on Psychology of the Buddhas and Alfred Adler idea of 'Will to Power'

 

 

Question 4:

Beloved Osho,

You said buddha is a state of no-mind. Then how can there be any psychology of the buddhas?

Please explain.

 

 

There can only be a psychology of the buddhas. The man who is in the mind cannot be objective about it. It is as if a madman were doing research on madness. Apparently -- it looks logical -- because he is mad he can do research on madness. But it is not so in reality. Only one who is sane can look at all the dimensions of insanity objectively. The madman is not in a position to see anything, to understand anything.

 

The same is the situation about the mind. One is in the mind and is trying to create a psychology: it is an impossible task. He can create only a fictitious psychology. That's why there are so many psychologies; otherwise there can only be one psychology -- just as there can be only one physics, one chemistry. There cannot be schools of psychology contradicting each other, refuting each other, arguing against each other, trying to prove themselves the real psychology.

 

Sigmund Freud has never known anything beyond the mind that can give him the right to study the mind. He is immersed in it, he is it. Who is going to understand it? The understanding is always from the beyond -- some distance is needed. So whatever he creates is a beautiful fiction. His own disciples start creating their own fictions. Alfred Adler created another fiction. Carl Gustav Jung created still another fiction. They are all irrelevant. Nobody can prove who is right, because they are all wrong -- wrong for the simple reason that living in the mind you cannot look at it from a detached space, which is the basic scientific method.

 

If you are studying tomatoes, one thing is absolutely necessary: that you should not be a tomato. You can be anything else. The state of the awakened person is a state beyond mind. He can see from the top of the hill into the dark valleys of the mind. The hilltop is full of sunlight. His vision is clear, he has no prejudices, he has no preconceived ideologies. He has left them far behind in the valley where everybody is a bigot, everybody is conditioned, everybody is either a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Buddhist, or a communist.

 

Everybody has become identified with a certain ideology. He has lost the clarity of vision, he is clouded. And he looks through those clouds, and everything becomes perverted. Sigmund Freud turns everything into sex. It is not true; everything is not sex. Sex is one of the most significant parts of life, but everything is not sex. But the way of seeing... he has colored glasses on his eyes. Whatever he sees, immediately his mind translates it into some sex symbol.

 

If he sees these pillars here, they are phallic. You have been sitting by these pillars. You have never thought that these are phallic symbols, that they represent the man's longing to have a long genitalia. But this long genitalia, the man will have to carry it on a truck! And what will happen about women? He cannot chase women, he is stuck with his truck.

 

Anything! Fountain pens, pencils -- everything is phallic. He has a cloud over his vision. He himself is oversexual, too much repressed. His repression is creating a certain smoke, and it is coming out into his writings. They are hilarious! You give him anything, and within minutes it is turned into something sexual. You could not have conceived that this thing can be turned into sexuality. Every hole becomes feminine sexuality. This is not psychology, this is psychopathy.

 

And one of his disciples, who said that "There are things which are connected with man's sexuality, but I cannot agree that everything is sexual" -- he found another fiction: will to power. For Alfred Adler, psychology simply became synonymous with will to power. Whatever you are doing, it is nothing but will to power. You say, "I have fallen in love" -- all wrong. According to him this is a strategy to be powerful over the woman. And that's why she is trying to escape from you. She knows the real purpose.

But she also cannot escape too far, because she has also the same psychology: she wants power over you. So every husband and wife are continuously in a power struggle. Children and parents are in a power struggle. Students and teachers are in a power struggle. Everywhere the whole business of life is reduced into a power struggle -- will to power.

 

According to Adler, sex becomes nothing but will to power. He was not aware of Eastern literature on sexology, which goes far back -- five thousand years old. Vatsyayana's maxims on sex describe eighty-four postures of lovemaking. But Adler knew only one posture -- the missionary posture.

 

It is called the missionary posture in the East, the man on top. The East became aware for the first time of this brutality when Christian missionaries went there to spread the word of God. People simply laughed. How can a man who is loving, lie on a woman who is delicate, smaller, fragile? The brute is on top of the beauty -- and he does not allow her to move, because to move is not ladylike. That is the meaning of the word "lady" -- a good lay. But a good lay means a dead lay. The woman has to lie down completely dead, and the brute goes on doing exercises, gymnastics, pushups, and this he calls love.

 

In the East it has been accepted that the woman should be on top. And it seems to be more natural. Man is stronger, more muscular, taller. And it is sexologically also significant that the woman should be moving, because if the man moves and woman remains unmoving, the man comes to his orgasm within seconds, and the woman has not even started yet. He is finished; gets down and goes to sleep. The woman cries, because she is simply being used, and to be used hurts more than anything else. This is not love. You have not taken any care about the woman, what happens to her. Vatsyayana makes it clear that the man should remain less moving so his orgasm is delayed, and the woman should be moving so they both come to orgasm almost simultaneously.

 

But Adler saw in the West man on top, and immediately he had another instance, evidence for his psychology, that this lovemaking is nothing but will to power -- being on top. The woman is not physically so strong, but she takes her revenge in being bitchy. You can be on top of her for a few seconds, but for twenty-four hours she is bitchy, a pain in the neck.

 

Love becomes a strange thing in the hands of Adler. It has to fit his idea of psychology. The same is true of Jung, of Assagioli, and so many others. Now there are dozens of schools, and every school pretends that they have found the real science of psychology. None of them is capable of finding real psychology because they don't fulfill the basic requirement.

 

The basic requirement is to go beyond mind, because only then you can see the functions of the mind, the subtle activities of the mind, the darkest corners of the mind. From the hilltop of no-mind the whole valley is available to you, and you are simply a witness, an objective witness. Hence, I repeat it again: Only buddhas can create authentic psychology. Otherwise, there will be only different schools of psychopathologies.

 

I can understand your question. Your question is: A man who has reached to the state of no-mind, what can he say about the mind? You are just putting this no-mind and mind in opposition. No-mind is not opposite to mind. No-mind is beyond mind. It is a clarity, a silence, that can give you the deepest insight into mind. You can look into all the layers of mind, but this is possible only from the highest point.

 

And because now you are no more in the mess of the mind, you are no more confined by your mind. You have gone beyond boundaries; you cannot only see your mind, you can see mind as such. And unless mind as such is known, psychology will remain just a fictitious game.

 

From the sunlit peaks you can see all the layers of mind. You are at the highest point. I have called it the cosmic mind, the mind of the whole existence. You are one with it. Just below you is the collective superconscious mind. Below that is the individual superconscious mind. Below that is the normal conscious mind. Below that is the unconscious mind. Below that is the collective unconscious mind. And at the very bottom is the cosmic unconscious mind. This is the whole rainbow of mind energy -- all the seven colors. The cosmic superconscious mind and the cosmic unconscious mind are the two ends of the rainbow. And then there are five divisions in between.

 

We are at the fourth, exactly in the middle. Three are below us, three are above us. If a man goes mad, that means he slips down from the fourth to the third, sometimes even to the second; very rarely, to the first. A meditator travels upwards: first to the superconscious mind, then the collective superconscious mind, and then cosmic superconscious mind.

 

This whole rainbow is not available to your so-called psychologists. So whatever they are doing is very fragmentary. And remember one thing: a fragmentary truth is far more dangerous than a lie. A half-truth is worse than a lie, because the lie cannot go on pretending to be true for long; sooner or later you are going to discover it. But the half-truth is dangerous:you can go on believing that this is the whole truth forever. You can be deceived by it.

 

And the second thing to remember: truth cannot be divided. So the half-truth is again a very beautifully systematized lie.

Just as you cannot have a half-circle -- or can you? Verbally there is no problem, but if you look at it closely, a circle can only be complete. The half-circle is not a circle, it is only an arc. Unless it is full, it cannot be called a circle. There are no other kinds of circles, there is only one kind: the full circle.

 

The same is the case with truth. You cannot have half-truths; they become far more dangerous, poisonous than straightforward lies. And whatever the psychologists are doing is nothing but stretching small fragments to absurdity in order to make them look like the full truth, the whole truth. I say to you again, only the awakened one, the buddha, can give you a total vision of psychology.

 

-Osho, "From Bondage to Freedom, #43, Q1"