If you drop these suddenly because others say they’re bad, you just push them down without really seeing them, and that inside fight makes you feel ill.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
According to last night's technique, when anger, violence, sex, etc., arises, one should consider it and then suddenly quit it. But when one does it, one sometimes feels sick and uneasy. What are the reasons for these negative feelings?
Only one reason: your consideration is not total. Everyone wants to quit anger without understanding it; everyone wants to quit sex without understanding it. And there is no revolution without understanding. You will create more problems and you will create more misery for yourself. Do not think of renouncing anything, just think of how to understand it: understanding, not renunciation. There is no need of thinking to quit anything. The only need is to understand it in its totality. If you have understood it in its totality, the transformation will follow. If it is good for you, if it is good for your being, it will grow. If it is bad for you, it will drop. So the real thing is not quitting, it is understanding. Why do you think about renouncing anger? Why? Because you have been taught that anger is bad. But have YOU understood it as bad?…
Osho, yesterday you described the cathartic practice of pillow‑beating to release anger. In the same way, what practices should be done for the cessation of lust, greed, attachment, and ego? Please shed some light on these.
The friend I mentioned yesterday—today his companion told me he actually pulled out a knife and ripped the pillow to shreds. I hadn’t even suggested that! It makes us laugh: how can someone stab a pillow? But when we can rip a living person apart, we don’t laugh—so what’s the difficulty in slicing a pillow? When someone tears a living person, the “juice” is in the tearing itself; the person is incidental. That same juice can arise with a pillow. In fact, more so—because with a pillow you need impose no limits at all. So shut yourself in your room, and when your root “disease” wants to show itself, let it show. Consider this meditation. Let it come out in every pore of your being. Shout, jump, do whatever is happening—let it happen. And watch from behind—you will even feel like laughing. You will be surprised: “I can do this?”…
Osho, we find that our tendencies are stronger than our understanding. When watched with awareness, the waves of hatred, jealousy, anger—all these tendencies—seem to rise from the navel center. The witnessing and the rising of the wave happen together. Please tell us why these waves arise from the navel center. Is the unconscious related to the navel center? And is there a large accumulation of these tendencies in the unconscious, or are they produced moment to moment?
The stream of consciousness itself is not divided. The split into conscious and unconscious exists because of repression. First understand this well. A child is born with consciousness one and undivided. There is neither a conscious mind nor an unconscious mind—no such two parts. But soon the division starts, because we teach the child what is right and what is wrong; what is auspicious and what is inauspicious; what to do and what not to do. And all that we brand as “don’t,” “bad”—what will the child do with it? Calling something bad does not destroy it. We say anger is bad. The child hears and understands—but anger doesn’t vanish just because we label it bad, because anger is natural. The child has not learned anger; he is born with it, just as he is born with a body, with eyes and hands. And existence uses anger: anger is energy.…
Beloved Osho, our impulses seem to be stronger than our understanding. When we look with awareness at our own feelings of hatred, jealousy and anger, they seem to be arising from the navel center. The witnessing and rising up of the waves happens simultaneously. Please, tell us why these waves arise from the navel center? Is our unconscious related to the navel center and is there a great store of these impulses in our unconscious, or are they created moment-to-moment?
So in the name of spirituality there are two possibilities available: either withdraw the fuel supply so that there is no fear of the steam being created, or go on adding weights on the kettle lid so that there is no fear that it will blow off. In one case the result is a dull person who is dead before he has died, and in the other a person doomed to go mad when the explosion finally happens. Those whom we call monks follow one or the other of these two paths of sickness. But look at Buddha or Mahavira; they look neither sick nor insane. It is rare to find a body as beautiful as Mahavira's. His every cell is the incarnation of dance and bliss. Looking at an image of Mahavira it is hard to imagine that we could ever find a more beautiful body. But just look…
No, Osho, what happens is that our mind is in one of two states. Either I feel I will be able to solve it, or I’m afraid that I won’t be able to solve it...
Because of that ignorance, we create many problems we don’t even suspect. For instance, in India almost everyone assumes that the sexual act is devastating. Physiologically that is absolutely wrong—completely wrong. In fact, sexual inactivity is devastating. Activity is not devastating. And it is also interesting that anyone who thinks he can go to extremes in sexual activity is mistaken. The body has checks. You cannot go to extremes; there are bodily checks. Nature has arranged it so you cannot expend surplus force beyond what the body allows. But one can misuse it, right? Even misuse is not possible—if you use full understanding. As far as sex has been understood, misuse is not possible. Misuse is impossible. Then not just sex—by that argument you can’t misuse anything! If we extend that very argument, you can’t misuse anything! No, no—you can misuse many things. Why not sex? Because the entire arrangement…