Smoking

NB: This is from one of the darshan diaries, Osho's personal interaction with individuals, and as far as i have heard, Osho later asked that they don't be published. Read it if u want, but I feel this info is required..... Osho also answered a question on smoking in "Beyond Psychology , #2"

[A sannyasin has had a problem with smoking -- since he dropped sucking his thumb, at sixteen.]

Mm mm. Sucking the thumb is better than smoking.

You can try it again. And it will be easier to drop smoking. This is one of the things to be understood: if you were sucking and then you stopped that, you have chosen smoking as a substitute. Smoking is not your problem. You cannot do anything with it. Howsoever hard you try, you will never succeed, because it is not in the first place a problem -- the problem was something else. You have changed the problem. The real problem has been dropped, and a false problem has been put there instead. You cannot change it!

My suggestion is: forget about fighting with your smoking -- you start sucking the thumb (she giggles a little self-consciously). And don't be worried -- it is beautiful, it is just beautiful. There is nothing wrong in it, because it is not harmful. Start sucking the thumb, and once you start sucking the thumb, smoking will disappear. When smoking disappears, we are on the right track. Then for a few months go on sucking the thumb so this long habit of so many years -- smoking -- drops. For six or nine months suck the thumb, and don't be ashamed of it -- because there is nothing wrong with it.

Smoking basically is somehow concerned either with the sucking of the thumb or with inadequate breast-feeding. When a child is taken away from the breast and he was not ready to, and he wanted to continue -- then he starts sucking the thumb. It is a substitute. What else can he do?

Later on sucking the thumb looks so ugly and so childish that one starts finding some substitutes for it: chewing gum or smoking, or chewing pan; one finds something. And of course when you find smoking, smoking fits better than the sucking of the thumb. It is more similar to the breast than the thumb, because when you drink the milk from the breast, it is warm. The smoke is warm, and it gives you again the same feeling of warmth . The thumb cannot give that. So once the child has discovered that smoking is more suitable, then the thumb is dropped -- but the thumb was innocent.

So first drop the smoking and instead start sucking your thumb go back regress back. After six, nine months, when smoking has completely disappeared and again the thumb-sucking is replaced, then start to drink milk every night, from an artificial bottle that you use for children... every night. Enjoy it like a breast, mm?

and don't be shy about it. Enjoy it every night -- fifteen minutes regularly -- and it will give you very very deep sleep. And then go to sleep -- just Lying down with the bottle. In the morning also when you open your eyes, again you can find the bottle and suck a little warm milk. In the day also -- two, three times. Not much -- just a little milk.

So first the cigarette has to be dropped, then you come to the thumb; then the thumb has to be dropped. Then you come back to the breast -- this time artificially -- and from that, things will disappear. Just after a few days you will see that now there is no need. First you will be drinking four, five, six times a day, then three times, then two times, then one. And then one day you will suddenly feel that there is no need... but this is how it has to disappear.

If you fight with smoking, you will never succeed. Millions of people are fighting and they never succeed, because they never follow the whole procedure. You have to go about it in a very scientific way. You have to come to the root cause. The root cause is -- you missed your mother's breast. You could not get as much as you wanted. That desire is lingering, that desire has not gone. And with that desire, something of the unsatisfied child will always remain in you. So it is not really smoking that is the problem: that unsatisfied child will be there.

And once this whole problem is tackled rightly, you will find that for the first time you have become grown-up. Once that child disappears, and the desire to suck the mother's breast disappears, you will suddenly feel an upsurge of energy -- something caged has been freed. You will become grown-up.

A person who smokes is not a grown-up, and he is never going to become a grown-up.

But smoking is not the problem, so I never say to not smoke -- that is not the problem. Mm? you have substituted many problems before it. It is a shadow of the shadow of the shadow.

Go to the root, to the original problem. There things can be settled, nowhere else. And not only about smoking -- about every problem, always go to the root; always find out where the root is. Once you know the root, it can be cut. But without knowing the root, you can go on fighting with the shadow. With shadows, you will be defeated; you can never be victorious.

So you make it a one year program, mm?

And it will be a better world if everybody -- these smokers -- are sucking their thumbs, sitting in the train, in the bus, moving around. It will be a better world! It will be more innocent, harmless. It is your thumb! You are not sucking anybody else's. Or if two persons decide to suck each other's thumb, that is their business -- they can do it! (laughter) Nothing wrong in it! It will be a loving gesture.

But smoking is patent foolishness. It is not a sin -- it is simply stupidity. But move slowly, and don't be in a hurry in dropping the smoking. First start sucking. The moment you are really into sucking, smoking will disappear. You will simply feel uninterested. Even if somebody offers you a cigarette, you will not feel any interest. For six, nine months you continue sucking; then move to a false breast. And in a one year program it will disappear.

And not only this will disappear -- you will be transformed through it. Something very basic in you -- which is holding you back -- will disappear. Your body will become more healthy, your mind will become more sharp and intelligent. In every way you will become more grown up. You are tethered to this small problem. Something in the past is holding you back, so you cannot move smoothly into the future.

---Osho, Blessed are the ignorant