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Question 3


OSHO, THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE ENTER INTO YOUR THERAPY GROUPS TO TRANSCEND THEIR LIMITATIONS AND BREAK THROUGH EMOTIONAL BARRIERS. WHAT GUARANTEE IS THERE THAT THEY WILL NOT SUFFER PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE?

Subhuti,

WHAT MORE PSYCHOLOGICAL DAMAGE CAN YOU SUFFER? You have suffered it already. That work has already been done. You cannot be more ill than you are; you cannot fall more than you have fallen -- the society has done it already. We cannot damage you; it is impossible now. The damage has been done.

What we are trying to do here is to undo it. You have been conditioned -- as a Hindu, as a Mohammedan, as a Jaina, as a Buddhist -- this is the damage. You have been conditioned as an Indian, as a German, as an Italian -- this is the damage. You have been forced to believe in things; you have been given all kinds of prejudices, superstitions. You have already been made schizophrenic; you have been cut into fragments. You have already been given the fever of ambition. You have been told that life is competition, conflict, violence, that the only joy in life is success, that the only bliss in life is to have as much money as you can have, that you will be fulfilled only if you become a president of a country or a prime minister. What more damage...? All this is bullshit. And you are full of it -- just look into yourself and you will see.

Each child is born as a pure mirror, with no conditionings, TABULA RASA, clean, like a sky without clouds, a mirror without dust. But we jump upon him -- all the vested interests jump upon him. The priest immediately comes in to baptize the child. We cannot allow the child to grow as he is; we cannot give him freedom. We start manipulating him, distorting him. We start giving him ideas -- which are UTTERLY neurotic. And he is so helpless that he accepts them, he has to accept them.

By the time he becomes a little aware, the damage will have been done so totally that he will not even be able to imagine how he can get out of it. By that time he will have become so identified with it that he will think, "This is what I am." If somebody asks you, "Who are you?" what is the answer? Ask yourself "Who am I?" and what is the answer? And whatsoever answer comes will be the damage: "I am a Hindu, I am a Mohammedan, I am an Indian, I am a Brahmin, I am a communist, I am this, I am that...." You have been told all those things!

You are nothing of all those things. You are simply a pure witness, a consciousness, and nothing else. You come into the world as pure consciousness, but people start throwing rubbish, much rubbish, in you, and soon consciousness is lost and you become the content. That is the fall, the original sin: the change of the gestalt from consciousness to content.

What we are doing here is reversing the process: changing the gestalt from content to consciousness. That's my whole work. That's what Sanyass is all about. How can this damage?

Snow White went to the doctor. "Doctor," she said, "could you examine me and tell me if I am still a virgin?"
So she lay on the couch and the good doctor examined her. When he had finished, she said again, "Well, doctor, am I still a virgin?"
"Well," replied the doctor, "it is very strange: you are technically still VIRGO INTACTO, but I can just detect seven small dents in it."

Only technically are you human beings -- only technically -- otherwise there are seven million dents. Your parents, your so-called society, your politicians, your priests, they have done a great job of messing you up.
Here, Subhuti, no psychological damage is possible, because we are not conditioning people -- we are simply unconditioning them. We are not even reconditioning them; we are simply unconditioning them. We are trying to help them to be utterly nude, psychologically nude. We are not giving them any ideology; we are taking away all the ideologies. We are trying to help them to be without any ideology -- to live without any idea of how to live. To live! totally, but with no idea of how life should be lived.

I am not giving you a philosophy of life -- I am taking all philosophies of life from you. And then pure life asserts itself. I am not giving you a goal that you have to achieve; I am taking away all the goals so that you need not think of the future, so that you can live in the present. I am NOT giving you any concept of perfection; I am not telling you that you have to be perfect -- I am declaring that you ARE perfect. Everybody is born perfect. Imperfection is a learned thing.

God is perfect, and out of God imperfection is not possible. We come perfect, we come with the signature of God. Out of perfection, perfection comes. And then we are manipulated, pushed, pulled by human beings who have been pushed, pulled, manipulated by other human beings. And immediately our open sky starts closing, our windows, our doors are closed -- we are no more available to existence. We become windowless.

And that is our misery.
The perfectionist is a neurotic. Anybody who wants to be perfect in any way will become neurotic. Neurosis is based in the idea of perfection -- because you can never be perfect. Why can you never be perfect? Because you already are it, so how can you ever be? If you start searching for something that you already have, you will never find it. If you are looking for your specs and the specs are on your nose, and you are looking through those same specs and searching, you will never find them, there is no possibility.
Perfection is our nature. That is my fundamental declaration to you: perfect we are. So we need not be in search of perfection. What I teach is: live your perfection as you are. How can I damage you? Ideals damage. Goals damage. The very philosophy of perfection damages. I am taking away ALL those things from you.

I am teaching you to live simply. To live with an idea is a very complicated living, it is cunning. To live simply, just like trees and birds....

Somebody asked Jesus, "How should we live?"

And he looked in the eyes of the man and said, "Don't ask me -- go and ask the trees, flowers, fish, fowl."
What does he mean by this? He is saying: Look around! The rose is a rose, and the lotus is a lotus, and the peacock is a peacock, and the dove is a dove. The peacock is not trying to become the lion, and the lion is not trying to become an elephant, and the rose is not trying to become a lotus, and the lotus is not trying to become a rose... otherwise all would have been on the psychoanalyst's couch. Nobody is trying to become anybody else -- and that's where our misery lies. You are trying to become somebody else.

Somebody is trying to become a Buddha, somebody is trying to become a Christ... now you will never be yourself. You will always remain in misery, in hell.

Be just yourself, in your pure ordinariness. Don't try to become extraordinary. Just be a radiant
ordinariness, and you will find extraordinary happenings happening. You will find your ordinariness transforming itself into such euphoria, into such ecstasy.

You are not to become extraordinary -- you are! You are not to become worthy -- you are! You are not to become a saint... the whole existence is full of God. It is ALL godliness!

You have just to live naturally, spontaneously, consciously, moment-to-moment, without sacrificing the present for the future, without sacrificing today for tomorrow -- because the tomorrow never comes.
And that is what has been damaging you -- the tomorrow, the future, the idea that you have to be like Jesus or like Buddha. You cannot be! because God never repeats. He creates only unique individuals. He does not produce carbon copies; he produces only originals.
Thousands of years have passed, we have not seen another Krishna, another Buddha, another Christ -- why? God never repeats. He is a REAL creator, he is creativity. It will be ugly to repeat. That will mean he has become exhausted. God is inexhaustible creativity. And he has created you -- he has shown such respect towards you, he has loved you. In creating you he has already loved you. Love yourself! The idea of becoming somebody else is based in self-hatred, in self-condemnation.

Subhuti, this may be the only place on the earth where you cannot suffer any psychological damage.

Osho.
Philosophia Perennis.
Chapter. 8.
Escape to Reality.