Even if you wake up, old habits and culture can still shape your words; drop them through healing and meditation so your inner light speaks clearly.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
But Osho, as I understand, communication means direct communication. As I see it, that is a very difficult problem, because human beings have been conditioned, as you said, for millions of years. That is, a person carries all those impressions, and whatever he communicates will also be the imprints of the past. How should we see through our conditioning so that we can have direct communication?
Understand it this way: what has been conditioned is the mind. What is conditioned is the mind; in fact, mind means the total conditioning. But behind the mind there is an awareness, a consciousness that cannot be conditioned—it is impossible to condition it. It is necessary to point toward that consciousness. That is why I put such emphasis on meditation. Because I hold that the moment one descends into meditation one goes behind the mind. Meditation means going behind the mind. And the very first time one steps behind the mind—leaving all thoughts, all emotions, all conditionings—at once it becomes clear: I am something entirely different from what I took myself to be—not a Hindu, not a Muslim, not the body. What I thought I was, I am not; I am something else. The deeper this realization goes, the more direct communication becomes possible with that person—because then we are…Read the full discourse →
Osho, this conditioning—it is in everyone. And can we not consider it in this way: the person we speak about—because he is...—therefore we also fully experience truth; someday we try to assimilate it with our own experience. I do not take memory to be merely something accumulated. Memory too is modified from time to time. So the reaction that happens also changes memory. It should change.
Yes, yes.Read the full discourse →
Beloved Osho, is it possible that while sannyasins might be cleaned of society's conditioning, they can adopt certain facets of your teaching as another kind of conditioning -- such as the need to be total, to doubt unless we know something from our own experience, not to be jealous, and so on? Could you explain how your way of working with us is not simply the exchanging of one set of values -- and thus conditionings -- for another?
In the first place, what I am teaching are not new values, not a new set of values in place of old values. For example, there are people who believe in God -- that is one set. There are people who do not believe in God -- that is another set. I am saying to people that there is no question of believing. Changing from one belief to another belief is changing the conditioning, but you remain conditioned. I am saying you have to remain without any belief system, and you yourself enquire into reality -- and whatever you find is your own truth. There is no need to believe in it because once you know it, the question of belief does not arise. You believe only in things which you do not know. When you know them, you know: belief is irrelevant. So I am not giving you another…Read the full discourse →
Osho, yesterday you said that jealousy is included in respect. I have immense respect for you, but the jealousy inherent in it keeps poisoning it, and I feel guilt and pain. Does reverence transcend this poison-laced respect?
It needs a little explaining—it's a delicate point. Whenever you respect someone, you do so because you see in that person something you do not have. You respect because you glimpse in the other something you would also like to possess. A beggar respects an emperor because he, too, longs to be an emperor. So on the one hand he respects, and inside he also envies. Because he is not yet an emperor but wants to be. You have attained what he wants to attain. He respects you as skillful, successful: “I stand far back in the line; you have gone ahead to where I should have been.” So you are powerful, clever, intelligent, strong—he respects you. But inside a fire of jealousy also burns—if he gets the chance, he would like to be in your place and push you aside. And if the beggar gets that chance, he will…Read the full discourse →
Osho, I have a question: Humanity has been conditioned for centuries—how can it free itself from this past? And what kind of measures do you suggest for creating a new education that gives understanding so that people at large can grasp the purpose of life?
Once the thought arises that it is possible, a man turns back and comes out. The difficulty is only this: we keep living in the very delusion that is the cause of our suffering, and we make it the basis of our search for happiness. And that very shoe has a nail that is piercing us, wounding the foot. We keep wearing that shoe because we think, “How will we walk without it?”—and the shoe itself will not let us walk. Its nail is taking our very life. Yet we imagine that without shoes the feet will be unsafe. So we go on wearing the shoe with the nail. It is only a matter of giving this simple reminder. Therefore my work is not the work of a guru. Nor is it the work of a preacher, because I do not want to give a new belief or a new…Read the full discourse →