Astrall
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"I do not teach morality, I do not teach virtue — because I know that without awareness it is only pretense, hypocrisy. They make you false. They do not liberate you, they cannot liberate you. On the contrary, they imprison you.
"Only one thing is enough: awareness is the master key. It unlocks all the locks of existence. Awareness means that you live moment to moment, watchful, aware of yourself and everything happening around you, in response, moment to moment. You are like a mirror, you reflect — and you reflect so totally that whatever action is born from this reflection will be right, because it fits with existence and is harmonious with it. In fact, it does not arise in you — you do not do it. It arises in the total context — the situation, you, and everything else involved. From this wholeness action is born — it is not your action, you did not decide to do it that way. It is not your decision, it is not your thought, it is not your character. You do not do it, you only allow it to happen.
It is exactly as if you wake up early in the morning, the sun has not yet risen, and on the path you see a snake — there is no time to think. You can only reflect — there is no time to decide what to do and what not to do — you immediately jump back! Notice the word immediately — without losing a single moment, you immediately jump off the path. Later you can sit under a tree and think about what happened, and how you did it, and pat yourself on the back for how well it turned out. But, in fact, you did not do it — it happened. It happened in the fullness of the context. You, the snake, the danger of death, life's attempt to protect itself… a thousand and one things are involved in this. The whole totality of the situation brought about this action. You were simply a channel.
And this action is appropriate. You do not do it. In religious terms we can say that God did it through you. That is just a religious way of saying it, that is all. The whole acted through the part.
This is virtue. You will never repent of it. And this is a truly liberating action. As soon as it happens, it is over. You are free to act again; you do not have to carry this action in your head. It will not become part of your psychological memory; it will not leave a wound in you. It was so spontaneous that it will leave no trace in you. This action will never become karma. This action will not leave any scratch on you. The action that becomes karma is an action that is not actually an action, but a reaction that comes from the past, from memory, from thinking. You decide, you choose. It does not come from awareness, but from unawareness. Then it is sin…"
A man of awareness is possessed by nothing — there is no obsession in him. He is simply relaxed, calm and quiet, in silence and serenity. From this silence, whatever blossoms is good. It is always good — he lives in choiceless awareness.
Therefore, go beyond the ordinary concept of a good man. You will not be good, you will not be bad. You will simply be alert, conscious, aware, and then whatever follows will be good. In other words, I can say that in total awareness you will acquire the quality of divinity, and goodness is merely a small by-product of divinity.
Religions have taught you to be good so that one day you might find God. This is impossible — no good man has ever yet found the divine. I teach the exact opposite: find the divine, and goodness will come by itself. And when goodness comes by itself, it has beauty, grace, simplicity, humility. It asks for no reward either here or in the hereafter. It is its own reward.
Osho
On Morale:
The foundations of morality are tied to ideals — how you should behave, what you should be. Thus, morality is, in essence, judgmental. You are never the ideal, so you are always judged. Any morality breeds a sense of guilt. You can never become the ideal; you always lag behind. There will always be a gap, because the ideal is impossible, and through morality it becomes even more impossible. The ideal is there in the future, and you are here as you are, but you are constantly comparing. You are never a perfect man; something is always lacking. Then you feel guilty; you condemn yourself.
Condemnation can only breed hypocrisy. Then you will pretend, you will try to show that you are what you are not in reality. Hypocrisy means that you are a real person, not an ideal one, but you pretend, you try to show that you are an ideal person. Then a split occurs within you; you have a false face. An unreal person is born, and tantra is primarily concerned with seeking the real, not the unreal person.
Any morality necessarily breeds hypocrisy. This is inevitable. Hypocrisy will always accompany morality. It is part of it — its shadow. This seems paradoxical, because moralists are the people who condemn hypocrisy the most, yet they are the ones who breed it. And hypocrisy cannot disappear from the face of the earth until morality disappears. They will exist together; they are two sides of the same coin. Morality gives you an ideal, and you are not the ideal; that is precisely why the ideal is given to you. Then you begin to feel that you do not measure up to the ideal and that this non-conformity is natural, that it is inherent in you from the beginning; you are born with it, and you cannot immediately do anything about it. You cannot transform yourself; it is not so easy. You can simply suppress yourself, that is easy.
But you can act in two ways. You can create a false face; you can pretend to be something you are not. This saves you. Then you can exist in society more easily — more comfortably. And inside you must suppress the natural, because the unnatural can be imposed upon you only if the natural is suppressed. So your natural is pushed deep inside, into the subconscious, and your unnatural becomes your conscious. Your unnatural part becomes more dominant, and the natural remains behind. You are split into two parts, and the more you try to pretend, the greater the gap between the two parts will be.
A child is born unified, whole. That is why every child is so beautiful. Beauty is a consequence of wholeness. The child has no gap, no split, no division, no separate fragments. The child is one. There is no natural and unnatural in him. The child is simply natural, truthful. You cannot say that the child is moral. He is neither moral nor immoral. He is simply unaware that there is something moral and something immoral. The moment he understands this, the splitting of the personality begins. Then the child begins to behave in an unnatural way, because being natural becomes more and more difficult.
This happens inevitably, remember, because the family, parents must regulate his behavior. The child must be civilized, educated, with good manners: otherwise it will be impossible for him to advance in society. He must be told: "Do this, do not do that." And when we say, "Do this," the child's nature may not be ready to do it. It may be unnatural; the child may have no natural desire to do it. And when we say, "Do not do this, do not do that," the child's nature may actually enjoy doing it.
We condemn the natural and force the unnatural, because the unnatural will be more useful in an unnatural society, the unnatural will be more convenient. A natural child will have great difficulty with society, because the whole of society is unnatural. It is a vicious circle. We are born into society, but so far there is not a single society on earth that is natural. And this is the perversion! A child is born into society, and society is already there with its fixed rules, instructions, patterns of behavior and morality that the child must learn.
When he grows up, he becomes false. Then he will have children, and he will help make them false — and so it will continue and continue. What to do? We cannot change society. Or, if we try to change society, we will not be here when it changes. It will take an infinite amount of time. What to do?
A person can become aware of this basic split within himself: that the natural is suppressed and the unnatural is imposed. This is pain, this is suffering, this is hell. You cannot get any satisfaction from the unnatural, because only unnatural satisfaction is possible from the unnatural, and that is natural. Only from the natural can natural satisfaction happen. Through the natural you can reach reality; through the natural you can comprehend truth. Through the unnatural you can only get more and more hallucinations, illusions, dreams, and with dreams you can deceive yourself, but you will never be satisfied.
In a dream, for example, you can be thirsty, and you may dream that you are drinking water. This will be useful and convenient so that the sleep is not disturbed. If you do not see in the dream that you are drinking water, your sleep will be disturbed. There is a real sensation of thirst. It will disturb your sleep, you will be troubled. The dream helps; it gives you the feeling that you are drinking water. But this water is false. Your thirst is merely deceived; it is not quenched. You can continue sleeping, but the thirst has been suppressed.
This happens not only in dreams: it happens throughout your entire life. You seek something in the unreal personality, which is not there, which is only a facade. If you do not get what you seek, you will suffer; if you get it, you will also suffer. If you do not get it, the suffering will be less — remember this. If you get what you seek, the suffering will be deeper and greater.
Psychologists assert that because of this unreal personality, we practically never desire to achieve any goal — never desire to achieve, because if we achieve the goal, we will be completely disappointed. We live on hope, in hope we can continue to live. Hope is a dream. You will never reach the goal, so you will never realize that the goal is false.
A poor man's struggle for wealth is happier at the stage of struggle, because in the struggle there is hope. And for the unreal, unnatural personality, only hope brings happiness. If the poor man becomes rich, his hope disappears. And the natural consequence is disappointment. Wealth will be achieved, but satisfaction will not. He will reach the goal, but nothing will happen. His hopes will be shattered. That is why the moment society becomes wealthy, it begins to experience anxiety.
If America is so deeply troubled today, it is because hopes have been fulfilled, goals have been achieved, and now you can no longer deceive yourself. So if in America the young generation rebels against all the goals of the older generation, it is only because of this: that it all turned out to be nonsense.
Here, in India, we are unable to comprehend this. We cannot understand young people who willingly become poor — become hippies. Become poor of their own free will? We cannot understand this. We still have hope. We hope for the future: that someday our country will become rich and there will be paradise here. Hope always involves heaven.
Because of this unreal personality, everything we try to do, everything we do, everything we see — everything becomes unreal. Tantra teaches that truth can happen to you only if you return again to the real, to the natural. But to settle into the real, you must have great courage, because the unreal is comfortable, because the unreal has been instilled too much, because your mind is so conditioned that you will fear everything real.
Osho
"Only one thing is enough: awareness is the master key. It unlocks all the locks of existence. Awareness means that you live moment to moment, watchful, aware of yourself and everything happening around you, in response, moment to moment. You are like a mirror, you reflect — and you reflect so totally that whatever action is born from this reflection will be right, because it fits with existence and is harmonious with it. In fact, it does not arise in you — you do not do it. It arises in the total context — the situation, you, and everything else involved. From this wholeness action is born — it is not your action, you did not decide to do it that way. It is not your decision, it is not your thought, it is not your character. You do not do it, you only allow it to happen.
It is exactly as if you wake up early in the morning, the sun has not yet risen, and on the path you see a snake — there is no time to think. You can only reflect — there is no time to decide what to do and what not to do — you immediately jump back! Notice the word immediately — without losing a single moment, you immediately jump off the path. Later you can sit under a tree and think about what happened, and how you did it, and pat yourself on the back for how well it turned out. But, in fact, you did not do it — it happened. It happened in the fullness of the context. You, the snake, the danger of death, life's attempt to protect itself… a thousand and one things are involved in this. The whole totality of the situation brought about this action. You were simply a channel.
And this action is appropriate. You do not do it. In religious terms we can say that God did it through you. That is just a religious way of saying it, that is all. The whole acted through the part.
This is virtue. You will never repent of it. And this is a truly liberating action. As soon as it happens, it is over. You are free to act again; you do not have to carry this action in your head. It will not become part of your psychological memory; it will not leave a wound in you. It was so spontaneous that it will leave no trace in you. This action will never become karma. This action will not leave any scratch on you. The action that becomes karma is an action that is not actually an action, but a reaction that comes from the past, from memory, from thinking. You decide, you choose. It does not come from awareness, but from unawareness. Then it is sin…"
A man of awareness is possessed by nothing — there is no obsession in him. He is simply relaxed, calm and quiet, in silence and serenity. From this silence, whatever blossoms is good. It is always good — he lives in choiceless awareness.
Therefore, go beyond the ordinary concept of a good man. You will not be good, you will not be bad. You will simply be alert, conscious, aware, and then whatever follows will be good. In other words, I can say that in total awareness you will acquire the quality of divinity, and goodness is merely a small by-product of divinity.
Religions have taught you to be good so that one day you might find God. This is impossible — no good man has ever yet found the divine. I teach the exact opposite: find the divine, and goodness will come by itself. And when goodness comes by itself, it has beauty, grace, simplicity, humility. It asks for no reward either here or in the hereafter. It is its own reward.
Osho
On Morale:
The foundations of morality are tied to ideals — how you should behave, what you should be. Thus, morality is, in essence, judgmental. You are never the ideal, so you are always judged. Any morality breeds a sense of guilt. You can never become the ideal; you always lag behind. There will always be a gap, because the ideal is impossible, and through morality it becomes even more impossible. The ideal is there in the future, and you are here as you are, but you are constantly comparing. You are never a perfect man; something is always lacking. Then you feel guilty; you condemn yourself.
Condemnation can only breed hypocrisy. Then you will pretend, you will try to show that you are what you are not in reality. Hypocrisy means that you are a real person, not an ideal one, but you pretend, you try to show that you are an ideal person. Then a split occurs within you; you have a false face. An unreal person is born, and tantra is primarily concerned with seeking the real, not the unreal person.
Any morality necessarily breeds hypocrisy. This is inevitable. Hypocrisy will always accompany morality. It is part of it — its shadow. This seems paradoxical, because moralists are the people who condemn hypocrisy the most, yet they are the ones who breed it. And hypocrisy cannot disappear from the face of the earth until morality disappears. They will exist together; they are two sides of the same coin. Morality gives you an ideal, and you are not the ideal; that is precisely why the ideal is given to you. Then you begin to feel that you do not measure up to the ideal and that this non-conformity is natural, that it is inherent in you from the beginning; you are born with it, and you cannot immediately do anything about it. You cannot transform yourself; it is not so easy. You can simply suppress yourself, that is easy.
But you can act in two ways. You can create a false face; you can pretend to be something you are not. This saves you. Then you can exist in society more easily — more comfortably. And inside you must suppress the natural, because the unnatural can be imposed upon you only if the natural is suppressed. So your natural is pushed deep inside, into the subconscious, and your unnatural becomes your conscious. Your unnatural part becomes more dominant, and the natural remains behind. You are split into two parts, and the more you try to pretend, the greater the gap between the two parts will be.
A child is born unified, whole. That is why every child is so beautiful. Beauty is a consequence of wholeness. The child has no gap, no split, no division, no separate fragments. The child is one. There is no natural and unnatural in him. The child is simply natural, truthful. You cannot say that the child is moral. He is neither moral nor immoral. He is simply unaware that there is something moral and something immoral. The moment he understands this, the splitting of the personality begins. Then the child begins to behave in an unnatural way, because being natural becomes more and more difficult.
This happens inevitably, remember, because the family, parents must regulate his behavior. The child must be civilized, educated, with good manners: otherwise it will be impossible for him to advance in society. He must be told: "Do this, do not do that." And when we say, "Do this," the child's nature may not be ready to do it. It may be unnatural; the child may have no natural desire to do it. And when we say, "Do not do this, do not do that," the child's nature may actually enjoy doing it.
We condemn the natural and force the unnatural, because the unnatural will be more useful in an unnatural society, the unnatural will be more convenient. A natural child will have great difficulty with society, because the whole of society is unnatural. It is a vicious circle. We are born into society, but so far there is not a single society on earth that is natural. And this is the perversion! A child is born into society, and society is already there with its fixed rules, instructions, patterns of behavior and morality that the child must learn.
When he grows up, he becomes false. Then he will have children, and he will help make them false — and so it will continue and continue. What to do? We cannot change society. Or, if we try to change society, we will not be here when it changes. It will take an infinite amount of time. What to do?
A person can become aware of this basic split within himself: that the natural is suppressed and the unnatural is imposed. This is pain, this is suffering, this is hell. You cannot get any satisfaction from the unnatural, because only unnatural satisfaction is possible from the unnatural, and that is natural. Only from the natural can natural satisfaction happen. Through the natural you can reach reality; through the natural you can comprehend truth. Through the unnatural you can only get more and more hallucinations, illusions, dreams, and with dreams you can deceive yourself, but you will never be satisfied.
In a dream, for example, you can be thirsty, and you may dream that you are drinking water. This will be useful and convenient so that the sleep is not disturbed. If you do not see in the dream that you are drinking water, your sleep will be disturbed. There is a real sensation of thirst. It will disturb your sleep, you will be troubled. The dream helps; it gives you the feeling that you are drinking water. But this water is false. Your thirst is merely deceived; it is not quenched. You can continue sleeping, but the thirst has been suppressed.
This happens not only in dreams: it happens throughout your entire life. You seek something in the unreal personality, which is not there, which is only a facade. If you do not get what you seek, you will suffer; if you get it, you will also suffer. If you do not get it, the suffering will be less — remember this. If you get what you seek, the suffering will be deeper and greater.
Psychologists assert that because of this unreal personality, we practically never desire to achieve any goal — never desire to achieve, because if we achieve the goal, we will be completely disappointed. We live on hope, in hope we can continue to live. Hope is a dream. You will never reach the goal, so you will never realize that the goal is false.
A poor man's struggle for wealth is happier at the stage of struggle, because in the struggle there is hope. And for the unreal, unnatural personality, only hope brings happiness. If the poor man becomes rich, his hope disappears. And the natural consequence is disappointment. Wealth will be achieved, but satisfaction will not. He will reach the goal, but nothing will happen. His hopes will be shattered. That is why the moment society becomes wealthy, it begins to experience anxiety.
If America is so deeply troubled today, it is because hopes have been fulfilled, goals have been achieved, and now you can no longer deceive yourself. So if in America the young generation rebels against all the goals of the older generation, it is only because of this: that it all turned out to be nonsense.
Here, in India, we are unable to comprehend this. We cannot understand young people who willingly become poor — become hippies. Become poor of their own free will? We cannot understand this. We still have hope. We hope for the future: that someday our country will become rich and there will be paradise here. Hope always involves heaven.
Because of this unreal personality, everything we try to do, everything we do, everything we see — everything becomes unreal. Tantra teaches that truth can happen to you only if you return again to the real, to the natural. But to settle into the real, you must have great courage, because the unreal is comfortable, because the unreal has been instilled too much, because your mind is so conditioned that you will fear everything real.
Osho
