Question :

Bleoved Osho,

Why am I such a Beggar for Attention? What can I do about it?

 

 

Prem Kabir, it is one of the human weaknesses, one of the deep-rooted frailties, to seek attention.

 

The reason one seeks attention is because one does not know oneself. It is only in other people's eyes one can see his face, in their opinions he can find his personality. What they say matters immensely. If they neglect him, ignore him, he feels lost. If you pass by and nobody takes any attention, you will start losing what you have put together -- your personality. It is something that you have put together. You have not discovered it, it is not natural. It is very artificial and very arbitrary.

 

It is not only you who is a beggar for attention; almost everybody is. And the situation cannot change until you discover your authentic self -- which does not depend on anybody's opinion, attention, criticism, indifference, which does not have anything to do with anybody else. Because very few people have been able to discover their reality, the whole world is full of beggars.

 

Deep down you are all trying to find attention; it is nourishment for your personality.

 

Even if people condemn you, criticize you, are against you, that is acceptable, at least they are paying attention to you; if they are friendly, respectful, of course that is far better, but you cannot survive as a personality without some kind of attention. It can be negative, it can be positive, it doesn't matter. People must say something about you; respectful or disrespectful, both fulfill the same purpose.

 

I would like you to think about the word 'respect'. It does not mean honor, as it is said in all the dictionaries without exception. Respect simply means looking again, re-spect.

 

When you are passing by on the road, somebody looks back again, you have caught his eye -- you are somebody. Because respect gives you the idea of being somebody special, you can do anything stupid just to get attention.

 

In all the ages people have tried in a thousand and one ways to get attention. Those ways are not necessarily rational -- for example, the punks in the West. What are they really wanting by cutting their hair in strange and weird ways, and then painting it with different psychedelic colors? What are they wanting? They are beggars. You should not be angry with them because that is what they want. You should not condemn them because that is what they want. Their parents should not criticize them because that is what they want. They cannot survive without people paying attention to them.

 

People have done all kinds of things you may not believe in the past. People have remained naked.... What was the need for Mahavira or Diogenes to be naked? It is no longer natural for man to be naked in all the seasons; he lost that capacity long ago. All animals are naked, but they have a natural immunity. When it is winter their hair grows, when it is hot summer their hair falls. Nature has given them a protection.

 

The same protection was available to man too, but man is intelligent and can improve on nature. He found ways to cover his body according to the seasons. Naturally his body lost the natural growth of hairs. Now, to be naked... suddenly your body cannot create the mechanism to protect you.

 

I know Mahavira or Diogenes are unique individuals, but I think they were a little uncertain of their uniqueness. They fulfilled that suspicion, that missing gap, by being naked, because you cannot avoid giving attention to a naked person in a world where everybody is wearing clothes. The naked person stands aloof. You cannot avoid... it is almost irresistible to look at him, to ask, "What is the matter?"

 

But their nakedness became something spiritual; people started being respectful just because they were naked. Now, nakedness is not a quality or any qualification or any creativity; all the animals, all the birds, all the trees are naked.

 

There are still Jaina monks in India, not more than twenty. They used to be in thousands, but now to find that many stupid people is a little difficult. One Jaina monk dies and is not replaced, so their number goes on falling. Only twenty people all over India are still naked -- and I have seen many of them; they don't show any sign of intelligence, they don't show any quality of silence, they don't show any joy. Their faces are sad, dull, sleepy. They are suffering, they are torturing themselves, just for the simple reason that it brings the attention of the people.

 

Anything, howsoever stupid, is possible for man if it can bring attention to him. In Russia before the revolution there was a Christian sect which used to cut their genitals publicly on a particular day each year -- and they had thousands of followers. Their only qualification for being spiritual was that they had cut their genitals. When the day arrived, they would gather in a church courtyard and they would cut their genitals and pile them up. And thousands of people would come to see this stupidity.

 

The women were not left behind... of course they were in a difficulty because they don't have hanging genitals to cut; their genitals are inwards. They started cutting their breasts -- they were not ready to be left behind. It was such a messy and bloody affair, but people were touching their feet, worshiping them, and all that they have done is just an ugly act against nature and against themselves.

 

What is significant if a man goes on a fast? Mahatma Gandhi used the strategy his whole life: It was nothing but catching the attention of the whole nation. And if he was going to fast unto death, the whole world's attention was immediately caught. Otherwise there is no spirituality in fasting: millions die starving. Millions are going to die in the coming ten, twelve years from starvation. Nobody will give any honor or respect to them. Why?

 

Because their starvation is inevitable. They are not starving wilfully but because they don't have food; they are simply poor and starving people.

 

But Mahatma Gandhi had everything available to him, although he lived like a poor man.

 

One of his intimate followers, a very intelligent woman, Sarojini Naidu -- has a statement on record that to keep Mahatma Gandhi poor they had to spend treasures on him. It was not a simple poverty, it was a managed show.

 

He would not drink the milk from a buffalo because it is rich, rich with vitamin A and other vitamins. He would not drink the milk of a cow because that too is rich, and poor people cannot afford it. He would drink only the milk of a goat, because that is the cheapest animal and poor people can afford it. But you will be surprised: his goat was being washed twice a day with Lux toilet soap! His goat's food consisted of the richest nourishment that any rich man may feel jealous of. It is such an insane world! The goat was given the milk of a cow to drink. Cashew nuts, apples and other nourishing fruits were her only food; she was not living on grass. Her daily food in those old days cost ten rupees per day; that ten rupees per day in those days was enough for a man to live for a whole month.

 

And Gandhi was traveling third class. Naturally, he was attracting attention -- a great man is traveling third class! But nobody saw that the third class compartment, which could have carried sixty people at least, was carrying only a single man; it is far more costly than the air-conditioned compartment. But it attracted attention.

 

He started using clothes just like the farmers of India -- they are eighty percent of the people in the country. Because he was using farmer's clothes -- the upper body is naked, only the lower body has a small piece of cloth to wrap around -- the poor people of this country became immensely respectful and started calling him Mahatma, the great soul.

 

But I have been looking into his life as deeply as possible. I don't find any great soul; I have not found even a little soul -- just pure politics in the name of religion. Knowing perfectly well that India can be impressed only by religion, he was doing devotional songs every day in the morning and in the evening, but it was all to attract attention.

 

Attention gives you tremendous nourishment for the ego. And there are instances... his secretary -- private secretary, Mahadeo Desai -- has written a whole diary of the many years that he spent with Mahatma Gandhi as his secretary. Many times there are mentions about J. Krishnamurti, with such sarcastic remarks that one cannot believe that Mahatma Gandhi had any insight into meditation or awareness: otherwise he cannot be sarcastic.

 

You can criticize, but criticism needs understanding. You can say Krishnamurti is not right, but then you have to give evidence -- on what grounds? But just to laugh and giggle when Krishnamurti's name was mentioned... Krishnamurti was saying, "I am the awakened one; you also have the capacity to be an awakened one," and that was making Mahatma Gandhi laugh sarcastically.

 

Meher Baba, another man of the same caliber as J. Krishnamurti, gave a telegram to Mahatma Gandhi saying, "You have been in search of God, you have written your autobiography and titled it EXPERIMENTS WITH TRUTH, but you don't know anything of meditation, of silence. If you are really interested I can come to you and I can make you aware of the dimension of meditation." And the whole gang that was around Mahatma Gandhi laughed -- "This fellow thinks that he is God himself." And Mahatma Gandhi replied, "I will do my own search; you need not trouble to come here."

 

A third time it happened. One man of the name Kedarnath was of the same caliber as J.Krishnamurti, but was not world known. He was not a man of words but a man of silence, peace. He stayed in Mahatma Gandhi's ashram, and soon the pendulum started moving towards him. The disciples of Mahatma Gandhi by and by started deserting him. In his morning devotional songs, the number of people was declining: they were going to sit in silence with Kedernath.

 

Finally it became such a situation: the ashram was Mahatma Gandhi's, Kedarnath was just a guest, but he captured almost all Gandhi's disciples. Gandhi was left alone, but his ego would not allow him to go and sit where all his disciples were sitting -- in silence with Kedarnath. It was with great humanity and compassion that Kedarnath left the ashram in the middle of the night just to avoid a clash, because now it was becoming clear that Mahatma Gandhi had lost control of his own disciples. Kedarnath did not want to create any conflict.

 

Sri Aurobindo had a certain clarity. He was not an enlightened man of the category of J.Krishnamurti or Meher Baba, but he was very close. Perhaps one life more and he will be enlightened; he was just on the border line. He declared, "India will become free, will attain freedom on my birthday" -- and it actually happened. The fifteenth of August is Sri Aurobindo's birthday, and he had declared it thirty years before. People had completely forgotten about his declaration, but India became free on the fifteenth of August.

 

Sri Aurobindo sent a message to Mahatma Gandhi, "Now that the country is free, you need a complete program for its progress, because it is one thing to fight for freedom and it is another thing after attaining the freedom to create a nation; tremendous responsibility falls on your shoulders."

 

And the reply that Mahatma Gandhi gave was again simply sarcastic: "You have left the world; you live in your ashram. You don't have to worry about what happens to freedom and what we are going to do; that is our business. You have left it, you don't have to interfere."

 

Now a man like Sri Aurobindo could have given insight, but that insight was not accepted -- and it shows. In those forty years that have passed since freedom, India has become worse every day. It has no program; its population has doubled, more than doubled. Its poverty has doubled -- the poverty grows according to the population. By the end of this century, India will be for the first time in the whole history of mankind, of millions of years, the most densely populated country. Up to now, China has been the first. So only one achievement seems to have come out of forty years of freedom: people have produced more and more children.

 

By the end of this century, just thirteen years away, India will have one billion people in the country. When it became free it had only four hundred million people. It seems that each year there is an increase of one million people -- but no technology is growing, no science is growing, no new methods are being used. And this population growth goes on making the country poorer and poorer. India is living on loans from the rich countries like America, and that is a new kind of slavery, economic slavery.

 

The days of political slavery are past, because it was unnecessary.... It is a similar case:

 

the days of slaves are past, and the days of servants have come in because the slave was a great responsibility to the slaveowner. He had to take care of the slave's health, he had to take care of his body, food, clothes, his medicine, because he was an investment. He has purchased the man, and if he dies his whole investment is gone.

 

Slavery disappeared not because slaves revolted against it; there is no instance of slaves revolting. Slavery died because the people who were enslaving other people found better ways -- servants. You are not purchased; hence it is not an investment. If you die, you die; it is not a loss to the owner. He pays you, but he has no concern for your body, for your health, for your family. This was far better.

 

The same has happened in the world of freedom. The British Empire disappeared, all other empires have disappeared, because political slavery became costly, very costly. It was the responsibility of the rulers to feed people, at least.

 

The moment Britain saw that India is growing so fast in population that it will be impossible to feed the people, and the whole responsibility will be on the head of Britain, Atlee sent to Mountbatten an urgent message: "You finish the whole thing before 1948, and if you can do it earlier I will praise you. Whatever way has to be found, be quick, and let them be free. Because then the whole responsibility will be on their own heads. They cannot complain, 'Britain is exploiting us; that's why we are poor.'" Now nobody is exploiting you, and your poverty has grown much greater than it has ever been under slavery.

 

Politicians can pretend to be religious if religion is attractive. Because they need attention their whole personality is false. It depends on how many people are following them; it depends on the number of people who are attentive to them. It is a politics of numbers.

 

The Catholic pope is against birth control, against abortion, not because he is compassionate, saying, "This is absolute cruelty and violence," not because he is life- affirmative -- the whole Catholic attitude is life-negative, it is against life. Then why this insistence that there should be no birth control and no abortion? Because this is the only way to increase the number of Catholics, and this is the only way to make other people so poor that they have to come under the fold of the Catholic empire.

 

Now that there are so many orphans in India, Catholics have a good opportunity. And one wonders... a woman like Mother Teresa is awarded a Nobel prize, is awarded many doctorates in India by Indian universities, is awarded prizes by the Indian government, all because she is taking care of orphans. But nobody thinks that that care simply means converting those orphans into Catholics. Naturally Mother Teresa cannot be in favor of birth control -- from where will she get the orphans?

 

Christianity cannot be in favor of a world which is rich. The scientists are declaring continually that we have come to such a point of technological progress that now there is no need for anybody to be hungry, to be starving or dying because of shortage of food. It has never before been possible, but now scientists are saying that we can feed five billion people very easily, we can feed even more -- but those voices are silenced. No politician pays any attention, because politicians are also interested in having a big following.

 

In India Mohammedans will not be ready to accept that you should not marry four women... which is simply a human matter. But they have made it a point that it is a religious matter. I cannot understand how it is religious to marry four women. And if it is religious to marry four, then it will be doubly religious to marry eight. Perhaps that's why Mohammed himself married nine women. The reality is that four women can produce four children in the year; vice-versa will not help. One woman marrying four men will still produce one child, not four children. But one man marrying a number of women can produce more children.

 

You will be surprised to know that India has already been divided in the name of religion, and Mohammedans have taken Pakistan on one side, and Bangladesh on another side; the country has been cut into three parts. Now again Mohammedans are growing so much that India is the greatest Mohammedan country in the world. No Mohammedan country has so many Mohammedans as India has. Any day they can start demanding a separate country, because they are second in number to Hindus, and Hindus are not a converting religion. Mohammedans are a converting religion, forcibly too. There is no need of any argument; the sword is the argument!

 

Your so-called religious leaders, your so-called political leaders, all need attention, all need their names and their photos continually in the newspapers, because if newspapers forget anybody's name for a few months, people forget that man also. Now what do you know about Richard Nixon? Where is that poor fellow? One day he was the greatest, most powerful man on the earth, and now you will only hear about him the day he dies, and that too will be on the third, fourth page of the newspapers in a small column. What happens to these powerful people? When they lose people's attention, their personality starts disappearing.

 

I have known many political leaders in this country. Perhaps this country has more ex- ministers, chief ministers, governors than any other country. Once they become "ex" they are finished. Then nobody pays any attention to them, nobody asks them to inaugurate bridges, railway lines, hospitals, schools. No paper even bothers where they are, whether they are alive or dead. And there was a time when they were in the newspapers every day, on the radios, on television.

 

One of my sannyasins works in the Indian television. She wanted to bring a small piece from my talks every day to the television. The director said, "We can accept the material, but we cannot mention Osho's name."

 

She said, "But this is absolutely illegal, and it is stealing."

 

But the director said, "You should not mention his name at all " -- because that's what the Indian politicians want, and that's what the politicians of the whole world want.

 

The Attorney General of America has emphatically declared in a press conference, "Our whole effort will be to silence Osho's voice completely."

 

One reporter asked, "What does it mean? Do you want to assassinate him?"

 

And the Attorney General laughed. He said, "No, we will find some roundabout ways so he is not heard any more."

 

The American government is pressurizing the Indian government so that no foreign news media will be allowed to reach me. And I am receiving letters from Germany, from America, from Greece, from England, from Australia, "What is the matter? Why is the Indian government absolutely stubborn that they don't want any news media, newspapers, radio, or television people to come to Poona?"

 

This is the way, in their eyes, to silence me. They are wrong. I have my own ways: I have my own people who are enough... just person to person. If a man like Gautam Buddha, without any television, without any newspapers, without any radio, could convert the whole of Asia, what is the problem? I am not dependent on their news media.

 

But the fear of the politicians is... the whole media attention should be focused on them -- and why are people asking to go to Poona? Why don't they ask to come to Delhi? That hurts them very badly.

 

It is not only your problem, that you are a beggar for attention; it is a human reality. And the reason is that you depend on your personality -- which is false, which has been created by the society, and which can be taken away by society. Don't depend on it. It is not in your power.

 

That which is in your power is your own individuality. Discover it! And the name of the science to discover it is meditation.

 

Once you know yourself, you don't care about others. Even if the whole world forgets you it does not matter, it does not even make the slightest difference to you; or the whole world can know -- that too does not give you any ego. You know ego is false, and to depend on the false is to make houses on the sand, without foundation. Your personalities are almost signatures on water. You have not even signed, and they disappear.

 

A group of Jewish mothers were drinking coffee together, and bragging about their children. One had a four-year-old who could read already. Another had a five-year-old who had already appeared on television. Then Becky Goldberg spoke up and said, "That's nothing. You should see my little Hymie. He is only five years old, but the other day he went to the psychiatrist all by himself!"

 

A middle-aged woman confessed to her priest that she was becoming vain.

 

"Why do you think so?" asked the priest.

 

"Because," replied the woman, "every time I look in the mirror I am inspired by my beauty."

 

"Don't worry," said the priest, "that's not a sin, that's only a mistake!"

 

It was a big meeting of the medical society in honor of an ear specialist who was retiring after more than fifty years of service. As a gift, they presented him with a golden ear. He stood up to make a speech, and after the applause had died down, he looked at his gift and said, "Thank god I was not a gynecologist!"

 

Don't depend on others!

 

Be independent in your being.

 

Just listen to your inner voice.

 

You can listen the moment you start stilling and silencing your mind -- and it is not difficult. And when I say it is not difficult, I say it with absolute authority: It is not difficult! If it has happened to me, it can happen to you -- there is no difference. All human beings are potentially capable to know themselves. And the moment you know yourself, then nobody can take away your individuality. Even if they kill you, they can only kill your body, not you.

 

When Socrates was poisoned, the chief judge said to him, "I feel sorry that I had to agree with the majority. They all wanted to kill you. And you are such a strange fellow... I gave you three alternatives, but you did not accept."

 

The chief judge had tremendous respect, but what to do? The majority was shouting, "He should be killed because he is corrupting our youth. He is giving them ideas which are against our tradition, against our religion. He is making them skeptical of the old and the ancient. He is making them explore the reality on their own, and not just believe in knowledge and ancient scriptures. He is destroying our tradition. We don't want this man; this man should be destroyed."

 

But the chief judge understood the whole situation. He said to Socrates... because in those days in Greece there were city states; Athens was a city state and the Athenian law was not applicable outside Athens. So he said, "The first simple choice is, you just move out of Athens, just outside the boundary line, and there you can make your school, your academy. Those who want to learn will come there."

 

Socrates said, "That will show my fear of death... and some day I am going to die, I am old enough. These people are too impatient; I will die by myself. So to escape from Athens just for a few years... my being does not support such an idea. I cannot act out of fear. I would rather accept death, because you can only kill my body but not my spirit.

 

And the body is going to die anyway, any moment!"

 

The chief judge said, "The second alternative is if you promise not to talk about truth, to stop teaching, you can live in Athens."

 

He said, "Then what will be the point of living? To me, truth is higher than life. Life comes and goes; truth remains. No, I cannot accept that."

 

The chief judge said, "Then the last thing is that you can say, 'I am sorry that I have hurt people's feelings.' Just a simple apology will make me stand in your favor, and you can be saved from this ugly act of poisoning you to death."

 

Socrates said, "That is not possible, because I have not done anything wrong. I cannot say I am sorry. I can only say I am immensely happy, and the question of an apology does not arise. For centuries you all will be condemned because you poisoned me. And one thing I would like you to know is that your name will be remembered only because you gave the judgment for my death; otherwise, nobody will remember you."

 

This is the man of individuality, who does not care for his life, for his body, who has no fear. He accepted death with joy.

 

An individual is the only person who can get rid of this state of begging; otherwise you are going to remain a beggar your whole life. And in subtle ways you are continuously begging. Every young man falling in love with a woman will ask the woman, "Am I the first man you have fallen in love with?" It is almost inevitable. And every woman will ask, "Am I the first woman you have fallen in love with?" Why such questions? The woman wants you never to have paid attention to anybody: "I am the first, the most beautiful woman in your eyes."

 

Man all through history has insisted that he will marry only a virgin -- for what? It is such a stupid idea, because a virgin is absolutely inexperienced. You should insist, "I should marry someone who has some experience." This is simple, logical, rational and scientific.

 

But all the societies have insisted that they will accept in marriage only a virgin girl.

 

In the middle ages there were doctors in Europe... because the woman's virginity can be judged, checked. There is a very thin layer of skin -- if she has not been in a sexual relationship, that skin remains intact; if she has been in a sexual relationship, that skin is broken. That broken skin proves that she is not a virgin. Now sometimes it can be broken just by riding on a bicycle, it can be broken by riding on a horse, it can be broken by any accident -- falling from the staircase. It is not something that can be broken only by making love. But every young man was alert on his first night as to whether the woman was virgin or not, so there were doctors in Europe who used to fix a false skin to make anybody virgin! Their profession was flourishing greatly.

 

I was in Greece, and I asked one of my sannyasins, "In Greece is virginity immensely valued by the orthodox church of Greece?" And the sannyasin I was asking had been one of the most beautiful women, one time chosen as Miss Greece.

 

She laughed. She said, "The church goes on saying that virginity is our fundamental principle, but it is very difficult to find a virgin in Greece!" But before getting married, they become virgin. It is just a very small thing for a gynecologist to fix a thin layer of skin.

 

I have heard one priest was asking and thundering and threatening the people of his congregation, "If you are not virgin, you will suffer hellfire. So all women who are virgin, or who have been virgin before their marriage, stand up!" Nobody stood up. He said, "I say again..." One woman with a little baby stood up. He said, "I am happy at least one woman has followed the religious principle of the Greek orthodox church."

 

The woman said, "Forgive me Father, I am not standing for myself; I am standing for the baby. You cannot expect a six-month-old baby to stand by herself! She is certainly a virgin, I can guarantee it!"

 

All kinds of stupid notions have prevailed in humanity. And you have to follow these notions if you want attention. In India, if you want to have attention... There was a man in Mahatma Gandhi's ashram, and he was an intelligent man. He had been a professor, a retired professor, Professor Ranga. He lived for six months only on cow dung and cow urine -- just these two things for six months -- and he became more of an attraction than Mahatma Gandhi himself. Everybody who was coming to the ashram was going to see Professor Ranga. Even Mahatma Gandhi called him a great man, a great spiritual man! I don't see how cow dung can make a man spiritual. It simply can prove that he is stupid.

 

But in Hindu society where the cow is accepted as the mother, the holy mother, this is a great spiritual attainment.

 

All over the world you will find the same kind of superstitions in different ways. And if you want the attention of people, you have to follow their ideas. You have always to be a follower, you have always to be a believer, you have always to be stupid and idiotic.

 

But if you want to get rid of this begging, you will have to get rid of your ego and your personality. You will have to learn that there is nothing in respect, there is nothing in reputation, there is nothing in respectability. They are all bogus words, meaningless, contentless. The reality belongs to you, but unless you discover it, you will have to depend on others.

 

You are emperors, but you have to discover yourself.

 

And this discovery is not difficult:

 

Your kingdom is within you.

 

You just have to learn to close your eyes and look inwards. A little discipline, a little learning not to remain focused on the outside continuously, but to turn inwards at least once or twice a day, whenever you can find time... slowly, slowly you start becoming aware of your eternal being. Then the idea of attention simply disappears.

 

And the miracle is: the day you don't need anybody's attention, people start feeling your charisma, because charisma is the radiation of your individuality. They start feeling that you are somebody special, unique -- although they cannot pinpoint where your uniqueness is, what it is that attracts like a magnet.

 

People who have discovered themselves have found thousands of people attracted towards them, but they are not asking for it.

 

-Osho, "The Great Pilgrimage From Here to Here, #1, Q1"