When the Shoe Fits - Oshorajneesh.com

CHAPTER 10. MAN IS A BORN IN TAO
salty, so anywhere you taste life it tastes insecure. Only death is secure. Life has to be insecure
because of its very nature. Why?
Whenever a thing is alive it is changing; only a dead thing never changes. Whenever there is
change there is insecurity. What does change mean? A change means moving from the known into
the unknown. And the base of all insecurity is that you want to cling to the known.
Look at it in this way: a child is in the womb of the mother. If it wants to be secure it is better to cling
to the womb and not come out. Can you get a more secure situation, a more secure position, than
being in the womb forever and ever?
There is no responsibility for the child – no job, no office, no problem to solve. Everything is solved
automatically. The child has not even to breathe on his own, the mother breathes for him. The child’s
heart beats through the heart-beat of the mother, the mother’s blood goes on feeding the child. He
is perfectly in heaven. Can you think of a better heaven than the womb – comfortable, asleep, not
even a dream flickers in, in a silent sleep? And then comes the birth! And psychologists say that
birth is very traumatic because the child is thrown out, uprooted from his security. A convenient
home, the most comfortable.... We have not been able to create anything like it. No noise enters; it
is as if the world does not exist at all. The child has not to make any choice and be divided; there is
no training, no conditioning. He simply enjoys himself as if he is the very centre of the world.
And then suddenly comes the birth. It is traumatic, insecurity comes into existence for the child
for the first time. Now he has to breathe; now he has to cry when he feels hungry, when he feels
thirsty, when he feels uncomfortable. He has to make his own arrangements and he has to start
being worried. If the mother is not there he is worried. He is wet, he cries and cries and nobody
listens. Now comes tension, insecurity; he is always afraid the mother may leave him. And the
mother always goes on threatening: Listen to me, otherwise I will leave you. Mothers even threaten
the child: Listen, follow, otherwise I will die. This is a threat! The child trembles to his very roots. He
has to follow, he has to make arrangements, he has to become false and to wear masks. He has
to play roles – even if he does not feel like smiling, if the mother comes, he has to smile. He has to
become a politician and to take care how others feel about him, otherwise he will feel insecure.
Now he will never be as secure as in the womb. What should he do? Should he cling to the womb?
And it seems that the child does cling, he does not want to come out. Many times the help of a
doctor is needed to bring the child out – his whole being clings. He resists; he wants to be there
as he is, the known. And can you think of anything more unknown, more strange for the child than
the world? He opens his eyes and everything is strange, there are sounds all around. He becomes
scared. And he will grow, and as he grows, more insecurity grows. Sooner or later he will be sent to
school – now even the home is no more his base. And every child resists. You cannot find a child
who is happy to go to school – unless the home is a hell. No child wants to go to school, he resists,
he clings to the mother, to the house, because now he is being pushed into another birth – he is
being thrown out of the home. And then he will start clinging to the school.
If you go to the university and look, and feel the pulse of the students, nobody wants to leave the
university.
There are many cases of people unconsciously making arrangements to fail again and again,
because the university is again security. The father cares, he sends money, and you simply live
When the Shoe Fits 139 Osho