According to Osho, a negative mood develops alongside sensitivity because life moves in polarities: the capacity for joy, love and compassion inevitably grows with the capacity for sorrow, hate and anger. They are one energy—'lovehate'—two poles of the same current. Instead of suppressing the negative, let expanded love/compassion absorb and transfigure it, creating harmony rather than phoney positivity.
When you become more sensitive and open, you feel both happiness and hurt more because they’re two sides of one coin, so let your love hold the hurt instead of fighting it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, meditation increases sensitivity. But as sensitivity grows, living seems to become more difficult—because the mind’s reactions become sharp and intense, and it feels as if one’s whole life is at stake at every small turn. In such a state, how can one find and hold the point of balance?
Certainly: as meditation deepens, sensitivity will also deepen. And with heightened sensitivity, problems grow too. Sensitivity means you will experience everything—every event—in its full velocity, with full intensity. If someone insults you, the way that hurt reverberates inside a meditator will not be the same for a non-meditator. If a thorn pricks, the meditator’s awareness of that sting will be much clearer than that of the non-meditator—because the non-meditator lives in a kind of stupor, a haze of unawareness. The duller the awareness, the less the pain is consciously felt. Perhaps that is exactly why we reduce our awareness—so we can feel less pain. Ask a psychologist and he will say: every child learns early how to numb their awareness. All children are born sensitive. Then they begin to kill their sensitivity—because living with raw sensitivity is very difficult. A certain blunting of feeling becomes “necessary.” That is why, at…
Osho, in the West today all the sensitive existentialist thinkers seem to be pessimists. Does sensitivity bring only suffering? Is there anything beyond sensitivity that frees one from both pleasure and pain? Please explain.
There is a reason. In the West, suffering has decreased. This will sound strange, even contradictory, but listen: outer, visible suffering has decreased. Streets are clean. People do not beg. There is little visible poverty. Children’s bellies are not swollen from hunger and malnutrition. People are beautiful, bodies healthy, lives longer. Outwardly a certain affluence has arrived. As the outer structure of life has been raised, the Westerner can afford to let his armor loosen a little; there is less to be defended against outside. And because there is less pain outside, the need to be numb lessens—so more pain becomes visible! Sensitivity returns, and with it the perception of suffering. In the East suffering is so overwhelming that if you became sensitive you would die, you would commit suicide. You couldn’t even make it from home to the market; you would hang yourself from a tree on the way.…
... That can be an even bigger problem. If you feel unhappy, it is easier to feel happy, but if you are not feeling unhappy, it will be more difficult. This will create a sort of numbness. Unhappiness is a very passionate thing -- at least one is feeling something. It is easy to move from hell to heaven, because one gets fed up with hell. One wants to get away, to get out. But if you are not feeling unhappy there can be more trouble, because then there is no motivation to go beyond it. One simply feels alive, so so, lukewarm... one can carry on. Then one starts living like a zombie. Whatsoever happens is okay. If nothing happens, that too is okay. Then one simply loses contact with life.
[The Aum marathon group are present. The group works on negativity. Recently Osho suggested it was followed by a positivity group. The groupleader, Veeresh, said that people were not totally responsive, and that he himself was becoming insensitive.] A few things.... Firstly, whenever you are working on people's negativity, with their negative emotions, their negative, darker side, moving through a deep negative catharsis, they will swing towards the positive automatically. So when a person becomes really angry, where can he go? A moment comes, a climax comes when he has to come back from anger. And then compassion arises... he relaxes. Tension brings relaxation. It is always the opposite that comes up, always. That's why all the groups in the West insist on being negative. Because through the negative, the positive comes up.
Beloved Osho, during catharsis I express only negative emotions, anger, jealousy, anguish, etcetera. Why do I not express love, devotion, bliss and religious emotions? Do I not possess them?
They are in you but they are a little deeper. When a well is dug, first of all it is stones, pebbles and mud which come out and not the water. It depends on the land also. Somewhere the water is at thirty feet and somewhere the water is at sixty feet deep. Water is certainly there. Every land has water underneath it but the difference is of depth. A simple-minded person will get the water soon -- maybe at two, three or ten feet, and if a complicated person digs then he may get it at fifty or sixty feet. An innocent-minded person will get it quickly, but a violent, angry man will take a long time to reach the water level. The difference is in the layers of the land. Water is underneath all land. The soul is there in everyone, godliness is there in everyone -- the…