Unconditioning the Mind

Osho on Unconditioning the Mind

Question: Is there any state of mind which has never been programmed at all Or Are there any techniques to de-condition our brain?
Osho: There has never been any consciousness which has not been programmed. In the very upbringing comes the programming. Even if the child is brought up not by you but by wolves in the wild, the wolves will program the child. There have been cases... Just a few years ago a child twelve years old was found who had been brought up by the wolves in the forest in north India. He could not stand even on his two feet. He ran like a wolf; even the best runner could not manage to keep pace with him. He had been programmed by the wolves.

The problem is, you have to bring the child up, and somebody has to take care, and whoever is going to take care is going to, knowingly or unknowingly, condition the mind of the child. It is not a question that you have to program consciously. But how the child will learn the language... it is a program. That’s why every language is called the mother tongue, because the child never finds the father speaking in the presence of the mother. Naturally he is conditioned by the mother.

There is no possibility of anybody being brought up unprogrammed. And you are asking, ”Are there any techniques to de-condition our brain?” There are techniques to de-condition, but that is re-programming. You can call it de-conditioning, but in fact, what are you doing? You are putting B in place of A. The only possibility is meditation; that’s why meditation should not be called a technique. It is simply relaxing into your own inner world, alone – without a guide, without scriptures – and becoming so silent that not a single ripple of thought remains. That’s the only way of canceling all programming.

Meditation is the only way – not the technique – in which you can find your self-nature, your Buddhanature in its purity, in its virginity, untouched by anybody. But there are people who are trying to de-program; in fact they are simply re-programming. There have been cases, strange cases, where young people have been abducted by their parents and taken to psychiatrists where they de-program them, because they have gone out of the Christian fold, or the Jewish fold. They have gone outside the society that has brought them up.

The society cannot tolerate this revolt. Parents abducting their own children and paying for their deprogramming... But it is not de-programming, it is again re-programming, making the Catholic again Catholic. But the Catholicism itself was a program. Except meditation, either you will be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian or a Jew – some kind of program will be there. Only the meditator rises above all programs, becomes a simple, innocent consciousness, on which nothing is written. But this gives such clarity of vision, such intensity of perception, such great joy of being that one becomes for the first time part of the eternal dance of existence.

Those who are programmed by anybody... Christian or Communist, Mohammedan or Hindu, it does not matter who programs you; he destroys your purity. Now, what are you doing in the Krishnamurti Foundation? You will teach people a certain program. Of course you will think you are de-programming people – you are programming them according to J. Krishnamurti. Even de-programming can be a part of a certain programming. Things are very complex. I have been meeting with many people who have listened to Krishnamurti for fifty years, forty years, and still they say, ”We are Krishnamurti-ites.” For thirty years that poor man was continuously trying to de-program you, but he has really programmed you again.
Now you are a Krishnamurti-ite. First you used to be a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan. Any doctrine, any effort of teaching about things which are not your experience is going to spoil your purity. For ten thousand years there has been only one way: its name is meditation. What Basho says:

Sitting silently,

doing nothing,

spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

Source: Hari Om Tat Sat - Osho