Ma Yoga Vidya

Rajneeshpuram, Oregon

Osho,
You say you are trying to deprogram the whole world. Specifically, what do you recommend for America?

The process of deprogramming is the same; whom you are deprogramming does not matter. He may be American, he may be German, he may be Hindu. It is just like cleaning the room. What kind of furniture the room has, what kind of pictures are hanging in the room, doesn’t matter. You are simply to remove everything from the room and create a space.

And it is a total deprogramming, so there is no question of choice, that something good has to be saved. Then your question will be relevant. But as I see things, whatever good is there is joined with something bad. They are together. You cannot separate them. For example, if you want to remove prostitution you will have to remove marriage. Without removing marriage there is no way to remove prostitution. That’s why for thousands of years every country, every religion has tried that prostitution should be removed. But they could not succeed, for the simple reason that they could not see an intrinsic connection between marriage and prostitution.

If you really want to remove prostitution, you have to remove marriage. And that is the case with everything. So if it was something that American society has, something good which can be saved, German society has something else good which can be saved…

Every society is an organic whole. A woman may be beautiful because she has a beautiful nose, but you cannot save the nose and throw the woman out. It is an intrinsic part of the woman. You will have to accept that the nose will also go with the woman. There may be a few things which appear good, but they are good only in appearance, because they are part of a bigger whole which is not good.

So it is not a question that in deprogramming America anything special is needed. The same process will be applicable to every society, everywhere. You will be throwing different things out of human life, but the throwing is the same. And the problems of throwing things will be the same. This always will be the problem, that there is something good connected with the bad. It can exist only with the bad part. If you throw the bad part, the good part simply disappears.

There is something good in marriage but you cannot save it. It is intrinsically joined with the whole fabric of marriage.