According to Osho, the world cannot accept you as you are because it exists to preserve the collective, not the individual. From childhood it programs you—through parents, schools, priests and leaders—to be obedient, useful, and identical to approved ideals. True individuality threatens centuries of conditioning and vested interests; accepting a free person (or his message) would require renouncing inherited religions, identities and conformist security.
People want you to fit their rules, so they shape you; being truly yourself scares the crowd because it means their rules might be wrong.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Beloved Osho, why is it so difficult for the world to accept you as you are?
And I asked Jugal Kisore Birla, "If the mother had told Parasurama to cut off the head of the father, what do you think would have been the situation? Would Parasurama still be accepted as an incarnation of God? The god is a man, the father is a man, the son is a man -- this is a man's world; to kill the woman is okay." And this man Parasurama was a brahmin, the highest Hindu caste, and the suspicion was that the mother was having a love affair with a warrior. You cannot find in the whole history of the world such stupidity, that because the mother was suspected... And it was only a suspicion, there was no certainty; the mother was never asked. There was no proof. Not only did he kill his mother, the story is that he killed all the warriors on the earth -- because…
Beloved Osho, since I have been here, one feeling gets stronger and stronger -- the only thing that I really want to do is sit on your lap.
USHA, JUST FAR OUT! But please don t start doing it. I have fifty thousand sannyasins: just think of me too, otherwise I will be killed in a stampede. But the idea is great, just as an idea -- don't practise it. The idea is symbolic: a great love is arising in you. It is good, it has to be so. Unless you are in deep love with me nothing is going to happen. Only through love, the transformation happens. And it is good that you have not projected it on me -- otherwise, that too happens... Just the other day, I read in the latest issue of YOUTH TIMES a statement of an Indian film actress, Pratima Bedi. She says,"Rajneesh is sexy." Now, I really enjoyed it! She came to see me once; she must have been there for four or five minutes in front of me. She says…
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHY AM I SCARED TO ACCEPT MYSELF THE WAY I AM? Kalyan Mitto, everybody is in the same situation. Everybody is scared to accept himself the way he is. This is how all the past centuries of mankind have cultivated, conditioned every child, every human being. The strategy is simple but very dangerous. The strategy is to condemn you and to give you ideals so that you are always trying to become someone else. The Christian is trying to become a Jesus, the Buddhist is trying to become a Buddha, and it seems so clever a device to distract you from yourself that perhaps the people who have been doing it are themselves unaware. What Jesus said on the cross, his last words to humanity, are immensely significant in many ways -- in this context particularly.
For centuries the society has been using that strategy to destroy the integrity of the individual. It gives you ideals, it tells you how you should be. It never allows you to love yourself as you are. It creates division: you are one thing, the society says you have to be something else; you become two. Your ideal self creates a constant tension in you. Your real self also becomes a burden because you don't want it; the society says that it is worthless: Drop it. The real is denied and the unreal is imposed. Now this is the whole misery of man: how can one ever be in bliss if the real is denied, rejected, condemned, and the unreal is appreciated, valued? The unreal remains unreal but it hovers above your head continuously torturing you: You should be this.
Why can't we let one another be? Why can't we just simply accept ourselves and others just the way we are? Why this persistent 'chasing-the-tail game' of trying to be different? -- that is, more open, more aware, more. You have said often that everything is fine, perfect, the way it is.... Isn't it about time we started playing a new game? I'm getting very exhausted by this old one. And life and love and fear and insecurity is so exquisite -- just the way it is. Could there possibly be more?
Once you have heard it -- that means, once it has hit home, once it has reached your heart -- then this question will not arise. Then you will not ask why. Then suddenly you will be able to see and the clarity will happen to you. You will see the whole game is this: you have been taught to improve, to go on. You have been taught to remain discontent. You have been taught that unless you are discontent you will never be progressive. If you are not discontent you will vegetate. Be discontent! Ask for more! And go on asking for more. If you don't ask, nobody's going to give you anything. ISN'T IT ABOUT TIME WE STARTED PLAYING A NEW GAME? But the new game will be the same if there is not a new mind. You can play the new game, that's what you are doing.…