Osho: "From Reaction to Action"

An excerpt from "freedom"

"The first thing, and the most basic to be understood, is that whatsoever you do, it should not be a reaction. If it is an act then there is no problem. Action is always good; reaction always bad.

So try first to understand this term 'reaction'. It means you are acting unconsciously. Somebody is manipulating you. Somebody says something, does something, and you react. The real master of the situation is somebody else. Somebody comes and insults you and you react, you become angry. Somebody comes and praises you and you smile and you become happy. Both are the same. You are a slave and the other knows how to push your buttons. You are behaving like a mechanism. You are an automaton, not a man yet.

Act, don't react. Don't be a plaything in the hands of others.

And you cannot predict a man who acts out of no-mind; only mind is predictable. If you are awake, alert, conscious, nobody can say what turn any situation will take. A thousand and one alternatives open for consciousness. Consciousness is total freedom -- spontaneous, an act totally in the present, not controlled by anybody else, coming out of his own being....

We react according to our conditionings. If you have been born in a vegetarian family and non-vegetarian food is placed on your table, you will feel nausea, vomiting, sickness. Not because of the non-vegetarian food, but because of your conditioning. Somebody else who has been conditioned for non-vegetarian food will relish the very sight of it, will feel appetite not nausea, will feel happy, will be thrilled. That too is a conditioning.

We react because we have been conditioned in a certain way. You can be conditioned to be very polite. You can be conditioned to be always in control. You can be conditioned to be silent. You can be conditioned to remain still in situations where people ordinarily become disturbed and distracted. But if it is a conditioning then it has nothing to do with religion; then it has something to do with psychology. And Buddha or Jesus are not masters there - B.F Skinner and Pavlov, they are the masters there. It is a conditioned reflex.

I have heard a story. In B. F. Skinner's lab, a new mouse was introduced.

They go on working with mice because they don't give any more credit to man. They think that if they can understand the mind of a mouse, they have understood humanity.

The old mouse, who had been there with Skinner for a very long time, initiated the new and said, 'Look. This professor B. F. Skinner is a very good man, but you have to condition him first. Push this button and immediately breakfast comes in. I have conditioned him perfectly'

B. F. Skinner thinks he has conditioned his lab mice, and they think they have conditioned him.

Conditioning is a murder; the spontaneity is killed. The mind is fed with certain ideas and you are not allowed to respond; you are only allowed to react. In small things or great things, it is the same.

If you have been brought up in a religious family, the word 'god' is so beautiful, so holy. But if you have been brought up in a communist family in Soviet Russia, then the very word is ugly, nauseating. One feels as if it would leave a bad taste in the mouth to utter the word.

Small or big is not the question. If you go on behaving the way you have been conditioned, you are functioning as a machine; the man has not been born yet.

"It is said that when you tell an englishman a joke, he will laugh three times. He will laugh the first time - when you tell it - to be polite. He will laugh a second time - when you explain it - again to be polite. (That is the training of the englishman - continuously being polite.) Finally he will laugh a third time in the middle of the night when he wakes from a sound sleep and suddenly gets it.

When you tell a german the same joke, he will laugh twice. He will laugh first - when you tell it - to he polite. He will laugh a second time - when you explain it - to be polite. He will never laugh a third time, because he will never get it.

When you tell an american the same joke, he will laugh once - when you tell it - for he will get it.

And when you tell a jew the same joke, he won't laugh at all. Instead he will say, 'It's an old joke, and besides, you are telling it all wrong.'

It may be a joke, or it may be a great philosophy. It may be trivia or god himself - it makes no difference. People behave the way they are conditioned to behave, the way they are brought up to behave, the way they are expected to behave. Nature is not allowed to function; only nurture is allowed to function. This is the man whom we call a slave.

When you become free, when you drop all conditioning and for the first time you look at life with fresh eyes, with no clouds of conditioning in between, then you become unpredictable. Then nobody knows, then nobody can imagine what is going to happen. Because then you are no more there; god acts through you. Right now only society goes on acting through you.

Once you are simply alert, ready to respond, with no fixed idea, with no prejudice, with no plan, whatsoever happens in the moment, you become true and authentic.

Remember two words - authority and authenticity. Ordinarily you behave according to the authority that has conditioned you - the priest, the politician, the parents. You behave according to the authority. A religious man behaves not according to the authority; he behaves through his own authenticity. He responds. A situation arises there, a challenge is there - he responds with his total being. Even he himself cannot predict it.

When you ask a question, even I don't know what answer I am going to give to you. When I give it, only then I also know; only then I say, so, this was the answer. Your question is there, I am here - a response is bound to happen.

Response is responsibility. Response is authenticity. Response is living in the moment.

You can always predict what unconscious people will do: they willl be brave or they will be cowards, they will be patient or they will be impatient. But for a real man of understanding there are no alternatives - all possibilities are always open; no door is closed. And each moment decides. He does not carry a decision beforehand; he has no ready-made decisions. Fresh, virgin, he moves. That is the virginity of an enlightened man... uncorrupted by the past.

Awareness is the key. If you become aware, everything follows.

Don't try to become anything - patient, loving, non-violent, peaceful. Don't try. If you try, you will force yourself and you will become a hypocrite. That's how the whole religion has turned into hypocrisy. Inside you are different; on the outside painted. You smile, and inside you would have liked to kill. Inside you car;y on all rubbish and on the outside you go on sprinkling perfume. Inside you stink; on the outside you create an illusion as if you are a roseflower.

Never repress. Repression is the greatest calamity that has happened to man. And it has happened for very beautiful reasons. You look at a buddha or a muso - so silent, undisturbed. A greed arises:

you would also like to be like them. What to do? You start trying to be a stone statue. Whenever there is a situation and you can be disturbed, you hold yourself. You control yourself.

Control is a dirty word. It has not four letters in it, but it is a four-letter word.

Freedom.... And when I say freedom I don't mean licence. You may understand... when I say freedom you may understand licence, because that's how things go. A controlled mind, whenever it hears about freedom immediately understands it as licence. Licence is the opposite pole of control. Freedom is just in between, just exactly in the middle, where there is no control and no licence.

Freedom has its own discipline, but it is not forced by any authority. It comes out of your awareness, out of authenticity. Freedom should never be misunderstood as licence, otherwise you will again miss.

Awareness brings freedom. In freedom there is no need for control, because there is no possibility for licence. It is because of licence that you have been forced to control, and if you remain licentious the society will go on controlling you.

It is because of your licentiousness that the policeman exists and the judge and the politician and the courts, and they go on forcing you to control yourself. And in controlling yourself you miss the whole point of being alive, because you miss celebration. How can you celebrate if you are too controlled?

It happens almost every day. When people come to see me who are very much controlled and disciplined, it is almost impossible to penetrate their skull; they are too thick... walls of stone around them. They have become stoney, they have become ice-cold, the warmth is lost. Because if you are warm, there is fear - you may do something. So they have killed themselves, completely poisoned themselves. To remain in control, they have found only one solution and that is not to live at all. So be a stone buddha. Then you will be able to pretend that you are patient, silent, disciplined.

But that is not what I am teaching here. Control has to be dropped as much as licence. Now you will be puzzled. You can choose either control or licence. You say, 'If I drop control, I will become licentious. If I drop licence then I have to become controlled.' But I tell you, if you become aware, control and licence both go down the same drain. They are two aspects of the same coin, and in awareness they are not needed.

It happened:

"An eighteen year-old boy, who had always been somewhat shy and retiring, one evening decided to change himself. He came down from his bedroom, all slicked up, and snapped at his father, 'Look, I'm going out on the town - I'm going to find some beautiful girls. I'm going to get blind drunk and have a great time. I'm going to do all the things a fellow of my age should be doing in the prime of life and get a bit of adventure and excitement, so just don't try and stop me!'

His old man said, Try and stop you? Hold on, my son, I'm coming with you.'

All controlled people are in that state - bubbling inside to explode into licentiousness.

Go and see your monks in the monasteries. In India we have that type of neurosis very much. They are all neurotics. This is something to be understood - either you become erotic or you become neurotic. If you repress your eras, eroticness, you become neurotic. If you drop your neurosis, you become erotic.

And both are sorts of madnesses. One should be simply oneself - neither neurotic nor erotic, available to all situations, ready to face whatsoever life brings, ready to accept and live - but always alert, conscious, aware, mindful.

So the only thing to be constantly remembered is selfremembrance. You should not forget yourself. And always move from the innermost core of your being. Let actions flow from there, from your very center of being, and whatsoever you do will be virtuous.

Virtue is a function of awareness.

If you do something from the periphery, it may not look like a sin, but it is sin. The society may be happy with you, but you cannot be happy with yourself. The society may praise you, but you deep down will go on condemning yourself because you will know you have missed life - and missed for nothing.

What is it - the praise of the society? If people call you a saint, what is it? Nothing but gossip. How does it matter? You have missed god for gossip. You have missed life for these foolish people who are all around, for their good opinion.

Live life from your very center. This is all that meditation is about. And by and by you will come to feel a discipline that is not forced, not cultivated, which arises spontaneously, arises naturally like a flower blooms. Then you will have the whole life available, and you will have your whole being available.

And when your whole being and the whole life meet, between the two arises that which is god, between the two arises that which is nirvana. [MORE] and [MORE]