According to Osho, modern man is neurotic because individuality is being born while old collective identities and infallible authorities have collapsed. Neurosis is indecision amid vanished labels and ambiguous meanings. This anxiety signals a revolutionary maturation of consciousness. To avoid paralysis, one needs utter intelligence, silence, and the capacity to step beyond the mind's traps and self-define responsibly.
We’re anxious today because the old labels and leaders no longer tell us who we are, and we must grow up and choose for ourselves.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
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;…
Question: it is an interesting coincidence that your meditation technique of release through intense chaotic breathing evolved at the same time that certain chaotic therapy techniques were happening in the west, such as r.d.laing's theory that schizophrenia is not something to be fought, but something to be experienced voluntarily. Laing has said that you cannot be sane until you have been non-sane or insane. Then there is wilhelm reich's use of sexual energy to release body blocks that coincide with neurosis; this technique was the inspiration for the therapy which is called bio-energetics, a
Ordinarily, it may look very difficult to be non-neurotic in a neurotic world. It is difficult in a way. If you get too serious, it is very difficult. If you start fighting with insane men and you start fighting with everything they have created, it will be difficult. But you can fight only if you are still insane. Otherwise you will laugh; there is no need to fight. There is no need to fight! You will laugh! Then you will act. A wise man is an actor; he is not serious because there is no need to be serious. You know that all around you are madmen, so there is no need to be serious with them. You can act, and only if you act can you help them. There is a proposal of R.D.Laing's that doctors in asylums for the mad should not be there as doctors but as…
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…
What is neurosis and what is the cure for it?
This was my experience. When I was a student I was surprised at my professors' knowledge because it was thirty years old. It was when they were young that they had gathered it from their teachers. Since then they had not looked at what had happened That knowledge was absolutely useless. I was constantly in conflict with my professors, I was thrown out of many colleges, expelled, because the professors said that they could not cope with me. And I was not creating any trouble, I was simply making them aware that what they were saying was out of date. But that hurts the ego. They had learned it in their own university days and they were thinking that the world had stopped then and there. Now students cannot depend on teachers and children cannot depend on their parents, hence a great rebellion is on the way all over the…
At the start of sexual union keep attentive on the fire in the beginning, and so continuing, avoid the embers in the end.
WHEN IN SUCH EMBRACE YOUR SENSES ARE SHAKEN AS LEAVES, ENTER THIS SHAKING. EVEN REMEMBERING UNION, WITHOUT THE EMBRACE, TRANSFORMATION. ON JOYOUSLY SEEING A LONG ABSENT FRIEND, PERMEATE THIS JOY. WHEN EATING OR DRINKING, BECOME THE TASTE OF FOOD OR DRINK, AND BE FILLED. Once you know this, even the partner is not needed. You can simply remember the act and enter into it. But first you must have the feeling. If you know the feeling, you can enter into the act without the partner. This is a little difficult, but it happens. And unless it happens, you go on being dependent, a dependency is created. For so many reasons it happens. If you have had the feeling, if you have known the moment when you were not there but only a vibrating energy had become one and there was a circle with the partner, in that moment there was…