[A sannyasin expresses concern about being a sannyasin in the West. She works in a personnel at a university. Osho says that is good work, and love is needed more than expertise…. ]

 

 

The therapist, the counsellor, has to love the patients so deeply, so totally, that in his love something starts in the patient. Under that impact of love he also can see the problems in their true perspective.

 

Problems are not really problems: the only problem is that people have become blind. They live with the problems for years and they can’t see it. Expertise can help you to dissect the problem, to analyse the problem, to go to its roots, to its causes, implications, and you can make the person intellectually understand, but that is not going to help really. It may make the person a little more adjusted but nothing much else. The problem will start asserting itself from somewhere else. It will find some new way to surface, in a new name it will continue, because the man has not really attained to insight.

 

If you attain to insight then solving one problem is solving all problems, because then you always have that insight with you: you can focus that insight on any problem and it starts disappearing. By becoming a sannyasin you naturally become more loving. My sannyas is sannyas into love, initiation into love… and with love you can see the problem of the other person.

 

So don’t sit there like an inhuman expert: come closer, more personally to the person, because his problems are your problems – they are everybody’s problems, they are human problems. There is not a single problem which cannot be your problem, and you cannot have any problem which cannot be anybody else’s problem… we share.

 

So don’t let the patient feel that it is his problem and he has come to a computer, an expert. Let him feel he has come to a human being – as frail, as limited, as prone to mistakes as he himself. Then an understanding arises, the person starts opening, and in the light of your love and care, he can start seeing something which he was not able to see before.

 

Help people to attain a loving insight into their lives, help people to love themselves, and problems will start disappearing: They have been taught to hate themselves, they have been taught condemnation and nothing else, hence so many problems. Help them to accept themselves, help them not to be perfectionists. That’s how millions of problems arise….

 

The perfectionistic mind is a neurotic mind. The perfectionist hankers for the impossible, so he always falls short. He cannot reach the goal, he is frustrated; then he starts thinking that something is wrong. He asks the impossible – it cannot happen by its very nature. Then he feels he has some defects. He loses self-confidence, and then small problems look like big problems; he cannot tackle them, he becomes nervous. He starts avoiding the problems, he goes on putting them aside. He hopes time will do something, and it never does anything.

 

The problems put aside become bigger and bigger; as time passes they become more bigger and more rooted. Perhaps if they were tackled in the very beginning they would not have been such a great nuisance. Later on they become very very difficult because they go deep into the blood; they start poisoning the whole system.

 

So bring people to love and accept themselves and tell them whatsoever they are is perfect… it is absolutely blissful the way they are! Once this feeling arises in a person – that he is absolutely okay – ninety-nine percent of problems have disappeared, and only one problem remains, and that problem nobody can dissolve. That problem is something which is existential – that is the problem of ’Who am I?’ For that problem the person has to go into the deepest core of his being. Help people to meditate, talk about meditation, help them to become more aware of dynamic methods of meditation.

 

America has become alert about the passive methods of meditation. They cannot help much because america basically is an active country. Passive methods cannot help america – they may give a little solace, consolation, but finally they will prove to be like tranquillisers, nothing more. Only very very active and creative methods can be helpful. And tensions have not to be dissolved; tensions have to be transformed.

 

If a person simply dissolves tensions he will become uncreative. That’s what happens through ’TM’ and other methods. They talk about it being very creative – it is just nonsense: it cannot be creative! Take away tension, then who bothers about creativity? The person becomes relaxed, but with relaxation he becomes detached too; with relaxation he starts looking at life as useless, meaningless. Tensions have to be transformed, tensions have to be used in a creative way so that they don’t destroy you – rather they create something.

 

India has suffered very much from these methods, in-active methods of meditation. The whole poverty of this country is because of these methods. For thousands of years we have been just drowning in ourselves, not thinking of anything else – not thinking of the society, not thinking of better roads, not thinking of better housing, not thinking of better food, not thinking of better hygiene – nothing! If a person can just close his eyes and be silent, we think enough is achieved.

 

Yes, this person will not go mad, that is certain, but just not going mad is not enough. It is not a qualification that you are not mad, that you sleep well, that you are not very tense. Good, but nothing to brag about. Something creative should be born out of your silence. So my emphasis is basically on active methods. Silence should come but through activity, creativity – through painting, dance, music… it should remain continuously joined with action so it does not annihilate action; on the contrary it enhances it.

 

So help people – your work is beautiful! Wherever people come in contact with people it is a beautiful work. When people work only with tools, mechanical tools, it is not very happy work because if you work too long with machines you become… you tend to become a machine. If you work with people you remain alive.

 

- Osho, ”This Is It, #7”