Today while walking I was listening to a discourse of Osho’s in which he spoke about anger. During the later part of the discourse, he also spoke about control Vs transformation and how it is so easy to control, but very difficult to transform. Sharing some excerpts that are relevant to this aspect. If you would like to read the transcript of the whole discourse, please visit this link And the Flowers Showered.
Excerpts from Osho’s discourse –
“….. it is very easy to control, it is very difficult to transform. It is VERY easy to control. You can control your anger, but what will you do? — you will suppress it. And what happens when you suppress a certain thing? The direction of its movement changes: it was going out, and if you suppress it, it starts going in — just its direction changes.
And for anger to go out was good, because the poison needs to be thrown out. It is bad for the anger to move within, because that means your whole body mind structure will be poisoned by it. And then if you go on doing this for a long time… as everybody has been doing, because the society teaches control, not transformation. The society says, ‘Control yourself,’ and through controlling all the negative things have been thrown deeper and deeper into the unconscious, and then they become a constant thing within you. Then it is not a question of your being angry sometimes and sometimes not — you are simply angry.
Sometimes you explode, and sometimes you don’t explode because there is no excuse, or you have to find an excuse. And remember, you can find an excuse anywhere!”
The most important learning for me from these two paragraphs is about how an emotion changes direction when you suppress it. Anger is poison and we try controlling it. All that it does is hurt us by getting expressed as illness.
Next excerpt –
“….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. Now psychologists say that almost eighty percent of diseases are caused by repressed emotions: so many heart failures means so much anger has been repressed in the heart, so much hatred that the heart is poisoned.
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.”
The word doctors use today is Psycho-somatic for diseases whose root cause is psychological and less physiological. Well, Master of Masters Osho obviously knew that :):). After all he was enlightened !!
Osho in this discourse, goes on to offer suggestions on how not to repress and how to express anger in a way that does not harm you or any other person. He says either go out and jog, or beat up on a pillow. Anger is mental vomit, so treat it like the physical vomit – throw it out, but not on anyone else.
Thank you Master.