Therapy

 

 

The unconscious human mind is the cause of the whole trouble.

 

There have been people around me who were doing all kinds of things -- there were doctors, there were dentists, there were plumbers, there were carpenters -- but none of them got such an ego as the people who were working as therapists.

 

Therapy basically has nothing to do with spirituality. I was using it just to clean the rubbish that the mind has gathered down the ages. The work of the therapist with me was exactly that of cleaners, nothing superior to them in any way. But in the West therapy has connotations of spirituality because there is nothing in the name of spirituality. There is a vacuum, and therapists seem to fill it.

 

It is only apparently so. They don't fill the gap, they cannot; they themselves have no spiritual experience. All that they know are certain techniques through which your mind can be cleaned. But even that cleaning of the mind makes you feel fresh only for a few days, because it does not change the base, the foundation of your being; it simply cleans the surface. You remain the same person. You will again collect the same garbage, so therapy will be needed again and again and again.

 

The same is true about every other kind of psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, analytical psychology -- they are just different names. There is not a single person in the whole world that psychologists can claim is purified -- now there is no need for him to go through analysis, therapy, or any kind of processing.

 

Even the psychotherapists, psychoanalysts have to go through therapy, analysis, be under some psychotherapist once in a while, because they are also collecting garbage. In fact they are collecting more because so many people are unloading themselves in their therapy sessions, and it is bound to affect the therapist. People will become a little lighter, but the therapist will become a little heavier -- he will need therapy himself. This is a vicious circle.

 

My effort was to bring the West closer to the East. The East has developed spiritual techniques, but when those techniques were developed, man was not so loaded with knowledge, degrees, and all kinds of meaningless garbage. Those techniques were developed for innocent people.

 

Now the situation is different: if you give those techniques directly to the people, the people are so loaded that in their garbage your techniques will be lost.

 

My understanding was, and still is, that therapy can be a good beginning, but it is not the end, it is not the answer. It can clean the mind only for a short period, but in that short period a spiritual technique can be introduced to you before the mind gets loaded again.

 

If the spiritual technique is introduced to you, then that garbage is not going to disturb you; it cannot create confusion, and you do not need any therapy anymore. You are on the way -- now this ordinary garbage cannot prevent you.

 

But if you are loaded already, then to introduce you to a spiritual technique is futile; it is throwing seed onto stones. The seed is not going to live, to become a plant, to become a tree, to blossom.

 

So I was using these therapies just for the moment to clean the ground and let me put in the seed. Then we are not worried about the garbage that you will be collecting. The seed has enough force; once it has found its soil, there is no problem. It will bring its branches and foliage, its fruits and its flowers, in spite of all the garbage around -- that doesn't matter.

 

But I was aware of the danger -- that these therapists themselves have no spirituality, and they will start feeling as if they are guides, spiritual guides; as if they are helping so many people on the path. It is so easy to blow your ego up bigger and bigger.

 

These therapists came from the West to me because in the West therapy was going out of fashion. People were tired, because what is the point? -- for a few days you feel great and then come the dumps. You feel worse than before. Then to go again to the therapist becomes a kind of addiction.

 

And there is no end to it. People go on moving from one therapy to another therapy their whole life, always feeling, "This is going to work." And it seems to work for a while, but it does not change anything basic, just superficial touches, so you are again back to zero.

 

All these therapists had failed in the West; nobody was coming to them. When they came to me they had no need to search for clients: thousands of sannyasins were coming, and I wanted a certain synthesis between Western methods of therapy and spiritual growth, so I allotted them the work.

 

But these therapists forgot completely that the people had not come for their therapies. In fact people were very unwilling to do their therapies; I had to persuade them. But slowly people started understanding the fact that just a little cleaning helps to take a long jump into meditation. So the people who passed through therapies went deeper into meditation than the therapists. The therapists were going deeper into their egos.

 

The therapists were not meditating. They were not asking questions, because to ask a question means that you are ignorant, you do not know the answer to it; they were not even humble enough to ask a question. And they were happy, tremendously happy that now there was no burden on them of finding people. People were coming by themselves, and I was sending them to their therapies.

 

I made them great therapists. I tried to refine their methods to make them the best possible therapists. I used to meet every therapy group and ask the people who had participated how they were feeling, what had happened. And indirectly -- and the therapist was present -- I was suggesting what more could be done, what should have been done. I was also asking the therapist what difficulties he was finding, what problems were arising with people -- in an indirect way, because I don't want to hurt anybody, even by giving advice.

 

Through the years I had worked on these therapists and their therapies, and they started feeling that they had become kinds of gurus, masters. And deep down there was great competition amongst them

 

- Osho, "Beyond Psychology, #37"