According to Osho, modern man’s greatest difficulty is a double bind: all ancient inner problems persist—magnified by repression and hypocrisy—while a new calamity has arisen: we live cut off from nature in an ever-expanding artificial world. Severed from the living, we lose the first doorway to the divine, inflate ego, and become divided and deranged.
We kept our old inner mess and then built a fake world that cuts us off from nature, so we feel split, ego-full, and far from life and God.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is the definition of God?
Words are very small. If you say God is light, then what of darkness? The scriptures have said that God is light. Suppose we accept this as a definition—then what about darkness? Where will darkness go? Darkness is too; in fact it is far more than light. Light sometimes is and sometimes is not; darkness is always, eternal. Where will you place darkness? If you say God is light, darkness is left out. If you say God is darkness, then light is left out. If you say God is both darkness and light, a contradiction arises: they cannot be together. Try to have both darkness and light in the same room. If you bring in light, darkness disappears; if you preserve darkness, you cannot have light. Then how can both be together? That becomes an impossibility. So you cannot say “both” either. Then the fourth device is to say: it…
Question: OSHO, WHAT IS THE GREATEST PROBLEM IN THE WORLD? THE greatest problem or the smallest problem, it is the same: man. And when I say man, I do not mean something abstract. I mean I, you, he, she. There exists no man as such, separate from human beings. There exists no humanity; it is only a name. The reality is the individual. And the problem arises because the reality has not been accepted. The real has been denied expression; and the unreal, the abstract, has been imposed upon it. You have been told continuously, "Live for humanity." Where is humanity? Have you ever come across humanity? Do you think you are ever going to have an encounter with humanity? It is just like all those big, bombastic, bogus words: God, motherland, fatherland, Holy Ghost. They don't exist, they are only projected. "Live for humanity" means don't live for yourself.
Why is modern man so neurotic?
Adolf Hitler shouted from the housetops. He was not whispering. He gave slogans -- clear-cut, well-defined. All that he gave is nonsense, but that is not the point. People are not worried about sense or nonsense, their whole thing is they want somebody who can shout so confidently that they can follow easily without any turmoil in their being. They followed Adolf Hider. It happens again and again in the history of man, intelligent people follow very unintelligent leaders. And this has been a problem for psychoanalysts: why does it happen? Now, just look at India -- a country which has cultivated intelligence for at least ten thousand years, and now following a man like Morarji Desai. This seems just unbelievable. Why should it happen? There is a reason for it. People who think, the MORE they think, the more they become hesitant. They start talking in ifs and buts;…
Beloved Osho, who is the modern man? Have science and technology corrupted the modern man?
The modern man has not yet come into existence. The people in the world are all very old and very ancient. It is rare to come across a contemporary. Somebody belongs to a religion founded ten thousand years ago, somebody belongs to a religion two thousand years old -- these people are not contemporary. They are living in modern times, but they are not modern. And this has created a tremendous problem: technology, scientific progress needs the modern man to use it, and the modern man is not available. Technology is available, science is available, but the people who can use it creatively are non-existent. The result is disastrous, because to these people who are not contemporaries, science has given technological instruments, machines, which are dangerous. It is like putting a sword in the hands of a child: he is going to hurt somebody, or himself; he is not a…
How would patanjali work with the incredible neurosis of the modern mind?
Just like me! What I am doing here? fighting with your neurosis. The ego is the source of all neurosis, because the ego is the center of all falsity, of all perversions. The whole problem is with the ego. If you live with the ego, sooner or later you will become neurotic. You will have to become, because ego is the basic neurosis. Ego says, "I am the center of the world," which is false, mad. Only if there is a God, he can say "I". We are only parts, we cannot say "I". The very assertion "I", is neurotic. Drop the I and all neurosis disappears. In between you and the mad people in the madhouses there is not vast difference -- only a difference of degrees, not of any quality, quantity. You may be ninety-eight degrees, and they have gone beyond hundred. You can go any time; the…