Is our conditioning that difficult to drop?

Osho, right now, here, I could drink you, share in your buddhahood, but I don't. Day after day, I don't. Beloved Osho, is our conditioning that difficult to drop?

THE MOST DIFFICULT THING IN LIFE IS TO DROP THE past -- because to drop the past means to drop the whole identity, to drop the whole personality. It is to drop yourself. You are nothing but your past, you are nothing but your conditionings. It is not like dropping clothes -- it is as if one's skin is being peeled off. Your past is all that you know you are. Dropping is difficult, arduous -- the most difficult thing in life. But those who can dare to drop it, only they live. Others simply pretend to live, others simply go on dragging themselves somehow. They don't have any vitality -- they can't have. They live at the minimum. And to live at the minimum is to miss the whole thing. It is only when you live at the optimum of your potential that blossoming happens. It is only at…

There are social needs and there are existential needs that are to be fulfilled. I will not say, "Do not condition children." If you leave them totally unconditioned, they will be barbaric. They will not be able to exist. Survival needs conditioning but survival is not the end, so you must be able to put your conditioning on and take it off--just like clothes. You can put them on, go out and do your business, and then come home and take them off. Then you are. If you are not identified with your clothes, with your conditioning, if you do not say, for example, "I am my mind," it is not difficult; then you can change easily. But you become identified with your conditioning. You say, "My conditioning is me," and all that is not your conditioning is denied.

But Osho, as I understand it, there are certain subjects like chemistry, physics, or medicine where positive values are essential. What are your views about that?

Einstein was doing an experiment. He had failed seven hundred times, yet every morning he came into the laboratory laughing, ready to begin again. The young assistant with him was exhausted. “Is this old man mad? Seven hundred failures—and again he starts fresh!” The youth was tired; he said, “We should drop this now. How many times have we been defeated?” Einstein said, “Defeated? You’re crazy—each time we have won.” “Where have we won? Every experiment has failed.” Einstein answered, “In seven hundred directions we have searched, and we now know truth is not there. We have succeeded seven hundred times. Truth is being endlessly eliminated into nearness. Suppose truth will reveal itself on the seven hundred and fifteenth attempt; then fourteen more eliminations are needed. Then only that will remain; it cannot escape. Where will it go? We have searched seven hundred paths and found it absent. That much…

Osho, I have a question: Humanity has been conditioned for centuries—how can it free itself from this past? And what kind of measures do you suggest for creating a new education that gives understanding so that people at large can grasp the purpose of life?

Once the thought arises that it is possible, a man turns back and comes out. The difficulty is only this: we keep living in the very delusion that is the cause of our suffering, and we make it the basis of our search for happiness. And that very shoe has a nail that is piercing us, wounding the foot. We keep wearing that shoe because we think, “How will we walk without it?”—and the shoe itself will not let us walk. Its nail is taking our very life. Yet we imagine that without shoes the feet will be unsafe. So we go on wearing the shoe with the nail. It is only a matter of giving this simple reminder. Therefore my work is not the work of a guru. Nor is it the work of a preacher, because I do not want to give a new belief or a new…

Beloved Osho, for years I have been a "groupie" searching for ways to understand myself. I have been in such misery that almost nothing asked of me was too much if it held a chance of alleviating my distress. Now you offer meditation as a means for leaving my misery behind, and all I do is resist. The thought of being still and quiet doesn't excite me. In fact it scares me, and I end up even more anxious. I don't understand this. Could you please explain this resistance to meditation?

In India if you take a bath once a year you alone will be enough to stink up the whole neighborhood -- so much perspiration, so much dust. And those lamas are still using many clothes, layer upon layer, I think seven layers at least. And they suffer from the heat, but the mind... they feel something is wrong, but the mind has gone so deep. For centuries they have lived that way. I told them, "If you want to talk to me you have to be at least ten feet away. Don't come near me because I am allergic to any kind of smell -- it may be Buddhist, it does not matter." In India it is very usual to take two baths, one in the morning, one in the evening. And those who have time, people like me... I used to take three -- one in the morning,…