Interviews

Osho! Why are Indians not being included in group therapy, in collective psychotherapy? Is it only the West that needs group therapy and not the East? But that doesn’t seem to be the case. In fact, ninety percent of Indians are found to be sexually neurotic. In this context, please kindly clarify how it is justified to deprive Indians of this particular method, and why? Asked by Dr. Tapan Kumar Chaudhary. He is a doctor, so certainly he knows what the real mental condition of Indians is. All right—it's not just ninety percent; ninety-nine percent of Indians suffer from sex-repression. And I kn

I have broken no law. Everyone has the right to be naked in a room—otherwise all husbands and wives will have to be put in jail. I have broken no law. I am moving with full awareness on this count. There is no legal charge against me, nor against my ashram. We have taken care that in a legal way they cannot catch us. Otherwise, do you think they would spare me? If they can file twenty-two cases against Sanjay Gandhi, they would file two hundred and twenty against me. But even all the 420s together could not bring two hundred and twenty cases against me. There is no cause for a case. Hence there is a sense of impotence: what to do—nothing is within their power; otherwise they would have erased me. Still, they keep trying as far as they can. You say: Why don’t I include Indians in…

Osho, to rise above mental afflictions like lust, anger, greed and attachment, and states like ego and stupefaction, the Buddha, Mahavira, and all Indian saints have prescribed only practices such as meditation-awakening, devotional singing and chanting, and satsang. But why are you—on what basis—adding new means like therapy-groups (group psychotherapy) along with other methods for Indian friends? Kindly explain.

I have no desire for your respect or your applause. I am not here to reproduce any enlightened one. I will live in my own way. I will say what is mine to say. So drop these expectations. Don’t keep throwing names like Buddha, Mahavira, and the rishis and munis at me; you bore me with them. Let them be. If you meet them somewhere, ask them why they don’t conduct group psychotherapy! I will live in my own way. I am a category unto myself. I am not a repetition of anyone, nor do I have any taste for that. Time is changing. It changes every day. What was needed then, the Buddha would have done. What is needed today, I will do. That need did not exist then. People were simple, straightforward, rural. Understand a little. If a woodcutter who chops wood daily comes here, I will not…

Osho, questions arise—and for many of them the answers also come. What is all this?

Girls want people to tell them they are beautiful. A handful of fools to say it—that’s all it takes—and you’ll always find such fools loitering on the seafront; no matter what she looks like—even if she resembles Kali of Calcutta, motherly and forbidding—some fool will still exclaim, “Ah, what beauty!” It feels good when someone says, “You are intelligent!” You gather your self-image from others’ borrowed opinions. You ask their questions and paste on their answers. You call this your knowledge. All of it stale and borrowed... No—no one else can give you knowledge. No one else can answer your questions. The one who truly wishes you well, who truly wants you to become a flame of life, will tell you: the answer to every one of your questions is within you. Therefore the way is to sit silently and go inward. And a moment comes, as you keep finding…

Osho, who are you?

And that's what has happened. Just the other day Radha wrote a letter saying that now she wants to move with Asang. I knew that this was going to happen, it was as absolutely clear as things can be, because when you live together for twenty-four hours a day you have to put aside your masks. At least sometimes, when you go to sleep, you have to put the masks aside; your real face starts showing. And for one, two, three days you can somehow manage: you can act nice, good, beautiful, but for how long? One cannot act twenty-four hours a day for many days; it becomes tiring, it becomes boring. One has to say the real thing. And I can perfectly understand the psychologists' idea that if we decide to be true, absolutely true, only for twenty-four hours, everything on earth will fall apart. Every relationship will fall…