everything has its own aura. And that aura, that energy surrounding you shrinks and expands, in different situations. Any situation where your energy shrinks, should be thought bad, sick. And every situation where your energy expands, should be respected and loved. In…

People have lived for years without making love. Love is not that much of necessity. It is a luxury, and it should be used as a luxury. It should be a rare thing, a feast It should not be made routine; it should not be everyday food. One should preserve it for some rare occasions when you are really flowing, when there is a different space. One should keep it as a present for rare moments, otherwise life becomes very boring. Mm? just as you eat every day and you drink your tea and you take your bath, you make love also. Then one finds it boring -- everything is the same. Let love be something special -- it is special. And wait for right moments. People almost always choose the wrong moment. My observation is: whenever the couple fight, after fighting they make love.

Question: it is an interesting coincidence that your meditation technique of release through intense chaotic breathing evolved at the same time that certain chaotic therapy techniques were happening in the west, such as r.d.laing's theory that schizophrenia is not something to be fought, but something to be experienced voluntarily. Laing has said that you cannot be sane until you have been non-sane or insane. Then there is wilhelm reich's use of sexual energy to release body blocks that coincide with neurosis; this technique was the inspiration for the therapy which is called bio-energetics, a

Ordinarily, it may look very difficult to be non-neurotic in a neurotic world. It is difficult in a way. If you get too serious, it is very difficult. If you start fighting with insane men and you start fighting with everything they have created, it will be difficult. But you can fight only if you are still insane. Otherwise you will laugh; there is no need to fight. There is no need to fight! You will laugh! Then you will act. A wise man is an actor; he is not serious because there is no need to be serious. You know that all around you are madmen, so there is no need to be serious with them. You can act, and only if you act can you help them. There is a proposal of R.D.Laing's that doctors in asylums for the mad should not be there as doctors but as…