My therapists are the best in the world... ~OSHO~

BELOVED OSHO,

IS THAT TRUE THAT YOU HAVE DECLARED YOUR THERAPISTS TO BE THE BEST IN THE WORLD? AND WHAT MAKES THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THEM AND THE FAMOUS THERAPISTS OF THE ESALEN INSTITUTE?

OSHO:Yes, my therapists are the best in the world, for the simple reason that other therapists are only therapists, they are not meditators. My therapists are meditators too.

Therapy is a superficial thing. It can help to clean the ground, but just to have a clean ground is not to have a garden.

You will need something more. Therapy is negative; it simply takes away the weeds from the ground, removes the stones from the ground, prepares the soil for the garden. But there its work ends.

Western therapy is still in its very primitive stage. It has to go a long way. And unless it becomes associated with meditation, it may help a little bit superficially but it cannot really help the person to grow.

And it takes so much time. There are people who have been in psychoanalysis or in other therapies for ten years, twelve years. They have been changing therapists, but their problems remain the same. They have been digging deep in their dreams; they have been finding new analysts - Freudian, Jungian, Adlerian, Assagiolian - and those explanations seem significant for a moment.

But they don't change anything. In fact people become addicted to therapy.

It has become a luxury in the West... just as in the old days women used to talk about each other's clothes, their diamonds, their paintings, the decorations of their house, and how much it cost; now ladies are talking about who their psychoanalyst is, and how much one session costs. It has become something to be proud of that you have the best, the most expensive psychoanalyst in the world, and you have had him for ten years.

And you have to look at one thing: the people practicing psychoanalysis and other concerned professions of therapy, these people themselves are not healthy. They know the technique, they have learned the technique, but they themselves are not healthy people - healthy in the sense that they have any integrity. Twice the number of psychotherapists go mad than any other profession.

And twice the number of psychoanalysts commit suicide than any other profession.

This is very strange... because these people should not go mad and should not commit suicide; otherwise how are these people going to help others?

Not a single meditator has committed suicide down the ages. You cannot think of Gautam Buddha committing suicide. You cannot think of Bodhidharma going mad. It is simply inconceivable. So something very fundamental is missing.

So when I say my therapists are the best in the world, I simply mean that my therapists are not only therapists, they are meditators too. Other therapists are only therapists. If you look into their lives you will be surprised: you will find what I am saying.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, was so much afraid of ghosts that you cannot believe it. You cannot say this man was mature: he was retarded. He was so much afraid of ghosts that even at the word "ghost" he went into a fit, fell from his chair, and started foaming from the mouth.

And this is the founder of psychoanalysis!

Carl Gustav Jung was going to be his successor - Freud himself had chosen him - and he was a man of great intellectual possibilities. But he was too interested in ghosts - that was the reason he was thrown out of the psychoanalytic movement. Freud tried to prevent his talking about ghosts.

He said, "Don't bring up that subject." He could not even mention the name of the subject - "that subject." But Jung was so interested that once in a while he would bring up the subject and the whole scene would be repeated.

Finally it was thought that Jung should be removed from the movement, and he was expelled. But he himself was not in a better position. He wanted to go to Egypt to see the old mummies of ancient queens and pharaos - three thousand years old, four thousand years old. He was very much interested in how they were preserved, how they looked. He was interested in death - that's why he was interested in ghosts.

On the one hand he was interested in the mummies, and on the other hand he was afraid. It happens always: things you are very much fascinated with, you are also afraid of - because too much fascination means you are getting caught in something which may prove beyond your capacities, and you may end up in something you never wanted.

Ten times Jung booked a ticket to go to Egypt, and every time he would find some excuse not to go.

He would fall sick, he would have a fever, and the ticket had to be canceled. And he knew perfectly well - he was a very keen observer - he knew perfectly well, "Why does it happen only when I book a ticket? Otherwise I am perfectly healthy - no fever, nothing. As the time comes closer, when I have to leave the next day, I cannot sleep the whole night, and in the morning I have fever. Just an excuse so nobody can say that I am postponing it."

But he became aware, "It is me," so the tenth time he said, "Whatever happens, I am going to go."

He went to the airport, had a nervous breakdown, and was brought back home. Then he dropped the idea of going to Egypt.

Now, are these people going to help? And these are the greatest names.

I say my therapists are better than Freud and Jung and Adler for the simple reason that they are not only therapists, they are meditators. And they do not have such hang-ups, such idiotic ideas in their minds. For that, the meditations I have devised are enough: they will cathart all these ideas. For example, if Freud had done Dynamic Meditation, I can guarantee it: his ghosts would not have had any power over him.

By the way, it happened that I used to live outside Jabalpur, near a graveyard of Mohammedans.

Mohammedans believe that when a man dies, his soul remains in the grave till the last judgment day. Then God will come and wake up all the souls from all the graveyards and decide who is good and who is bad.

I had found a house just near the graveyard for the simple reason that the house was very beautiful and nobody was ready to purchase it or rent it - because people were afraid of the graveyard. So many souls are there, so many ghosts! The bungalow that I had rented was called a ghost bungalow.

I approached the owner; he said, "If you simply live there, there is no need for any rent. Just take care of my bungalow, because it has not been maintained. I have put so much money into it, but I had never thought that this graveyard would create trouble."

So he gave me the bungalow free. I started Dynamic Meditation, and it was the right place because no neighbors, only ghosts! So nobody was disturbed. But I was surprised: after two or three days, a group of Mohammedans with a Maulvi - a Mohammedan priest - reached me and they said, "You cannot do this Dynamic Meditation here."

I said, "What is the problem? - because here is no neighbor, nobody is disturbed. You don't live here."

One said, "It is not a question of neighbors - you are disturbing our graveyard! And the way you do Dynamic Meditation, the souls may escape from the grave. Then at the last judgment day how is God going to find them?"

I said, "This is really a problem! I have never thought about it, that Dynamic Meditation would frighten the ghosts and they would escape from their bodies and the graveyard, and God would have difficulty finding where they had gone...." So I had to stop because they were very angry.

They said, "It is a religious question, and it is not one soul - so many souls. And from where have you got this Dynamic Meditation? We have never heard about it. It can wake up any sleeping soul."

I said, "It is true - it can wake up!"

If Sigmund Freud had done Dynamic Meditation he would have dropped his sickness. If Jung had done it, he would have dropped his sickness. They are good people, but they are doing only half the work - and the remaining half is far more important. They simply clean the ground and wait for the garden to happen. It never happens: then they get frustrated.

You will be surprised to know that Sigmund Freud never went through psychoanalysis - his own method. His disciples were insisting, "You should go through psychoanalysis. We are trained, you have trained us - now you can choose anybody you like and he will psychoanalyze you."

But Freud refused point-blank. Why was he so afraid? And if the founder himself is afraid of going into psychoanalysis, it has great meaning. It means he knew that his dreams will reveal all that he has been condemning. His dreams will show that he is carrying in his heart all that he is telling other people - that they are repressing sex. His dreams will show that he himself is repressing sex.

He never agreed: the founder of psychoanalysis was never analyzed. Now, this is strange. It is as if the founder of vipassana - Gautam Buddha - never did vipassana. And if he never did vipassana, what right would he have to say to others, "You do it and it will be good for you."

First one has to experiment on oneself, and unless one finds that it works, and works for the better, one has no right to say to anyone, "Do it."

So I repeat: my therapists are the best in the world. And any therapist in the West, if he wants to become a real therapist, has to come to me. He has to come to meditations, and he has to create a synthesis between therapy and meditation. Then only will he be a real therapist; otherwise he is just doing half a job - which is very dangerous.

It is like doing partial surgery on a person and leaving him with an open wound. It would have been better if you had not touched him. If you have opened his wound, it is better you do it completely.

And that's what is happening in the West: the psychotherapists and other therapists are opening people's wounds and leaving them incomplete. They are creating a very dangerous situation for the person. He will find himself in more anguish than he had ever been.

Now is the time that psychoanalysis should come to meet with meditative methods. East and West, unless they meet and merge with each other, will remain half and half. They are not complete in themselves. Together they can be complete - and completion of anything has a beauty of its own.

OSHO
Light on the Path,
Chapter 16