Emotions Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  MEDICAL DISCLAIMER

  EMOTIONS

  Introduction

  What are emotions?

  The ordinary commonsense view

  You can experiment, yourself.

  Mind is a division which thinks,

  Emotions and Sentimentality

  Why?

  Don’t throw it on anybody.

  Don’t go on forcing it inside.

  Sensitivity grows with awareness.

  Mind can play the game of being silent.

  ANGER

  What is Anger?

  From where does the anger come?

  People ARE angry.

  If you want to know anger only to be rid of it,

  A simple act of authentic spontaneity,

  Don’t cut yourself in two.

  Remember not to misunderstand.

  If your anger is partial, lukewarm,

  Whatsoever is the case is the case.

  To leave everything and just sit under a tree

  When you see anger in others,

  The only problem with sadness,

  They say anger is bad.

  Step within yourself without any prejudice,

  Why do people get angry at you?

  JEALOUSY

  This is a universal problem;

  Make love a great celebration.

  Wherever jealousy is present, love is not present.

  Jealousy is like a rock - very gross.

  Your jealousy will destroy your energy unnecessarily.

  FEAR

  You have fear - don’t ask why.

  Fear is intelligence.

  The fear of death

  The crowd is an essential for the false self to exist.

  Nobody else can answer your question “Who am I?” You will know it.

  Fear is like darkness.

  All men are afraid of women,

  All fears can be reduced to one fear:

  Fear is made of ignorance of one’s own self.

  Courage means going into the unknown

  You have exaggerated your fears.

  You have never looked at them.

  Understanding is the Secret of Transformation

  Understanding is the secret of transformation.

  Try to understand.…

  Whenever there is joy,

  The joy is always within you.

  Whenever you are alone,

  Don’t try to change the scene, please change yourself.

  Methods to Help You

  And remember: be aware.

  EPILOGUE

  For more information:

  About the Author

  OSHO INTERNATIONAL MEDITATION RESORT

  Copyright Page

  MEDICAL DISCLAIMER

  Any advice or teachings given in this book are not intended to replace the services of your physician, psychotherapist, or psychiatrist. Nor is it meant to provide an alternative to professional medical treatment. This book offers no diagnosis of or treatment for any specific medical or psychological problems that you may have. Before you start any intensive exercises which may be part of some of the meditations, consult your physician.

  EMOTIONS

  Always remember,

  problems

  are yours…

  Introduction

  The title of this little book might give readers the idea that they have found another “how to” book. Not at all - this book will provide you with a different dimension, where all the questions about “how” are dissolved into a direct perception of your own, hidden reality.

  Osho says:

  “We reduce everything into a how. There is a great how-to-ism all over the world, and every person, particularly the modern contemporary mind, has become a how-to-er: how to do this, how to do that, how to grow rich, how to be successful, how to influence people and win friends, how to meditate, even how to love. The day is not far off when some stupid guy is going to ask how to breathe. It is not a question of how at all. Don’t reduce life into technology. Life reduced into technology loses all flavor of joy.”

  Here you will find insights to unlock your own intuitive understanding of yourself and your inner world. Some of the ideas you encounter may disturb you, may go against everything you think you already know. Others may fill you with the shock of recognition, as they bring words to a truth that it suddenly feels you have always known.

  Whatever the case, relax….give it some time to sink in and watch. Come back to it again and again - and soon you will find new levels of understanding growing between the lines, as you come closer and closer to the truth of your own being.

  No, this is not a “how to” book. It is a lamp that you can use, no matter who you are, to light the hidden corners of your own unique individuality.

  What are emotions?

  What are your thoughts except ripples on a lake?

  What are your emotions, your moods, your sentiments?

  What is your whole mind? - just a turmoil.

  And because of this turmoil you cannot see your own nature.

  You go on missing yourself.

  You meet everybody in the world and you never meet yourself.

  You are angry, but you cannot remain angry forever.

  Even the angriest man laughs sometimes, has to.

  It cannot become a permanent state of affairs,

  being angry.

  Even the saddest man smiles;

  and even the man who laughs continuously

  sometimes cries and weeps and tears come to his eyes.

  Emotions cannot be permanent.

  That’s why they are called “emotions”!

  The word comes from “motion,” movement.

  They move; hence, they are emotions.

  From one to another you continuously change.

  This moment you are sad, that moment you are happy;

  this moment you are angry,

  that moment you are very compassionate;

  this moment you are loving, another moment full of hatred;

  the morning was beautiful, the evening is ugly.

  This goes on.

  The ordinary commonsense view

  is that the heart is the source of emotions like love or hate or anger. Just as the mind is the source of conceptual thoughts, the heart is the source of all that is emotional and sentimental.

  That is the commonsense view.

  We have lived with this traditional division,

  that imagination and feeling and emotions

  and sentiments are of the heart.

  But your heart is just a pumping system.

  Everything that you think or imagine or feel

  is confined into the mind.

  Your mind has seven hundred centers

  and they control everything.

  But when a person like Buddha talks about “the heart”

  he means the very center of your being.

  It is his understanding that your love,

  your hate, everything, arises out of your mind.

  And I think he is being absolutely scientific;

  all psychologists will agree with him.

  You can experiment, yourself.

  You can see from where your anger arises - it is the mind;

  from where your emotions arise - it is the mind.

  Mind is a big phenomenon. It covers conceptual thinking,

  it covers your emotional patterns, your sentiments.

  This has to be understood: emotions are in your head!

  But consciousness is not in your head.

  In fact, your head is in your consciousness!

  Consciousness is vast, infinite.

  Emotions, desires, ambitions, are in your head; they will dry up. But even when your hea
d has completely dropped and disappeared into the earth, your consciousness will not disappear. You don’t contain the consciousness, the consciousness contains you; it is bigger than you.

  It is absolutely true:

  your emotions, your sentiments, your thoughts - the whole paraphernalia of the mind - is from the outside, is manipulated by the outside. Scientifically it has become more clear. But even without scientific investigation, the mystics, for thousands of years, have been saying exactly the same thing - that all these things that your mind is filled with are not yours, you are beyond them.

  You get identified with them,

  and that’s the only sin.

  Mind is a division which thinks,

  and heart is another division of the same mind, which feels.

  Feeling and thinking,

  thoughts and emotions...

  but witnessing is separate from both.

  When you are thinking, the watcher watches... a thought is passing by, or you are feeling angry - the witness still watches. An emotion is passing by, just like clouds pass, and you see them.

  You are neither the good nor the bad.

  You are neither the pleasant nor the unpleasant.

  You are neither the thought nor the emotions.

  You are neither the mind nor the heart.

  Love always makes one nervous.

  There are reasons why it makes one nervous. It comes from the unconscious, and all your capacities are in the conscious; all your skill, all your knowledge, is in the conscious. Love comes from the unconscious and you don’t know how to cope with it, what to do with it, and it is too much.

  The unconscious is nine times bigger than the conscious, so whatsoever comes from the unconscious is overwhelming. That’s why people are afraid of emotions, feelings. They hold them back, they are afraid they will create chaos.

  They do, but chaos is beautiful!

  There is a need for order, and there is a need for chaos, too. When order is needed, use order, use the conscious mind; when chaos is needed, use the unconscious and let chaos be. A whole person, a total person, is one who is capable of using both, who does not allow any interference of the conscious into the unconscious or of the unconscious into the conscious.

  We believe in life in its totality, in its days,

  in its nights, the sunny days and the cloudy days.

  We believe that everything in life can be enjoyed.

  You need just a little more awareness,

  more consciousness of what is happening.

  You are not your mind, you are not your body.

  There is a witness somewhere inside you

  who can go on looking at the mind, at the emotions,

  at the physiological reactions.

  That witness is you.

  And that witness is capable of enjoying everything,

  once you get centered there.

  Your mind feels misery, suffering; it feels all kinds of emotions, attachments, desires and longings, but it is all the projection of the mind.

  Behind the mind is your real self, which has never gone anywhere. It is always here and here.

  Don’t judge!

  If you are angry, then be angry

  - and don’t judge that it is good or bad.

  This is the difference between negative and positive emotions: if you become aware of a certain emotion, and by your becoming aware the emotion dissolves, it is negative. If, by your becoming aware of a certain emotion, you then become the emotion, if the emotion then spreads and becomes your being, it is positive.

  Awareness works differently in each case.

  If it is a poisonous emotion, you are relieved of it through awareness. If it is good, blissful, ecstatic, you become one with it. Awareness deepens it. So to me this is the criterion: if something is deepened by your awareness, it is something good. If something is dissolved through awareness, it is something bad.

  That which cannot remain in awareness is sin, and that which grows in awareness is virtue. Virtue and sin are not social concepts, they are inner realizations.

  I tell you that even negative emotions are good, if real; and if they are real, by and by, their very reality transforms them. They become more and more positive and a moment comes when all positivity and negativity disappears.

  You simply remain authentic: you don’t know what is good and what is bad, you don’t know what is positive and what is negative. You are simply authentic. This authenticity will allow you to have a glimpse of the real.

  Only the real can know the real, the true can know the truth,

  the authentic can know the authentic that surrounds you.

  Emotions and Sentimentality

  Emotion is a purity; sentimentality is a trick.

  You have learned a trick.

  A woman knows that if she cries, she is the winner.

  Now, sometimes the crying is not coming at all,

  because crying is not so easily manipulated.

  But she tries to bring it, she acts, she pretends.

  Those tears are false.

  Even if they are flowing through the eyes,

  they are false - because they are not coming,

  they are being brought.

  Sentimentality is emotion created,

  manipulated, cunningly.

  Rationality is one thing;

  rationalization is a manipulation of reason

  just as sentimentality is a manipulation of emotion.

  If you are rational, REALLY rational,

  you will become a scientist.

  If you are really emotional,

  you will become a poet.

  These are beautiful things.

  But still, a real dialogue between a rational person and an emotional person will not be possible - it will be easier. With rationalization and sentimentality it is very difficult, but with reason and emotion it is not so difficult - still there will be difficulties, but there will be compassion, an effort to understand each other.

  Many people think that sentimentality is spirituality.

  But emotions are as mental as thoughts, and what you call your heart is as much in your head as your head. You can become emotional very easily. You can cry and weep with tears falling down, big pearl-like tears - but it is nothing spiritual. Tears are as physical as anything else. The eyes are part of the body, and emotions are a disturbance in the physical energy.

  You cry and weep - of course you will feel relieved, you will feel relaxed after you have had a good cry. You will feel relieved. All over the world, women know it. They know it well, that it helps. They cry and they weep and then they are relieved. It is a catharsis, but there is nothing spiritual in it. But people go on mistaking things - things which are not spiritual they go on thinking are spiritual.

  Repression and Control

  You never see animals going to war. Of course there are fights sometimes, but they are individual fights - not world wars with all the crows of the east fighting with all the crows of the west or all the dogs of India fighting all the dogs of Pakistan. It is not. Dogs are not so foolish, neither are crows. Yes, sometimes they fight, and there is nothing wrong in it. If their freedom is violated, they fight, but the fight is individual. It is not a world war.

  Now, what have you done? You have repressed humanity and you have not allowed individuals to be angry sometimes - which is natural. The ultimate, total result is that everybody goes on gathering his anger, goes on repressing the anger; then one day everybody is so full of poison that it explodes in a world war. Every ten years a world war is needed.

  And who is responsible for these wars?

  Your so-called saints and moralists, do-gooders,

  the people who have never allowed you to be natural.

  What is repression?

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

  Why?

  Why does man suppress so much and become unhealthy?

  Because the society teaches you to control, not to transform, and the way of transformation is totally different. For one thing, it is not the way of control at all, it is just the opposite.

  Through suppression, mind becomes split. The part that you accept becomes the conscious, and the part that you deny becomes the unconscious. This division is not natural, the division happens because of repression. And into the unconscious you go on throwing all the rubbish that society rejects - but remember, whatsoever you throw in there becomes more and more part of you: it goes into your hands, into your bones, into your blood, into your heartbeat.