Osho on Meditation and Psychotherapy

BELOVED MASTER,

WHAT IS BEYOND PSYCHOTHERAPY?

PLEASE EXPLAIN.

Beyond psychotherapy is your real being. Psychotherapy is confined to the mind — and you are not the mind. The West has always divided man into body and mind. The East, which knows more, knows that there is something beyond this duality of body-mind.

Psychotherapy can help a little bit for those who are mentally sick, but not much, because psychotherapists are the most mentally sick people on the earth. More psychotherapists commit suicide than any other profession. More psychotherapists go mad than any other profession. More psychotherapists are sexually perverted than any other profession. And these people are trying to help mentally sick people! They have the expertise, they can help you a little bit; they can bring you back to your normal state of insanity. But that which is beyond psychotherapy brings you to real health, wholeness.

Man consists of three layers: the body — the most visible; the being — the most invisible; and the mind — in between. The mind is a good mechanism, but not a good master. It can serve you if you are the master and the mind is the servant. But if the servant becomes the master and starts ruling over you, that is the state of insanity. That’s why I say the whole humanity is “normally insane.” What is mind? It is all borrowed, and borrowed from different sources — from the parents, from the neighbors, from the teachers, from the priests, from the libraries. Its hunger is insatiable; it goes on swallowing all kinds of information. That information may be contradictory, that information may create tensions, may create a split — or many splits. For example, if you are born a Christian…. The BIBLE says the earth is flat. From your very childhood you have believed in the BIBLE because your parents believed in it. But in school you learn that the earth is not flat, it is a globe. Both these pieces of information are collected by the mind. Their conflict becomes your anxiety, and this anxiety takes thousands of shapes. And it is impossible for you to decide which way to go; you are pulled apart in all directions. If you somehow can maintain your balance, this is normal insanity. Insanity is there, but it is just the same as everybody else’s. Unless you come in close proximity to a saner person, you will not be able to think yourself insane.

The function of the psychotherapist is, whenever somebody goes beyond the boundary of the normal humanity, to bring him back. It is not an easy job. It takes years, and only the very rich can afford it. Then, too, success is not certain, because the person who is treating him is himself repressing his own insanity. I have heard about one psychotherapist…. He was treating a patient who had this insane idea that thousands of flies, which nobody could see, were sitting all over his body — on his face, on his hands — and he was continuously brushing them off. Everybody said that there are no flies, but he said, “Should I believe my own eyes or your eyes? Should I believe my own hands which are feeling the flies, or your hands? I can see flies are not on you; they are simply attracted to me.” Finally, it became impossible for him to do anything. His family brought him to the psychotherapist. The psychotherapist tried, explained, analyzed his dreams.

After two years they were sitting in the garden chitchatting — they had become friendly in the two years — and the man started brushing off flies. The psychotherapist stood up, and he said, “Not on me! I have tolerated it for two years, but there is a limit to everything.” In these two years the madman with the flies has convinced the psychoanalyst that flies exist, they are — rather than the psychoanalyst convincing him that the flies are just his imagination. It is a dangerous game. That’s why so many psychotherapists go mad; to be with mad people is not an easy job…This unity between the patient and the doctor…. The psychotherapist has to create some kind of bridge to communicate, but inside him is the same kind of mind which can go berserk any moment. And to convince a madman, a fanatic — and all madmen are fanatic, and all fanatics are mad — is very difficult.

One man, who thought he was dead, was brought to a psychoanalyst. That was too much. The whole society was puzzled as to how to convince him that he was not dead. His family, wife, children, parents, were all in deep sadness. But how to convince a man that he is not dead? The psychoanalyst thought of a method. He asked the madman, “Do you know that a dead man never bleeds?”

The madman said, “That’s true, I know. How can a dead man bleed? Blood disappears as life disappears.”

The psychoanalyst took him close to the mirror, pushed a needle into his hand, and blood came out. The psychotherapist asked him, “Now what do you say?”

He said, “This means the proverb is wrong — dead men do bleed! This is a proof; nobody ever experimented before. Are you convinced, or not?”

Naturally, psychotherapists become more and more filled with these mad people’s ideas; they become their nightmare, they follow them like a shadow. So it is understandable why they go mad more than any other profession. And why do they commit suicide? Perhaps the tension becomes so much that living becomes impossible. Why do they become perverted? — because they are surrounded by perverted people. And your mind is continuously taking information from outside, accumulating it; it is a computer. Psychotherapy has not done much good to humanity. It cannot.

In the East, nothing like psychotherapy has happened. You will be surprised that in the East, for ten thousand years, no enlightened person has even paid any attention to the mind. If they have ever talked about the mind, they have talked in reference to meditation. And what they have talked about is how to make the mind silent, empty, a total nothingness, a no-mind.

The state of no-mind is unknown to the West, and it is only in the state of no-mind that one becomes aware of that which is beyond mind…. Because when all the chattering of the mind stops and there is no more noise, the still small voice of the being is heard. For the first time one becomes aware, “I am here. I was not there in that crowded place, I was always out of it.” And a single moment of knowing yourself to be above the mind has given you a master key. Now the mind can never become your master. And if the mind can never become your master it can never drive you mad.

Now the mind cannot go on accumulating whatever it wants. Once the being asserts itself, the mind becomes very submissive — immediately.

It is just like in a small school… children are chitchatting, making noise, running around in the class — and the master appears. Immediately, every child is in his seat, with open book, trying to look very busy; and there is complete silence. The master has not done anything, he has not even uttered a single world, but his presence is enough. Exactly something like that happens.

The presence of being — and the mind stops all its nuisance. The thoughts disappear and the mind becomes just a pure space.

The being can see through the mind with great clarity, perception. Before the being’s arrival it was always a question of either/or — to do this or to do that, what is right, what is wrong — and the mind was never able to decide. And, whatever it decided, it was always half-hearted; hence, repentance was always bound to happen. You were thinking to marry this woman or that woman… finally the mind has to decide. Wavering, it comes to a decision. By marrying one woman you come to know the woman in her totality, and a great repentance settles in: you have chosen the wrong woman. Nobody in the whole world has chosen the right woman, neither has any woman chosen the right man. It is very strange…. How do you manage, out of millions of people, always to find the wrong woman, the wrong man?

The fault is not of the man, not of the woman. The mind has no clarity. It is clouded by so many thoughts; it is incapable of decision because it is incapable of clarity. Once mind is silent, once there is a state of no-mind, being is very sharp and clear. There is no question of either/or, there is no question of choosing; whatever the being does is choiceless. It simply does that which the clarity allows it to do. It is always right. Just as mind is always wrong, being is always right. But the West has not recognized being. Hence, in the muddy waters of the mind, Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler and their progeny — they are all just making the water more muddy. They have themselves not known that there is something in their innermost core which cannot go mad, which is sanity itself. Existence speaks through it — it is the voice of life itself.

But the psychotherapists are afraid even to discover being. There were chances…. Jung traveled long in India, visiting the Taj Mahal, Khajuraho, Konarak, the caves of Ajanta and Ellora — all beautiful places. And he was told by every person he came across, “Rather than wasting time in visiting these places, you should not miss meeting a man, Raman Maharshi, who lives in South India on the hill Arunachal — it is not far away — because he can give you a glimpse. Perhaps in his presence, just sitting by his side or talking to him, you may have some idea of why the East has never paid any attention to mind, and yet has produced the greatest enlightened people, the sanest people possible, with crystal-clear vision.” Raman Maharshi was one of those people, but Jung never went to him. He was afraid; the very idea that there is something beyond mind was very scary. That means the whole of psychoanalysis is meaningless, and he was not ready to take the risk of meeting such a man. He came back from India without visiting Raman.

Jung’s fear is the fear of all psychoanalysts — something beyond the mind makes their whole profession utterly meaningless. And if there is a direct method to reach the being by bypassing the mind, and if the moment you reach the being the mind itself cools down, there is no need of any psychoanalysis. There is no need to convince the insane person that he is wrong. There is no need to go into deep details about his dreams, diaries, and all kinds of nonsense. Meditation is a direct route to being. It simply bypasses the mind. And once you are centered in your being, the mind, which was jumping up and down pretending to be your master, suddenly becomes submissive; it immediately falls silent, drops all its noise. And a man of being can use the mind just the way you can use any mechanism. But if the mechanism starts using you, that is an ugly state. Man should remember that he is the master of his body and of his mind. Certainly the master must be beyond both. And I say it on my own authority: it is so.

You can play with psychotherapy and other therapies — they are just games. If you like those games, no harm. They are better than football, but they are no more than games. And they are not going to give you a new life, they are not going to give you an authentic intelligence, a clarity which can see into every problem without any question of either/or. The enlightened man is nothing but the man who functions from his being.

People tell me, “We have to decide what is right and what is wrong.” Yes, you will have to decide if you live under the impact of the mind — and none of your decisions is going to prove right. Whatever you choose you will suffer, and you will always look back: “Perhaps the other alternative was better?”

The enlightened man never chooses, he lives in a choiceless awareness. In the light of his awareness he knows what is right; it is not a question of decision. And the moment you know what is right, with your total being, you never repent.

For three decades continuously I have never looked back. I have never for a single moment thought that perhaps if I had chosen something else, it would have been better. The question does not arise. Hence, the enlightened man carries no burden of the past, and remains clear — because the burden of the past is like dust gathering on your awareness, on the mirror of your being. When the mirror is clear it simply reflects what is the case.

So it is not a question of deciding what is right and wrong. That’s why I have never talked to my people about morality, immorality, virtue, sin, good, bad; it is useless. I have insisted only on one point, that you become centered in your being. And then whatever you do is right, is virtue. Yes, there is your real being — beyond psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is only children’s play. And it is strange, still today the psychoanalyst is not willing even to consider the position of enlightenment. I can understand why he cannot even consider it: psychotherapy has become his bread and butter. It is one of the most highly paid professions. The psychotherapist is the latest version of the priest. He is a parasite, he is sucking blood in the name of curing insane people. And I have never come across a single man who has been cured by psychoanalysis. Even the psychoanalyst is not cured. The founders of psychoanalysis were not the people who can be said to be whole and absolutely healthy in their consciousness.

Jung was very much afraid of death. Now, that is not a sign of a meditator. He was so afraid of death…. But it is a strange phenomenon: whatever you are afraid of, you are also in some way obsessed by. He was obsessed with the desire to see the mummies in Egypt. At least half a dozen times he booked his ticket to go to Egypt, and each time he would find some excuse to cancel it. The sixth time he gathered courage and reached the airport, but at the airport he lost his nerve again. He turned back, and he wrote in his diary, “I cannot go to Egypt. I cannot see those dead bodies, hundreds of years old, because every dead body reminds me of my own death.” A man of meditation knows there is no death. And if this kind of fear exists in the founder of a school called analytical psychology, what can you expect from his disciples?

Jung himself was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. And the reason they had to part was a very funny one. Sigmund Freud was very much afraid of ghosts. Even the word “ghost” was enough to make him go into a fit, and he would start foaming at the mouth. So every disciple knew that the word “ghost” was never to be mentioned before him. And this is the founder of psychoanalysis! These people are sick themselves. Because Jung continued to use the word “ghost,” and three times made Freud go into a fit, that was too much. The third time, when he came out of the fit, Freud told Jung, “You just get lost! I don’t want to hear anything that makes me sick.”

But what is the fear in ghosts? Why is he so afraid — such trembling, such fear? And Freud was psychoanalyzing hundreds of people’s dreams, but he never allowed any of his disciples to psychoanalyze his dreams. He himself was not psychoanalyzed. Strange… the founder should be available for his own method. The reason is clear. Freud knew what his dreams were, and how he had been interpreting others’ dreams — making everything symbolic of sexuality. If somebody sees a rocket in the dream, that is a phallic symbol. Anything! He was very clever at making symbols, interpreting them as your repressed sex. And that was the fear: because these disciples have become experts, now they will interpret his dreams as repressed sexuality — which he never wanted the world to know. But this is not the way of the seeker, the way of truth.

Psychotherapy’s days are numbered. As meditation spreads, psychotherapy will start shrinking. If we can spread meditation around the earth, psychotherapy will simply disappear. There is no use for it, and it has not helped in any way. And you should not get into the mud of psychotherapy — because to get into it is very easy but to get out of it is very difficult. You go on digging, and you go on finding more and more mud; there is no end to it. Mind has an infinite store of dreams, thoughts, desires, repressions, perversions. There are people who have been psychoanalyzed for fifteen years continuously, but their psychoanalysis is not complete. There is not even a single man in the whole world whose psychoanalysis is complete. He is exactly at the same stage where he had started fifteen years ago — although his bank balance has disappeared.

Meditation takes you to being. It is a direct route to the beyond.

And once the master is there, mind immediately surrenders. In that surrender is health, because the master is in his place and the servant is in his place; the harmony is restored. And to be harmonious is all that health means.

Source:

This is an excerpt from the transcript of a public discourse by Osho in Buddha Hall, Shree Rajneesh Ashram, Pune.

Discourse Series: From Bondage to Freedom
Chapter #38
Chapter title: Enough just to be with me
22 October 1985 am in Rajneeshmandir

References:

Osho has spoken on notable Psychologists and philosophers like Adler, Jung, Sigmund Freud, Assagioli, Wilhelm Reich, Aristotle, Berkeley, Confucius, Descartes, Feuerbach, Hegel, Heidegger, Heraclitus, Huxley, Jaspers, Kant, Kierkegaard, Laing, Marx, Moore, Nietzsche, Plato, Pythagoras, Russell, Sartre, Socrates, Wittgenstein and many others in His discourses. Some of these can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

The Hidden Splendor
The Wild Geese and the Water
This, This, A Thousand Times This: The Very Essence of Zen
Nirvana: The Last Nightmare
Beyond Enlightenment
Beyond Psychology
Dang Dang Doko Dang
The Discipline of Transcendence
The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
From Bondage to Freedom
From Darkness to Light
From Ignorance to Innocence
The Secret of Secrets, Vol 1
From Personality to Individuality
I Celebrate Myself: God Is No Where, Life Is Now Here
Yoga: The Alpha and the Omega, Vol 4
Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 1