My earlier two articles on Altruism were a bit one sided and so I am writing a third to complete the picture.
I am assuming you have read my earlier two articles. Links are below
I will again be referring to Osho and his teachings. The following concepts were gleaned from his book, And the Flowers Showered (Link to browse the book is below:
People who are worried about other, you will feel that they are always more healthy …
Too much concern with yourself is a sort of disease. And the deeper you go within – you are opening a Pandora’s box: many things bubble up and there seems to be no end to it. You are surrounded by your own anxieties and you go on playing with your wounds, you go on touching them again and again to see whether they are healed or not. You have become a pervert …
So in the West psychoanalysts help people to think about others and to drop thinking of yourself. Psychologists go on teaching people how to be extroverts and not to be introverts, because an introvert becomes ill, an introvert becomes in reality perverted …
Psychoanalysts have found a clue. The clue is not very meaningful in the end; it cannot lead you to reality, it can at the most make you normally unhealthy. It can make you adjusted – it is a sort of adjustment to the people around you. They say: be concerned with others’ worries, help people, serve people …
… by becoming an extrovert you can never become a Buddha … because this worrying about others may be an escape. It is … Then what to do? Treat yourself as if you also are the other; don’t be too concerned.
And you are the other. Your body is other, why not my body also? Your mind is other, why not my mind. The question is only distance: your body is five feet away from me, my body is a little closer that is all. Your mind is there, my mind is here – the difference is of distance. But my mind is as other as your mind, my body is as far away from me as your body. And if this whole world is not a concern for me, why make myself a concern? Why not leave both and be neither extrovert nor introvert? – that is my message.
… Look at yourself from a distance; the distance is there. You only have to try it once and you will feel it. You are also the other.
If you cannot follow this then it is better to follow the psychoanalysts. Be an extrovert, be unconcerned, you will not grow but you will not suffer as much as an introvert does.
In my opinion Osho’s advice is sound. Firstly, the BMI (Body-Mind-Intellect) is not the Self. Your ego is not you. So why be concerned about it.
In theory this is simple but all of us are identified with our egos. That is what makes Osho’s recommendation a difficult path to follow. Being enlightened is not a joke. It is not very likely that I will attain enlightenment in this lifetime and so being extroverted is the way for me as well (to some extent)
I myself have benefited by serving others – through my blog and answering questions on the Quora website. Link to my Quora profile is below, if you are interested in my activities there. If it wasn’t for these two activities, I might have found myself falling into depression again.
https://www.quora.com/profile/Nikhil-Gangoli-1
I’ll end here. Please comment on this article and explore this site for more articles that will interest you. Feedback from my readers keeps me going.
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