Accept your limitations, accept your imperfections

 

 

Create fear... create as much fear as you can. That has been the policy of the society. Hells have been created just to catch hold of you; heavens have been created just to reward those who will follow the dictates. All are imaginary: there is no hell, no heaven. But these rewards and punishments are subtle strategies, and they have worked up to now, and they have destroyed all human dignity.

 

This is not a gut-feeling in you. Your gut-feeling and the conscience created by the society have got mixed up. The gut-feeling is to DO something -- yes, that is a gut-feeling. When energy is there, one wants to do something; that is natural. Energy wants to be expressed. But WITH the motive to be worthy, that is a conscience part which is getting mixed with your gut-feeling. Be clear about it!

 

You have been messed around by the society in every possible way. You have been confused so much that you have to depend on somebody. Either you go to the priest -- in the old days you used to go to the priest. In India they still go to the priest. In the West the new priest has arisen: the psychotherapist, the psychiatrist, the psychologist -- go to him.

 

And the miracle is that the priest is just like you, maybe even more in a mess than you are, but still you go to him to find good advice. Yes, he repeats good advice like a parrot. Your psychotherapist, your psychiatrist, your psychoanalyst, may be in deeper anxiety, in more tensions than you are.

 

Just the other night one of my sannyasins was asking me, "Osho, you had told me last time when I came here, 'Look for the lighter side of life, count the roses, ignore the thorns. They are there, take note of them, but don't pay too much attention to them.' But my psychoanalyst has said, 'This is dangerous, this is going to repress your emotions.' So I am puzzled -- what to do?"

 

I told him, "You just wait a few days, your psychoanalyst will be here...!" But I was not aware that this sannyasin himself is a psychoanalyst. Just later on Vivek told me that he himself is a psychoanalyst. Now, one psychoanalyst going to another psychoanalyst -- for what? And that one may be going to somebody else.

 

THE FOUNDER OF PSYCHOANALYSIS, Sigmund Freud, was one of the most pathological persons you can imagine -- very superstitious. You will laugh if you go into his biography about how such a man could become the founder of psychoanalysis, and how such a man could be trusted, that what he was saying was true.

 

One of his friends gave him the idea that just as each woman has a twenty-eight-day period when her menstruation comes, exactly like that each man has a twenty-three-day period. There is some truth in it -- not twenty-three days, exactly twenty-eight days. Now much more research has been done on it.

 

Those four, five days when a woman goes through the period are sad, depressive, dull, negative -- exactly like that man also goes into a negative state each month for four, five days. Of course, his period is not very visible, but it is there; it is a psychological fact. It should be there, because men and women are not very different.

 

So the friend's idea was on the right track. Sigmund Freud suddenly got one idea -- lying down in his bed, he was thinking about twenty-eight and twenty-three -- suddenly an idea flashed in his mind: twenty-eight plus twenty-three means fifty-one, and he could not sleep the whole night. He became certain by the morning that he was going to live fifty-one years -- a very great gut-feeling. And he started talking about it twenty-eight plus twenty-three -- fifty-one years and he will die.

 

And the fifty-first year came and passed... and he did not die. Then something else had to be found. The day he was expecting to die, his phone number was changed and the end of the phone number was sixty-two. So he said, "Look, another indication: so now I am going to die at sixty-two." But that day also came and was passing.

 

But the people like Sigmund Freud are not easy... they will find something or other. He was staying in a hotel and the number of the room was eighty-two, so he said, "Look, another indication from above -- at eighty-two I am going to die -- that is absolutely certain."

And that day also passed. He died when he was eighty-three.

 

Such superstitious people... he was so afraid of death, that's why he was so much concerned about it. He was so afraid of death that five times in his life he fainted publicly because somebody started talking about death. He used to faint flat on the ground. Just the IDEA of death! And such a pathological, neurotic person became the founder of psychoanalysis.

 

And he used to project himself: whatsoever was true for him he thought was true for every human being. That is the very limit of nonsense. All that he has said about man is not about man -- it is about Sigmund Freud. And Sigmund Freud is a single individual; he does not represent man. Nobody represents man! Nobody can ever represent man. So maybe a few people are helped by psychoanalysis, very few people -- rarely have I seen a person who has been helped by psychoanalysis -- but those are the people who are of the same type as Sigmund Freud.

 

And now much research has happened and it has been found that even those people who are helped are not helped by psychoanalysis but by something else. In one experiment, twenty-five persons were given psychoanalysis for six months, and twenty-five persons were just kept waiting and were told, "Soon your psychoanalysis will start." They were all suffering from the same kind of illness, and the result was very surprising.

 

The twenty-five who were given psychoanalysis were helped a little bit, but the twenty-five who were kept waiting were helped far more. Just waiting helped them far more. In fact, this secret has been known in the East, it has been practised for centuries. If you take a mental case into a Zen monastery, they put him in isolation for three weeks; nobody talks to him -- just the opposite of psychoanalysis -- nobody talks to him, nobody listens to him. They just keep him isolated; somebody goes, absolutely silently, and puts the food there, comes back. He has to live with himself for three weeks... and miracles have been happening down the ages.

 

Just putting him there for three weeks in isolation, slowly slowly he cools down -- no psychoanalysis, no therapy, just isolation. In fact, he was suffering too much from people -- the stress of being in a crowd continuously.

 

Psychoanalysis may not be the real cause of help, but the length of time -- two years, three years, four years, the psychoanalysis continues. It continues as long as you can afford it; it depends on you. If you have enough money, it can continue your whole life. In fact, psychoanalysis never comes to a termination. It cannot come, because the mind is very inventive. It goes on inventing more and more rubbish. It starts enjoying, slowly slowly, because the more rubbish it brings up, the more happy the psychotherapist feels. Seeing him happy, it obliges more.

 

Whatsoever the expectations of the psychotherapist are, the patient fulfills them. Patients are really patient people, very obliging, courteous. Good people they are! That's why they are suffering; they are not hard people -- not hardware but software. Because they are soft they are suffering. The hard guys are not suffering; the hard guys make others suffer. The soft guys become victims. Three, four years Lying down on the couch, talking nonsense, waiting, waiting, waiting -- it helps one to unwind, one becomes a little more relaxed. And somebody is listening to you very attentively, at least pretending that he is listening very attentively.

 

My own observation is that the attention of the psychotherapist is of immense value. This is a world where nobody gives you any attention. If the husband wants to talk to the wife she says, "There is so much work to be done in the kitchen -- and the dishes have to be washed and I have no time." If the wife wants to talk to the husband, he is tired from the whole day at the office and the work and the traffic, and he wants to watch the TV.

 

A survey says that the average husband/wife communication in America is only thirty-three minutes per day -- and that is the average. And in that thirty-three minutes you can count fighting, nagging, pillow-throwing, and every kind of thing. Thirty-three minutes only between husband and wife -- out of twenty-four hours?

 

A great need has arisen that somebody should listen to you. Hence the psychotherapist helps -- he is a professional listener. That is the only quality that he has, the only qualification really. You can start the business -- no other qualification is needed -- if you know only one thing: how to be attentively sitting there by the side and listening. Just listening attentively will help. The person starts feeling, "I have some worth. Somebody..." And the more he has paid, the more it helps because the person who is listening is no ordinary psychotherapist, not run-of-the-mill."... Somebody special, very famous, world-known -- and listening so attentively to me?" The very idea gives worth, "Then I must be saying something immensely beautiful."

 

Gibberish he may be bringing up. That's what in psycho-babble is called 'free association' -- anything that comes to your mind, bring it up. If such gibberish is being listened to so attentively, a great need is fulfilled -- he feels worthy, he feels important, he feels somebody.

 

Remember, this society has messed you up so much that man as such is almost on the verge of going insane. All love has disappeared, all communication has disappeared, all friendship has disappeared, all aesthetic sensitivity has disappeared. People have become like zombies. They talk to each other yet they don't talk, they don't meet.

 

This society is an ill society, and when I say 'this society' I mean all the societies that exist in the world, more or less, in this way or that, they are ill -- because in the past, for centuries, we have been creating a model of man which is wrong. We are giving people ideals and saying "Unless you fulfill THESE ideals you will never be worthy." And those ideals are impossible. We are giving people ideas of being perfect. and once the idea of being perfect enters in one's being, it turns one into a neurotic.

 

Accept your limitations, accept your imperfections. That's what it means to be a human being! And accept yourself as you are -- with joy, not in helplessness. Because GOD accepts you -- this is my basic teaching -- God accepts you, accept yourself; love yourself. Let there be a great upsurge of self-love. And out of that love you will start becoming creative; a person who loves himself is bound to become creative. I am not saying he will become famous; I am not saying that he will be a Picasso or an Ezra Pound or a Pablo Neruda, no -- he may be, he may not be. But that is irrelevant! The real thing is to enjoy creativity. Whatsoever you do, do it with joy, bring your total intelligence to it, be meditative in it.

 

- Osho, "The Fish in the Sea is not Thirsty, #8, Q1"