Is it possible to grow and flower in a harsh environment?

Beloved Osho, being near you, I feel utterly at home, as if in the right soil. In the west, I worried: "how to be near Osho sooner?" and often found it impossible to be meditative. Osho, is it really possible to grow and flower in the harsh environment of the west?

Prem Chhando, it is certainly difficult in the harsh environment of the West to grow into meditation. But it is not impossible. It is certainly arduous, because the whole surrounding is against meditation. Everything is mind-oriented and meditation is a state of no-mind. The whole education, the culture, the society, the people, they are all believers that there is nothing beyond mind. Mind is their whole world. And meditation simply denies mind and wants to go beyond it. So I can understand, it is difficult. But even in the West you can find silent moments when society cannot interfere. In your own room, in the middle of the night, when everybody has fallen asleep, when the noises of city life have disappeared, you can find the East just in your bedroom. When you have some time, weekends, holidays, you can move to some solitary place, you can go to a…

Look for the flower to bloom in the silence that follows the storm: not till then.

But what do we do? We move in an infinite regression We yet depressed. Then we yet depressed because of the depression: a second depression follows. If you are depressed. that's okay! -- nothing is wrong in it. It is beautiful because through it you will learn and mature. But then you feel badly. "Why do I get depressed? I should not get depressed." Then you start fighting with the depression. The first depression is good, but the second depression is unreal. And this unreal depression will cloud your mind. You will miss the moment that would have followed the real depression. When depressed, be depressed. Simply be depressed. Don't get depressed about your depression. When depressed, simply be depressed. Don't fight it, don't create any diversion, don't force it to go. Just allow it to happen; it will go by itself. Life is a flux; nothing remains the same.…

Osho, sitting fretfully, squirming endlessly, does the spring still come and the grass grow by itself?

THE SPRING still comes. It does not depend whether you are sitting silently or fretfully, whether you are sitting or not sitting at all. It does not depend on you; it comes on its own accord. And the grass goes on growing, but if you are not sitting silently you will miss it. It will come, but you will not be able to feel it. It will come, but you will not be able to experience it. The grass will grow, but you will not grow. The sun rises, the night disappears, but the light is only for those who have eyes and only for those who open their eyes: otherwise you will remain in darkness. The sun will be there, the light will be there, but you will not be bathed in its light; you will remain the same. The whole question is whether you are closed or open.…

Osho, in your discourses you strike us hard with one hand, and with the other you give out flowers and fragrance—no, you lavish them! Do you not find it difficult to move through both at once?

A robust seed, a well-prepared field, companions gathered— that is why I put great emphasis on your cultivating both meditation and love. Meditation means: learn to be alone. Love means: create sweetness within relationships. Do not end up only alone, or you will dry up; something very precious in you will die. Something precious dies in the sannyasin who runs off to the forest. Something precious also dies in the person who lives only in the crowd. Both are incomplete. The person who lives in the crowd loses the address of his own home; he cannot return to the temple of his own mind; he gets lost in the crowd and forgets who he is. The one who goes into solitude begins to remember himself, but forgets the other; and without the remembrance of the other, the ego becomes very strong. In one who lives in solitude, the ego becomes…

Osho, until now there have been two kinds of seekers. Those who went on the inner journey minimized their relationship with the outer world. Those who set out on conquests in the outer world had no awareness of the inner. You have given us a new dimension of living—that we must complete our journey in both directions. But the sprouts of silence and peace that arise from meditation and satsang get crushed in the external hustle and bustle. And the morbidity and politics we become habituated to in the struggles outside turn into chains on the inner journey. Master, please bless us with the compa

Psychology says: become like Narcissus and you become deranged, ill. And your prevalent approach to the inner journey has been Narcissus-like—close yourself in; you are everything; nothing exists outside you. Close all doors and windows—let no sun, no breeze enter, no moonlight, no starlight; let no sound be heard outside—close the ears, shut the eyes! There are stories of saints gouging out their eyes lest they be attracted by forms, piercing their ears lest music affect them. These are symptoms of derangement. The natural result was that very few people became interested in such a religion—only those slightly unbalanced found a rationale for their imbalance, because madness began to look spiritual. This may surprise you, but remember: in Western countries, where religion’s influence has waned, more people become insane. This gives Indian egotists an opening: “See, although we are poor, lacking science, technology, money, food, jobs, clothes, roofs; diseases, famines,…