Question :

Osho,

Would you please say something about Sincerity?

MAN can live in two ways: either he can live according to the dictates of others — the puritans, the moralists — or he can live according to his own light. It is easy to follow others, it is convenient and comfortable, because when you follow others they feel very good and happy with you.

Your parents will be happy if you follow their ideas, although their ideas are absolutely worthless because their ideas have not made their lives illumined, and it is so apparent. They have lived in misery, still they want to impose their ideas on the children. They cannot see a simple fact: that their life has been a failure. that their life has not been creative, that their life has never tasted of bliss, that they have not been able to discover truth. They have not known the splendor of existence, they have no idea what it is all about. Still their egos insist that the children should be obedient, they should follow their dictates.

The Hindu parents will force the child to become a Hindu, and they will not even think for a single moment what has happened to them. They have followed those same ideas their whole life and their life is empty; nothing has flowered. But they enjoy the idea that their children are obedient and they are following them. They have lived in misery, in hell, and their children will live in misery and hell, but they think they love their children. With all good intentions they destroy the future of their children.

The politicians try in every possible way that the society should live according to their ideas, and of course they pretend to others and to themselves that they are doing public service. All that they are doing is destroying freedom of people. They are trying to enforce certain superstitions which were enforced on them by their parents, by their leaders, by their priests.

The politicians, the priests, the pedagogues, they are all trying to create a false humanity; they are creating insincere human beings. They may not have intended to do so, but that’s what has happened. And a tree is to be judged by fruits; it does not matter what was the intention of the gardener. If he was sowing seeds of weeds and hoping, intending, desiring that roses will come out just because of his good intentions, roses are not going to come out of the weeds. He has destroyed the whole field. To impose a certain structure of character on anybody is to make him insincere, is to make him a hypocrite.

Sincerity, Yoga Punya, means to live according to your own light. Hence the first requirement of being sincere is to be meditative. The first thing is not to be moral, is not to be good, is not to be virtuous: the most important thing is to be meditative — so that you can find a little light within yourself and then start living according to that light And as you live it grows and it gives you a deep integrity. Because it comes from your own innermost being there is no division.

When somebody says to you, “Do it, it SHOULD be done,” naturally it creates a division in you. You don’t want to do it, you wanted to do something else, but somebody — the parents, the politicians, the priests, those who are in power — they want you to follow a certain route. You never wanted to follow it so you will follow it unwillingly. Your heart will not be in it, you will not be committed to it, you will not have any involvement with it. You will go through it like a slave. It is not your choice, it is not out of your freedom.

The first disciples of Jesus had chosen him; it was THEIR choice and they had chosen a very risky path — to be with Jesus was dangerous. It has always been so: to be with anybody who gives you freedom is dangerous because he will make you so independent that you will continuously be in a fight with the society, with the establishment, with the vested interests. You will be in a constant struggle your whole life. Of course, that struggle is worth and it is not a curse, it is a blessing, because only through that struggle you grow, you expand. Your consciousness becomes more and more clear; it becomes a peak. You have to pay for it; it is not cheap. Hence the risk.

The few people who followed Jesus were taking a dangerous path: they could have been crucified, and they were tortured in many ways. But today to be a Christian has no risk, hence it is bogus.

The people who followed Buddha were living dangerously, and to live dangerously is the only way to live. But they were sincere people: they followed their own inner voice against the whole society, against the whole tradition, convention. They followed a rebel and became rebels in their own right. Buddhists were burned alive just as early Christians were burned alive, thrown to the lions and to the wild animals, tortured in every possible way. But still they attained to the ultimate experience of godliness — they paid for it. But to be a Buddhist now is very convenient there is no problem about it, anybody can be a Buddhist. And the same is true about all religions.

Right now to be with me is dangerous. You will be continuously in trouble; wherever you will go you will be opposed. You will be opposed by the Christians, by the Hindus, by the Mohammedans, by the Jains, by the Buddhists. You will be tortured, you will be condemned, you will not be accepted anywhere. But you will become sincere, you will have some authenticity. And you will suffer all these tortures joyfully because you have chosen them.

Even to choose hell is beautiful, rather than to be forced to live in heaven. If you are forced to live in heaven it is hell, and if you choose hell it is heaven — because it is your own choice. It brings your life to its highest peak.

Sincerity means not living a double life — and almost everybody is living a double life. He says one thing, he thinks something else. He never says that which he thinks, he says that which is convenient and comfortable, he says that which will be approved, accepted. he says that which is expected by others. Now what he says and what he thinks become two different worlds. He says one thing, he goes on doing something else, and then naturally he has to hide it. He cannot expose himself because then the contradiction will be found, then he will be in trouble. He talks about beautiful things and lives an ugly life.

This is what, up to now, humanity has done to itself. It has been a very nightmarish past. The new man is an absolute necessity now because the old is utterly rotten. The old is continuously in conflict within himself; he is fighting with himself. Whatsoever he does he feels miserable. If he follows his own inner voice he feels he is going against the society, against the powerful people, against the establishment. And that establishment has created a conscience in you; that conscience is a very tricky procedure, a strategy. It is the policeman inside you, implanted by the society, who goes on condemning you that: “This is wrong, this is not right. You should not do it, you should feel guilty for it — you are being immoral.”

If you follow your voice your conscience is at daggers with you; it will not give you any rest, it will torture you, it will make you miserable. And you will become afraid — afraid that somebody may find it out. And it is very difficult to hide because life means relationship — somebody is bound to know, somebody is bound to discover. You are not alone.

That’s why the cowards escaped to the monasteries, to the Himalayan caves, just for a single reason: that there they will not be found out at all. But what kind of life you can live in a cave? You have already committed suicide. To be in a cave is to be in a grave — and alive! If you are dead and in a grave, that seems right — where else you can be? But alive AND in a grave — it is real hell!

In the monasteries people are living a miserable life; that’s why they have such long faces — not that they are religious. Those long faces are a simple outcome of a cowardly life. If you are in the world living with people you cannot hide for long; you can deceive a few people for a time being, but not forever. And how can you deceive yourself? Even if you are not found out by others you know that you are living a double life — and the guilt…

And everybody is guilty, and the priests want you to be guilty because the more guilty you are, the more you are in the hands of the priests. You have to go to them to get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Ganges to take a bath, you have to go to Mecca, to Kaaba, so that you can get rid of your guilt. You have to go to the Catholic priest to confess so that you can get rid of the guilt. You have to do fasting and other kinds of penances and other kinds of austerities so that you can punish yourself These are all punishments! But how can you be happy? How you can be cheerful and blissful? How can you rejoice in a life where you are constantly feeling guilty and punishing yourself, condemning yourself?

And if you choose NOT to follow your inner voice and follow the dictates of others — they call morality, etiquette, civilization, culture — then too that inner voice will start nagging you, it will continuously nag you. It will say you are being untrue to your nature. And if you feel that you are being untrue to your nature then your morality cannot be a rejoicing; it will be only an empty gesture.

This is what has happened to man: man has become schizophrenic.

MY effort here is to help you to become one. That’s why I don’t teach any morality, any character. All that I teach is meditation so that you can hear your inner voice more clearly and follow it, whatsoever the cost. Because if you follow your inner voice without feeling guilty, immense is going to be your reward, and looking backwards you will find that the cost was nothing. It looked very big in the beginning, but when you have arrived at the point where sincerity becomes natural, spontaneous, when there is no more any division, no more any split in you, then you will see a celebration is happening and the cost that you have paid is nothing compared to it.

You ask me, Yoga Punya: WOULD YOU PLEASE SAY SOMETHING ABOUT SINCERITY?

Sincerity is the fragrance of meditation.

-Osho, “I am That, #2, Q3”