The second question

Question 2

OSHO, I FEEL NEGATIVE ABOUT MYSELF: HOW DO YOU SEE ME?

Swami Prem Asutosh,

IT IS NOT ONLY YOUR PROBLEM -- it is the problem of almost everybody. All the cultures and all the religions have been conditioning you to feel negative about yourself. Nobody is loved, appreciated, for just being himself or herself. You are asked to prove whether you are of any worth: "Bring gold medals from the university! Achieve success, money, power, prestige, respectability! Prove!" Your worth is not intrinsic; that's what has been taught to you. Your worth has to be proved.

Hence a deep antagonism towards oneself arises, a deep feeling that I am worthless as I am -- unless proved otherwise." And very few people can succeed in this competitive world. Millions and millions of people are competing. How many people can succeed? How many people can become presidents and prime ministers? In a country of millions, only one person will become the president; and deep down everybody is hankering for it. Millions will feel that they are unworthy.

How many people can become great poets? A Shakespeare. a Milton, a Shelley, a Rabindranath -- how many people can become great poets? And everybody has something of the poetic in his being; everybody has some poetry to give to the world. But when it becomes an ambition... ambition in itself is anti-poetic. How many people can become great painters like Picasso or Dali? And everybody has something to create.

The idea of success is torturing you. It is the greatest calamity that has happened to humanity, the idea of success, that you have to succeed. And success means you have to compete, you have to fight, by fair or foul means -- it doesn't matter. Once you succeed everything is okay. The question is of success. even if by foul means you succeed, once you are successful whatsoever you have done is okay. Success changes the quality of all your acts. Success changes evil means into good means. So the only question is: How to succeed? How to reach to the top? And naturally, very few people can reach to the top. If everybody is trying to reach Everest. how many people can stand there? There is not much space there; only one person can stand there at ease. Then the millions who were also striving will feel failure, a great despair will settle in their souls. They will start feeling negative.

This is a wrong kind of education. It is utterly poisonous, this so-called education that has been given to you. Your schools, colleges, your universities, are poisoning you. They are creating misery for you; they are the factories where hells are manufactured -- but in such a beautiful way that you never become aware of what is going on. The whole world has become a hell because of a wrong education. Any education that is based on the idea of ambition is going to create hell on the earth -- it has succeeded.

Everybody is suffering and feeling inferior. This is really a strange situation. NOBODY IS inferior, and nobody is superior, because each individual is unique -- no comparison is possible. You are you, and you are SIMPLY YOU, and you cannot be anybody else, and there is no need either. And you need not become famous, you need not be a success in the eyes of the world. Those are all foolish ideas.

All that you need is to be creative, loving, aware, meditative... if you feel poetry arising in you, write it for yourself, for your woman, for your children, for your friends -- and forget all about it! Sing it, and if nobody listens, sing it alone and enjoy it! Go to the trees and they will applaud and appreciate it. Or talk to the birds and the animals, and they will understand far more than the stupid human beings who have been poisoned for centuries and centuries with wrong concepts of life.

The ambitious person is pathological.

You say: I FEEL NEGATIVE ABOUT MYSELF.

Everybody is feeling negative about himself, because that's how he has been made to feel. Your parents have done it to you -- this is a heritage, a great heritage. Your teachers have done it to you, your priests have done it to you, your political leaders have done it to you -- and so many people are doing it that, naturally, you have become impressed by the very idea that you are worthless, that you don't have any intrinsic meaning or value, that you don't have any significance of your own.

Each parent is saying to the child, to each child, "Prove that you have some worth!" Being, just being, is not enough -- some doing is needed.

My whole approach is that being is intrinsically valuable. Just that you are is such a gift from God, what more can you ask for? Just to breathe in this beautiful existence is certificate enough that God loves you, that existence needs you; otherwise you would not be here. YOU ARE! Existence has given birth to you. There must have been an immense need -- you have filled a gap. Without you existence would be less. And when I say this, I am saying it not only to you: I am saying it to the trees, to the birds, to the animals, to the pebbles on the shore. A single pebble less on the immense seashore and the seashore would not be the same. A single flower less and the universe would miss it.

You have to learn that you are valuable as you are. And I am not teaching you any ego -- just the contrary. In the feeling that you are valuable as you are you will also feel others are valuable as they are. Accept people as they are; drop shoulds, oughts -- those are the enemies.

And you are carrying so many shoulds: "Do this and don't do that!" You are carrying so many dos and don'ts that you cannot dance; the burden is too heavy. And you have been given so many ideals and goals -- ideals of perfection -- that you always feel you are falling short. And the ideals are utterly impossible. You cannot fulfill them; there is no possibility of fulfilling them. So you will ALWAYS fall short.

To be a perfectionist is to be ready for the psychiatrist's couch; to be a perfectionist is to be a neurotic. And you have all been told to be perfect.

Life is beautiful in all its imperfections. Nothing is perfect. Let me say to you: even God is not perfect -- because if God is perfect then Friedrich Nietzsche is right that God is dead. Perfection means death! Perfection means now there is no possibility of growth. Perfection means now everything is finished. Imperfection means there is a possibility to grow. Imperfection means the excitement of new pastures, ecstasy, adventure. Imperfection means that you are alive, that life is going to be there.

And life is eternal, hence I say life is eternally imperfect. And there is nothing wrong in being imperfect. Accept your imperfection. And then the idea of being negative towards yourself will disappear. Accept your present state and don't compare it with some future perfection, future ideal. Don't think in terms of how you should be! That is the root of all pathology -- drop that. You are as you are today, and tomorrow you may be different, but you cannot predict it today, and there is no need to plan for it either.

Live this day in all its beauty, in all its joy, in all its pain, agony, ecstasy. Live it in its totality -- in its darkness, in its light. Live the hate and live the love. Live the anger and live the compassion. Live whatsoever is available in this moment. My approach is not that of perfection but that of totality. Live the moment that is available to you totally, and the next moment will be born out of it. If this moment has been lived totally, the next is going to reach a higher pitch of totality. a higher peak of totality -- because from where is the next moment going to come? It is going to be born out of this moment. Forget all about the future -- the present is enough.

Jesus says: "Think not of the morrow, and look at the lilies in the field! how beautiful they are. Even Solomon was not so beautiful attired in all his grandeur."

And what is the secret of the beautiful lilies, the poor lilies? The secret is simple: they think not of the morrow, they don't know anything of the future. Tomorrow exists not. This day is enough unto itself, this moment is enough unto itself.

And, Asutosh, your feeling of negativity about yourself will disappear. Remember, if you feel negative about yourself, you will automatically feel negative about others. That is a necessary corollary. It has to be understood.

THE PERSON WHO IS NEGATIVE ABOUT HIMSELF cannot be positive about anybody else either, because the faults that he finds in himself he will find in others -- in fact he will magnify them in others. He will take revenge. Your parents have made you negative about yourself, you will take revenge on your children you will make them even more negative.

Hence, negativity goes on growing with each generation. Each generation becomes more and more pathological. If the modern man is suffering psychologically so much it has nothing to do with the modern man himself: it simply shows that the whole past has been wrong. It is all accumulation of the whole past. The modern man is suffering from the past; the modern man is not suffering from his own sins as the so-called religious preachers go on saying to you. You are suffering from the sins of centuries... but now things have come to a peak. Man is falling apart. Up to now somehow we have managed to keep ourselves together, but now things have come to such a point that either man has to change totally and has to change his vision of life, or man has to commit suicide.

If you follow the past, then you are on the verge of committing a global suicide. And that's what your political leaders are trying to do: preparing atom bombs, hydrogen bombs, super hydrogen bombs -- piling up bombs upon bombs. They already have too many! In fact, just ten years ago they were already capable of killing each person seven times. Ten years ago they were ready to destroy this earth seven times, although a person dies only once -- you need not kill him twice, that will be unnecessary. But in case somebody survives, politicians have to take care -- they plan perfectly. But that is how things were ten years ago.

Now, you will be surprised: they can destroy this earth seven hundred times -- each single person can be killed seven hundred times! Now this is too much, and absolutely unnecessary. Seven is okay -- there are a few cunning people who may not die. But seven hundred times!? And still the race continues. Even poor countries are joining the race hankering to join it -- starving, but they want atom bombs. Starving! but they want more power to kill and destroy.

Just a bird's eye view and you can see the earth is preparing for a global suicide, a total destruction, a total war. And remember again, this has nothing to do with the modern man as such. The modern man is only a victim of the whole past. And the priests go on saying that something is wrong with the modern man, and they go on praising the past.

The modern man is a by-product of the whole past! Christian, Mohammedan, Hindu, Buddhist -- all kinds of cultures have contributed to this situation. They are responsible. Unless they all disappear, unless we drop this whole pathological past and start anew, living in the present, with no idea of perfection, with no ideals, with no shoulds, with no commandments, man is doomed.

Everybody is feeling negative. One may say it, one may not say it. And when one feels negative about oneself, one feels negative about everything else. One's attitude becomes negative, that of a NO. And if the negative person is taken to the rosebush he will count the thorns, he will not look at the rose flower -- he cannot. He is not capable of that. He will simply ignore the roseflower, he will count the thorns.

A woman was very unhappy. Her husband was seriously ill in hospital, and her son had just been arrested on a drug charge. So she went to the park to sit in the sun and refresh herself. She sat on a bench. As she watched, a little bird flew from a tree on one side of the bench towards a tree on the other side. When it passed over the woman, it let loose a little birdshit which hit her on the forehead. The woman's eyes lifted towards heaven, her hands came up, and she said, "You see how it is, God -- for other people they sing!"

If you are feeling negative, then the whole life becomes a dark night. Then there are no more dawns, then the mornings are never there. Then the sun only sets and never rises. Then your dark nights are not even full of stars. What to say about stars? You don't even have a small candle.

The negative person lives in darkness, lives a kind of death. He slowly dies. That's what he thinks life is. He goes on poisoning himself in many ways; he is self-destructive. And, naturally, whosoever comes in contact with him, he destroys him too. A negative mother will destroy the child. The negative husband will destroy the wife; the negative wife will destroy the husband. The negative parents will destroy their children; the negative teacher will destroy his students. The negative priest... and all priests are negative. It is very rarely that you come across a man like Buddha or Christ or Mohammed, who is not negative -- but they are not priests: they are prophets. They bring new visions to life.

Priests exploit the prophets' vision; they distort it. They interpret it in such ways that it becomes a strategy to dominate people. Christ is not a Christian, remember; Christ was never a Christian. Christianity is created by the priests; Christianity is the creation of Saint Paul. He is the real founder of Christianity -- not Jesus Christ.

It is not Buddha who is the founder of Buddhism, but the priests who followed.... And it is so with every religion. Whenever a truth has entered into somebody's being, whenever somebody has received God, priests gather together around him. They never miss the opportunity -- they are the most cunning people. They start exploiting the situation. And once the enlightened person is gone, then the priests become the masters, the owners.

The past has been created by the priests. It is a negative past -- life-denying, anti-life, anti-love, anti-joy, anti-celebration. It has created only two kinds of people in the world those who are sincere -- just like you, Asutosh -- those who are sincere, they are suffering from negativity, anguish, despair; and those who are not sincere, they have become hypocrites. They go on talking about the anti-life religious teachings, and from the backdoor they live a totally different life. On the surface they are spiritualists, deep down they are materialists.

And, remember, I am not against materialism: I am against hypocrisy. I would like everybody to be a materialist and a spiritualist, because you are both body and soul, because God is both God and the universe. The universe is his manifestation. Your body is the manifestation of your soul.

In the past, because the religions talked in terms of anti-materialism they created two kinds of people: sincere people who had to declare that they were materialists -- and that is not good; because of that declaration they became closed to the spiritual dimension -- and then there were insincere, cunning people who talked about spiritualism and remained materialists.

You can see it in this country. My own experience is -- and I have known all kinds of people; here with me there are all kinds of people from almost every country of the world -- my own experience is that Indians are the most materialistic. They talk about spiritualism, they brag about spiritualism, but all that bragging and all that talking is just to hide, to cover their reality. They are hypocrites.

The more religious a country pretends to be, the more hypocritical it is. And then man is split. Either the spiritual dimension becomes closed, or you become a split person. And both alternatives are wrong.

A new man is needed who will affirm life, who will love life, who will love love, who will love this existence AS it is, who will not make demands that first it has to be perfect, who will celebrate life with all its limitations. And that new man is my sannyasin.

My sannyasin heralds the new man, a new beginning, a disconnection from the past, a discontinuity from the past. I don't want you to be hypocrites: I want you to be real, authentic human beings. Love your body, live your body to its totality. Love your instincts, your desires, and live them in their totality.

And you will be surprised: if you love your life, life starts opening its doors to you. If you love, mysteries are revealed to you, secrets are handed over to you. If you love your body, sooner or later you will become aware of the soul that resides in it. If you love the trees and the mountains and the rivers, sooner or later you will see the invisible hands of God behind everything. His signature is on every leaf. You just need eyes to see -- and only positive eyes can see; negative eyes cannot see. Negative eyes are blind! Negative eyes only see the wrong.

You ask me, Asutosh: I FEEL NEGATIVE ABOUT MYSELF: HOW DO YOU SEE ME?

I SEE YOU AS A BEING A BEAUTIFUL PERSON. I see you as of great worth, significance. If God has given birth to you, that is proof enough! -- no other proof is needed -- that you are fulfilling some immense need of the universe. Start loving yourself, because that is the only way to love others, that is the only way to love God. If you cannot love yourself, how can you love your creator? If you hate yourself, you will hate your creator too -- because finally HE is responsible. He has created an unworthy person like you. He has made you ugly. He has given you wrong, evil desires. He is the culprit! Condemning your own instincts, your own desires, yom own life, you are condemning, vicariously, God himself

Accept yourself, otherwise you will become a hypocrite. Don't repress -- nothing is negative in you. Existence is utterly positive. Express... manifest your hiddenmost core. Sing your song, and don't be worried what it is. Don't expect anybody to applaud it -- there is no need. Singing in itself should be the reward.

I would not like you to become a hypocrite. And who is a hypocrite? The person who says something, believes something, and lives just the contrary.

Father Flanagan is walking through the village when he is hailed by Mrs. O'Rourke. "Would ye be joining us, father?" she calls out. "It is a bit of a party we are having."

"I wish I could," replies the good father, "but I have to go and say mass."

"What a pity," says the woman, "a fine party it is, and we are playing some lovely games. We blindfolded the women, the men took off their trousers, and the women have been guessing who is who. And would you believe it, father, your name has been called out five times already!"

Beware! One cannot live in the negative. One can think negatively but one has to live positively. You cannot live in the no, because the no has no nourishment in it, and the no has no space in it. No is a death! One can die in a no, but one cannot live in a no.

If you want to really live, you will need a deep yes in your heart. It is only yes that allows you to live. It gives you nourishment, it gives you space to move. Just watch the word! Even repeating the word 'yes'... and something starts opening up in you. Say no and something shrinks. Say no, repeat no, and you are killing yourself Say yes and you will feel overflowing. Say yes and you are ready to love, to live, to be.