To go beyond your parents

Psychologists will say that your parents, your education, your heredity, they determine everything. But the East knows something more. Eastern psychology knows something more because Eastern psychology says that this life is just one link in a great chain. And now, those in the West who have really gone deep into the human mind – for example, C. G. Jung – are also feeling that this life is not the beginning. No child is born as a child; he has many, many memories within him.

Eastern psychology says that it is not the parents who decide your life. Really, you have chosen them. You have chosen particular parents; you are responsible. If I am born to a particular mother and to a particular father, this is my choice. They will determine me because I have allowed them to determine me. I have chosen them because of so many actions in my past life. It is a chain.

So, ultimately, I remain responsible. If I choose a very violent father or if I choose a very wise man, whatsoever my choice is it is my choice. Then they determine me, but this determination by parents, education, etc., is not ultimate. Ultimately, you remain the master; you can throw it at any moment. It is difficult, but it is not impossible.

It is very difficult because it is not just like throwing your clothes. It is like changing your skin. It is so deep-rooted in you, everything that has happened has gone so deep, that it has become your blood and bones: you are made of it. Now you cannot conceive of yourself apart from it. Your identity has become mixed with it. But, still, to throw it is not impossible. You can jump out of it!

Really, all yoga is concerned only with this: how you can get out of all the influences that have made you whatsoever you are; how to jump out of them, how to go beyond; how to go beyond your parents, how to go beyond your education, how to go beyond your heredity, how to go beyond your past lives. The whole science of yoga consists only of this: to help you go beyond. So we will take a few things concerning how this becomes possible.

Education, upbringing, gives you a particular identity, a particular image. You begin to feel, “I am this.” Everyone has an image of himself: “I am this.” A good man, a bad man, a religious man, an intelligent man or a stupid one, everyone has an image of himself which has been given by the society, by the parents, by education. How to throw this? Sannyas was a method to throw this.

Osho, The Ultimate Alchemy, Vol 2, Ch 12, Q 2

Group therapy is a great process of understanding “What I have been doing to myself!” And if you go still deeper… where no group therapy has yet gone, not even primal therapy. But Buddha has gone deeper. He says: If you have chosen a certain kind of parent, that too is your choice.

See the point. Millions of foolish people were making love when you were hovering to take birth. But still you have chosen a certain couple – why? You must have a certain idea; it is your choice. And then you say, “My parents have done harm to me.” In the first place, why did you choose them? Then your wife, your husband… and you think they have done harm? Then the society – who has created this society? You have created this society. It does not come out of the blue. […]

Nobody is responsible except you. This is one of the hardest truths to accept. But once you accept it, it brings great freedom, it creates great space. Because with this, another possibility immediately opens up: “If I am responsible then I can change. If I am not responsible, how can I change? If I am doing it to myself, then it hurts but it also brings a new possibility – that I can stop hurting myself, I can stop being miserable.”

A group process is not to make you natural; it is to make you aware of your unnaturalness, of your phoniness.

Osho, Take It Easy, Vol. 1, Ch 12, Q 2