The Great Path - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 4. TO BE DEAD DO NOTHING
world are influenced. Then slowly the drug becomes less effective. Once in a while some person
does not get cured, or a stubborn patient takes the drug and suffers, thus destroying the faith of
others. Then the medicine becomes less effective. So every year new cures have to be found.
New drugs impress only if they are well advertised. So all media should be used: radio,
newspapers, cinema, magazines, television. Advertising is more effective than the drug itself; it
is the advertisement that hypnotizes. It becomes a mantra, a repetition. Open the newspaper...
Aspirin! Switch on the radio ... Aspirin! Television ... Aspirin! Billboards by the side of the road ...
Aspirin! Wherever you turn you are confronted by ’Aspirin’. It becomes a bigger headache than the
headache itself. Only then is it effective in curing the headache.
Repetition creates energy. Mantra means to repeat something over and over again. This sutra
says: THE MIND ITSELF IS THE MANTRA. The sutra says that you need no other mantra if you
understand the mind The working of the mind is nothing but repetition. What is your mind doing?
What has it been doing for infinite lives? Merely repeating. What do you do every day? What you
did yesterday you repeat today, and you will do it again tomorrow if you do not change. And the
more you repeat, the more intense will the repetition become and you will get so involved that you
will find it difficult to get out of it.
There are people who come to me and say, ”I cannot give up smoking.” Smoking has become a
mantra, they have repeated it so many times. If they smoke two packs of cigarettes a day that
means the person is repeating something forty times a day, and has been doing this for years. Now
if he wants to stop he cannot. You may stop smoking, but the mind will keep craving for a smoke;
then your body will demand: I want to smoke! I want a smoke!
This is what we call addiction. Craving comes when you suddenly want to stop what you have been
doing repeatedly. Now this addiction which has become a mantra has to be broken by an alternative
mantra.
Pavlov has done a great deal of research on this subject. He is perhaps the only person who has
cured patients with addictions. If you were addicted to smoking and wanted to give it up, Pavlov
would use this method of repetition. He would give you a cigarette. No sooner would you have it in
your hand than you receive an electric shock. Your whole body feels the tremor and the cigarette
falls out of your hands. For seven days you remain in his clinic. Ever time you smoke you feel the
electric shock. In seven days the mantra would be stronger than the urge, so much so that the very
mention of a cigarette makes you tremble. You develop an aversion to smoking.
Pavlov cured thousands of patients in this matter. His argument was that unless a person be given
an opposite habit, which is stronger than his addiction, he cannot be made to overcome his habit.
The pattern of your life, whatever it is, is a result of your mind. You go on repeating. Every day
you want to get rid of your anger, and every day you get angry. The more you repeat the anger,
the stronger it becomes. How often you vow not to get angry, but your vows are always broken.
Now the confusion deepens. It was better not to take any oaths, for now the mantra is reinforced; it
has become doubly effective. Now you keep repeating, ”I shall not be angry. I shall not be angry...”
knowing full well that your anger is much stronger than your vows. Vows have no value; they are not
worth a penny no matter how many times you take them. Now this also becomes hypnosis. Now
you will swear you will not be angry, knowing full well that it is not going to be effective.
The Great Path 66 Osho