Moodiness : nobody is responsible except you‏

HABITS FORCE YOU TO DO CERTAIN THINGS; you are a victim. Hindus call it the theory of karma: each action that you repeat, or each thought -- because thought is also a subtle action in the mind -- becomes more and more powerful. THEN YOU ARE IN THE GRIP OF IT. Then you are imprisoned in the habit. Then you live the life of an imprisoned man, a slave. And the imprisonment is very subtle: it is of your habits and conditioning and the actions that you have done. It is all around your body and you are entangled in it, but you go on thinking and befooling yourself that you are doing it.

    When you get angry, you think you are doing it. You rationalize it and you say that the situation demanded it: "I had to be angry, otherwise the child would go astray; if I were not angry then things would go wrong, then the office would be in a chaos, then servants won't listen; I had to be angry to manage things, to discipline the child. To put the wife in her right place, I had to be angry." These are rationalizations. That's how your ego goes on thinking that you are still the boss, but you are not. ANGER COMES OUT OF OLD PATTERNS, OUT OF THE PAST. And when anger comes, you try to find an excuse for it.

    Psychologists have been experimenting and they have come to the same facts as the Eastern esoteric psychology: MAN IS A VICTIM, NOT A MASTER. Psychologists have put people in total isolation, with every comfort possible. Whatsoever was needed was given to them, but they didn't come in any contact with other human beings. They lived in isolation in an air-conditioned cell -- no work, no trouble, no problem, but the same habits continued. One morning, with no reason now -- because every comfort was fulfilled, there was no worry, there was no excuse to be angry -- and the man would find suddenly that anger was arising.

    IT IS WITHIN YOU. Sometimes, suddenly sadness comes for no apparent reason at all; and sometimes one feels happy, sometimes one feel euphoric, ecstatic. A MAN DEPRIVED OF ALL SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS, isolated in total comfort, supplied with every need, moves through all the moods that you move through in relationship. That means that something comes from within and you hang it on somebody else. That is just a rationalization. You feel good, you feel bad, and these feelings are bubbling from your own consciousness, from your own past. NOBODY IS RESPONSIBLE EXCEPT YOU!

    NOBODY CAN MAKE YOU ANGRY, AND NOBODY CAN MAKE YOU HAPPY. You become happy on your own, you become angry on your own, and you become sad on your own. Unless you realize this, you will always remain a slave. The mastery of one's self comes when one realizes, "I am absolutely responsible for whatsoever happens to me; whatsoever happens, unconditionally I am responsible, absolutely."

    In the beginning, it will make you very, very sad and depressed, because if you can throw the responsibility on the other, YOU FEEL GOOD THAT YOU ARE NOT IN THE WRONG. What can you do when the wife is behaving in such a nasty way? You have to be angry. But remember well, the wife is behaving nastily because of her own inner mechanisms. She's not nasty to you. If you were not there, she would be nasty to the child. If the child were not there, she would be nasty to the plates -- she would have thrown them on the floor. She would have broken the radio. SHE HAD TO DO SOMETHING; nastiness was coming up. It was just coincidence that you were found reading your newspaper and she became nasty to you. It was just coincidence that you were available in a wrong moment.

    You are angry not because the wife is nasty. SHE MAY HAVE SUPPLIED THE SITUATION, that's all. She may have given you a possibility to be angry, an excuse to be angry, but the anger was bubbling up. If the wife were not there, you would have been angry all the same -- with something else, with some idea; but anger had to be there. IT WAS SOMETHING THAT WAS COMING FROM YOUR OWN UNCONSCIOUS.

    EVERYBODY IS RESPONSIBLE, TOTALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR HIS OWN BEING AND BEHAVIOR. In the beginning, it will give you a very depressed mood that you are responsible, because you have always thought that you want to be happy -- so how can you be responsible for your unhappiness? You always desire blissfulness, so how can you be angry on your own? And because of this, you throw the responsibility on the other. If you go on throwing responsibility on the other, remember that you will always remain a slave because NOBODY CAN CHANGE THE OTHER.

    How can you change the other? Has anybody ever changed the other? ONE OF THE MOST UNFULFILLED WISHES IN THE WORLD IS TO CHANGE THE OTHER. Nobody has ever done that. It is impossible because the other exists in his own right -- you cannot change him. You go on throwing responsibility on the other, but you cannot change the other. And because you throw the responsibility on the other, you will never see that THE BASIC RESPONSIBILITY IS YOURS. The basic change is needed there inside you.

    This is how you are trapped: if you start thinking that you are responsible for all your actions, for all your moods, in the beginning a depression will take over. But if you can pass through that depression, soon you will feel light because NOW YOU ARE FREED FROM THE OTHER, now you can work on your own. You can be free, you can be happy. Even if the whole world is unhappy and unfree, it makes no difference. Otherwise, how is a Buddha possible? And how is a Patanjali possible? How am I possible? The whole world is the same. It is just the same as it is for you, but a Krishna goes on dancing and singing; he's freed. And the first freedom is to stop throwing responsibility on the other, THE FIRST FREEDOM IS TO KNOW THAT YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE. Then many things become immediately possible.

    The whole philosophy of karma is that YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE. Whatsoever you have sown in the past, you are reaping. You may not be able to follow the link between the cause and the effect, but if the effect is there, the cause must be there somewhere in you.

OSHO
Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega
Vol 4, Ch #7: Awareness: the fire that burns the past
am in Buddha Hall