Question – Beloved Master, The west is overpopulated with psychotherapists and their patients, but why does no one seem to be helped?

Osho – Patrick, the help is possible only through a buddha. The help is possible only through the awakened one.

The psychotherapists are as asleep as you are; they are in the same boat. There is no qualitative difference between you and them — in fact they may be crazier than you are. They may be more in a mess than you are because they constantly deal with mad people; day in, day out, they are surrounded by mad people. Rather than helping the mad people to become sane, just the opposite happens: being constantly in contact with mad people, slowly slowly they become mad themselves.

This is natural. They don’t have yet that awareness which can remain aloof, unaffected. They don’t have that distance, that coolness, that detachment. They are not living on sunlit peaks; they are groping in the same dark valley where you are groping. They are as blind as you are, but they have to pretend that they are not blind — and that is more dangerous.

If a person is blind and knows that he is blind and never pretends otherwise, there is every possibility he will walk more cautiously. If he pretends that he is not blind, if he projects that he is not blind, if he convinces others that he is not blind, slowly slowly he will be hypnotized by his own sayings, auto-hypnotized. He will start believing that he is not blind and he will start walking less cautiously. And that is more dangerous.

I have heard:
Once a blind man came to visit a Zen master. When he was leaving — it was night, a dark night, no moon, and so many clouds — the master said to the blind man, “Please take this lamp with you.”
The blind man laughed loudly. He said, “Are you joking? What can a lamp do for me? I cannot see! It is all the same to me whether I have a lamp or not.”

But the master said, “That I know, that you cannot see, but at least others will be able to see in the darkness that you are coming so they will not stumble into you.”
The argument appeared right. The blind man took the lamp, went away. He had just walked only a hundred yards and a man just walked into him. He said, “What is the matter? Are you too blind? Can’t you see this lamp?”

And the man said, “I am not blind. Excuse me, but your lamp is no longer lit; its flame has gone out.”
The blind man went back to the Zen master and said, “Look, never give a lamp to another blind man again. If there was no lamp I would have walked more cautiously. I always walk cautiously. Because of the lamp I walked as if I were no longer blind — and the lamp went out. But how was I to know that the lamp went out? Because of this lamp, for the first time I have been hurt by a man. Otherwise, I have walked my whole life in every possible situation, but because I was so cautious, always making noise with my stick on the road so people can feel that some blind man is there, always groping with my stick in the darkness so I know where I am, whether I am facing a wall or a door…. It was the first time that I walked without any fear.”

And that’s what is happening to your psychotherapists, Patrick. They think they know — they know nothing. They are more informed, but information is not knowing. They are well educated, but they have not a higher being than you. And help is possible only when somebody higher than you gives you a hand.

More psychotherapists go mad than any other profession and more psychotherapists commit suicide than any other profession. And it is natural. Living with mad people, one can understand — they become affected.

A few scenes will be helpful to you….
The first scene:
A man walks into a psychiatrist’s office.
“You must help me!” he exclaims.
“What do you do for a living?” asks the shrink.
“I am an automobile mechanic.”
“Get under the couch!”

The second scene:
First psychiatrist: “Hello!”
Second psychiatrist: “I wonder what you mean by that?”

The third scene:
The patient: “Of course I am upset, doctor. I have eleven children and I find out my husband does not love me.”
The doctor: “You are very lucky. Imagine if he did!”

The fourth scene:
“Doctor, my wife accuses me of being a compulsive card-player.”
“That’s ridiculous. Now shut up and deal!”

And the fifth scene:
“Doctor, now that you have cured me of my homosexual tendencies and since this is our last session, may I kiss you goodbye?”
“Don’t be ridiculous — men don’t kiss. I shouldn’t even be lying on the couch with you!”

You ask me, Patrick, “The West is overpopulated with psychotherapists and their patients, but why does no one seem to be helped?”

Help is possible only from higher sources. A person who is on the same ground as you cannot be of any help to you. Help is possible only when a fully conscious man tries to help the unconscious. It is as if you are asleep; do you think somebody else asleep can help you in any way? Only somebody who is awake can wake you. If you want to be awakened at a particular hour, you don’t say to somebody else who is asleep, “Please wake me up at five o’clock in the morning. I have to go for that goddamned Dynamic Meditation!” You have to ask somebody who is awake. Only somebody awake can wake you up. In fact, the person who is asleep may help you to fall into a deeper sleep.

You may have watched it happen. If a few people are sitting just by your side yawning, you start feeling sleepy. They create a certain vibe; they create a certain atmosphere in which anybody vulnerable will start feeling it is better to go to sleep. The same happens with awakened people: a buddha creates a totally different vibe. He shakes you up, he wakes you up. He goes on shocking you in many ways; he finds devices to shock you.

Kavita has asked, “Beloved Master, sometimes you use such words that I feel shocked — and I used to think that no word can ever shock me. Don’t you have any couth?”

Kavita, I will go on using these words unless you wake up. You would like to listen to lullabies — but lullabies are not going to help. What appeals to you, what you like is not going to help. Something that shocks you…. I am going to use rough words till you stop yawning.

Whenever I see somebody yawning somewhere, immediately I have to say something which shocks you — and I can see his yawning disappears. The moment I say “bullshit” — immediately I say it he stops yawning! His spine is erect, his kundalini is rising upwards! Unless you all become awakened I am not going to leave you at ease; I will go on hitting you in every possible way.

Help is possible, Patrick, only from the awakened ones. You don’t need psychotherapists, you need buddhas. Secondly: you go to the psychotherapist, but you don’t really want to be helped. You have great investment in your pathology.

A few scenes again.

First:
“Doctor, my wife thinks she is a refrigerator.”
“Why don’t you divorce her?”
“I would but I need the ice.”

Second scene:
“Doctor, my girlfriend thinks she is a rabbit.”
“Bring her in. I will see what can I do.”
“Okay, but whatever happens, I hope you don’t cure her.”

Nobody wants really to be helped. People are only playing games. They go to the psychiatrist in the hope that he can’t do anything, that he is not going really to change them. Nobody wants to be changed; everybody wants to remain the same as he is. You have become so accustomed to your misery, to your pathology… it is your life, it is your way of life. If you want to be changed you will seek a master, not a psychotherapist.

Source – Osho Book “The Dhammapada, Vol 10″

[A new sannyasin says: I am a therapist, a child therapist... Also working with brain- children and using hypnosis.]

Osho - Hypnosis has many possibilities and more people should be working in that direction. has not been yet taken seriously, and it is one of the very fundamental things which can innermost core of all problems and of all solutions.

The whole western psychology has gone away from hypnosis. In fact psychoanalysis under hypnosis. Freud had gone to learn hypnosis, and then by and by he started from it. So psychoanalysis has been going away from hypnosis. It has done much very significant thing has been lost in the process, and people have to come back.

So work harder on hypnosis. Because the work that can be done through psychoanalysis four years, can be done in three or four weeks in hypnosis… and sometimes there are cannot be done by any psychoanalytic methods and can be only done by hypnosis. Hypnosis can go so deep that you can help the person to remember not only about this life but about past lives. That has to be worked out. Work hard in that direction….

One life is not enough because one life is a very fragmentary thing. Unless you know the whole connection, unless you know the whole series, to decide anything about life is going to be very fragmentary. It is almost as if you tear a page out of a book and read it and decide about the whole book according to that one page – that is foolish!

Unless we know the whole interconnection of the past…. First hypnosis has to go deeper into the past, and once hypnotic techniques have become capable enough to enter into the past, then there is a possibility to enter into the future too. But that is possible only when the past has been well mapped-out, planned, measured.

Then the same techniques can be moved towards the future. And when we know the past and the future, only then can we know exactly where we are and what we are doing. Only then can we know the meaning of life – never before it. We can philosophise, speculate – but speculations are just speculations. They don’t really matter much – they are irrelevant. And hypnosis can go both ways.

First the past has to be penetrated and then the same techniques can be used for the future. And once a person becomes capable of going into the past he becomes automatically capable of going into the future, because the process is the same. It seems impossible to enter into the future first, because the very thing seems inconceivable. We think the future is that which is not – that’s not true.

Almost ninety-nine percent of the future is already there. Only one percent of the future is not there, and that one percent of the future very rare people touch. That is the phenomenon of enlightenment. That is not in the future. That cannot be predicted – that is the only unpredictable element. There is no prediction about when a person will become a buddha – that is not part of the future.

Otherwise, the future is as mechanical as the past. It is just the continuity of the past. So ordinarily everything about the past and the future of a mechanical man can be known. about a buddha’s past everything can be known. Only one thing – if he is going to become a buddha – cannot be known about the future. Or, if somebody has become a buddha, then you don’t know anything about his future – because his future is freedom. Now he doesn’t exist in time, so there
is no reflection in time. And hypnosis cannot penetrate into eternity – there hypnosis is impotent. There meditation enters.

Hypnosis is a horizontal method. It goes into the past, it goes into the future. It will cover the whole ground. Meditation is a vertical hypnosis – it goes from depth into more depth and into height. It does not move on the horizontal plane. And hypnosis and meditation together is the meaning of the cross, the christian cross – the horizontal and vertical.

A man has to spread himself in both. One has to rise in consciousness vertically, and one has to penetrate all the stuff of the mind – of the past and of the future. The mind is past and future, and consciousness is vertical. Hell and heaven, the lowest and the highest – that is in the consciousness. And this consciousness cuts every moment of the horizontal and there it becomes a cross. Eternity enters into time every moment, vertically.

First hypnosis has to travel into the past. That is easier, more believable, because we think that the past has happened so we can remember it. Once it has happened, then it becomes believable to enter the future. Once that too has happened, then it becomes believable to turn vertical and enter into height and depth. Meditation is hypnosis in the vertical dimension, and hypnosis is meditation in the horizontal dimension. Work at it deeply!

Source: from Osho Book “The Buddha Disease”

Osho on purpose of Therapy Groups

Osho - THE PURPOSE OF THE THERAPY GROUPS is not to bring the participants to their natural self – not at all. The purpose of the therapy groups is to bring you to the point where you can see your unnaturalness. Nobody can bring you to your natural self; there can be no method, no technique, no device, which can bring you to your natural self – because all that you will do will make you more and more unnatural.

Then what is the purpose of a therapy group? It simply makes you aware of the unnatural patterns that you have evolved in your being. It simply helps you to see the unnaturalness of your life, that’s all. Seeing it, it starts dispersing. To see it is to annihilate it, because once you have seen something as unnatural in your being, you cannot persist in it any longer.

And seeing something as unnatural, you have also felt what IS natural – but that is indirect, that is vague, that is not clear. What is clear is this, that you have seen that something is unnatural in you. Seeing the unnatural you can feel the natural. Seeing the unnatural, you cannot support it any more. It existed because of your support – nothing can exist without your support. Your co-operation is needed.

If you co-operate something exists. Certainly the unnatural cannot exist without your co-operation. From where will it get the energy? The natural can exist without your co-operation, but the unnatural cannot exist. The unnatural needs constant support, it needs constant care, it needs constant control.

Once you have seen that this is unnatural, your grip on it becomes loose. Your fist opens of
its own accord. The group is not a device to open your fist. It is just to help you see that what you are doing is unnatural. In that very seeing, the transformation.

You ask: IS THE PURPOSE OF THE THERAPY GROUPS TO BRING THE PARTICIPANTS TO
THEIR NATURAL SELF?

No, that is not the purpose. The purpose is simply to make you aware of where you are, what you have done to your-self – what harm you have been doing continuously and you are still doing. What wounds you are creating in your being. On each of the wounds is your signature – that is the purpose of the group, to make you alert about your signature. That it is signed by you, that nobody else has been doing it.

That all the chains that you have around yourself are created by you. That the prison you live in is your own work. Nobody is doing it to you. Seeing it, that ”I am creating my own prison,” how long can you go on creating it? If you want to live in the prison, that’s another matter – but nobody ever wants to live in the prison.

People live because they think, ”Others are creating the prisons, what can we do?” They always gO on throwing the responsibility on somebody else. Down the ages, they have found new and different devices, but the purpose remains the same: throw the responsibility on somebody else. And you will be surprised at what excuses man has been trying to find.

In the ancient days, man used to think, ”This is the way God has made us, so the responsibility is God’s – what can we do? We are just creatures, and we are the way he has made us. We have to live this misery. This is destined.”

That was a trick. You are relieving yourself of all res-ponsibility. But it happens that when a trick has worked for long it becomes a cliche. It works no more; people are fed up with it. They start searching for new ideas, but the purpose remains the same. And the revolution never comes; it has not happened yet. Not in Russia, not in China – nowhere.

The revolution never comes; it is just a postponement. Man is as miserable in Russia as he is anywhere else, as much in the mire of the mind as anywhere else. Jealousy is as much in Russia as anywhere else. Anger is as much, violence is as much. nothing has changed.

Freud says it is because of the upbringing. In your childhood you have been brought up wrongly – what can you do? It has already happened; now there is no way of undoing it. At the most, you can accept it and live it. Or you can go on fighting unnecessarily – but there is no hope. Freud is one of the greatest pessimists ever. He says there is no hope for man, because in childhood the pattern is settled – settled for ever.

Then you go on repeating the pattern. Again the responsibility is thrown. So your mother is responsible. And the mother thinks what can SHE do? – her own mother is responsible… and so on and so forth. These are all devices, but the purpose is the same – different devices for the same purpose. What is the purpose? To take responsibility off your shoulders.

The group therapy is to make you aware that neither God is responsible nor is society responsible nor are parent? responsible. If there is anybody who is responsible it is you? A group process is a hammering of this simple fact – that it is you who are responsible. And this hammering has a great significance.

Because once you understand that ”This is ME, I myself am doing wrong to myself,” then the doors open. Then there is hope. Then something is possible. Revolution is possible through responsibility, individual responsibility. You can transmute; you can drop those old patterns. They are not your destiny. But if you accept them as your destiny they become your destiny. It is all a question of whether to support them or not.

And I am not saying that parents have not done something to you, remember. And I am not saying that the society has not done anything to you – I am not saying that either. The society has done much, the parents have done much, the education and the priest, they have done much. But, still, the ultimate key is in your hands. You can DROP it, you can drop the whole conditioning.

Whatsoever they have done, you can erase it – because your consciousness at the deepest core always remains free. That is the purpose of a therapy group, to bring this truth home: that you are responsible. ’Responsibility’ is the MOST important word in a group-therapy process. Nobody wants to take the responsibility, because it hurts. Just to see the point, ”I am the cause of my misery,” hurts very much.

If somebody else is the cause, one can accept it, one is helpless. But if I am the cause of my misery, it hurts. It goes against the ego, it goes against the pride. That’s why group therapy is a difficult process, hard. You want to escape – from encounter, from tao, from primal therapy, you want to escape. Why do you want to escape? Because you have always believed that you are perfectly right, you are perfectly good – others have been doing harm to you.

Now the whole thing has to be changed; you have to put everything upside-down. Nobody is doing any harm to you. And if they are doing any harm, it is through your co-operation. So finally you are responsible, you have chosen it. You say, ”My husband is doing harm to me” – but you have chosen THIS husband, in fact, only so that he can do harm to you. You wanted to be harmed and that’s why you have chosen THIS husband, THIS wife.

Just watch people who go on changing their wives. You will be surprised – again and again they find the same type of woman. It is a difficult thing to find the same type of woman, but they find. And within six months they are complaining again. And the complaints are exactly the same.

I have heard about one man who married eight times, and again and again he managed to find the same type of woman. Just see the point: the point is that he has a certain kind of mind, a certain conditioning. In that conditioning, only a certain type of woman appeals to him. A blonde or a brunette – a certain kind of woman appeals to him. The long nose, the black eyes, or something.

Always he is attracted by a certain kind of woman. And then that woman starts doing the same things. And then he is puzzled – and he was thinking he was changing the woman. You ARE changing the woman, but you have not changed your mind! So your choice remains the old, because the chooser is the old. It is not going to help; you will be in the same trap.

The colour of the trap may change, the fiber of the trap may change, but the trap is there and you will be trapped again and again. And the same misery will arise. Group therapy is a great process of understanding ”What I have been doing to myself!”

And if you go still deeper… where no group therapy has yet gone, not even primal therapy. But Buddha has gone deeper. He says: If you have chosen a certain kind of parent, that too is your choice. See the point. Millions of foolish people were making love when you were hovering to take birth. But still you have chosen a certain couple – why? You must have a certain idea; it is your choice.

And then you say, ”My parents have done harm to me.” In the first place, why did you choose them? Then your wife, your husband… and you think they have done harm? Then the society – who has created this society? You have created this society. It does not come out of the blue. The beggar on the road has not appeared suddenly from the blue. WE have created him. If you want to become rich, somebody has to become a beggar.

And seeing the beggar you feel very sorry. Whom are you trying to deceive ? And you still carry the idea of becoming rich. If you want to become rich, somebody is going to become a beggar. If you want to become somebody, then somebody will not be able to reach that fame, name. It is a competitive world. You don’t want wars, but you are violent – in everything you are violent. And you condemn wars.

And have you seen the pacifists and their processions How violent they look! Their slogans against war, their shouts against war – and sooner or later the procession turn into a riot. And they are burning cars and destroying offices and burning buses and trains and attacking the police – and they had gone to protest against war!

Now what is happening? These people are violent people; war is just an excuse. Their protest is nothing but their expression of violence. They are not concerned about war, they are using it as a pretext. This society is created by you. And then you say that society is responsible.

NOBODY IS RESPONSIBLE EXCEPT YOU. This is one of the hardest truths to accept. But once you accept it, it brings great freedom, it creates great space. Because with this, another possibility immediately opens up: ”If I am responsible then I can change. If I am not responsible, how can I change? If I am doing it to myself, then it hurts but it also brings a new possibility – that I can stop hurting myself, I can stop being miserable.”

A group process is not to make you natural; it is to make you aware of your unnaturalness, of your phoniness.

IS THE PURPOSE OF THE THERAPY GROUPS TO BRING THE PARTICIPANTS TO THEIR
NATURAL SELF?

No, not at all. The purpose is just to make them aware of the unnatural self. And then the natural self comes of its own accord. Nobody can bring it – when the unnatural disappears, the natural is found. The natural has always been there, hidden under the rubbish. Unnatural gone, you are natural. You don’t become natural; you have always been natural. How can one become natural? All becoming will lead you into unnaturalness.

Osho – What is the role of therapy in meditation?

Osho -Buddha never needed any psychotherapy for his sannyasins; those people were innocent. But in these twenty five centuries, people have lost their innocence, they have become too knowledgeable.

People have lost their contact with existence. They have become uprooted. I am the first person who uses therapy but whose interest is not therapy but meditation…just as it was with Chuang Tzu or Gautam Buddha. They never used therapy because there was no need.

People were simply ready, and you could bring the rosebushes without clearing the ground. The ground was already clear. In these twenty-five centuries man has become so burdened with rubbish, so many wild weeds have grown in his being that I am using therapy just to clean the ground, take away the wild weeds, the roots, so the difference between the ancient man and the modern man is destroyed. The modern man has to be made as innocent as the ancient man,
as simple, as natural. He has lost all these great qualities. The therapist has to help him ― but his work is only a preparation. It is not the end. The end part is going to be the meditation.

Source: from book “The Great Pilgrimage From Here to Here”by Osho