Authenticity

 

 

To be authentic means: to remain true to your own being. How to remain true? Three things have to be remembered. One, never listen to anybody, what they say for you to be: always listen to your inner voice, what you would like to be. Otherwise your whole life will be wasted. [....]

 

Remember, be true to your inner voice. It may lead you in danger; then go in danger, but remain true to the inner voice. Then there is a possibility that one day you will come to a state where you can dance with inner fulfillment. Always look, the first thing is your being; and don't allow others to manipulate and control you. And they are many: everybody is ready to control you, everybody is ready to change you, everybody is ready to give you a direction you have not asked for. Everybody is giving you a guide for your life. The guide exists within you; you carry the blueprint.

 

To be authentic means to be true to oneself. It is a very, very dangerous phenomenon; rare people can do that. But whenever people do it, they achieve. They achieve such beauty, such grace, such contentment, that you cannot imagine. If everybody looks so frustrated, the reason is that nobody has listened to his own voice.

 

You wanted to marry a girl, but the girl was a Mohammedan and you are a Hindu brahmin. Your parents wouldn't allow. The society wouldn't accept; it was dangerous. The girl was poor and you are rich. So you married a rich woman, Hindu, brahmin by caste, accepted by everybody -- but not by your heart. So now you live an ugly life. Now you go to the prostitute, but even prostitutes won't help you. You have prostituted your whole life. You wasted your whole life.

 

Always listen to the inner voice, and don't listen to anything else. Thousand and one are the temptations around you because many people are there peddling their things. It is a supermarket, the world, and everybody is interested in selling his thing to you; everybody is a salesman. If you listen to too many salesmen you will become mad. Don't listen to anybody, just close your eyes and listen to the inner voice. That is what meditation is all about: to listen to the inner voice. This is the first thing.

 

Then the second thing -- if you have done the first thing only then the second becomes possible: never wear a mask. If you are angry, be angry. It is risky, but don't smile, because that is to be untrue. But you have been taught that when you are angry, smile; then your smile becomes false, a mask. Hmm?... just an exercise of the lips, nothing else. The heart full of anger, poison, and the lips smiling -- you become a false phenomenon.

 

Then the other thing also happens: when you want to smile you cannot smile. Your whole mechanism is topsy-turvy because when you wanted to be angry you weren't, when you wanted to hate you didn't. Now you want to love; suddenly you find that the mechanism doesn't function. Now you want to smile; you have to force it. Really your heart is full of smile and you want to laugh loudly, but you cannot laugh, something chokes in the heart, something chokes in the throat. The smile doesn't come, or even if it comes it is a very pale and dead smile. It doesn't make you happy. You don't bubble up with it. It is not a radiance around you.

 

When you want to be angry, be angry. Nothing is wrong in being angry. If you want to laugh, laugh. Nothing's wrong in laughing loudly. By and by you will see that your whole system is functioning. When it functions, really, it has a hum around it, just as a car, when everything is going good, hums. The driver who loves the car knows that now everything is functioning well, there is an organic unity -- the mechanism is functioning well. You can see: whenever a person's mechanism is functioning well, you can hear the hum around him. He walks, but his step has a dance in it. He talks, but his words carry a subtle poetry in them. He looks at you, and he really looks; it is not just lukewarm, it is really warm. When he touches you he really touches you; you can feel his energy moving into your body, a current of life being transferred... because his mechanism is functioning well.

 

Don't wear masks; otherwise you will create dysfunctions in your mechanism - blocks. There are many blocks in your body. A person who has been suppressing anger, his jaw becomes blocked. All the anger comes up to the jaw and then stops there. His hands become ugly. They don't have the graceful movement of a dancer, no, because the anger comes into the fingers - and blocked. Remember, anger has two sources to be released from. One is teeth, another is fingers: because all animals, when they are angry - they will bite you with the teeth or they will start tearing you with the hands. So the nails and the teeth are the two points from where the anger is released. [....]

 

Remember, if you cannot cry and weep wholeheartedly, you cannot laugh also, because that is the other polarity. People who can laugh can also cry; people who cannot cry cannot laugh. And you may have observed sometimes in children: if they laugh loudly and long they start crying - because both things are joined. In the villages I have heard mothers saying to their children, "Don't laugh too much; otherwise you will start crying." Really true, because the phenomena are not different - just the same energy moves to the opposite poles.

 

Second thing: don't use masks -- be true whatsoever the cost.

 

And the third thing about authenticity: always remain in the present - because all falseness enters either from the past or from the future. That which has passed has passed - don't bother about it. And don't carry it as a burden; otherwise it will not allow you to be authentic to the present. And all that has not come has not come yet - don't unnecessarily be bothered about the future; otherwise that will come into the present and destroy it. Be true to the present, and then you will be authentic. To be here-now is to be authentic. No past, no future: this moment all, this moment the whole eternity.

 

-Osho, "Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 5, #7"