While in a mess, try to remain calm, silent and alert, says Osho
Man is a crowd, a crowd of many voices — relevant, irrelevant, consistent, inconsistent — each voice pulling in its own way; all the voices pulling man apart. Ordinarily man is a mess, virtually a kind of madness. You somehow manage to look sane. Deep down layers and layers of insanity are boiling within you. They can erupt any moment, your control can be lost any moment, because your control is enforced from without.
For social, economic and political reasons, you have enforced a certain character upon yourself. But many vital forces exist against that character within you. They are continuously sabotaging your character. Hence every day you go on committing many mistakes, many errors. Even sometimes you feel that you never wanted to do it.
Buddha does not call these mistakes sins, because to call them sin will be condemning you. He simply calls them misdemeanours, mistakes or errors. To err is human, not to err is divine. And the way from the human to the divine goes through mindfulness. These many voices within you can stop torturing you, pulling you, pushing you. These many voices can disappear if you become mindful.
In the modern Humanistic Potential Movement there is a parallel to understand it. That’s what Transactional Analysis calls the triangle of PAC. P means parent, A means adult and C means child. These are your three layers, as if you are a three-storied building. First floor is that of the child, second floor is that of the parent, third floor is that of the adult. All three exist together. This is your inner triangle and conflict. Your child says one thing, your parent says something else, your adult, rational mind says something else.
The child says enjoy. For the child this moment is the only moment; he has no other considerations. He has no values and he has no mindfulness, no awareness. The child consists of felt concepts; he lives through feeling. His whole being is irrational.
Of course he comes into many conflicts with others. He comes into many contradictions within himself, because one feeling helps him to do one thing, then suddenly he starts feeling another feeling. A child never can complete anything. By the time he can complete it his feeling has changed. He starts many things but never comes to any conclusion. A child remains inconclusive. He enjoys — but his enjoyment is not creative, cannot be creative. He delights — but life cannot be lived only through delight. You cannot remain a child forever. You will have to learn many things, because you are not alone here.
The parental voice in you is the voice of the society, culture, civilisation; the voice that makes you capable of living in a world where you are not alone, where there are many individuals with conflicting ambitions, where there is much struggle for survival, where there is much conflict. You have to pave your path, and you have to move very cautiously.
When you listen to one voice and follow it you are getting into trouble. You will never be satisfied with it. Only one part will be satisfied, the other two parts will be very much dissatisfied. Whatever you do, reaction can never satisfy you, because reaction is partial.
Response — response is total. Then you don’t function from any triangle, you don’t choose; you simply remain in a choiceless awareness. You remain centered. And out of that centering you act, whatsoever it is. It is neither child nor parent nor adult. You have gone beyond PAC. It is you now — neither the child nor the parent nor the adult. It is you, your being. That PAC is like a cyclone and your center is the center of the cyclone.
So whenever there is a need to respond, the first thing, Buddha says, is become mindful, become aware. Be there for a few moments before you do anything. There is no need to think about it because thinking is partial. There is no need to feel about it because feeling is partial. There is no need to find clues from your parents, Bible, Koran, Gita — these are all P — there is no need. You simply remain tranquil, silent, simply alert — watching the situation as if you are absolutely out of it, aloof, a watcher on the hills.
This is the first requirement — to be centered whenever you want to act. Then out of this centering let the act arise — and whatsoever you do will be virtuous, whatsoever you do will be right. Buddha says right mindfulness is the only virtue. Not to be mindful is to fall into error. To act unconsciously is to fall into error.
