A New Age Spiritual Explainer
The Reason Why “You” Is the Most Toxic Word in New Age Spirituality
Fundamentals of the 5 spiritual “yous” that are always getting mixed up.
Published in
8 min readJun 9, 2021
A Huge Debate Over “You”
“Man carries the seed of his misery or bliss, hell or heaven, within himself. Whatsoever happens to you, it happens because of you. Outside causes are secondary; inside causes are primary. And unless you understand this, there is no possibility of a transformation.”
This is a quote from Osho (1931–1990), a controversial spiritual teacher formerly known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. It was posted as a meme on a spiritual awakening group on Facebook on June 3, 2021.
In about 2 days it generated a debate with 522 comments. Those comments fell into three categories:
- Those who rejected the quote felt it was Spiritual Gaslighting innocent victims of crime and abuse. It was using spirituality to blame the victims.
- A middle ground saw the quote as a way of saying that you cannot control what the outside world does to you, You Only Control How You Respond to what happens to you.
- Those who fully supported the statement felt it was a true reflection of the New…
