This is something to be understood, because everybody has to face this problem. You are born in a schizophrenic world. You have been given double standards. You have been taught materialism, and you have been taught spiritualism, together. The whole society goes on teaching you contradictory things.

I was staying with a Vice Chancellor, and he told me that he was very worried about the new generation. He has two young boys and he was worried about them. He wants them to be humble. He wants them to be true, honest; he wants them to be religious, prayerful.
I said, "That's okay. What else do you want them to be?"
He said, "Of course, I would like them to succeed in life."
I insisted, "What do you mean by success?"
He said, "At least I have become a Vice Chancellor. I would like them to be well-educated, to reach to high posts, to succeed materially as far as wealth is concerned: a good house, a good car, a good wife, respect in the society." And then he became a little uneasy, and he said, "But why are you asking this?"
I said, "I am asking this because both are contradictory. On the one hand you want your son to be humble, on the other hand you want him to be ambitious.

Now both will make him just split. On the one hand he will try to carry the ideal of humility, humbleness, simplicity; on the other hand, the ideal to succeed, to be ambitious, to achieve. An ambitious man cannot be humble; a humble man cannot be ambitious. And you want him to be prayerful? And you want him to be true and honest?
A man who is trying to succeed in the world HAS to be dishonest.
Of course, he has to be dishonest in such a way that nobody ever discovers it. He has to be very cunningly dishonest. He has to pretend to honesty and remain dishonest.
He has to pretend to humbleness and remain egoistic. But these are such different, diametrically opposite goals, and you put them inside one person -- that person will always remain divided. If he succeeds he will think,'What happened to my humbleness, what happened to my prayer, what happened to my compassion?'
If he becomes humble he will think,'What happened to my ambition? I am nowhere'." You are born in a schizophrenic world.
Your parents were schizophrenic, your teachers were schizophrenic, your priests, your politicians are schizophrenic.
They go on talking about two diametrically opposite goals, and they go on creating the split m you.

Osho, from "The Beloved, Vol 2", Ch #1

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