Force

Question: Osho, to me the present state of world affairs appears illusory. Eminent scholars from different walks of life offer various themes for the transformation of life. For instance, religious leaders affirm that God or religion alone is omnipotent and can transform life and provide heaven. Sociologists, politicians, educationists and moralists believe that only better forms can create a better society. Naturalists say that understanding nature will bring transformation. Whereas psychologists and psychopathologists believe that psychoanalysis, tranquilizers, sedatives or brainwashing agents can transform life, etc., etc. But to me, sir, all this appears to be merely a partial transformation. Would you suggest what total and spontaneous transformation is? As you say: clothes are fine, houses are fine, roads are fine; all kinds of instruments have been developed by which man’s senses have become a hundred million times more mobile.

Beloved Osho, why am I forcing situations according to my will, instead of accepting them and letting them just happen? I have a feeling that my body makes me aware of it, reacting with high fever.

Devam Navyo, the upbringing of man is so poisonous, so crippling, that it destroys all that is significant and valuable in you and replaces it with cruelty, violence, a desire to dominate. The whole of society from all sides supports this destruction of your innocence; it is favorable to them. Forcing anything simply means you are forcing against yourself. This creates the schizophrenia, the split personality which is fighting with itself. This is the most ugly and destructive device which has been used by the vested interests for thousands of years. They found a simple clue for how to destroy the individual. The individual is a danger -- a danger against exploitation, a danger against slavery, a danger against any kind of enforcement. An individual would die rather than submit. Individuality has a dignity.... But man has been taken away from his individuality by a simple device. Put the individual…

So be a noble ruler, but the only way to be a noble ruler is to go in. Possess yourself, be absolutely rooted, centred, integrated, so that you can move according to your light, so no unconscious instinct forces you to move in a certain direction, so you need not go into something into which you never wanted to go. But this is really the situation. That's why in all the languages phrases like 'in spite of myself' exist. It simply means you are not the master. You become angry and then later on you apologize and you say 'I never wanted to be, but I became angry in spite of myself.' What does it mean? What are you confessing? You are confessing that there are forces inside you over which you don't have any mastery. They can do things which you don't want to do.

Osho, when we are reborn, where is the accounting kept? What remains?

We are all bundles of habits. If you want to change these habits, resolve is needed. And the beginning of resolve is this: that it dawns on you that they can be changed. If you think they cannot be changed, your resolve will die completely. A German Jew, Frankl, during the last world war was imprisoned in a great camp. He has written—he has written very astonishing things—in his memoirs. Because he is a psychologist, he kept observing what was happening. December was approaching; the festival days were near. All the prisoners hoped that at least around Christmas there would be release; that around Christmas Hitler would show mercy and people would be freed. Frankl writes: until Christmas, however many tortures the prisoners were given, no one died. People remained ill, but there was a hope—Christmas is approaching. With that hope, there was strength in their life-breath. He writes: the…