on Roberto Assagioli

Assagioli's idea of synthesis is more philosophical than existential

 

 

Question 5

Assagioli says that all the awareness in the world will not help until you choose -- "it is the willingness to choose that produces change and thus growth." Yet you talk of choiceless awareness.

Is there really a choice?

 

 

CHARANA, ASSAGIOLI HAS MOVED TO THE OTHER EXTREME in reaction to Sigmund Freud. His vision is not balanced, cannot be. It is a reaction. Reactions are never balanced. And I say to you that he is far higher in his understanding than Sigmund Freud, but still the imbalance remains.

 

Sigmund Freud's whole process was just to make you aware of your deep-rooted problems. If you become aware of your deep-rooted problems, they dissolve -- that is Freudian analysis. Nothing else is needed. One has to take a conscious note of one's unconscious problems. The moment consciousness penetrates the unconscious, a little light arises in the darkness of your being, problems start changing.

 

Freud was on the right track, but got stuck in the world of dreams. Never went deeper than that. Let me remind you: wakefulness is the first state, dreaming the second state, sleep the third state, and TURIYA -- samadhi -- the fourth state. Sigmund Freud created a revolution just by changing the emphasis from the first state to the second. The whole psychoanalytical revolution consists in that. Up to that point, the Western man particularly had lived with the idea that wakefulness is all. The dreams were never taken into account. The credit goes to Sigmund Freud that he expanded human consciousness. He brought dreams in. He moved into the darkness of the inner world. ONE step, but that one step is pregnant, very pregnant, very potential. But got stuck there.

 

It takes years of psychoanalysis to make you a little alert. That little alertness helps, but the process is too long. In the East, we have methods which can make you immensely alert within a VERY short period. Vipassana can do within months what psychoanalysis will do in years. And Vipassana works on the third, goes deeper than psychoanalysis. And when you work deeper, the problems that were very important before simply fade away. If dreaming becomes a conscious process, it will change your waking awareness. If in sleep you become conscious, it will change your dreaming awareness.

 

And there are ways to take the quantum leap from the third to the fourth. That is what is called satori, the quantum leap, when you become aware of the fourth. When you are simply aware, neither of waking nor of dreaming, nor of sleep -- but just aware. There is no content to your awareness. This fourth state, TURIYA, is the highest point of consciousness. One who has achieved that, all his problems simply disappear. They need not be changed. There is nothing left to change. No other remedy is needed.

 

Freud is on the right track, but got hooked and became too much involved in the dreaming world. And if you become too much involved in the dreaming world, the main goal is forgotten. You start moving sideways. And then there is no end to it. You can go ON analyzing and analyzing dreams for years and for lives... it will help, but the transformation is not going to be total ever. You can solve one thing here, another thing will arrive. You change something on one point, another point goes wrong. But the total situation remains the same.

 

Assagioli became aware of it and started thinking that just by being aware transformation is not going to happen -- you have to will. He reacted to Sigmund Freud. He reacted on two points: one is analysis -- he created a new philosophy he called 'psychosynthesis' -- and on another point: just observation is not going to help, because he had seen that Freudian work takes you nowhere.... You change one thing, and another thing goes wrong, but the total remains the same. So he brought will into it, that one has to will. This is moving to the other extreme, because with the will ego enters in.

 

Will is nothing but an expression of the ego. And through will all kinds of repression... you will start repressing. What IS will? You choose this against that -- what are you going to do with that which you are against? You will repress it. The pendulum moved back. Where it was before Freud, it went back again to the same situation.

 

Assagioli's insight is beautiful, that analysis is not enough -- because analysis only dissects. And by dissecting, you destroy. And by dissecting, you can know only dead things, because in dissection they become dead. If you dissect a flower, how are you going to know the beauty of it? -- it will disappear. If you dissect a child, it is dead. ALL dissection is post mortem. So whatsoever you come to through dissection will never give you any clue to life and life's mysteries. It may help you to understand matter, dead matter, but all that is alive disappears. For that, a more synthetic vision is needed.

 

Assagioli is right -- about THIS point he is right. But about will he is absolutely wrong. If you will, of course you can change. That's what humanity has been doing in pre-Freudian days, for centuries. You have anger -- will compassion, and repress anger. Then anger becomes repressed and compassion becomes cultivated. You have a beautiful personality, but not a beautiful soul. A polished personality, but deep inside is just hell-fire. You look very heavenly on the surface, but in your depth all that you have repressed goes on boiling within. It WILL explode. And it will go on poisoning your life in millions of ways.

 

Will is not the way. About that, Freud is far more right than Assagioli. The problem with Freud is he never went deeper than the dreaming. But I can understand: he was the pioneer in the West; pioneers cannot go very far. They only break the ice, they only begin. Much has to be done.

 

But the East has done the whole work. You will be surprised to know: one of the most perceptive Indians of this century, Ananda Coomaraswamy, claims that for one psychological term in English there are four psychological terms in Greek. And for one psychological term in Greek there are forty psychological terms in Sanskrit. For one English term you can find hundreds of psychological terms in Sanskrit, with subtle nuances and differences.

 

Five thousand years of work.... You may be aware that Eskimos have twelve words for ice -- naturally, they live there. They have many many understandings about ice that nobody else has. No other language has twelve words for ice.

Psychology in the East has been the ancient most science. In fact, the only science the East has worked hard for. Our experience down the ages has been this: that awareness is the only remedy. But it has to become more and more total.

When awareness is total, it transforms. NO other act is needed. Just to SEE a thing totally is to be free of it. To understand is to be transformed. If after understanding a thing something needs to be done, that will be only an indication that you have not understood it yet.

 

For example: if you really understand that anger is poison, not because I say, not because Buddha says, but you understand by your own observation, meditation, that anger is poison, that it poisons your being, then will you ask, "Now what to do to drop anger?" If you ask the question "What to do to drop anger?" that will simply show you have not yet understood. If you have really understood and seen that anger is poison, it is dropped. In that VERY understanding, it is dropped. Awareness is transformation. No other discipline is needed.

 

Assagioli falls back again. In one point, he brings something beautiful: synthesis. But on another point, on another account, he falls back: he goes to the old repressive mind -- will means repression. I don't teach you will. It is because of will that you have become so miserable. It is because of will that you feel guilty. It is because of will that you go on carrying scorpions, snakes and crocodiles and all kinds of things inside you. You have lost all beauty and grace.

 

What is will? Will means struggle against the whole. The real man of understanding is absolute will-lessness. That's why Jesus says: THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE. How is Assagioli going to explain it? -- THY WILL BE DONE.... Not mine! Because whatsoever is MY will is going to be against God's will. I have to efface my will completely. I have not to be. When I am in an absolute will-lessness, then God's will starts functioning.

 

And about synthesis too -- Assagioli's idea of synthesis is more philosophical than existential. There are two possible kinds of synthesis. One: put together. Mahatma Gandhi did it in India. He tried to put Islam and Hinduism together. He tried to create a kind of synthesis. The motivation was political, so that Hindus and Mohammedans wouldn't fight. The motivation was not religious: it was political -- so that India would remain undivided. It didn't work, because political motives can never work. They are dishonest, fundamentally insincere.

 

And how did he try to make the synthesis between Hinduism and Mohammedanism? Just a superficial synthesis: choose a few theories from the Bhagavad Gita and a few theories from the Koran, and try to show that they mean the same. It is very easy! But to contradict it, there are a thousand things in the Koran and a thousand things in the Gita which are against each other. Don't talk about them. Don't bring them in. Just bring those points which correspond.

 

This is a superficial synthesis. There is another kind of synthesis -- Ramakrishna did it. He practiced all religions, almost all that were available to him. For six months he became a Mohammedan. Just see the difference. What did Gandhi do? -- he just looked into the Koran, looked into the Gita, tried to find some intellectual synthesis, and created a kind of synthetic philosophy. But it is not existential, it is in-tellectual. And the motivation is political.

 

What did Ramakrishna do? He achieved the ultimate samadhi through Hinduism. No man before him has ever done such a thing. And then he said, "Now I would like to follow the path of Islam."

His disciples were bewildered. They said, "For what? You have attained!"

He said, "Now I want to see whether I can attain from that path too or not. I have come to the peak of the mountain by one path. I will go down into the valley again, and I will start trekking on another path. I would like to see whether I can reach to the same peak."

 

It was one of the greatest endeavors in human history. Ramakrishna stands very alone in his effort, solitary. He became a Mohammedan. And when he became a Mohammedan, he stopped going into Hindu temples -- he was no more a Hindu! He started wearing Mohammedan clothes, started eating Mohammedan food. He had a Mohammedan cook to make food for him. Practiced Sufism for six months. Then the mosque was his place. After six months he reached the peak. He declared to his disciples, "This path, too, leads to the same place. Now I will follow other paths.... "

 

He became a Buddhist , he became a Christian... and the strangest thing that he did, the most strange of all these paths was this. In Bengal there is a sect, Krishnaites, who believe in Krishna. And one of their fundamental beliefs is that Krishna is the only male in existence, and everybody else is just a girlfriend to Krishna -- all ARE GOPIS. All! Even men. There is only one man, the center, and all are the girlfriends dancing around him. So the follower of that path has to believe that he is a woman. He may be a man or a woman -- that doesn't matter. This is one of the funda-mentals.

 

Ramakrishna followed that path for one year... he lived like a woman, in women's dotes. And the miracle was this, that within a few weeks he started walking like a woman -- which is very difficult. It is really difficult, because it needs a totally different anatomy. It is not a question of just belief. The woman walks in a certain way because of the womb. The man cannot walk that way. Because of the womb inside the woman her physiology moves in a different way. But he started walking like a woman. People were puzzled.

 

Not only that: his voice changed -- he started talking like a woman. Not only that: his breasts started growing. His disciples were very much worried. And not only that: the most miraculous thing that happened was that after six months he started menstruating. Regular period! It was unbelievable. Doctors came and could not believe it was happening -- regularly, every month. He became a woman! And he attained through that path too. This is existential synthesis. This is REAL synthesis. The Gandhian synthesis is hocus-pocus. Utterly meaningless. This is real synthesis.

 

Assagioli has done something which is just intellectual. What WE are doing here is real synthesis. And not only of all religions, but of all psychologies, all yogas, too. We are trying to move existentially into all the possibilities that any human being has ever moved. We can create here the greatest synthesis that has ever been created anywhere else.

 

But this synthesis is not intellectual: it is existential. We are living it. When I talk about Sufis, I am a Sufi. And when you listen to me about Sufis, those who really listen to me become Sufis. Then all else disappears. When we move in the world of Zen, we are PART of it! We are not alien and outsiders. When I am speaking on Zen Masters, I am not speaking from the outside. I am not a scholar, and you are not here like students. These are not discourses, these are communions. When I talk about Zen Masters, I am one! And those who love me, and those who are intimate with me, those who are sannyasins, they become one with that approach. And in that oneness, understanding arises. And we are moving through ALL kinds of climates, all kinds of paths. Slowly slowly, we will have on the earth not one Ramakrishna but thousands.

 

-Osho, "The Perfect Master, Vol 2, #4, Q5"