Neurosis

 

 

If a neurotic person... and remember ego IS neurosis and ego needs attention; pay it attention, and ego feels good. Many people have murdered simply to get the attention of the newspapers, because only when they murder can they be covered by headlines. They become suddenly very, very important -- their pictures are given, their names, their biographies are covered: suddenly they are not nobodies, they have become somebodies.

 

Neurosis is a deep hankering after attention, and if you give it attention, you feed it -- that's why psychoanalysis has been a complete failure.

 

In zen monasteries they treat a person within three weeks: in Freudian psychoanalysis they cannot treat him in thirty years, because they miss the very point. But in zen monasteries no attention is given to the neurotic person, nobody thinks that he is somebody important -- they simply leave him alone, that is the only treatment. He has to sort out his own things; nobody bothers. Within three weeks he comes out absolutely normal.

 

Solitariness has a healing effect, it is a healing force. Whenever you feel that you are getting messed up, don't try to solve it there. Move away from society for a few days, for at least three weeks, and just remain silent, just watching yourself, feeling yourself, just being with yourself, and you will have a tremendous force available which heals. Hence, in the East, many people have moved to the mountains, to the forests, somewhere alone, somewhere where there is nobody else to be bothered with. Only oneself... so one can feel oneself directly, and you can see what is happening within.

 

Nobody is responsible for you except yourself, remember. If you are mad you are mad -- you have to sort it out: it is your deed! This is what Hindus say: your karma. The meaning is very deep. It is not a theory. They say, whatsoever you are it is your own work, so sort it out! Nobody else is responsible for you, only you are responsible.

 

So go into solitary confinement -- to sort out things, meditate on your own being and your problems. And this is the beauty: even if you can just be quiet, living with yourself for a few days, things settle automatically, because an unsettled state is not natural. An unsettled state is unnatural, you cannot prolong it for long. It needs effort to prolong it. Simply relax and let things be, and watch, and make no effort to change anything, remember; if you try to make any change you will continue the same because the very effort will continue to disturb things.

 

It is just like sitting by the side of a river: the river flows, the mud settles, the dead leaves go to the sea; by and by the river becomes absolutely clean and pure. You need not go into it to clean it -- if you go, you will muddle it more. Simply watch, and things happen. This is what the theory of karma is: that you have messed yourself up; now move alone.

 

So you need not throw your problems on others, you need not throw your diseases on others -- you simply move alone; suffer them in silence, watch them. Just sit by the bank of the river of your mind. Things settle! When things settle you have a clarity, a perception. Then move back into the world -- if you feel like it. That too is not a necessity, that too should not be an obsession. Nothing should be an obsession, neither the world nor the mountain.

 

Whatsoever you feel is natural, whatsoever you feel is good and heals you, whatsoever you feel you are whole in, not divided -- that is the path. The mountain is crossed. You have reached the path -- now follow it, now flow into it!

 

The mountain is the problem. The path is available when you have crossed the mountain. And you have accumulated this mountain in many lives -- your karmas, whatsoever you have done. It is now heavy on you.

 

-Osho, "And The Flowers Showered, #4"