Imperfection

 

 

Question 1

Osho,

Why can't i say yes to myself? I have the feeling that all my misery is rooted in this incapacity.  

 

 

It is one of the greatest problems. Every human being has to face it, because the whole society up to now has been based on self-condemnation. All the religions, all the societies, all the cultures create a tremendous guilt in you that you are not what you should be. They give you perfectionist ideals to fulfill which are impossible. They simply drive you crazy.

 

Perfectionism is the root cause of all neurosis. Nobody can be perfect -- nobody NEED be perfect; life is beautiful because everything is imperfect. Perfection is death; imperfection is life. It is because of imperfection that growth is possible. If you are perfect then there is no growth, no movement. Then nothing can happen to you; all has already happened. You will be utterly dead.

 

Hence I say God is the most imperfect phenomenon because God is the most evolving factor in existence and evolution and perfection are against each other. It is because of this that all the religions have been against the idea of evolution. Christianity condemned Darwin and his philosophy as much as possible. The reason was this: Christianity believed in a perfect God, and a perfect God can create only a perfect world. How can imperfection come out of a perfect creator? Then there is no possibility of evolution. If the possibility of evolution is accepted, then the world, the creation, is imperfect and ultimately it will lead to the logical conclusion that the creator is imperfect.

 

No religion has dared to declare that God is imperfect, but I declare that God is imperfect because imperfection means evolution, imperfection means life, imperfection means flow, growth. And God is infinitely imperfect; he will never become perfect. The moment he becomes perfect the whole existence will disappear into nonexistence.

 

But because of this idea of a perfect God we have all been trying for centuries to be perfect, and there are two outcomes of it. One is: if you are simple, innocent, you will start TRYING to be perfect and you will go neurotic. And you can never become perfect, hence you will carry a mountainous burden of guilt. It will crush you, it will destroy all your joy in life, it will poison you. It won't allow you to celebrate, to sing, to dance. It is suicidal. Or if you are not innocent and simple, if you are cunning and clever, then you will become a hypocrite. You will talk about perfection; that will be just a facade, a mask, and hidden behind the mask you will go on being whatsoever you are.

 

Both are ugly phenomena. Going crazy, becoming, neurotic, guilt-ridden is ugly; becoming a hypocrite is ugly. But your so-called religions leave you no other alternative: they all talk about saying yes, but they all teach you saying no. They all think they are theistic -- they are all atheistic, because to me atheism means a deep-rooted no and theism means a fundamental yes to life. Theism has nothing to do with God, nor has atheism anything to do with the denial of God. Theism is saying yes to life with all its imperfections, as it is, saying yes to it with no conditions, with no strings attached. And atheism to me means saying no to life as it is and trying to make it better, trying to make it perfect.

 

Renata, you say: WHY CAN 'T I SAY YES TO MYSELF?

 

Because you have been told you are all wrong, you are nothing but a sinner. Everything that you do is wrong, everything that you think is wrong, everything that you are is wrong -- how can you say yes to yourself? You have been given ideas, great ideals, shoulds: "You should be like this, like that..." And you go on comparing yourself with those stupid ideals. Of course, you fall very short, and when you fall very short you start feeling a deep no to yourself you want to destroy yourself; you cannot love yourself.

 

You have been told to love others, but you have neVer been told to love yourself. And you can love others only if you have loved yourself in the first place: if you don't love yourself you cannot love anybody else in the world. Loving yourself, you learn the art of love. And if you can love yourself with all your imperfections you will be able to love other human beings with all their imperfections. If you cannot love yourself with your imperfections, how are you going to love others with their imperfections? You will hate them!

 

Parents hate their children, children hate their parents, wives hate their husbands, husbands hate their wives, for the simple reason that they can see the imperfections. Everybody is in search of a perfect person and you will not find a perfect person anywhere, except some fools who go on claiming that they are infallible, perfect. Pope John Paul the Polack, he is infallible! Popes are infallible. They represent God -- how can they be fallible? In India Satya Sai Baba claims to be infallible. Now, to me these are utter idiots! They have no sense of any manners, of any etiquette even; they don't have any intelligence. Otherwise they could see -- it is so simple. But it is a traditional thing.

 

Jainas in India have claimed that Mahavira is all-knowing. Buddha laughed at the whole idea. He was an intelligent man, a really penetrating intelligence, but he never claimed that he was infallible. No intelligent person can do that. He laughed at the whole idea that Mahavira was infallible. We don't know what was Mahavira's own statement about it because according to the Jaina tradition he remained silent, he never said a single word. There were interpreters of his silence who were telling people what he meant. I cannot conceive that he would have ever meant that he was infallible. A man of such intelligence as Mahavira could not do that.

 

Buddha says, "I have heard: Mahavira going for a morning walk steps on a dog's tail, and when the dog barks then he comes to know that there is a dog -- because it is still dark in the morning. And this is the all-knowing man who knows past, present, future, and he does not know that he is stepping on the tail of a dog!"

 

Buddha has said, "I know that Mahavira has many times stood begging in front of a house where nobody lives; the house has been empty for years. Only when people say to him that 'This house is empty, nobody lives here,' will he move to another house to beg."

 

And the followers claim that he knows past, present and future, that he knows everything, that he is omniscient, that he is omnipotent, that he is all-powerful. But he suffered throughout his life from stomach diseases, he died of stomach diseases -- it may have been something like a stomach cancer, the word "cancer" was not known in those days -- and he is thought to be omnipotent and he is thought to be omnipresent: all the qualities of God. But these are the claims of the followers. That I can understand: followers are stupid people, otherwise why should they follow?

 

I don't have any followers here. You are all my friends. I don't want any followers because I don't want to live surrounded by fools!

 

But Satya Sai Baba declares that he is infallible, that he knows all, that he has never committed a mistake that he cannot commit a mistake. Now these are ali maniacs. Ego cannot be more mad.

 

Perfection is not possible. You are imperfect, and there is nothing wrong in being imperfect; this is the only way to be. Once you accept your imperfection you have accepted your humanity, and in that acceptance the yes arises. And then you can love yourself and you can love others too, because they are as imperfect as you are.

 

Renata, you are still trying to live according to the ideas given by your parents to you. In that way all parents have poisoned their children for thousands of years; that poisoning still continues. And once a child is poisoned, from the very beginning he starts thinking it IS his own idea. It gets so deep-rooted -- it goes to the very guts -- that you completely forget that it has been implanted from the outside. And then you try to live it out. You cannot manage it, and it will mess up your whole life.

 

One Indian friend has asked: "Osho, nothing moves without the will of God, not even a single blade of grass..." These are his actual words:

 

-Osho, “Tao: The Golden Gate, Vol 1, #10“