Is there a form of training that supports our true nature without covering it?

One friend has asked: our education, our culture, our tradition, become a covering over our nature. Is there no training which does not cover our nature but can become a help to our nature?

Education means that which is given from without, that which is given by someone else. Impressions are that which have been given by others. Therefore all education, all impressions, become a covering on one's nature in an intrinsic way. The only thing that can be possible is that some coverings are complex, more solid, and some are less. Some are hard like iron, others are like the air. But they are coverings all right. Understand this well. Education is necessary for the world. If you have to live in the world, run after desires, be ambitious, then you must be active; then education is necessary. Education, teaches you how to be active. The more educated a person, the more active he is and the more successful in the world. The less educated a person, the less active he is. Education is the technology of activity. But to go within one's…

A friend has asked: Osho, all our education, civilization, and culture become coverings over our nature. Then is it not possible to have an education that does not become a covering on our nature, but instead becomes a companion in its revelation?

The very meaning of education is: that which is given from the outside, given by someone else. The meaning of conditioning is: that which is implanted from the outside, put in by someone. So, in a deeper sense, all education and all conditioning will become coverings over nature. Only this much can happen: some coverings may be very complex, some less complex. Only this much can happen: some coverings may be of iron, some may be coverings of air. Coverings there will be. Understand this well. Education is necessary for the world. If one is to live in the world, move in the world, run after desires, be active, then education is necessary. Education is the arrangement for activity. Therefore, the more educated a person is, the more successful he appears in the world of activity. The less educated, the more the doors of activity close. Education is the technology…

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…

Osho, Desmond Morris calls modern humans “the naked ape.” In your meditation experiments you also say to meditators: let whatever happens, happen. Many laugh, cry, become naked. Would you call this state regression or not? And secondly, how do you hold that such natural behavior does not harm the person?

I say to you: when the inner event happens, then become naked. Naked means: the moment comes when you want to know yourself as you are, and you want others to know you as you are—no longer desiring otherwise. Then you have taken the greatest step toward truth. First you must know your nakedness completely—of body, of mind, in the deepest depths. Only then will you attain the explosion where the Ultimate is revealed. But before that, reveal yourself to yourself. Then all your images, imposed and maintained for the sake of others’ opinions, will fall away. When someone puts powder on the face, it is never for oneself, it is for someone else. Therefore as the person changes, the powder changes. If there is no one to impress, one can do without it; if there is, one cannot do without it. All that you do with your body you…

Beloved Osho, you seem to be fulfilling two roles: an outer one in which you provoke and expose the structure of our society, and a more intimate one in which you encourage your disciples towards the ultimate.

But I would not have been of any help to anybody, because who is going to destroy all that rubbish? And the rubbish has to be destroyed first, it is blocking the way. It is your whole conditioning. You have been programmed from your very childhood with absolute lies, but they have been repeated so often that you have forgotten that they are lies. That's the whole secret of advertisement: just go on repeating. On the radio, on the television, in the films, in the newspapers, on the walls, everywhere, go on repeating. In the old days it was thought that wherever there is a demand the supply happens on its own accord. Now, that is not the rule. The rule is, if you have something to supply, create the demand. Go on hammering in people's minds certain words so that they forget completely that they have been listening to…