on Psychology

 

 

Question:

Osho,

I am a Psychologist. I was hoping that studying psychology would help to change my life, but nothing like that has happened. What should I do now?

 

 

Psychology is still a very very immature science. It is very rudimentary, it is only the beginning. It is not yet a way of life -- it cannot transform you. It can certainly give you a few insights into the mind, but those insights are not going to be transforming. Why? -- because transformation always happens from a higher plane. Transformation never means solving problems -- remaining on the same plane -- that means adjustment.

 

Psychology is still trying to help you adjust -- to adjust to the society which is itself insane, to adjust to the family, to adjust to the ideas that are dominant around you. But all those ideas -- your family, your society -- they themselves are ill, sick, and to adjust to them will give you a certain normality, at least a superficial appearance of health, but it is not going to transform you.

 

Transformation means to change the plane of your understanding. It comes through transcendence. If you want to change your mind, you have to go to the state of no-mind. Only from that height will you be able to change your mind, because from that height you will be the master. Remaining in the mind and trying to change the mind by mind itself is a futile process. It is like pulling yourself up by your own shoestrings. It is like a dog trying to catch hold of its own tail; sometimes they do, sometimes they behave very humanly. The dog is sitting in the warm sun early in the morning and he looks at the tail just resting by his side -- naturally, the curiosity arises: Why not catch hold of it? He tries, fails, feels offended, annoyed; tries hard, fails harder, becomes mad, crazy. But he will never be able to catch hold of the tail -- it is his own tail. The more he jumps, the more the tail will jump.

 

Psychology can give you a few insights into the mind, but because it cannot take you beyond the mind it can't be of any help.

 

Sam became a psychiatrist and began to prosper. He bought a big expensive limousine and drove it out for the first time. After he had been riding for a few moments, another car slammed into him. He jumped out of his smashed Cadillac, went over to the car that had rammed his, shook his fist at it, and roared, "You idiot! You moron! You crook of a rat! You son of a...!" Then he suddenly remembered he was a psychiatrist and lowered his voice and softly asked, "Why do you hate your mother?"

 

Psychology cannot help. I have heard another story about this same Sam -- a story of when he was no more in the world, he had died.

 

The widow was tending to the plants around her husband's grave. As she bent over, some blades of grass tickled the bare flesh under her skirt. Startled, she turned around quickly, but there was no one in sight. Sighing, she turned back to the grave and whispered, "Sam, behave yourself! And remember, you are supposed to be dead."

 

Neither in life nor in death is psychology going to help you much. You can be helped only by religion. Now the psychologist is trying to play the role of the master, which is utterly pretentious. The psychologist, the psychoanalyst and the psychiatrist are not masters! They don't know themselves. Yes, they have understood a little bit about the mechanism of the mind, they have studied, they are well informed. But information never changes anybody, it never brings any revolution. Deep down the person remains the same. He can talk beautifully, he can give you good advice, but he cannot follow his own advice.

 

The psychoanalyst cannot be the master. But in the West particularly he has become so successful professionally that even the priest is in tremendous awe. Even the priests -- the Catholic and the Protestant -- are studying psychoanalysis and other schools of psychology, because they see that people are not coming to the priest anymore, they are going to the psychoanalyst. The priest is becoming afraid that he is losing his job.

 

The priest has dominated people for hundreds of years. He was the wise man -- he has lost his attraction. And people cannot live without advisors; they need somebody to tell them what to do because they never grow up. They are like small children, always in need of being told what to do and what not to do. Up to now the priest used to do that; now the priest has lost his charm, his validity. He is no longer contemporary, he has become out of date. Now the psychoanalyst has taken his place, HE is the priest now.

 

But as the priest was false, so is the psychoanalyst. The priest was using religious jargon to exploit people; the psychologist is using scientific jargon to exploit the same people. Neither was the priest awakened, nor is the psychoanalyst awakened. Man can be helped only by somebody who is a buddha already; otherwise he cannot be helped.

 

All your advisors will make more and more mess out of you. The more you listen to advisors, the more you will become messed up -- because they don't know what they are saying! They don't even agree amongst themselves. Freud says one thing, Adler says another, Jung says still another. And now there are a thousand and one schools. And every school is fanatical about its philosophy -- that it has the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Not only does it say that it is true; it says it has THE truth, and everybody else is lying, deceiving.

 

If you listen to these psychoanalysts, if you go from one psychoanalyst to another, you will be more puzzled. The only help that they can give to you is that if you are intelligent enough you will become so fed up with them, so bored with them, that you will simply drop the idea of being transformed, and you may start living your life normally, without bothering much about transformation -- IF you are intelligent, which is very rare, because intelligence is crushed from the very beginning. You are made mediocres. From the very beginning, intelligence is destroyed. Only a few people somehow escape the society and remain intelligent.

 

Nagesh, you ask me, "What should I do now?"

My suggestion is: you have done enough. Now learn something which is not DOING but nondoing. Be here, and learn -- not to do but to be. Sit silently, doing nothing. Within three to nine months, if one is patient enough and if one can simply go on sitting for hours together every day -- as much as one can find time just sit.... In the beginning, great turmoil will arise in your mind; everything from the unconscious will start surfacing. You will see it as if you are going mad. Go on watching -- don't be worried. You cannot go mad because you are already mad, so there is nothing to lose and nothing to fear.

 

A politician, a great politician, was consulting a psychoanalyst. The politician was suffering from an inferiority complex -- all politicians suffer from inferiority complexes. If they don't suffer from inferiority complexes, they will not be politicians in the first place. To be a politician means striving to be superior, to be in power, so one can prove to others and to oneself, "I am not inferior. Look! I am the prime minister. Look! Only I am the prime minister of the country and nobody else -- how can I be inferior?"

 

Politics arises out of the inferiority complex -- all power politics arises out of the inferiority complex. So it was not rare that the politician was suffering from an inferiority complex.

The psychoanalyst worked on the politician year in, year out. After two or three years, listening to all his gibberish nonsense...because what can a politician say? For hours together he would lie down on the couch and talk nonsense.

 

After three years, one day when he came, the psychoanalyst received him with great joy and said, "I am glad to declare, after three years' research on you, that you don't suffer from an inferiority complex. I have come to this conclusion after such a long effort that it can't be wrong. You don't suffer from an inferiority complex -- simply forget all about it."

The politician was very happy and he said, "I am grateful to you, but can you tell me how you arrived at this conclusion?"

The psychoanalyst said, "Because you ARE simply inferior -- how can you suffer from an inferiority complex?"

 

Nagesh, you need not be worried. If sitting silently you start feeling madness arising, don't be worried -- you can't be more mad than you already are. Man cannot fall more. He has fallen to the rock bottom. Now there is no further to fall. Sitting silently you will see madness arising in you, because it has remained repressed. And you keep occupied with things -- psychology etcetera -- now you will become occupied with meditation and sannyas, but these are all occupations and you are not allowing your unconscious to reveal itself to you. It is frightening.

 

My suggestion to you is, just sit silently as much as you can find time to. Zen people sit silently at least six to eight hours per day. In the beginning it is really maddening. The mind plays so many tricks on you, tries to drive you crazy, creates imaginary fears, hallucinations. The body starts playing tricks on you...all kinds of things will happen. But if you can go on witnessing, within three to nine months everything settles, and settles of its own accord -- not because you have to do something. Without your doing, it simply settles, and when a stillness arises, uncultivated, unpracticed, it is something superb, something tremendously graceful, exquisite. You have never tasted anything like it before -- it is pure nectar....

 

You have transcended the mind! All mind problems are solved. Not that you have found a solution, but simply they have fallen by themselves -- by witnessing, by just witnessing.

You are already too knowledgeable. No more knowledge is needed; you need unlearning. Knowledgeable people are very cunning people -- they can always go on finding excuses to remain the same.

 

A professor of philosophy and psychology was addicted to moonshine whiskey. One night, after guzzling a large amount, he went into his cabin, undressed for bed, and tried to blow out the candle. His alcoholic breath burst into flame.

 

Sadly shaken by the experience, he called out to his wife, "Bring me the Bible, Martha. This here has been a terrible lesson to me. I am going to swear off."

The happy housewife brought the Bible in a hurry, stood by while her man put his hand on it and looked heavenward: "I swear by all that is holy," intoned he, "that I will never again blow on a lighted candle."

 

Mind is cunning. You have to go beyond mind -- that's what meditation is all about.

 

-Osho, "The Dhammapada, Vol 2"