Chapter-7 Reconciliation with the parents

Beloved Osho,
I am angry with my parents for the first time. They are simple people, and i say to myself that it is not their fault that they have no understanding of Osho. But my anger is so much in conflict with my love that it hurts. I am so angry writing this that I can’t even formulate the question. Can you help please?

Every child would be angry if he understood what the poor parents have been doing to him unknowingly, unconsciously. All their efforts are for the good of the child. Their intentions are good but their consciousness is nil. And good intentions in the hands of unconscious people are dangerous; they cannot bring about the result they are intending. They may create just the opposite.

Every parent is trying to bring a beautiful child into the world, but looking at the world it seems it is an orphanage. There has been no parent at all. In fact if it were an orphanage, it would have been far better, because you would at least have been yourself — no parents to interfere with you.

So the anger is natural, but useless. To be angry does not help your parents and it harms you.
Gautam Buddha is reported to have made a very strange statement: In your anger you punish yourself for somebody else’s fault. It looks very strange the first time you come across the statement that in anger you punish yourself for somebody else’s fault.
Your parents have done something twenty years back, thirty years back, and you are angry now. Your anger is not going to help anyone; it is simply going to create more wounds in you. And being near me, close to me… I am trying to explain to you the whole mechanism of how children are being brought up, you should become more understanding that whatever has happened had to happen. Your parents were conditioned by their parents. You cannot find out who was really responsible to begin with. It has been passed from generation to generation.

Your parents are doing exactly what has been done to them. They have been victims. You will feel compassion for them and you will feel joyous that you are not going to repeat the same thing in your life. If you decide to have children you will feel joyous that you are going to break the vicious circle, that you are going to jump out of the line that goes back to the very beginning and continues up to you, that you can become the dead end. You will not do it to your children or to any other person’s children.
You should feel fortunate that you have a master with you to explain what has been happening between parents and children — the complex upbringing, good intentions, bad results, where everybody is trying to do the best and the world goes on becoming worse and worse.

Your parents were not so fortunate to have a master — and you are being angry at them. You should feel kind, compassionate, loving. Whatever they did was unconscious. They could not have done otherwise. All that they knew they have tried on you. They were miserable, and they have created another miserable human being in the world.
They had no clarity about why they were miserable. You have the clarity to understand why one becomes miserable. And once you understand how misery is created, you can avoid causing the same in somebody else.

But feel for your parents. They worked hard; they did everything that they could, but they had no idea how psychology functions. Instead of being taught how to become a mother or how to become a father, they were being taught how to become a Christian, how to become a Marxist, how to become a tailor, how to become a plumber, how to become a philosopher — all these things are good and needed, but the basic thing is missing. If they are going to produce children, then their most significant teaching should be how to become a mother, how to become a father.

It has been taken for granted that by giving birth you know how to become a mother and how to become a father. Yes, as far as giving birth to a child… it is a biological act, you don’t have to be psychologically trained for it. Animals are doing perfectly well, birds are doing perfectly well, trees are doing perfectly well. But giving birth to a child biologically is one thing and to be a mother or to be a father is totally different. It needs great education because you are creating a human being.

Animals are not creating anything, they are simply producing carbon copies. And now science has come to a point where they have discovered that carbon copies can really be produced! It is a very dangerous idea. If we make banks — and sooner or later we are going to make them; once an idea is there it is going to become a reality. And scientifically it is proved that it is one hundred percent possible… there is no problem.

We can have banks in the hospitals for both the male sperms and female eggs. And we can create exactly the same two sperms and exactly the same two eggs, so two children are born which are exactly the same. One child will be released into the world; the other will grow in a fridge, unconscious, but all his parts will be exactly the same as the other person. And if the first person is in an accident and loses a leg or loses a kidney, or has to be operated on, there is no problem: his carbon copy is waiting in the hospital. From the carbon copy a kidney can be taken out — he is growing exactly at the same rate, he is just unconscious — and it will be exactly the same as the kidney that has been lost. It can be replaced.

That carbon copy will always be available for replacing any parts — even the brain. You can fall into a coma or you can even have a heart attack… Your brain can remain alive even after a heart attack for at least four minutes — but not more than that. If during these four minutes an identical brain is inserted, an identical heart is inserted, you will never feel that anything has changed or anything has happened to you. Perhaps you fell asleep and now you are awake. You will never know that your brain has been changed, that your heart has been changed.

This idea of having carbon copies seems to be a great advancement in medical science in a way, but it is dangerous — dangerous in the sense that man becomes a machine with replaceable parts, just like any machine. When something goes wrong you replace the part. And if every part can be replaced then man will be falling farther and farther away from spiritual growth, because he will start thinking of himself as just a machine. That’s what half of the world, the communist world, thinks — that man is a machine.

You are fortunate that you can understand the situation your parents were in. They have not done anything specifically to you; they would have done the same to any child that was born to them. They were programmed for that. They were helpless. And to be angry against helpless people is simply not right. It is unjust, unfair, and moreover it is harmful to you.
If your parents cannot understand me, you should not be worried about it. The whole world cannot understand me. Your parents are normal people; they just follow the crowd, which is safer. You have fallen out of the crowd. You have chosen a risky and dangerous path. If they don’t want to go into a dangerous lifestyle, it is their choice; that should not be a cause for your anger.

In fact you can help them by really becoming the individual that I am talking about: more conscious, more alert, more loving. Seeing you can only change them. Seeing you so radically changed can only make them think twice, that perhaps they are wrong. There is no other way. You cannot intellectually convince them. Intellectually they can argue, and argument never changes anybody. The only thing that changes people is the charisma, the magnetism, the magic, of your individuality. Then whatever you touch becomes golden.

So rather than wasting your time and energy in being angry and fighting against the past which no longer exists, put your whole energy into becoming the magic of your individuality. So when your parents see you they cannot remain untouched by the new qualities that you have grown, qualities which are automatically impressive: your freshness, your understanding, your unconditional lovingness, your kindness even in a situation where anger would have been more appropriate.

Only these things can be the real arguments. You need not say a word. Your eyes, your face, your actions, your behavior, your response, will make the change in them. They will start enquiring about what has happened to you, how it has happened to you — because everybody wants these qualities. These are the real riches. Nobody is so rich that he can afford not to have the things that I am telling you.

So put your energy into transforming yourself. That will help you, that will help your parents. Perhaps it may create a chain reaction. Your parents may have other children, they may have friends, and it will go on and on.
It is just like you are sitting on the bank of a silent lake and you throw a small pebble into the lake. The pebble is so small that it creates a small circle at first, but circle after circle… and they go on spreading to the far ends, as far as the lake can take them. And it was only a small pebble.

We are living in a certain kind of new sphere, a new psychological lake, in which whatever you do creates certain vibrations around you. It touches people, reaches to unknown sources.

Just create a small ripple of right individuality and it will reach to many people — and certainly to those who are most closely related to you. They will see it first, and they will understand with great awe. They will not believe their eyes because all that they know of religion is the Sunday church, where nothing happens. They have been going every Sunday their whole lives, and they come back home just the same.

In the name of religion they know only the BIBLE or the KORAN or the GITA and they have been reading it and nothing happens, because they don’t know one thing — that you are a living being and a book is dead. And the man in the church who is delivering a sermon is just a professional. He has prepared the sermon from the books, and he goes on repeating the same sermons. Nobody listens, so nobody catches him. He is repeating the same sermon that he delivered two months before. Nobody listened that time, and nobody is listening this time. And you know that that sermon cannot change you because that sermon has not changed the preacher himself. He is just as mundane as you are — perhaps more.

I used to know a Jaina monk who was a very simple man, almost a simpleton. He asked me, “How many lectures do you have?”
I said, “This is a very difficult question. Until I am finished with my life, I will not know.”
He said, “I have only three: one is for ten minutes, one is for twenty minutes, one is for thirty minutes, depending on the occasion. Sometimes in a conference you have only ten minutes. I have a ready-made, ten minute lecture. If they give me twenty minutes, I have a twenty minute lecture. If they give me thirty minutes, I have a thirty minute one. More than that is not possible, because nobody is interested in listening too much. People want a short cut.”

I said, “That’s great. You have found a really great idea.”
And he said, “It works.”
And I asked, “People have not found it out?”
He said, “Nobody has said anything about it to me, and I have been using these three lectures my whole life. Wherever I go — to the temples, colleges, and universities where I talk — I ask, `How many minutes? Ten, twenty, thirty?’ Whatever they want, my lecture is ready. And I have repeated the same lecture so many times that now I don’t feel nervous. I can repeat the lecture without thinking at all!”

Now do you think listening to such a man is going to transform you? — or anybody? But every Christian missionary is doing that.
One of the most famous, world-renowned Christian missionaries was Stanley Jones. He was very friendly with me but he became very angry and then the friendship was broken. He was an old man, a friend of Mahatma Gandhi, and Mahatma Gandhi respected him very much. He used to come to the city where I was living and he stayed in the house of one of my friends. He had printed cards — ten cards or twenty cards for his whole lecture — and he would put the cards on the table. He would start lecturing, and he would go on changing the cards.

He became very angry with me because I mixed up his cards! So he was saying something and it was not on the card. He almost had a nervous breakdown. He looked at all the cards and it was not there. That card I had taken out. And he said, “Today I am not feeling well. I am feeling sick, so I will not be speaking.”
And he asked the host, “Who has done this?”
The host said, “Your friend.”
Stanley Jones was very angry. He said, “Are you my friend or my enemy? You destroyed my whole lecture!”
I said, “Once in a while you should speak from your heart, not from these cards. I have looked in your suitcase, and you have almost fifty sets of these cards, so you can go on repeating these speeches. And do you think this is going to help anybody? — these dead cards that you have repeated your whole life? And today just because one card was missing and the numbers were mixed up, you lost your temper, you lost your integrity. You were almost in a state of madness. And what do you think people thought who had come to listen to you?”

He had written many books. I have gone through those books: he writes well, beautifully, but it is all stolen. Nothing is his own. Nothing is his own experience. Unless something is your own experience it is not going to impress anybody.
So feel blissful. Here you have a chance to get totally transformed. And help your poor parents, because they did not have such a chance; feel sorry for them.
(Excerpted from: The Path of the Mystic, Chap-15, Q-2)
Osho,
My parents are so disappointed in me, they worry all the time. They have made my being here possible, so how can I turn from them? What do I owe to my parents?

Prem Shunya,
THE TROUBLE with the family is that children grow out of childhood, but parents never grow out of their parenthood! Man has not even yet learned that parenthood is not something that you have to cling to it forever. When the child is a grown-up person your parenthood is finished. The child needed it — he was helpless. He needed the mother, the father, their protection; but when the child can stand on his own, the parents have to learn how to withdraw from the life of the child. And because parents never withdraw from the life of the child they remain a constant anxiety to themselves AND to the children. They destroy, they create guilt; they don’t help beyond a certain limit.

To be a parent is a great art. To give birth to children is nothing — any animal can do it; it is a natural, biological, instinctive process. To give birth to a child is nothing great, it is nothing special; it is very ordinary. But to be a parent is something extraordinary; very few people are really capable of being parents.

And the criterion is that the real parents will give freedom. They will not impose themselves upon the child, they will not encroach upon his space. From the very beginning their effort will be to help the child to be himself or to be herself. They are to support, they are to strengthen, they are to nourish, but not to impose their ideas, not to give the shoulds and should-nots. They are not to create slaves.

But that’s what parents all over the world go on doing: their whole effort is to fulfill their ambitions through the child. Of course nobody has been ever able to fulfill his ambitions, so every parent is in a turmoil. He knows the death is coming close by every day, he can feel the death is growing bigger and bigger and life is shrinking, and his ambitions are still unfulfilled, his desires are still not realized. He knows that he has been a failure. He is perfectly aware that he will die with empty hands — just the way he had come, with empty hands, he will go.

Now his whole effort is how to implant his ambitions into the child. He will be gone, but the child will live according to him. What he has not been able to do, the child will be able to do. At least through the child he will fulfill certain dreams.

It is not going to happen. All that is going to happen is the child will remain unfulfilled as the parent and the child will go on doing the same to his children. This goes on and on from one generation to another generation. We go on giving our diseases; we go on infecting children with our ideas which have not proved valid in our own lives.

Somebody has lived as a Christian, and his life can show that no bliss has happened through it. Somebody had lived like a Hindu and you can see that his life is a hell but he wants his children to be Hindus or Christians or Mohammedans. How unconscious man is!

I have heard:
A very sad, mournful man visited a doctor in London. Seating himself in a chair in the waiting room and glumly ignoring the other patients he awaited his turn. Finally the doctor motioned him into the inner office where after a careful examination the man appeared even more serious, sad and miserable than ever.

“There’s nothing really the matter with you,” explained the doctor, “you are merely depressed. What you need is to forget your work and your worries. Go out and see a Charlie Chaplin movie and have a good laugh!”
A sad look spread over the little man’s face. “But I am Charlie Chaplin!” he said.
It is a very strange world! You don’t know people’s real lives; all that you know is their masks. You see them in the churches, you see them in the clubs, in the hotels, in the dancing halls, and it seems everybody is rejoicing, everybody is living a heavenly life, except you — of course, because you know how miserable you are within. And the same is the case with everybody else! They are all wearing masks, deceiving everybody, but how can you deceive yourself? You know that the mask is not your original face.

But the parents go on pretending before their children, go on deceiving their own children. They are not even authentic with their own children! They will not confess that their life has been a failure; on the contrary, they will pretend that they have been very successful. And they would like the children also to live in the same way as they have lived.

Prem Shunya, you ask: MY PARENTS ARE SO DISAPPOINTED IN ME…
Don’t be worried at all — all parents are disappointed in their children! And I say all, without any exception. Even the parents of Gautam the Buddha were very much disappointed in him, the parents of Jesus Christ were very much disappointed in him, obviously. They had lived a certain kind of life — they were orthodox Jews — and this son, this Jesus, was going against many traditional ideas, conventions. Jesus’ father, Joseph, must have hoped that now he is growing old the son will help him in his carpentry, in his work, in his shop — and the stupid son started talking about kingdom of God! Do you think he was very much happy in his old age?

Gautam Buddha’s father was very old and he had only one son, and that too was born to him when he was very old His whole life he has waited and prayed and worshipped and did all kinds of religious rituals so that he can have a son, because who is going to look after his great kingdom? And then one day the son disappeared from the palace. Do you think he was very happy? He was so angry, violently angry, he would have killed Gautam Buddha if he had found him! His police, his detectives were searching all over the kingdom. “Where he is hiding? Bring him to me!”

And Buddha knew it, that he will be caught by his father’s agents, so the first thing he did was he left the boundary of his father’s kingdom; escaped into another kingdom, and for twelve years nothing was heard about him.
When he became enlightened he came back home to share his joy, to say to the father that, “I have arrived home,” that “I have realized,” that “I have known the truth — and this is the way.”

But the father was so angry, he was trembling and shaking — he was old, very old. He shouted at Buddha and he said, “You are a disgrace to me!” He saw Buddha — he was standing there in a beggar’s robe with a begging bowl — and he said, “How you dare to stand before me like a beggar? You are the son of an emperor, and in our family there has never been a beggar! My father was an emperor, his father was too, and for centuries we have been emperors! You have disgraced the whole heritage!”

Buddha listened for half an hour, he didn’t say a single word. When the father ran out of gas, cooled down a little… tears were coming out of his eyes, tears of anger, frustration. Then Buddha said, “I ask for only one favor. Please wipe your tears and look at me — I am not the same person who had left the home, I am totally transformed. But your eyes are so full of tears you cannot see. And you are still talking to somebody who is no more! He has died.”

And this triggered another anger, and the father said, “You are trying to teach me? Do you think I am a fool? Can’t I recognize my own son? My blood is running in your veins — and I cannot recognize you?”
Buddha said, “Please don’t misunderstand me. The body certainly belongs to you, but not my consciousness. And my consciousness is my reality, not my body. And you are right that your father was an emperor and his father too, but as far as I know about myself I was a beggar in my past life and I was a beggar in a previous life too, because I have been searching for truth. My BODY has come through you, but you have been just like a passage. You have not created me, you have been a medium, and my consciousness has nothing to do with your consciousness. And what I am saying is that now I have come home with a new consciousness, I have gone through a rebirth. Just LOOK at me, look at my joy!”

And the father looked at the son, not believing what he is saying. But one thing was certainly there: that he was so angry but the son has not reacted at all. That was absolutely new — he knew his son. If he was just the old person he would have become as angry as the father or even more, because he was young and his blood was hotter than the father’s. But he is not angry at all, there is absolute peace on his face, a great silence. He is undisturbed, undistracted by the father’s anger. The father has abused him, but it seems not to have affected him at all.
He wiped his tears from the old eyes, looked again, saw the new grace…

Shunya, your parents will be disappointed in you because they must have been trying to fulfill some expectations through you. Now you have become a sannyasin, all their expectations have fallen to the ground. Naturally they are disappointed. but don’t become guilty because of it, otherwise they will destroy your joy, your silence. your growth You remain undisturbed, unworried. Don’t feel any guilt. Your life is yours and you have to live according to your own light.

And when you have arrived at the source of joy, your inner bliss, go to them to share. They will be angry — wait, because anger is not anything permanent; it comes like a cloud and passes. Wait! Go there, be with them, but only when you are certain that you can still remain cool, only when you know that nothing will create any reaction in you, only when you know that you will be able to respond with love even though they are angry. And that will be the only way to help them.
You say: THEY WORRY ALL THE TIME.

That is their business! And don’t think that if you had followed their ideas they would not have worried. They would have still worried; that is their conditioning. Their parents must have worried and their parents’ parents must have worried; that is their heritage. And you have disappointed them because you are no more worrying. You are going astray! They are miserable, their parents have been miserable, and so on, so forth… up to Adam and Eve! And you are going astray, hence the great worry.

But if you become worried you miss an opportunity, and then they have dragged you again back into the same mire. They will feel good, they will rejoice that you have come back to the old traditional, conventional way, but that is not going to help you or them.
If you remain to be independent, if you attain to the fragrance of freedom, if you become more meditative — and that’s WHY YOU are here: to become more meditative, to be more silent, more loving, more blissful — then one day you can share your bliss. To share first you have to have it; you can share only that which you have already got.

Right now you can also worry, but two persons worrying simply multiply worries; they don’t help each other.
You say: THEY WORRY ALL THE TIME.
It must have become their conditioning. It is the conditioning of everybody in the world.
A rabbi was being hosted by a family, and the man of the house, impressed by the honor, warned his children to behave seriously at the dinner table because the great rabbi is coming. But during the course of the meal they laughed at something and he ordered them from the table.

The rabbi then arose and prepared to leave.
“Anything wrong?” asked the concerned father.
“Well,” said the rabbi, “I laughed too!”
You don’t be worried about their seriousness, about their worrying about you. They are trying unconsciously to make you feel guilty. Don’t let them succeed, because if they succeed they will destroy you and they will also destroy an opportunity for them which would have become possible THROUGH you.
You say: THEY HAVE MADE MY BEING HERE POSSIBLE.
Be thankful for that, but there is no need to feel guilty.
SO HOW CAN I TURN FROM THEM?
There is no need to turn from them, but there is no need either to follow them. Go on loving them. When you meditate, after each meditation pray to the existence that “Something of my meditativeness should reach to my parents.
Be prayerful for them, be loving to them, but don’t follow them. That won’t help you or them.
You say: WHAT DO I OWE TO MY PARENTS?

You owe this: that you have to be yourself. You owe this: that you have to be blissful, that you have to be ecstatic, that you have to become a celebration unto yourself, that you have to learn to laugh and rejoice. This is what you owe to them: you owe to them enlightenment.

Become enlightened like Gautam the Buddha and then go to your parents to share your joy. Right now what can you do? Right now nothing is possible. Right now you can only pray.

So I am not saying turn away from them, I am saying don’t follow them, and this is the only way you can be of some help to them. They have helped you physically, you have to help them spiritually. That will be the only way to repay them.

(Excerpted from: I Am That, Chap- 6 , Q-2)
[A sannyasin says: I feel guilty about my mother...and I can’t give her any love, no attention and since she is living in the same house it has got worse and I don’t know what to do with her.]

A few things.… First: mothers, fathers, demand too much, more than is possible for the children to give, because the natural course is: they love you because you are their children; but you cannot love them in the same way, because they are not your children. You will love your children, and the same will happen again: your children will not be able to love you in the same way, because the river moves onwards, not backwards. The natural course is that the parents will love the children and the children will love their children; it cannot move backwards. But the demand seems to be natural. Because the mother has loved you, she thinks you should love her in the same way, and the more she demands, the less you will be capable of returning the love and the more and more she will create a feeling of guilt in you. So drop that idea — completely drop it; it is natural. You cannot love her in the same way that she has loved you, and nothing is wrong with you, nothing at all. That’s how it happens to every child; that’s how nature intends it to happen.

If children love their parents too much they will not be able to love their own children. That will be more dangerous — then the survival of the species will be at risk. Your mother has also not loved her mother. At the most one can be polite, formal, but love does not flow backward. One can be respectful, that’s true — one should be respectful, but love is not possible. Once you understand that love is not possible the guilt feeling will disappear; then you are just being normal. If it is possible, you are abnormal; you need some treatment.

There are a few people who become too attached to, too obsessed with, their parents; they are psychologically ill. If a woman loves the mother too much she will not be able to love a man because she will always find that her mother will suffer, that it will be creating a kind of conflict. If she loves a man her love will flow towards that man and she will feel guilty. So there are a few women who remain attached to the mother and the father, and a few men who remain attached to the parents. They are ill people — they will never enjoy life. And because they will not enjoy life, they will be angry also at their parents. Deep down they will be murderous; they will hope ‘Some day if the mother dies or if the father dies, then I will be free,’ although they will not tell it to anybody — not even to themselves will they tell it. It will just be there lurking in their unconscious, because that seems to be the only possibility to be free. That’s not good — to think of your parents as dead — but that’s how it happens if you become too attached.

There is no need — just be respectful, that’s all. Take care, whatsoever you can do, do, but don’t feel guilt at all. It is because of the guilt that you behave horribly. Just see the point: because you feel guilty, certainly you feel it is her presence that is making you feel guilty and destroying your happiness. She is a disturbance, so when you come to see her you start behaving horribly — that is a natural by-product. And when you feel horrible back home you will feel more guilty. This-is a vicious circle: you will feel more guilty, next time you will behave more horribly and so on, so forth; there is no end to it.

Drop the guilt. You are perfectly normal; this is how things should be. And if parents are understanding they will understand this. This happens in animals — in animals there is no question: the moment the child is able to stand on his or her own, the child leaves the parents. The parents don’t go after the child saying ‘Listen, where are you going? We have done so much for you….’ That is not asked in nature at all.

And it is not that the mother and father have not done anything; they have done much — particularly the mother has done much, but it was her joy. To carry you in her womb was her joy. To nourish you, to bring you up, was her joy. She has been rewarded already. Nothing more is needed to be given to her; there is no question of giving. She enjoyed those moments — when she was pregnant she enjoyed it — when she gave birth she was happy, because she became a mother, she was fulfilled. Then she brought you up and she was happy: she is bringing up a child… a natural happiness. She has been rewarded already. Nature always rewards immediately; it never keeps files hanging.

So don’t feel guilty — that’s where you have to change your mind. Drop the guilt absolutely and then you will feel a great transformation happening: you will feel sorry for the poor woman. She has done much — you will feel respectful to her; it is because of her that you are in the world. But then there is no question of guilt. And whatsoever you do you will be doing because of your simple happiness. You would like to do something… out of sheer joy! You would like to share something with her; that’s okay.

And you will not be horrible any more. It is the guilt that creates horrible behaviour, and when you are not horrible you will feel better and another circle will start. Whenever you go to her without guilt, you will feel good, you will be happy that she is still alive, that you can still do something for her, and when you come home you will feel very very good. And that will create again a better, deeper relationship, and respect. All that is needed is: drop the guilt feeling. It is absolutely unnecessary but I understand how it happens.

Parents have been creating it — down the ages they have been teaching children ‘You have to do this, you have to do that and if you are not doing it, you have betrayed us, you are a traitor.’ Directly or indirectly they start making you feel guilty, and they don’t know that if you are guilty, you will behave badly with them. But this is simply ignorance. So drop the guilt and then see the change coming.

And there is no need, if you don’t feel good, to go to her. Go only when you feel good! There is no need to go unnecessarily. Never go because of any duty. Never go because you have to. No. Only go when you feel really happy and you would like to be with your mother for a few moments. It is better to be happy and there only for a few moments rather than to be horrible and be there for hours and create misery for her and yourself. Be a little more aware…

Whenever possible, come back. Help my people, mm? And don’t feel guilty if you can’t! (MUCH LAUGHTER)

(Excerpted from: The Tongue Tip Taste of Tao, Chap-3)

[A sannyasin asks about doing the Fischer-Hoffmann process because she has I have a tight knot in hermy stomach at the idea of seeing hermy parents. She says: I either become very distant, mechanical with them, or very argumentative and defensive. And I know that they’re limited and they have problems, but I don’t have the compassion for them.Should I go into therapy?

Osho checks her energy.]
There is, in fact, no need. The energy is perfectly good, but your fear is also there. It is just a fear which comes from the past, just an impression from your whole past which is hanging around. Your energy is perfectly good: there is no knot in the energy, the knot is just in your memory. These are two different things.

If the knot is in the energy then it is a difficult thing, a difficult problem to solve. But if the knot is just in the memory it is a very simple thing. If you want you can drop it just like that. My suggestion is that before going into anything else, just be happy back home for two, three months, the way you have been here. Just enjoy life with no barrier, with no guilt, with no inhibition. If you can enjoy life with no guilt and no inhibition, a great compassion for your parents will arise in you. Now you will not be able to see how this can function….

In fact, no child is ever able to forgive his parents unless he becomes guiltless, because parents mean guilt. They have created the guilt, the basic guilt: do this, don’t do that; be like this and don’t be like that. They were the first creative elements, but they were also destructive. They helped the child to grow, they loved the child, but they had their own minds and conditionings and they tried to impose those conditionings on the child. So every child hates the parents.

That’s why all the societies make it a cultural programme to respect your parents. It has to be made to balance the hatred, otherwise parents will be killed! They will not be able to survive; it is a survival measure! So, all the societies, ancient, new, eastern, western, cultured, uncultured, all agree about one thing — that the children should respect the parents, because they know that if this respect is not enforced, forcibly, the children are going to revolt. When they are small they cannot do anything, but when they become powerful, when they come into their own — by the time they have become a little older and powerful — the parents will start becoming old and powerless; that time will be dangerous for the parents. To avoid that calamity all the societies have to create this taboo. Now, this taboo cannot be dropped unless you drop the guilt — because it is a shadow of the guilt.

You are feeling against your parents, afraid of your parents because they don’t allow you to be yourself. So whenever they are there, you start feeling cramps, you feel knots in your stomach, because they won’t allow you to be yourself. Again you become a child in their presence; again the past becomes alive. Again you are helpless, and you are not a child now, so naturally you become argumentative, you retaliate, you say things, you become angry or you become very defensive, or you start avoiding… but all these things create a distance.

And there is a deep urge in you to love your parents; that’s so with everybody. You have come from them, you owe your life to them. Everybody loves this origin but the origin has done something which does not allow closeness, communication, so when you come close there is a problem. If you don’t come close, some deep urge to commune, to forgive, to make new bridges is there.

For three months just live as you would like to, and that will be the cleaning of this memory part. Just live the way you want to live. Your parents are not obstructing you any more so you can live your life. Your parents will speak from within you many times: you will be doing something and a parental voice will come, ‘Don’t do this’. Laugh at that parental voice and remember that now you are free and your parents have made you mature enough that you can live your own life and can take responsibility for it. So no need for this voice — now you have your own consciousness, you need not have a substitute for it. Now the parents need not speak for you; you can speak on your own.

Just keep this in mind, and don’t listen to the parental voice. Even if sometimes it is hard, go on your own; don’t listen to the parental voice. For three months try this; within three months this knot will disappear.If it doesn’t disappear then you can go through Fischer-Hoffmann, and that will be helpful.

But I don’t see that there is any problem. Much has happened to you here. Mm? you were not here for many days but much has still happened. The energy is perfectly flowing. It is just a memory thing, and a memory thing is not very important. Mm? it can be washed very easily, it can be erased; this will be the way to erase it. And you can do it on your own, then there is no need for therapy. If you cannot and you feel it is difficult, then Fischer-Hoffmann therapy will be helpful. It will do the same thing: it will try to erase the memory. If you cannot do it alone it is always good to take the support of any expert who knows how to do it, there is nothing wrong in it, but first try it on your own.

Otherwise, what happens sometimes is that your therapist may be able to help you to get rid of your parents but he becomes your parent. The mind is so clumsy, so confused, that if it starts losing some grip on something, it immediately starts grabbing something else from some other direction as a substitute. So, many people who go to the therapist by and by get rid of many problems but then the therapist becomes the problem. Then they cannot afford to lose the therapist; they cannot drop out of therapy. They have to continue in one or another. They can change the therapist, they can change the therapy, they can go from one kind of therapy to another kind of therapy, but they become therapy-addicts.

It is very good sometimes to tackle your problems on your own — it will give you more confidence. If you can finish… and my feeling is that you can finish; there is no problem about it. You have just to make an effort for three months.

And this is the process — to do whatsoever you want to do; don’t listen to any parental voice. Good or bad, that is not the point. Whatsoever you want to do is good for these three months, and whatsoever you don’t want to do is bad so don’t do it. Be completely at ease and free, and enjoy life almost as if you are born for the first time. And that’s exactly what has happened through sannyas. You are a new child, it is a new birth. You can start growing on a new line, and then those parental voices and the parental conditionings will not come in the way at all, it is a new growth.

For three months just enjoy, and if you feel that things have changed, perfectly good; if they have not changed, then there is nothing wrong. You can take Fischer-Hoffmann. Keep this (Osho gives Madhu the box) with you. And whenever you need me, just put it on your heart and remember me… and I will be working continuously. And help my people there!….

(Excerpted from: The No Book, Chap-20)
[A sannyasin’s father has died after a long illness andMy father suddenly died and I feelshe says: I have to go somehow more to be with my mother, to finish something there. There is something there that feels so… unfinished emotionally with her, and now seems the time.]

It is always so with parents… very difficult to finish. The relationship is such that to finish it needs great awareness — only then can it be finished. Even the idea to finish it may not allow it to finish. So don’t carry that idea — that you have to finish it. Just be there… naturally there, lovingly there.

Do whatsoever you can do — because parents have done much, and in the West they are not even thanked for it. Nobody feels any gratitude.

In the East it has been totally different. In the East it is never an unfinished situation. It is always complete, because parents have given so much and children have always been giving as much reverence as possible, as much respect as possible. Mm? that has become so natural in the East, and it has to be so for a very deep reason.

If you are not in rapport with your patents you will not be in rapport with yourself, because parents are not just an accidental phenomenon — they are deeply in your roots… you come from them. Half of your being comes from your mother, half of your being comes from your father. They both will carry on in you. All their conflict will continue in you… all their anxieties will deep down continue. It is for your sake that you have to come to a rapport. And the easiest way is not to make any effort for it.

Effort will never help — it is very artificial. So drop this idea, otherwise you will come back feeling again that something has remained incomplete. Simply drop that idea. Go there….
In fact in the east it has been always said that there is no way to repay… no way. Whatsoever we owe to our parents, there is no way to repay it — it is not possible. This has been accepted. With this acceptance, repayment becomes easy, because then there is no problem. If it cannot be done, there is no problem. So we love, we respect.

Just go there, be there. And she will need you in this moment. When your father is gone she will be in a great sorrow — she will need you. So don’t make any effort deliberately, mm? Just be with her, caress her, care about her… sometimes meditate with her, help her to meditate if she can. Otherwise just tell her that you will meditate in her room. She can simply rest in her bed — you will meditate. And that very vibration will help her.
Be happy. It will be difficult in a situation, in this situation, but still be happy. Take cheerfulness for her… make the burden light. Help her to accept the situation.

And don’t bother about your relationship, mm? simply don’t bother about it, and suddenly you will see that it is healed. It is indirect — you cannot work directly. And if for two, three weeks you can be very loving and helping and she feels happy that you have come — she feels happy that you have some totally different kind of energy that she needed… that you have been a nourishment to her — that’s enough. You will feel a rapport coming.

If we can be loving, no relationship remains hanging. Each moment it has a completion.
And I don’t like the word’finished’, because that seems like a dead end, a full stop, as if something has been closed, filled in, and closed… no need to bother about it — finished.
The connotation of that word is not very good — that it was something which had to be done. One is happy that it was finished — that one is out of it, that one need not look back again, that one is able to forget all about it now. That is implied in the word’finished’.

I like the word ‘completion’. Completion is never finished in a way and yet it is complete. Each moment of it is a complete moment.
If I die right now, my relationship with you all is complete. If I live, the relationship continues. Completion is not against continuity. Finishing is against continuity. Completion is each moment but with an opening into the future — it is not a closed thing.

In fact the more complete a relationship is, the more it becomes open — open-ended — and you can look forward; there is no need to look back. Not that it is finished so there is no need to look back — there is no need to look back because now you can look forward. There is future, there is hope, there is thrill. The next moment will bring another completion. We go from completion to completion, from perfection to another perfection.

And nothing should be finished while you are alive — how and why should it be finished? Everything should continue — that’s what your life is. The more rich it is, the more it is related. If you have thousands of relationships of course you have a richer life, because they all pour their love energy in you and they all share your love energy. You live tremendously enriched in that give and take, in that sharing, in that meeting of energies.

In the West that too is happening — people are becoming very very poor in their relationships. It is becoming a very very small circle every day. First the joint family disappeared — otherwise it was a wider circle. Uncles and aunts were all living together, and children of the uncles and the aunts and the cousins and faraway cousins — they were all living together. It was a big family. One had a better possibility of communion, of relationship. One was richer because of it.

Then the joint family dropped, disappeared. The family became a very small unit wife, husband, children. Now even that is dropping! Even wives and husbands are not living together. Even children are like a burden — servants are taking care of them. The wife has her own life, the husband has his own life. They meet like strangers. The home is no more a home — it is more like a hotel. At the most a house, but not a home. There is no communion left. Yes, people stay overnight, meet and talk and even make love — but the communion is not there. And people are becoming very very poor.

That’s why these growth groups have become so important in the west. A great need to commune, to relate, to touch people, to be touched by people, exists — and that is fulfilled nowhere. Hence so much impact of encounter, gestalt, psychodrama. They will spread because the family has disappeared and they have become now a temporary sort of family. For ten days you meet in a group — twenty people. At least for ten days twenty people become a family. One wants to relate and belong.

In the East it will be difficult. Unless the family disappears these groups cannot function. People ask me why I am not allowing indians in the groups. I am not allowing because it is pointless! They still live in big groups… the family still survives. Maybe it has disappeared in Bombay and Calcutta — then I will allow Bombay, Calcutta people by and by but in the greater india it is not a problem at all.

In small villages the whole village exists like a family — everybody is related to everybody; nobody is unrelated. Everybody is taken care of by the community. So it is impossible for indians to conceive of any need to be touched, hugged, and they cannot see… they will think, ‘These people are crazy! What are they doing?’

There is no need to finish any relationship, but there is a need to make every relationship so complete each moment That if you drop dead suddenly there is nothing left which is incomplete. You will not hang… your spirit will not haunt people. You will simply disappear on your path. There will be no need to look backward — everything is complete.

(Excerpted from: The Buddha Disease, Chap-21)

Osho, I am suspicious about my father. I don’t think that he is myreal father. Can you help me get rid of this doubt?
Christopher,
THIS is a really difficult question! In the first place, it matters not. It is irrelevant whether A is your father or B is your father. How does it matter? Christopher is Christopher,you are you, you are that which you are. From where your first cell came, from where, from what source, makes no difference now.

Sooner or later it will be impossible to decide who is whose father, because there are going to be just semen banks, like there are blood banks. People will donate their semen to the banks, and the doctors will decide the right type for a particular woman.
Why are you so worried about it? But such things sometimes become obsessions. Even if you come to know, even if I say that “This man is your father” — for example, if I say ParitoshPaul, old ParitoshPaulis your father, then what? Are you going to believe me? Then you will start doubting me, so it is better that you doubt your father! Or you may start doubting poor ParitoshPaul, who has nothing to do with it!
Only your mother can answer. Even your father cannot answer, because even your father may not be right. Ask your mother.

A youngster went to his father and said, “Dad, I would like to marry Susy.” “Don’t marry her, son,” said the old man. “When I was a kid I sowed my wild oats, and well, you know how it is.”
About a week later the boy came to his father again and said, “Dad, I am in love with Mildred and I want to marry her.”
The old salesman said, “She is your half-sister, son. You can’t marry her.”
“How about Mabel?” the kid asked a couple of weeks later.
“She is your half-sister too,” said dad.
The youngster, who was anxious to get married, went to his mom and complained, “Pop says I should not marry Susy, Mildred or Mabel because they are my half-sisters. What do I do?”
Mom put her arms around her boy and consoled, “You can marry any one of them you like — he is not your father!”
So it is a very difficult thing unless your mother is truthful about it; nobody can give you a guarantee.
But I have heard about one machine that IBM has produced. I don’t know whether it is true or not, but you can enquire.
A woman, having heard how fantastic the IBM machines are, enters the IBM saleas room to look around.
“You can ask the machine any question you like and it will give you the correct answer,” explains the salesman.
The woman writes the question, “Where is my father?” and puts it into the machine. The answer comes back, “Your father is fishing off the west coast of Florida.”
“Ridiculous!” exclaims the woman. “My father has been dead twenty years.”
“The machine never makes a mistake,” the salesman proclaims. “There is simply a misunderstanding. Rephrase your question and ask it again.”
The woman writes down for the machine, “Where is my mother’s husband?”
The IBM machine answers, “He has been dead twenty years, but your father is fishing off the west coast of Florida.”
But please don’t ask such questions of me, I am not an IBM machine — neither am I your mother!
(Excerpted from: The Guest, Chap-8, Q-6)