Energy

I used to come out of the morning discourses feeling inspired and invigorated. Now I am usually drained. I want to be alone and I go home and sleep for a couple of hours. Why is this?

You must have been using the discourses as drugs. Otherwise why should you feel inspired and invigorated? You must have used them as props, drugs, activizers. I am not trying to inspire you here, because all inspiration, if it is really inspiration, should come from your innermost core. How can it from the outside? How can you say that you are inspired by somebody? The whole thing looks contradictory. Inspiration cannot come from outside, otherwise it won't be inspiration. Inspiration has to bubble in your being. If is comes from the outside then it is a drug. Then it is not happening to you, but as it happens with all drugs, soon you will get addicted to it -- then it won't affect you. Then more doses will be needed. And then the same drug which used to inspire you in the beginning, and give energy to you, will prove…

Another friend has asked: Why should we strive for the upward movement of the natural energy that is flowing downward?

No one is telling you to strive. Your energy is flowing downward; from it comes sorrow, from it comes suffering; because of it your life becomes wasted and hollow. So it is you who feel the pain, the distress, the sense that life is going to waste—then you feel it should be taken upward. No one is asking you to take it upward. And on anyone’s say-so, you will never take it upward either. But the experience of the downward is in itself painful. Energy flowing downward means misery; energy flowing upward means bliss. If the downward-flowing energy gave only misery, everyone would stop. But the downward flow dangles the lure of pleasure and, in the end, delivers pain. That is why so many are swept along by it. The energy flowing down raises the hope that pleasure will come. The hope remains; what comes is suffering. But we are…

Osho, you said recently that you loved wilhelm reich. I have studied and written about him for years. While your ideas -- sex equals energy, living in the now and god is life -- agree with his, you go far beyond him. In what way was he limited?

He lived in the bottle. The goose could not come out. And he became too attached to the bottle -- his ideology, his philosophy. And this constant fear of persecution, suspicion drove him mad. You say: ... YOUR IDEAS -- SEX EQUALS ENERGY, LIVING IN THE NOW, AND GOD IS LIFE -- AGREE WITH HIS... They only appear to agree. Living in the now, how can you feel persecuted? Persecution is always going to be tomorrow. Right at this moment how can you feel persecuted? It can happen only in the next moment. His whole life he was talking about living in the now, but it was only talk, mere talk; he never lived in the now. He was thinking of himself in the old foolish pattern, as being a prophet. This stupid Judaic idea of being a prophet has tortured many people in the West. Christians, Mohammedans, Jews --…

Beloved Osho, the german psychologist, wilhelm reich, stumbled upon some inner secrets of bio-energy. He also started practicing these on his patients but he was declared anti-social, was imprisoned and pronounced mad. Osho, what is it that reich was working on and where did he go wrong. What was he missing?

I suspect he was forced to go into madness. It is very easy to drive anybody mad when all the powers are in your hands and the person is made absolutely helpless. When he became mad.... This is the world: when he was at the peak of his fame, there were friends, there were colleagues, there was a beautiful woman who loved him. But when he came out of jail, the woman divorced him, the friends disappeared, the colleagues made it clear to him that they didn't want any more connection with him because even to be connected with him created suspicion. It is sad that he died, but I will say he was forced to die. If you boycott a person in such a way that he becomes an island in the great ocean of humanity -- separate, isolated, cannot communicate with anybody, everybody thinks he is mad --…