Addiction

Beloved Osho, for more than ten years I have been following you from place to place. I can't believe that I am back in india. Am I brainwashed, addicted, or what?

You are certainly brainwashed. I use a dry cleaning machine, I am not old-fashioned. And naturally you are addicted. Who will not be? Addiction is not always bad. If you are addicted to beauty, to poetry, to drama, to sculpture, to painting, nobody tells you to drop the addiction. Addiction has to be dropped only when it makes you unconscious. Alcoholics are told to drop the addiction, but here my teaching is of consciousness -- be addicted to it more and more. And what is wrong in being brainwashed? -- wash it every day, keep it clean. Do you like cockroaches? When I brainwash people, I find cockroaches. Cockroaches are very special animals. It has been found scientifically that wherever you find man you find cockroaches, and wherever you find cockroaches you find man. They are always together, they are the oldest companions. What have you got in your brain?…

Osho, I cannot drop the habit of chain-smoking. I have tried hard but I have failed always. Is it a sin to smoke?

Gurucharan, DON'T MAKE A MOUNTAIN OUT OF A MOLEHILL! Religious people are very skillful in doing that. Now, what are you really doing when you are smoking? Just taking some smoke inside your lungs and letting it out. It is a kind of PRANAYAMA -- filthy, dirty, but still a PRANAYAMA! You are doing yoga, in a stupid way. It is not sin. It may be foolish but it is not a sin, certainly. There is only one sin and that is unawareness, and only one virtue and that is awareness. Do whatsoever you are doing, but remain a witness to it, and immediately the quality of your doing is transformed. I will not tell you not to smoke; that you have tried. You must have been told by many so-called saints not to smoke: "Because if you smoke you will fall into hell." God is not so stupid as…

Osho, my husband is otherwise almost a deity—only one bad habit: he drinks. How can I make him give up alcohol?

Rama Devi! Understand my definition of a religious person: a religious person makes a total effort to transform himself, but he has no ambition to transform someone else. The desire to change the other is politics. There is a kick in it—what kick? Ego! I am superior and the other is inferior, therefore I have the right to change them. And as if women have taken a contract to change their husbands! Always on their backs—do this, don’t do that; don’t eat this, don’t drink that. They make life miserable. Often that is precisely why the poor fellows start drinking. If you make their life hell—and they, too, have a right to live—what else is left for them but to drink to forget you for a while? Now, Rama Devi, you say: “In every other way my husband is a veritable god.” Of course he is. He is your husband.…

Osho, I know that some Italians are coming to you to get rid of their drug habits. Is there any hope for them? Can you cure them?

Certainly—because I give them an even bigger intoxication. What intoxication can they manage in Italy! Marijuana, hashish, ganja, opium, LSD... I am giving them meditation. Once the intoxication of meditation takes hold, all other intoxications drop. And the beauty of the intoxication of meditation is this: it is, and it is not. Meditation is a profoundly paradoxical high. It awakens you and it drowns you. It intoxicates too. It fills you with ecstasy and it also ignites supreme awareness. It sharpens your inner consciousness, breaks your stupor, puts dance in your feet and humming in your throat. It gives you song—such songs, such colors, that rainbows spread through your very life-breath, that lotuses bloom within you! One who has tasted this intoxication—every other intoxication falls away. In my view, those who take drugs are actually searching for meditation. They have not yet found meditation; so they grope in the dark…