Hypocrisy

 

 

Question 2 :

Osho,

I am a hypocrite. What should I do?

 

 

Narayandas Diwari, it is good, it is beautiful that you recognize, that you confess that you are a hypocrite. This is the beginning -- the beginning of sincerity, the beginning of truth. Hypocrisy cannot remain long now any more. Hypocrisy can remain only if it goes on pretending that it is not hypocrisy. It exists by pretending to be that which it is not.

 

Once you recognize that you are wearing a mask, the mask has already started slipping. You have become aware that this is not your face. The mask can remain on your face only so long as you go on believing, pretending, deceiving others and yourself that it is your real face. And the problem is: if you deceive others you will start deceiving yourself finally. The person who goes on being cunning with others sooner or later starts being cunning with himself He forgets the language of sincerity, authenticity, truth. He has been Lying so long that all he knows now is Lying; he goes on Lying. And if others start believing in his lies -- because he becomes very clever in Lying -- seeing that others are believing in his lies he starts believing in those lies himself; naturally, when so many people are believing, there must be some truth in it. How can you deceive so many people? People are not such fools!

 

This is the greatest problem of wearing masks: they become your faces. Slowly slowly the distance between the original face and the mask disappears, they become glued together, almost welded. In fact, to separate them will feel as if you are peeling your skin -- it is painful, it is surgical.

 

But to be with a Master is to be on a surgical table. It is surgery because much that has accumulated around you which is false has to be cut, chunk by chunk. It hurts. It has become almost your second nature -- your originality is completely forgotten -- it has become far more important than the original.

 

Hence, the first thing I would like to say to you, Narayandas, is that this is good, tremendously good, that you accept. Otherwise it is very difficult, particularly for Indians, to accept that they are hypocrites. They are all hypocrites. For centuries they have lived in hypocrisy; that has become their way of life. Their mahatmas, their saints, their so-called great men, they all live in hypocrisy; and the smaller people naturally follow the so-called great. The hypocrisy has gone into the blood, into the bones, into the marrow.

 

It always happens to an ancient culture, and India is one of the most ancient cultures alive -- not very much alive, of course, but still breathing; vegetating, almost in a coma, but still breathing. It has not died yet. That is a misfortune that it has not died, because if it had died something new would have been born.

 

There have been other great cultures which have disappeared from the world. Where is Babylon, Assyria? Gone, absolutely gone. Where is the ancient civilization of Egypt? The civilization that made the pyramids has disappeared completely. The ancient Chinese civilization is no more there. Where is Greece and its great civilization, and the Roman culture? They all have disappeared.

 

If you look around the map of the world, the only ancient culture somehow still dragging is the Indian culture. It is so old, so crippled, so paralyzed, that it can only pretend. It has lost all courage to be true, to be adventurous, to be inquiring. It has become almost fossilized, it is a big graveyard. But somehow the people who are in the grave are not completely dead; that is the trouble. If they were dead one is finished with them. They are somehow alive and they have gathered many lies meanwhile.

 

Have you watched this fact? -- that children are never hypocrites, they cannot be! They simply say whatsoever is the case. As they grow they start telling lies; they have to, just to survive with the grown-up people, because the all grown-up people are Lying. And slowly the child starts seeing the fact that if you want to survive you have to lie.

 

My own approach about it was always this: whenever my father will ask me anything I will ask him another question immediately: "Do you want the truth? Are you ready to listen to the truth? Or you want something sweet? You decide!" If he asked me, "Have you done this? Had you jumped into somebody's well and were you taking bath in the well?" I will ask him immediately, "You just tell me one thing: do you want the truth? Are you ready to hear the truth? Are you ready not to punish the truth? Otherwise I was not in the well -- somebody else -- then you will have to prove!"

 

He was a very beautiful person. He will always tell me, "You can tell the truth and you will be protected." And I will tell him the truth, whatsoever it was. But sometimes he himself used to get into trouble because of me.

 

One day he said to me that, "You are sitting outside in the sun..." It was a winter cold morning. "Some person is going to see me and I don't want to see him today. He is such a bore and he will destroy my whole day, and it is very difficult to get rid of him. So you simply say him that, 'My father is not at home.' "

 

And the bore came and he asked me, "Where is your father?"

 

I said, "He is in, but he has told me to tell to the bore, because he is going to destroy his whole day, that he is not inside the house."

 

He became very angry. He went inside the house, found my father and said, "What is the matter? What is your son saying?"

 

I went in and my father was in trouble because that bore was one of the richest men of the town and he could do harm in many ways.

 

My father said, "What have you told him?"

 

I said, "Do you want the truth?"

 

For a moment he hesitated because now it was going to cost him, but finally he decided. He said, "Yes, whatsoever he has said I had told him. Just I had forgotten to tell him not to tell it to you! But he did exactly the way I had told him. Now I am sorry, it was my fault. He has nothing to do with it."

 

Many times he was in difficulty because of me, but never he punished me for being true. Then there was no need for me to be untrue.

 

The same was my approach with my teachers, but they were not so courageous. Then I would tell them lies and I would say, "These are lies! But you want to listen lies and you protect lies and you support lies. You are creating a hypocrite in me!"

 

But that's how older people become: older they are, more cunning they become. And the same happens to a civilization: the older it is, the more cunning.

 

For example, Americans are more honest than any country for the simple reason because they are the newest people in the world, only three hundred years of history; it is nothing compared to the Indian ancient past. Even the very realistic historians say India has existed at least for ten thousand years; about that there are enough proofs. But there are other historians, who are not so accepted, who say that India has existed at least for ninety thousand years. And there is a possibility, because in the Vedas the description of a star is such that it had happened only ninety thousand years before. The description is so exactly true that it cannot be just imagination, poetry. It is so scientifically true that it seems that the record is at least ninety thousand years old. And if the record is ninety thousand years old then the people whose record it is must have lived more than ninety thousand years. Now what is three hundred years? America is just like a small child; hence the truth, the authenticity.

 

You can ask an American girl, "how many times you have made love before you got married?" and she will answer. But no Indian woman will answer; it is impossible. Her whole life will be destroyed. You can collect such data only in America, not in India. And Indian saints go on saying, "Look! In our country no girl ever loses her virginity" -- because there is no data for it. You cannot collect data for the simple reason -- not that it is true -- for the simple reason that nobody is ready to say the truth. Only in America you can find such data.

 

You can ask all kinds of questions to people and people are willing to answer sincerely, for no other reason than just to help the scientific survey. They are ready to risk their own personal lives. You can ask American husbands how many extra-marital relationships they are having, but you cannot ask an Indian husband. He will say, "What? Extra-marital relationships? Never thought about it, never dreamed about it!

 

-Osho, "Zen: The Special Transmission, #2, Q2"