Feeling good is natural; the guilt that follows is just learned voices—see it, ignore it, and allow yourself to enjoy.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, it seems that whenever I have experienced a feeling of well-being inside, it is always followed by a wave of self-condemnation. And the deeper and more intense the laughter and celebration becomes, the deeper and more intense the condemnation that follows in its wake. I feel as if I am being strangled by it. Will there ever be a point when it will disappear or will it remain a shadow of my enjoyment?
To console the poor... and the poor have always been in the majority, they are the real clients of all religions. The religions have to console them, and they found out -- all the religions of the world -- the same consolation, after death.... The trouble is that nature is too powerful; conditionings cannot destroy it completely, they can only poison it. And this, Surabhi, is what you are suffering: poisoning by conditioning. Whenever you feel a certain well-being it is followed by a wave of self-condemnation. What is wrong in feeling well-being? You are not harming anybody. Well-being is not something quantitative that you have taken, so others cannot feel it. You have not deprived anybody. In fact, by your well-being you may trigger other people's well-being. To be with a man who is full of well-being, radiates a certain joy which is contagious. Why should you feel self-condemnation?…
Why does religion create so much guilt?
Religion does not create guilt -- if it creates guilt it is not religion. Yes, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, they create guilt. Let that be your definition of religion: if it creates guilt it is not a religion. It is something else pretending, something else garbed as religion, posing as religion -- but it is not religion. Religion creates celebration, not guilt. These are hidden things which don't want to expose themselves. These so-called religions are more political than religious. Their whole idea, desire, ambition, is how to dominate people, how to control people. And naturally, guilt is one of the best mechanisms ever evolved to control people, to dominate people. Make them feel guilty! Once they start feeling guilty they are in your control. All dictators do that, all politicians do that. And your priest is just a politician behind the mask. The popes, the SHANKARACHARYAS, are all politicians;…
Why is it that 'going with the flow' makes me feel guilty? Please talk about guilt . It is the guilt factor that makes floating so unattractive.
The child wants to enjoy everything, and the parents are guilt-ridden. The child wants to shout and he enjoys shouting; that is his expression, that is his creativity. That shout, if helped and not destroyed, will become his song -- that is the beginning of the song. But we stop him. We say, "Don't shout! This is ugly, this is bad, this is unmannerly. This is not done in the society. You belong to a famous family, you belong to a great, respectable family -- you should not do this. This is okay for the urchins, but not for you. You represent us: look how serious we are. We never shout -- and you are shouting?" And the child was enjoying the shouting so much. In fact, when you stop him shouting you have condemned his joy -- that's what he will understand deep down, existentially. What will happen to…
Since returning to poona and listening to your discourses, I have been experiencing a certain amount of disquiet. I learn that my ego does not really exist. My greater disquiet now is about my superego, presumably nonexistent also, who has been keeping a watchful eye for many years on an ego which is not there; in my dilemma I recall some lines from an anonymous poet. These run something like this:. As I was walking up the stair I passed a man who was not there. He did not come again today. I really wish he'd go away.
THE ego is the greatest dilemma, and it has to be understood. Otherwise you can go on and on ad infinitum creating a new ego fighting with the old. What exactly is the ego? It is topdogging yourself. It is creating a division in yourself -- the division of the topdog and the underdog, the division of the superior and the inferior, the division of the saint and the sinner, the division of good and bad the division, basically, of God and devil. And you go on getting identified with the beautiful, with the hither, with the superior: and you go on condemning the lower. If this division exists, then whatsoever you do there is an ego: you can drop it, and by dropping it you can create a superego. Then by and by the superego will start creating trouble for you, because all division is misery. Nondivision is bliss:…
Question: BELOVED OSHO, HOW COME EVERYTHING IS GOING SO WELL? Why could a man of the intelligence of Croce not see a simple thing -- that beauty has to be felt, not thought about? You have to see it, you have to experience it. You are capable of creating it. But it is such a mystery that it is beyond explanation. You cannot confine it in a definition. But his whole lifelong effort shows only one thing: the poor man never experienced even a single moment of beauty; otherwise, his whole questioning would have changed. He would rather have devoted his life to creating beauty, to experiencing beauty, to rejoicing with the stars and with the moon and with the flowers and with the birds. But he wasted his whole life. And to what conclusion did he come in the end? -- that beauty is indefinable.