The first question:

Osho,
Is it fair to put politicians with the dogs?

I am sorry, I apologize – because dogs are so innocent. It is not fair at all.

The second question:

Osho,
What is neurosis and what is the cure for it?

Neurosis has never been so epidemic in the past as it is now. It is almost becoming a normal state of human mind. It has to be understood.

The past was spiritually more healthy, and the reason was that mind was not fed so many things simultaneously – the mind was not overloaded. The modern mind is overloaded, and that which remains unassimilated creates neurosis. It is as if you go on eating and stuffing your body: that which is not digested by the body will prove to be poisonous. And what you eat is less important than what you hear and see. From your eyes, from your ears, from all your senses, you go on receiving a thousand and one things each moment, and there is no extra assimilation time, as if one were constantly sitting at the dining table, eating, eating – twenty-four hours a day. This is the situation of the modern mind: it is overloaded, so many things are burdening it; it is not any surprise that it breaks down. There is a limit to every mechanism. And mind is one of the most subtle and delicate of mechanisms.

A really healthy person is one who takes fifty percent of his time to assimilate his experiences. Fifty percent action, fifty percent inaction – that is the right balance. Fifty percent thinking, fifty percent meditation – that is the cure. Meditation is nothing but a time when you can relax utterly into yourself, when you close all your doors, all your senses, to the outside stimulus. You disappear from the world. You forget the world, as if it exists no more – no newspapers, no radio, no television, no people. You are alone in your innermost being, relaxed, at home.

In these moments, all that has become accumulated is assimilated: that which is of worth is assimilated, that which is worthless is thrown out. Meditation functions like a double-edged sword: on the one hand it assimilates all that is nourishing, and it rejects and throws out all that is junk. But meditation has disappeared from the world.