Conditioning

 

 

In my childhood they started giving me answers... because there was a special class for Jainism in the Jaina temple and every child had to attend it, one hour every evening. I refused.

 

I told my father, "In the first place I don't have those questions for which they are supplying answers. This is stupid. When I have questions I will go and learn their answers and try to find out whether they are correct or not. Right now I am not even interested in the question. Who created the world? My foot! -- I am not interested. I know one thing for certain: I have not created it.

 

My father said, "You are a strange child. All the children from the family are going, from the neighborhood, everybody is going."

 

Jainas tend to live in a neighborhood, a close-knit neighborhood. Minorities are afraid of the majority so they remain close to each other; it is more protective. So all the children of the neighborhood go and their temple is in the middle of the neighborhood. That too is for protection, otherwise it will be burned any day if it is in a Hindu neighborhood or in a Mohammedan neighborhood.

 

And it will become difficult: if there is a riot you cannot go to your own temple. And there are people who will not eat without going to the temple. First they have to go to the temple and worship, then only can they eat. So Jainas live in small sections of the town, city, village, with their temple in the middle, and surrounding it is their whole community.

 

"Everybody is going," my father said.

 

I said, "They may have questions, or they are idiots. I am not an idiot, and I don't have those questions, so I simply refuse to go. And I know what the teacher goes on teaching the children is absolute rubbish."

 

My father said, "How can you prove that? You always ask me to prove things; now I ask you, how can you prove what he says is rubbish?"

 

I said, "Come with me."

 

He had to go many times to many places; it was just that the arguments had to be concluded. And when we reached the school, the teacher was teaching that Mahavira had these three qualities: omnipotence, all-powerful; omniscient, all-knowing; omnipresent, everywhere-present. I said, "You have listened, now come with me to the temple." The class was just by the side of the temple, a room attached to the temple. I said, "Now come into the temple."

 

He said, "But what for?"

 

I said, "Come, I will give you the proof."

 

What I had done was on Mahavira's statue I had just put a laddoo -- that is an Indian sweet, a round sweet, just like a ball -- I had put a laddoo on Mahavira's head, so naturally two rats were sitting on Mahavira's head eating the laddoo. I said, This is your omnipotent Mahavira. And I have seen these rats pissing on his head."

 

My father said, "You are just impossible. Just to prove this you did all that!"

 

I said, "What else to do? How else to prove it? Because I cannot find where Mahavira is. This is a statue. This is the only Mahavira I know and you know and the teacher knows. And he is omnipresent so he must be present here seeing the rats and what they are doing to him. He could have driven those rats away and thrown away my laddoo. I was not here. I had gone to pick you up -- I had all the arrangements to make. Now prove to me that this man is omnipresent. And I'm not bothered at all -- he may be. Why do I care?"

 

But before a child even asks a question, you stuff his head with an answer.

 

That is a basic and major crime of all the religions.

 

This is what programming is, conditioning is.

 

These religions condemn me, that I am conditioning people; I am simply deconditioning people.

 

The conditioning, they have done: they have already filled your mind with all kinds of answers. I am simply destroying those answers so you can find your question. They have covered the question completely, so completely that you have forgotten that you had any question.

 

In fact you have never asked any questions. No chance has been given to you to be acquainted with your question, with your questioning intelligence. The religions are so afraid that once you start questioning-just once -- then it is going to be difficult to force answers against your will, because that questioning intelligence will be raising doubts; it will raise more questions against their answer than you could have imagined.

 

So the best way is to commit this basic crime: the child should be caught -- the earlier the better -- and he should be spoon-fed theology, dogmatics, doctrines, catechisms. Before he becomes even aware of the question he knows all the answers.

 

If you are a Christian how do you know that there is a trinity? -- that God the father, the Holy Ghost, the son, these three make the highest power monopoly, that they dominate the world, that they are the real dictators -- how do you know it? It has been told to you. Perhaps you have forgotten who told you. It was told to you so early that unless you go deeper than that, further back than that, you will not be able to find who was this fellow who corrupted your mind.

 

The virgin birth... if you are not a Christian, you will immediately object: How can a virgin give birth to a child? But if you are a Christian, you simply don't question it because before your questioning arose, the answer was put into you. They have been behaving with you as if you are a computer -- they just go on feeding the answer.

 

And if somebody says anything against Christianity, you are ready to kill or be killed for this rubbish that you are not even responsible for discovering on your own. And the person who forced it on you did not himself know either: the same was done to him.

 

For centuries it goes on and on. Each generation goes on giving all its stupidities and superstitions to the new generation, thinking that they are helping you to become knowledgeable.

 

And once you become knowledgeable. the doors of mysticism are closed for you.

 

Mysticism means looking at existence without any prejudice.

 

Hence I say no so-called religion can be really mystic -- mystifying of course, but never mystic because they cannot fulfill the basic condition to be a mystic.

 

You have to drop lal your knowledge, all that you have taken on faith has to be thrown down the drain.

 

Nothing is valuable in it, so don't be worried; it is not a treasure, it is a tragedy. if you can get rid of it you will feel light, you will feel suddenly unburdened; your eyes fresh like a child's eyes.

 

All these layers of knowledge: Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jewish.... All these layers of knowledge -- it does not matter who has committed the crime against you; all the religions are in the same boat, committing the same crime. And because they are all committing the same crime, nobody objects.

 

The whole of humanity is in their grip.

 

-Osho, “From Personality to Individuality, #1, Q1”