Osho on Being Authentic

Truthfulness means authenticity, to be true, not to be false, not to use masks. Whatsoever is your real face, show it...and at whatsoever the cost.

To be authentic means to remain true to your own being. How to remain true? Three things have to be remembered.

One, never listen to anybody, what they say for you to be. Always listen to your inner voice, to what you would like to be; otherwise your whole life will be wasted. Your mother wants you to be an engineer, your father wants you to be a doctor, and you want to be a poet. What to do? Of course the mother is right because it is more economical, more financially helpful to be an engineer. The father is also right: to be a doctor is a good commodity in the market; it has a market value. “A poet? Have you gone mad? Are you crazy?”

Poets are people who are cursed. Nobody wants them. There is no need for them; the world can exist without poetry. There will be no trouble if poetry is not there. The world cannot exist without engineers; the world needs engineers. If you are needed you are valuable; if you are not needed you don’t carry any value.

But if you want to be a poet, be a poet. You may be a beggar. Good! You may not get very rich through it. Don’t worry about it, because you may become a great engineer and you may earn much money, but you will never have any fulfillment. You will always hanker, your inner being will hanker, to be a poet.

Remember, be true to your inner voice. It may lead you into danger; then go into the danger, but remain true to the inner voice. Then there is a possibility that one day you will come to a state where you can dance with inner fulfillment. Always look for the first thing is your being and don’t allow others to manipulate and control you. They are many: everybody is ready to control you, everybody is ready to change you, everybody is ready to give you a direction you have not asked for. Everybody is giving you a guide for your life. The guide exists within you; you carry the blueprint.

To be authentic means to be true to oneself. It is a very, very dangerous phenomenon; rare people can do that. But whenever people do it, they achieve. They achieve such beauty, such grace, such contentment, you cannot imagine. If everybody looks so frustrated, the reason is that nobody has listened to his own voice.

You wanted to marry a girl but the girl was a Mohammedan and you are a Hindu brahmin. Your parents wouldn’t allow. The society wouldn’t accept; it was dangerous. The girl was poor and you are rich. So you married a rich woman, Hindu, brahmin by caste, accepted by everybody but not by your heart. So now you live an ugly life. Now you go to the prostitute, but even prostitutes won’t help you. You have prostituted your whole life; you wasted your whole life.

Always listen to the inner voice, and don’t listen to anything else. A thousand and one are the temptations around you because many people are there peddling their things. It is a supermarket, the world, and everybody is interested in selling his thing to you; everybody is a salesman. If you listen to too many salesmen you will become mad. Don’t listen to anybody; just close your eyes and listen to the inner voice. That is what meditation is all about: to listen to the inner voice. This is the first thing.

Then the second thing — if you have done the first thing only then does the second become possible: never wear a mask. If you are angry, be angry. It is risky, but don’t smile because that is to be untrue. But you have been taught that when you are angry, smile; then your smile becomes false, a mask...just an exercise of the lips, nothing else. The heart full of anger, poison, and the lips smiling; you become a false phenomenon.

Then the other thing also happens: when you want to smile you cannot. Your whole mechanism is topsy-turvy because when you wanted to be angry you weren’t, when you wanted to hate you didn’t. Now you want to love; suddenly you find that the mechanism doesn’t function. Now you want to smile; you have to force it. Really, your heart is full of smile and you want to laugh loudly, but you cannot laugh, something chokes in the heart, something chokes in the throat. The smile doesn’t come, or even if it comes it is a very pale and dead smile. It doesn’t make you happy. You don’t bubble up with it. It is not a radiance around you.

When you want to be angry, be angry. Nothing is wrong in being angry. If you want to laugh, laugh. Nothing’s wrong in laughing loudly. By and by you will see that your whole system is functioning. When it functions, really, it has a hum around it, just as a car, when everything is going good, hums. The driver who loves the car knows that now everything is functioning well, there is an organic unity — the mechanism is functioning well. You can see: whenever a person’s mechanism is functioning well, you can hear the hum around him. He walks, but his step has a dance in it. He talks, but his words carry a subtle poetry in them. He looks at you, and he really looks; it is not just lukewarm, it is really warm. When he touches you he really touches you. You can feel his energy moving into your body, a current of life being transferred...because his mechanism is functioning well.

Don’t wear masks; otherwise you will create dysfunctions in your mechanism...blocks. There are many blocks in your body. A person who has been suppressing anger, his jaw becomes blocked. All the anger comes up to the jaw and then stops there. His hands become ugly. They don’t have the graceful movement of a dancer, no, because the anger comes into the fingers — and blocked.

Remember, anger has two sources to be released from. One is the teeth, another is the fingers: because all animals, when they are angry, will bite you with their teeth or they will start tearing you with their paws. So the nails and the teeth are the two points from where the anger is released.

I have a suspicion that wherever anger is suppressed too much, people have teeth trouble. Their teeth go wrong because too much energy is there and it is never released. Anybody who suppresses anger will eat more; angry people will always eat more because the teeth need some exercise. Angry people will smoke more. Angry people will talk more; they can become obsessive talkers because, somehow, the jaw needs exercise so that the energy is released a little bit. Angry people’s hands will become knotted, ugly. If the energy was released they could have become beautiful hands.

If you suppress anything, in the body there is some part,a corresponding part, to the emotion. If you don’t want to cry, your eyes will lose their luster because tears are needed; they are a very alive phenomenon. When once in a while you weep and cry, really you go into it — you become it — tears start flowing down your eyes; your eyes are cleansed, your eyes again become fresh, young, and virgin. That’s why women have more beautiful eyes, because they can still cry. Man has lost his eyes because they have a wrong notion that men should not cry. If somebody, a small boy cries, even the parents, others, say, “What are you doing? Are you being a sissy?”

What nonsense, because God has given you — man or woman — the same tear glands. If man was not to weep, there would have been no tear glands. Simple mathematics! Why do the tear glands exist in man in the same proportion as they exist in woman? Eyes need weeping and crying, and it is really beautiful if you can cry and weep wholeheartedly.

Remember, if you cannot cry and weep wholeheartedly, you cannot laugh also, because that is the other polarity. People who can laugh can also cry; people who cannot cry cannot laugh. You may have observed sometimes in children: if they laugh loudly and long they start crying — because they are joined. In the villages I have heard mothers saying to their children, “Don’t laugh too much; otherwise you will start crying.” Really true, because the phenomena are not different — it is just that the same energy moves to the opposite poles.

The second thing: don’t use masks. Be true whatsoever the cost.

The third thing about authenticity: always remain in the present — because all falseness enters either from the past or from the future. That which has passed has passed; don’t bother about it. Don’t carry it as a burden; otherwise it will not allow you to be authentic to the present. All that has not come has not come yet. Don’t unnecessarily be bothered about the future; otherwise that will come into the present and destroy it. Be true to the present, and then you will be authentic. To be here-now is to be authentic. No past, no future: this moment all, this moment the whole eternity.

These three things, and you attain what Patanjali calls truthfulness. Then whatsoever you say will be true. Ordinarily you think you have to be alert to say the truth. I’m not saying that. I am saying: you create authenticity; whatsoever you say will be true. An authentic man cannot lie; whatsoever he says will be true.

In Yoga we have a tradition — it may not even be possible for you to believe it; I believe it because I have known it, I experienced it: if a real, authentic man lies, the lie will become true, because an authentic man cannot lie. That’s why in the old scriptures it is said, “If you are practicing authenticity, be alert not to say anything against anybody — because it can become true.” We have many stories of great seers who said something in anger, but they were so authentic....

You must have heard the name of Durvasa — a great seer, authentic man. If he says something, even he cannot cancel it. If he curses you, the curse is going to come true. If he says, “You will die tomorrow!” you will die tomorrow, because from that source of authenticity the lie is not possible. The whole existence follows an authentic man and then even he cannot cancel it.

It is beautiful. That’s why people go to great seers for their blessing: if they bless, it is going to come true. That is the meaning, nothing else. They go and they ask blessings. If the seer gives the blessings then they are not worried; it is going to happen now, because how can an authentic man say a lie? Even if it is a lie, it is going to be true. So I don’t say, “Tell the truth.” I say, “Be authentic and whatsoever you say is going to be true.”