According to Osho, when present experiences touch old wounds, the repressed pain uncoils and hurts; yet this surfacing is medicinal. If exposed to the sun and wind of awareness, love, and trust, the wound heals; if protected by ego and consolation, it festers into ‘psychological cancer.’ A true guide may cut or strike—sometimes hard—not to injure, but to remove the crust and enable real transformation.
Old hurts can sting when poked, but letting them breathe with honesty and care helps them heal instead of getting worse.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
12. Whether fulfilled in the present or the future, karmic experiences have their roots in the five afflictions. 13. As long as the roots remain, karma is fulfilled in rebirth through class, span of life, and types of experiences.
14. VIRTUE BRINGS PLEASURE; VICE BRINGS PAIN. That is the whole method of prati-prasav: how to move from the effect to the cause, how to go backwards and find the cause, from where it is coming up. Whatsoever happens to you -- you feel sad, just close your eyes and watch your sadness. Follow where it leads, go deeper into it. Soon you will come to the cause. Maybe you will have to travel long, because this whole life is involved; and not only this life, but many other lives are involved. You will find many wounds in you which hurt, and because of those wounds you feel sad; they are sad. Those wounds have not gone dry yet; they are alive. The method of prati-prasav, the method of going back to the source, from the effect to the cause, will heal them. How does it heal? Why does it…
[A sannyasin, who is returning to the West, says he is feeling emotionally exhausted since he completed the primal group two months ago: I feel there's just big wounds inside me, and I'm just a bit afraid that they won't heal when I go back to the west. I feel very vulnerable.] Wounds heal only when they are open -- wounds never heal when they are protected, defended. It is painful; to have an open wound but that's the only way it heals. So don't try to close it again. Remain vulnerable, mm? -- let the wind and the sun rays touch it, play with it. Yes, many times it will hurt, but remember only one thing: this time let it hurt but don't create a wall to protect it. Those walls ultimately become our imprisonment. First we create them so that we are not hurt.
Osho, the arrows you let fly from behind the shelter of Baba Maluk, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira and Christ have wounded me. When will the balm and bandage be applied to the wounded?
This alone is the meaning of a true Master: he makes you hear of the other shore. You may resist hearing, yet he keeps telling it. And one day a dream is stirred within you; you begin to dream of that far shore. This shore starts to seem futile. When there appears no substance here, then the trouble begins. On this shore nothing seems substantial; life here no longer feels meaningful. There is no relish now in earning money. No purpose now in the race for position. Even relationships look like children’s toys—wife, husband, sons, daughters. Now it is a big difficulty. Until now you managed to distract yourself with your toys; now you see they are toys. The real is across. Long were you bewitched by the counterfeit here. But now how...? Between lies a vast ocean. The real is over there and between is a great sea. To…
Osho, you have earlier said, “Live moment to moment, live in the present.” Now you are saying, “Return to the past.” What should we do?
So it is with the mind—there are ruts. The past means endless grooves. However much you understand, your intellect agrees, you make decisions, you resolve—at the moment of resolve you feel something is going to change. But not even an hour passes before your decision breaks. Then only self-condemnation is produced, nothing else. Your saints, your fakirs, your priests and pundits—most of the time they only succeed in producing self-condemnation in you, nothing else. Their words are logically correct. You cannot even say they are wrong; you have to admit they are right. In that admission you take a decision. But against what are you deciding? Inside are grooves carved since who knows when, deep tracks. Walking in them has become a habit. It is easy to walk in them. They will pull you again and again. The meaning of returning into the past is: these grooves must be erased.…
Is there any pain worse than this? You have touched my secret: all my sources are poisoned and yet I manage to go on living and it is not possible -- that is what I want to hide from everyone. You put the finger on my deepest wounds, and make me scream out in pain and then you lead me to the only life-giving source -- acceptance.
Neerjo, ecstasy is only out of agony -- and the deeper the agony, the deeper the ecstasy will be; total the agony, total will be the ecstasy. Everything has to be paid for. For ecstasy, we have to pay in agony. One has to go through deep pain to get rid of pain. Pain is cleansing. Pain is a fire; it burns the rubbish in you, it destroys the unessential. Just as we purify gold through fire, consciousness is purified through pain. Pain has something to deliver to you. Don't avoid pain! If you avoid pain, you are avoiding pleasure. Don't avoid the world! If you avoid the world, you have avoided God. Don't avoid darkness. If you avoid darkness, dawn will never come. It is out of the dark night that the morning is born. And when the night is darkest, the sunrise is closest. Remember this fundamental law…