Osho on Transpersonal Psychology and Psychology of the Buddhas

Osho on Transpersonal Psychology and Psychology of the Buddhas

Question - 'There is a new "Fourth Force" in Psychology -- Transpersonal Psychology -- which seeks to explore the needs and aspirations that go beyond self-actualisation and humanistic psychology.' so says Assagioli. Are 'transpersonal psychology' and your 'psycho-logy of the buddhas' synonymous?

Osho - They cannot be. Transpersonal psychology still remains psychology, still remains concerned with the objective, but the psychology of the Buddhas is not really a psychology because a Buddha is born when the psychology disappears, when the mind disappears.

And the psychology of the Buddhas is not objective, it is absolutely subjective. It can happen to you but you cannot watch it happen to somebody else, there is no way. You can become a Buddha but you cannot understand a Buddha. Even if Assagioli sits by the side of a Buddha for thousands of years he will not understand anything unless he becomes a Buddha. You cannot observe it, you cannot watch it from the outside because it is such an internal phenomenon, it is so deep inside, it is the very inside of being. All that you see will be nothing but a behaviouristic standpoint. Yes, you can see that the Buddha is silent, that he seems to be very graceful; you can see that he is less angry, or not angry at all; you can see a thousand and one things -- but still you will not be seeing Buddhahood itself.

When I talk about the psychology of the Buddhas one thing to be remembered is that it is not really a psychology. I have to use words. No word is adequate for it but I have to use some words -- but always take them with a pinch of salt. It cannot really be called a psychology. Psychology presupposes a mind and Buddha is a no-mind. Psychology presupposes that the mind is functioning, thinking, planning, worrying, imagining, dreaming -- and a Buddha has no dreaming, no planning, no worrying, no thinking. He simply exists. He exists like a rock, like a tree, like a river -- with just one difference, a very tremendous difference. The difference is that he exists without mind but full of awareness.

This awareness cannot be understood from the outside. If you try to understand it you will only misunderstand it. There is no way to check it by instruments, there is no way. It will not appear on any graph. All that can appear on a graph remains of the mind, it is not of the beyond. The beyond is beyond grasp. One has to become a Buddha, one has to become the awakened soul, one has to come to this awareness himself.

The psychology of the Buddhas is the yoga, the discipline, the inner journey, the science -- or whatsoever you want to call it -- of knowing that there is something inside you that can only be known through going there, through being there. No other way, no other approach is possible.

Assagioli goes on talking.... He is far better than Freud because at least he brings some vision of synthesis to psychology. Freud is analytical, analysis is his method. Assagioli brings a synthesis. But this synthesis is not what Buddhas talk about. This synthesis is a synthesis put together. Just think of something... I show you a rose flower. You take it apart, you want to know how it ticks. You take all the petals apart. This is what Freud did with the human mind -- he took it apart. He wanted to label everything, classify, categorise; he wanted to pigeon-hole everything.

Of course, when you take everything apart something disappears, because something was there -- the beauty of the rose flower -- which existed only with the whole. When you take a flower apart something mysteriously disappears. The flower disappears because the flower is not just the sum total of the parts, it is something more than the sum total of the parts. That 'more' is what religion is, that 'more' is what poetry is, and that 'more' cannot be taken apart. Once you take the parts apart something simply disappears, goes into non-existence, becomes unmanifest.

Now what has Assagioli done? He has put that flower together again. That flower which had been pulled apart by Freud has been put together by Assagioli -- he calls it psycho-synthesis. But this flower is dead, it is not that unity which existed before Freud analysed it. Assagioli presupposes Freud -- without Freud there can be no Assagioli, remember this. If Freud had not existed there would have been no Assagioli. Freud does half the work and the other half is done by Assagioli. Freud dissects, Assagioli unites.

But in the dissection the primal unity has disappeared. No, you can put it together but it will never be the same thing again. The flower cannot become alive again. Just by putting it together -- you can put it together very cleverly, you can glue it together with the best glue, invisible glue -- but still it will not be the same flower again. You will not be able to again produce that beauty that had existed before analysis.

That's why Zen says go and have a look at the face that you had before you were born, the primordial unity. Go into yourself to that remote existence of your being when you were not put together, when you were a pure soul, before your mother and father had put this body together, when you had not yet become embodied. Go there. Unembodied you were. Go there. Have a vision of that. Or, go and have a look at your face when you are dead and your body is going to be burned. This original face is something that has not been analysed.

The psychology of the Buddhas is not a synthesis, it is a non-analysis. Let my emphasis be clear. Assagioli is synthesis, Freud is analysis, the psychology of the Buddhas is non-analysis -- no dissection, otherwise we will go on changing arguments but we will remain in the same boat.

It happened....
The new inmate at the mental hospital announced in a loud voice that he was President Ford. This was particularly interesting because the institution already had a President Ford. The head psychiatrist decided to put the two men in the same room, feeling that the similarity of their delusions might prompt an adjustment that would help to cure them. They were introduced and left alone. No disturbance was heard from the room that night.
The next morning the doctor had a talk with his new patient. 'Doctor, I have been suffering from a delusion,' said the new inmate. 'I now know that I'm not President Ford.'
'That's wonderful,' said the doctor.
'Yes,' said the patient, 'I am Mrs. Ford.'

Now another illusion. From one illusion to another, it is not much of a change. Assagioli is not much of a revolution. Yes, he is creating an adjustment, but he remains a shadow of Freud. Freud looms large, Assagioli remains just a shadow to him. Without Freud he would not know where to go and what to do.

The psychology of the Buddhas is a totally radical standpoint. One has to go into one's own consciousness without dividing it, without analysing it, without judging it, without evaluating it, without condemning it, without saying anything about it. Just go into it and have a feel of it -- what exactly it is. The whole mind has to disappear, only then will you become aware of what it is -- because the mind goes on creating ripples on the surface, and the mirror remains disturbed and the mirror goes on distorting. When the mirror disappears completely the mind disappears completely, and then there is pure silence, KOKORO, nothingness, satori, samadhi -- that samadhi is the non-analytical state of your being. That is your primal state. That is what God is.
Assagioli still comes closer to Buddha than Freud -- but not very close.

A lady walked into a bar with a parrot on her shoulder. It kept saying, 'Guess my weight, guess my weight.' A fellow barstooler asked the lady what the meaning of that was and she replied, 'Guess my parrot's weight and you can come home and sleep with me.'

The man looked at the parrot and jokingly said, 'A hundred pounds.' The lady grabbed him by the arm and said, 'Come on, lover, that's close enough!'

That's how close Assagioli is to the psychology of the Buddhas.

Source - Osho Book "Zen: The Path of Paradox, Vol 1"

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Osho on Transpersonal Psychology