According to Osho, rationalization is pseudo-reasoning: clever, convenient explanations that disguise your real motives and emotions, protecting the ego while misdirecting blame. It turns anger and fear into justified stories, keeping you unconscious. Drop these pretenses, acknowledge the raw feeling—'I am angry'—and act with awareness; only then can honesty and religiousness (wakefulness) begin.
Rationalization is making smart-sounding excuses to hide what you really feel or why you really did something.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is rationalisation?
Rationalisation is a pseudo reasoning -- it looks like reason, but is not. In life you use it every day. You come from the office angry, the boss was nasty but you could not be angry there; there you had to smile. He was shouting at you, screaming at you, and you were smiling; you were as soft as butter, you swallowed anger. You wanted to kill the man then and there, but that is not economical and can lead you into danger. So now you come back home, now you start searching in a very unconscious way to find some excuse so that you can throw out your anger. And your small child comes dancing and singing, and you are angry, and you say 'Not a single moment's peace! Stop! The whole day I have been tired and I come home and there is no peace even here.' And…
Osho, what is rationalization? I am asking this question because my husband is a professor of philosophy and whatsoever I say he almost always says it is nothing but a rationalization.
Malti, sometimes you may be rationalizing -- watch it. But my own experience of women is that they are not great rationalizers -- men are bigger rationalizers, because women live more intuitively, more instinctively, and man lives more through the head, through reason. Women don't bother much about logic. Their behaviour is more or less illogical -- instinctive, spontaneous. They don't try to masquerade it in a logical way; they simply jump from one point to another without bothering about the Aristotelian process of logic. They simply jump! Their leaps are quantum, from one point to another. You cannot see what the bridge is, how they manage to get from one point to another. Their ways are totally different from men's. Malti, more possibility is that your husband is rationalizing, that this is his way of putting you down. He uses philosophical jargon: rationalization. And, of course, you become afraid…
My wife is very much against reason. She calls all reasoning 'rationalization'. What is reasoning? And what is rationalization?
How stupid -- stupid of both, but it can lead to, it can trigger, a great argument. And then they start bringing great things into it, and all their differences immediately surface. They are at daggers drawn. They have made a mountain out of a molehill. And they go on condemning each other: "You are wrong -- all your reasoning is just a rationalization." And I am not saying that all your reasoning is reasoning -- ninety-nine percent it is rationalization. end I am not saying that all the emotions of the women ARE emotions -- ninety-nine percent they are sentimentalities. Mind is very tricky -- both, male or female. Mind is very cunning . A man of fifty married a woman of thirty. The marriage caused quite a bit of talk in their circles. Once, when someone asked the newly married man about the great difference in age, he…
Question: THE SUFI MASTER, AJNABI SAID, 'WRITE TO MULLA FIROZ AND TELL HIM THAT I HAVE NO TIME TO ENGAGE HIM IN CORRESPONDENCE, AND THEREFORE HAVE NOTHING TO SAY TO HIS LETTER.' THE DISCIPLE, AMINI, SAID, 'IS IT YOUR INTENTION TO ANNOY HIM WITH THIS LETTER?' AJNABI SAID, 'HE HAS BEEN ANNOYED BY SOME OF MY WRITINGS. THIS ANNOYANCE HAS CAUSED HIM TO WRITE TO ME. MY PURPOSE IN WRITING THE PASSAGE WHICH ANGERS HIM WAS TO ANGER SUCH AS HE.' AMINI SAID, 'AND THIS LETTER WILL ANGER HIM FURTHER?' AJNABI SAID, 'YES. WHEN HE WAS ENRAGED AT WHAT I WROTE, HE DID NOT OBSERVE HIS OWN ANGER, WHICH WAS MY INTENTION. HE THOUGHT THAT HE WAS OBSERVING ME, WHEREAS HE WAS ONLY FEELING ANGRY. NOW I WRITE AGAIN, TO AROUSE HIS ANGER, SO THAT HE WILL SEE THAT HE IS ANGRY.
Why do you insist so much on the irrational? What is wrong with the rational?
That's why renunciates become afraid of the world -- they don't come there, they cling to their cave. This is escapism. And this is not God, that you can find only in the caves. God is everywhere. Only God is: he has to be everywhere. Even in the marketplace he is as throbbing-alive as in the Himalayas. In the Himalayas he is silent, in the marketplace he is noisy -- but he is everywhere. When you are sitting unmoving he is unmoving, and when you are running he is running -- but he is there. So the answer is rational, but not whole; reason cannot answer for the whole. Reason divides, reason analyzes, reason dissects -- it has dissected even God. God cannot be dissected. Even while you are ignorant, God is in you. He is your ignorance -- who else can be? And when you know, he is your…