The first question:

Osho,
Why is it that whenever I leave your lecture I quickly become disillusioned with myself because I am unable to live up to the ideals you put forward in your lecture?

What are you talking about? Ideals?…that’s exactly what I go on destroying! I am not putting any ideals before you. I am not giving you any fantasies about the future; I am not giving you any future at all, because the future is a trick to postpone the present. It is a trick to avoid yourself, a way to escape from yourself. Desire is a deception, and ideals create desires. I am not giving you any “should” or any “should not,” either positive or negative. I am simply telling you to drop all ideals and be.

But I can understand your question. You make an ideal out of it, you start thinking, “How should I be?” You start thinking, “What should I do to be?” I am trying to take away the ideals and you make an ideal out of it: how to drop all ideals. You misunderstand me, you misinterpret me. You don’t hear what I am saying, you go on hearing what I am not saying at all. Listen more carefully.

It has always happened. We don’t know what Buddha said exactly, because the people who reported were people just like you. We don’t know what Jesus has said, because the people who reported were again people like you. The report certainly says what they heard, but it doesn’t say anything about what he said. And these can be diametrically opposite things.

I speak a totally different language. You reduce it to some other thing – to your language; you come in and you start interfering.

You ask: “Why is it that whenever I leave your lecture I quickly become disillusioned with myself…?”

You become disillusioned with yourself because you don’t know who you are, and you have a certain image of yourself. That image is not you, that image cannot be you; that image is a mind construction. You have created an image of yourself – you think this is what you are. And when you listen to me and I start pulling your legs, you become disillusioned; your image is broken, your image is not left intact as it was.

But you are not broken. In fact the image is not allowing you to have space, it is not allowing you to be. The image has to be thrown out so you can have enough space to grow. The image has become too huge, too powerful; it has taken over your whole house and you are living on the porch, it does not allow you to come in. And the image which you have made out of ideals goes on condemning you, the creation goes on condemning the creator.