Why people are so fake?

French mystic George Gurdjieff says that what is my message is not going to help much to future generations. The questions asked by my disciples and my answers to those questions are going to help future generations. 

Osho continued the tradition and in my opinion this  one question ‘Why people are so fake.’ becomes more important because people are maintaining different profiles on different social media platforms. 
Here is Osho’s answer to the existential question. 

Question 3

Disciple:- Why people are so fake?

Osho:- People are so fake because it pays, it is a good policy.

If you are true, you will be in danger. You can be true only in a true society where truth is respected, loved.
This society exists through lies. Here truth is not respected, here truth is crucified, here truth is killed. Lies are enthroned.

That’s why politics becomes so important in this world – because politics is the game of lies. And the politicians become the most important people in the world.

They should be the last. They become the first because this world – this whole society – is based on lies. And if you live with liars and you will live with this falsehood all around you, you have to be fake.
It pays, it is economical, it is safe. It protects you – otherwise people will be against you. If you are true and they are all living through lies, they cannot tolerate you.

From the very beginning a child starts learning that lies pay.

If the child tells the truth, he is beaten; if the child tells the truth, it creates a kind of embarrassment for the parents. If the child is being truthful, nobody is for him, everybody is against him.
If he is Lying, then he can protect himself. A lie becomes a kind of umbrella. And if he is Lying in tune with the parents’ lies, then there is no problem at all. He can exist very smoothly. And children are very perceptive, sensitive; they learn whatsoever they see around.

I have heard….

Returning after a lengthy absence to his family’s spot on the beach, the youngster found them preparing to leave.

’Come along,’ said the mother, ’we are going to a restaurant for a good dinner.’

’I am not hungry,’ said the boy. ’I have eaten seven ice cream cones and three frankfurters.’

’Where on earth did you get seven ice cream cones and three frankfurters?’ asked his astounded mother. ’You didn’t have any money.’

’I didn’t need money. I just wandered all around the beach crying as if I was lost.’

’Crying as if I was lost…. ’ Now the child has learned a great trick.
If the child pretends that he is lost, it pays.

And that is the whole secret of why people are fake – it pays. Whenever you are true, it harms you. And who is there to harm himself, and for what? The lie is a survival measure.

So Why people are so fake? People are false because they have found a key.

They know what makes life secure, comfortable, convenient, safe – although convenience, comfort, safety, security, don’t bring any kind of blessing. They bring all kinds of miseries, they don’t bring any happiness in life.

True Happiness comes only through being original. Unless you have your original face you will never be blessed.

But to have your original face you will have to pass through many inconveniences, discomforts. The path is arduous.

Keep it in mind that whenever you face a choice between convenience and joy, always choose joy, otherwise you will become fake.

Whenever you have a choice between comfort and some adventure, choose the adventure, howsoever arduous, otherwise you will become a fake. Whenever you have a choice between security and insecurity, let insecurity be your love. Never choose security. Security makes people dead and dull. A perfectly secure person is already in his grave, he is no longer alive. If you are alive there is bound to be insecurity – the more alive, the more insecure.

A really totally alive person lives moment to moment in insecurity. But then there is great thrill. And he is always on the verge of the unknown and he is always moving into something mysterious. The mysterious cannot be secure. Don’t depend on bank balances, don’t depend on marriage, don’t depend on a comfortable and well-paying job, don’t depend on family, society and state. People who have depended on those things are all around. You can see them – how dead they are, how dragging is their life, how sad are their eyes. Not a single song is in their heart and you will never feel any dance in their feet. Impossible. You can go on searching in their life and you will find desert and more desert, not a single oasis. Love does not bloom; celebration they have not known.

Hell is that which you know. Meditate over it: hell is that which you are acquainted with; hell is the past, the known, the well-trodden path. Heaven is something unknown, something that you cannot compare with your past, cannot compare with your experience, there is no comparison. It is utterly new! Utterly! Absolutely! It is discontinuous. You have never known anything like it.

But if you live a life of comfort and convenience and ritual and formality and lies, if you live a fake life, a pseudo life, you live in hell. And you will be living in hell in the future too. You are creating it around yourself. Shake yourself up and get out of your dull and dead so-called life. Start living again. And don’t think about what pays! It is always the wrong thing that pays in this world. The right thing never pays because there are no more people who can pay for the right thing. If you do something wrong you will be paid very much.

Just think, a poet is not paid, but a general is. And the general is doing the wrong thing – killing people. He is a murderer. The soldier is paid, not a painter. Those who bring death into the world, they are paid. Can’t you see it? The army people are the well-paid people. They are the butchers and murderers, but they are the most well-paid, well-fed. They live in good houses, have all the facilities of life. Look at the poet who goes on singing songs of love – he will be a beggar. Think of the musician who brings music to your door – he is a beggar. All that is right is not paid; it cannot be paid. The world is so wrong. The politicians are highly paid, highly respected. The newspapers are continuously full of their news. Have you ever seen anything else than politics in the newspapers? And these are the most mischievous people in the world. These are the people who make the earth a hell. But they are the well-paid people.

Remember, if you think in terms of payment, you will be fake. If you want to be paid in this world with comfort, luxury, you will have to be fake. If you really want to be alive, then don’t bother whether it pays or not. If it pays, good; if it doesn’t pay, good.

But then you will be living a life of great enrichment. You may not be rich, but your life will be enriched. You may not have fame, but you will have joy; you may not be known in the world, but you will be known to God. And that is all that is worth anything.

And I am not saying that you all have to carry your crosses on your shoulders continuously. No, I am not saying that. I never demand the impossible. When you live with false people there is no need to create unnecessary conflict either. Avoid. Go on searching for your life, your original face, but there is no need to be in conflict every day, every moment – otherwise it becomes a problem, an unnecessary wastage of energy. Follow the rules of ordinary life, just as one follows the rules of a game. On the roads in India they say: Keep to the left – so keep to the left. It is nothing of any importance. In America they keep to the right. That too is perfectly okay. When in America keep to the right, when in India keep to the left. And if some mad country exists somewhere where you have to keep in the centre, keep in the centre. Don’t be worried.

But always know that this is nothing fundamental. It has nothing to do with any truth. It is a convenience. And when there are so many people…. You need not create incon-venience for others. You are at freedom to create all kinds of inconveniences for yourself – that is your freedom – but you need not create inconveniences for others.

I have heard….

The great maestro, Toscanini, was as well-known for his ferocious temper as for his outstanding musicianship. When members of his orchestra played badly, he would pick up anything in sight and hurl it to the floor. During one rehearsal a flat note caused the genius to grab his valuable watch and smash it beyond repair.

Shortly afterwards, he received from his devoted musicians a luxurious, velvet lined box containing two watches – one a beautiful gold timepiece, the other a cheap one on which was inscribed: For rehearsals only.

So keep that in mind. When you are moving in the world, moving with people, there is no need to carry your cross. There is no need to go on shouting loudly that you are a martyr or a Jesus or a Mansoor, there is no need. Follow the rules of the game. It is just a game.

But remember always that the game should not become your whole life.

That’s all I would like my sannyasins to remember. That’s why I don’t take you out of society.

Never has it been done before.

For a single reason it has never been done before – the reason was that Buddha would not allow his sannyasins to live in the world.

The problem was that if the sannyasin was to be true, it would be difficult to live in the world – because with people you have to be polite, formal, many times.

In life you cannot continuously remember that you have to be true; people are so false. Just out of compassion, out of politeness, sometimes you may have to keep yourself quiet, not to say a word – because if you say something it is going to hurt people unnecessarily.

Or

sometimes you will have to do something which is not true. You can’t be absolutely yourself when you are living with so many people.

So Buddha said to his sannyasins, ’Leave the world. Sacrifice your relationships to be true.’

Others who decided to live in the world sacrificed their truth to live in relationship.

Both are lopsided.

You can leave the world, but then you will be leaving many opportunities to grow. You can go to a Himalayan cave and sit there. Of course there will be no need to lie because there will be nobody to lie to, nobody to talk to, nobody to relate to. You will be alone in the cave, you will be perfectly true, you can have your original face – but then you don’t have any opportunities as challenges to provoke you into growth.

You are out of life, and only in life do people grow.

Life is a great opportunity.

In the cave you will be secluded, all alone, dull and dead. You will again become dead because you will not have any possibility of responding.

Yes, you will not be telling any untruth, but to whom are you going to say the truth? You will not be angry, right, but you will not be loving either. So this is something meaningless. Anger is dropped but love also disappears.

So the old kind of sannyasin becomes cold. They don’t have any anger – a good thing – but they don’t have any love. And that can’t be praised.

It is as if a person was afraid of illness so he committed suicide. Now he will never be ill, that’s true, but he will never be alive either. This is throwing the baby out with the bath water. I am not in support of it.

But up to now these have been the two alternatives given to humanity.

One is to leave the world, to shrink into yourself – that is a kind of dull life again. Or, to live in the world and be false, because it is too troublesome to be true.

I am giving you the golden mean: live in the world and don’t be of the world. You will need to be very, very alert – more alert than Buddha’s sannyasins. They did not need to be alert, they could go to sleep in their caves.

You will have to be very, very alert, and you will have to keep two watches – one for rehearsals only, and one, the real one, for yourself.

You will have to become a great actor.

But when you act consciously you are not fake. When a conscious act is there and you know that it is just an act, then it is not going to destroy your life.

But when you forget that this is an act and you become identified with it, then you become worldly.

So the old definition of the worldly is to live in the world, and the definition of the non-worldly is to not live in the world to get out of it.

My definition is different.

The worldly is one who gets into his act and becomes unconscious and forgets that this is an act. It is as if you are playing on the stage, acting some role. For example, you are in a drama playing the role of Jesus or Pontius Pilate and you forget that it is a role, and when the curtains fall and you come home you come as Pontius Pilate or Jesus Christ. Then you will be in trouble.

If this happens, then you are a worldly man.

That is my definition of a worldly man – one who gets into his act and forgets to come out; one who remains hooked there. This is the worldly man.

And the sannyasin, the other-worldly, is the man who goes on playing acts, who knows they are acts, who never gets hooked by any act. When he comes home, he plays the act of being the husband and the father and the wife. These are all games. Play beautiful, play artistically, play aesthetically, but there is no need to get hooked – that YOU ARE a father, that you ARE a mother, that you ARE this or that. Or you are a doctor, you are an engineer, you are this and that – these are functions. When you are treating a patient, be in the role of being a doctor, but when there is no patient and you are sitting alone in your room, there is no need to be a doctor.

But people remain identified with their profession etc etc all through the day and night.

This is happening to almost everybody, more or less. I call the man worldly who does not know how to play a game and gets too serious about it.

My sannyasin is a new entry into the world of religion. He will live in the world, he will play all kinds of games, and he will know that these are all games and he will never be hooked by any game. And he will always be able to get out of any act easily, and he will go on searching for his original face. He will not be lost in the acts that he has to put up with.

This is of immense importance. If he lives in the world in a worldly way, he becomes dead.

If he becomes an old traditional kind of sannyasin, he shrinks and becomes dead.

Both are ways of death.

Life is where opposites meet. Life is where day and night meet. Life is in the world and yet only for those who can remain beyond it.

Be a lotus flower – in the water and yet untouched by it.

-Osho

Sufis: The People of the Path, Vol 2, #6 An Eternal Recurrence.

My comments: It is my experience that average people don’t know about their uniqueness. So they start comparing themselves with other peoples around them, even while deep down they know that everyone is beyond comparable to all others. This lie with the self is beginning of becoming a fake personality.

I quote “You will have to be very, very alert, and you will have to keep two watches – one for rehearsals only, and one, the real one, for yourself.

You will have to become a great actor.” The one watch for rehearsal is a metaphor used for keep watching the body and the real watch is metaphor used for the watcher. Everyone is having these two watches.

To develop watchfulness in our life we need to act consciously, fully aware during each part of the act. Here are few passages given below to know more about awareness.

At any moment you close your eyes, first you will see thoughts, a layer of thinking all around you, thoughts vibrating – one coming, another going – a crowd, a traffic.

Remain silent for a few seconds, and suddenly you will see that thinking is no longer there but dreaming has started. You are dreaming that you have become the president of a country, or you have found a brick of gold on the road, or you have found a beautiful woman or a man, and suddenly you start projecting; dreams start functioning.

If you continue dreaming for a long time, one moment will come when you will fall asleep – thinking, dreaming, sleep, and from sleep again to dreaming and thinking.

This is how your whole life revolves. Real awareness is not known yet, and that real awareness is what Patanjali says will destroy ignorance – not knowledge, but awareness. We collect knowledge just to befool ourselves and others.

-Osho, Yoga:The science of the soul.

The deep problem is: how to become aware? how not to be unconscious? From where to start?

Don’t try to fight with some very deep-rooted habit. You will be defeated. Start with very neutral habits.

For example: you go for a walk; just be aware that you are walking. It is a neutral thing. Nothing is invested in it.

You are looking at the trees; just look at the trees and be aware. Don’t look with clouded eyes.

Drop all thinking. Just for a few moments even, just look at the trees, and just look. Look at the stars.

Swimming, just be alert to the inner feeling that happens inside your body while you are swimming, the inner. Feel it. You are taking a sun bath; feel how you start feeling inside: warm, settled, rested.

While falling asleep, just watch how you are feeling inside. Inside, outside – try to be aware of the coolness of the sheets, the darkness in the room, the silence outside, or the noise outside. Suddenly, a dog barks – neutral things; bring your consciousness to them first. And then, by and by, proceed.

Then, try to be aware of your good habits, because good habits re not so deep-rooted as bad habits. Good habits need much sacrifice on your part, so very few people try to cultivate good habits. And even those who try to cultivate good habits try very few good habits; just underneath, many bad habits are there.

First try neutral, then good, then move by and by to bad habits. And finally, remember that each habit has to be made aware. Once you have become aware of your whole habitual pattern, that habitual pattern is your mind. Any day the shift will happen. Suddenly, you will be in the no-mind. When all the habits of your life have become aware, you don’t do them unconsciously suddenly, a shift will happen. You will find yourself in emptiness. That is the original mind which is neither pure nor impure.( The original watch ).

-Osho, Yoga-The science of the soul, Chapter 3, Returning to the original mind.

Awareness meditation is the way worked for me, may be you too find it suitable otherwise Dynamic meditation is for most of the people. There are 110 other meditation techniques discovered by Indian Mystic Gorakhnath about 500years before and further modified by Osho that one can experiment and the suitable one could be practiced in routine life. 

My experiences may be of your help in taking only one step. Because everyone has to move forward alone, this is the nature of this journey.
In my life mindfulness or awareness meditation helped miraculously. Apart from that living a simple, authentic and totality in life is very helpful even when we are serving people around us with great love and care without discrimination.

Hi ….. I write my comments from my personal experiences of my inner journey. This post may include teachings of Mystics around the world which from my personal experience I found worth following even today. For more have a look at my linktree website for getting regular updates through social media lor subscribe to YouTube channel or listen to the podcasts etc.

For references of content on Osho, Copyright © OSHO International Foundation, An MP3 audio file of many discourses can be downloaded from Osho(dot)com or you can listen or watch most of his discourses @ OSHO International channel of YouTube where you can get subtitles in language of your choice or you can read the entire book online at the Osho Library. Many of Osho’s books are available online at Amazon.

My suggestions:-

Osho International Online (OIO) provides facility to learn these Osho discovered Dynamic Meditations for new generation from your home, through Osho Meditation Day @€20.00 per person. You can learn Dynamic meditations from disciples of Osho.  OIO rotate times through three timezones NY,Berlin and Mumbai.