Repression

 

 

Repression is to live a life that you were not meant to live.

 

Repression is to do things which you never wanted to do.

 

Repression is to be the fellow that you are not:

 

Repression is a way to destroy yourself.

 

Repression is suicide -- very slow of course, but a very certain, slow poisoning.

 

Expression is life; repression is suicide.

 

This is the Tantra message: Don't live a repressed life, otherwise you live not at all. Live a life of expression, creativity, joy. Live the way God wanted you to live; live the natural way. And don't be afraid of the priests. Listen to your instincts, listen to your body, listen to your heart, listen to your intelligence. Depend on yourself, go wherever your spontaneity takes you, and you will never be at a loss. And going spontaneously with your natural life, one day you are bound to arrive at the doors of the divine.

 

Your nature is God within you. The pull of that nature is God's pull within you. Don't listen to the poisoners, listen to the pull of nature. Yes, nature is not enough -- there is a higher nature too -- but the higher comes through the lower. The lotus grows out of the mud. Through the body grows the soul. Through sex grows SAMADHI.

 

Remember, through food grows consciousness. In the East we have said: ANNAM BRAHM: food is God. What type of assertion is this that food is God? God grows out of food: the lowest is linked with the highest, the shallowest is linked with the deepest.

 

Now the priests have been teaching you to repress the lower. And they are very logical. Only they have forgotten one thing -- that God is illogical. They are very logical and it appeals to you. That's why you have listened down the ages and followed them. It appeals to reason that if you want to attain to the higher, don't listen to the lower -- it looks logical. If you want to go high, then you cannot go low; then don't go low, go high -- it is very rational. The only trouble is that God is not rational. [....]

 

Out of work is rest. Out of expression is silence. This is how God works. His ways are very irrational.

 

Now, if you really want to be secure, you will have to live a life of insecurity. If you really want to be alive, you will have to be ready to die at any moment. This is God's illogic! If you really want to be authentically true, then you will have to risk. Repression is a way to avoid the risk. For example, you have been taught never to be angry, and you think that a person who is never angry is bound to be very loving. You are wrong. A person who is never angry will not be able to love either. They go together, they come in the same package.

 

A man who really loves will sometimes be really angry. But his anger is beautiful -- it is out of love. His energy is hot, and you will not feel hurt by his anger. In fact, you will feel grateful that he was angry. Have you watched it? If you love somebody and you do something, and the person is REALLY angry, frankly angry, you feel grateful because he loved you so much that he can afford anger. Otherwise why? When you don't want to afford anger, you remain polite. When you don't want to afford anything -- you don't want to take any risks -- you go on smiling. It doesn't matter.

 

If your child is going to jump into the abyss, will you remain unangry'? Will you not shout? Will you not be a boiling energy? Will you go on smiling? It is not possible. [....]

 

Repression is not listening to your nature. Repression is a trick to destroy you. [....]

 

The society has played a great game -- it has put everybody against himself. So you are continuously fighting within yourself. You don't have any energy to do anything else. Can't you observe it happening in you? Continuously fighting. The society has divided you into a split person: it has made you schizophrenic and it has confused you. You have become driftwood. You don't know who you are, you don't know where you are going, you don't know what you are doing here. You don't know why you are here in the first place. It has really confused you.

 

And out of this confusion are born great leaders: Adolf Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Josef Stalin. And out of this confusion arises the Vatican Pope, and out of this confusion a thousand and one things arise. But YOU are destroyed.

 

Tantra says: Be expressive. But remember, expression does not mean irresponsibility. Tantra says: Be expressive intelligently, and no harm will happen to anybody from you. A man who cannot harm himself will never harm anybody. And a man who harms himself is a dangerous man in a way. If he is not even in love with himself, he is dangerous; he can harm anybody. In fact, he WILL harm.

 

When you are sad, when you are depressed, you will create other people around you who are sad and depressed. When you are happy, you would like to create a happy society, because happiness can exist only in a happy world. If you are living joyfully, you would like everybody to be joyful -- that is true religion. Out of your own joy, you bless the whole existence.

 

But repression makes you false. It is not by repression that anger, sex, greed are destroyed, no. They are there -- just the labels are changed. They go into the unconscious, they start working from there: they go underground. And, of course, when they are underground, they are more powerful. The whole psychoanalytic movement tries to bring what is underground to the surface. Once is becomes conscious, you can be freed of it. [....]

 

Your parents, your society have destroyed you, you are destroying your children. Now, this is a vicious circle. Somebody has to come out of the vicious circle.

 

If you understand me rightly, then my sannyas is an effort to bring you out of the vicious circle. Don't be angry at your parents — they could not do better than they have done. But now become more conscious, and don't do the same thing to your children. Make them more expressive, teach them more expression. Help them, so that they become more authentic, so that they can bring out whatsoever is inside them. And they will be tremendously grateful forever, because there will be no conflict within them. They will be in one piece; they will not be in fragments. And they will never be confused, they will always know what they want.

 

And when you know exactly what you want, you can work for it. When you don't know what you really want, how can you work for it? Then anybody who takes hold of you, anybody who gives you any ideas... and you start following him. Any leader comes -- anybody can convince you argumentatively, and you start following him. You have followed many people, and they have all destroyed.

 

Follow your nature.

 

Each generation destroys the other. Unless somebody becomes very alert, aware, the destruction is bound to happen.

 

-Osho, "The Tantra Vision, Vol 2, #8, Q4"