Question: Many times when I work with people I feel very frustrated if they walk out before I believe they are ready to leave. Does being a therapist mean learning to live with this? Am I trying to play god and interfere with the way people want to live their lives? Osho: There is no need to be afraid that you are playing God. Many are doing it. Nobody is entitled to do it. The best that you can be is not playing the role of God, but being a real friend. The therapist has to be a real friend. He has to show his compassion, his love, his understanding. He has to make the patient feel that for the first time he is being respected as an individual, as a human being. If you start playing the God, he is again humiliated. That's what he has been suffering his whole life in the world. The priest is playing the God, the politician is playing the God, and there are small gods, the whole hierarchy. Hindu religion have thirty-three million gods. Perhaps they need so many for a hierarchy to run this whole universe, the whole bureaucracy. And then there are small gods everywhere. A therapist has to be humble, has to be a friend. He is not a priest. He is not there to dictate your life. He is there simply to stand on your feet. He is not going to walk on your behalf. If you fall he will help you to get up again, but you have to walk on your own. Everybody has to walk on his own. But it is very easy for people to play God, particularly in a therapeutic situation where there are people who are available to you and whatever you want to do, they are ready to do it. Their trust should not be in any way misused. Their trust is of immense value. You can pay it only by friendliness. Make it clear from the very beginning that I have nothing to do with running your life. Your life is your life. I can help you to be clear, to be more alert, to be more conscious, and then it is up to you. It is your life: whatever you want to do, do it! Do it more intelligently, more lovingly, more creatively. I can teach you how to be more creative, but I am not going to tell you that you start painting. Just teaching how to be more creative is not running anybody's life. The person may start painting, the person may start sculpture, the person may start playing a flute, a guitar. The person may start dancing, or the person may find some other way of creativity. That is up to them. What they make out of their life is none of your business. Your business is that whatever they do.... I'm reminded of one great mystic, Nagarjuna. He was one of the rarest men who have ever walked on the earth. People like Aristotle and great logicians of the West stand nowhere in his comparison. His reasoning, his logic, is just so immense, so complex, so penetrating. Yet the man was such a humble man. Naked, he roamed around India as a beggar. Kings were his followers. One queen gave him a begging bowl, because that was his only possession. She insisted that she wants to change the begging bowl. He should give his wooden begging bowl which was rotting, old. And she said I have made a begging bowl for you. So he changed it. When he opened the cover of the begging bowl he said, "This is going to create unnecessary difficulty." It was a golden bowl, studded with diamonds. He said, "I am a naked man, and this begging bowl studded with diamonds, so precious, I cannot manage to keep it, even for a few hours. Because just now after my lunch I am going to sleep and I sleep in the ruins outside the city in the temples, anywhere I can find a shelter. Who is going to take care of this bowl?" But he said, "Let us see what happens." As he was going back to his ruins where he was staying, a thief saw the bowl in the hands of a naked man. He could not believe his eyes. He had never seen such a precious thing, and he was o studded with diamonds, so precious, I cannot manage to keep it, even for a few hours. Because just now after my lunch I am going to sleep and I sleep in the ruins outside the city in the temples, anywhere I can find a shelter. Who is going to take care of this bowl?" But he said, "Let us see what happens." As he was going back to his ruins where he was staying, a thief saw the bowl in the hands of a naked man. He could not believe his eyes. He had never seen such a precious thing, and he was o studded with diamonds, so precious, I cannot manage to keep it, even for a few hours. Because just now after my lunch I am going to sleep and I sleep in the ruins outside the city in the temples, anywhere I can find a shelter. Who is going to take care of this bowl?" But he said, "Let us see what happens." As he was going back to his ruins where he was staying, a thief saw the bowl in the hands of a naked man. He could not believe his eyes. He had never seen such a precious thing, and he was one of the greatest thieves around. He said, "How this man can manage? At least in the night he will sleep." He dropped all other businesses. He said, "For twenty-four hours I will not be available. I have to follow this man. Who knows where he is going, and he seems to be a little strange type. Where he got this begging bowl?" Nagarjuna reached inside the ruins of the temple. The thief was hiding behind a wall, near a window. Nagarjuna laughed loudly and he said, j"Don't sit there unnecessarily. Just come in." The thief became very much afraid that how he managed to know? He knew because that man was following him out of the town, went on following him, and as he entered the temple, he watched where he is going. Because it was a ruin, so he could see. He has gone at the back and sitting behind a wall. He said, "Don't unnecessarily... that doesn't look good. I am your host. You are my guest. Come in." The poor thief has to come in, nervous, that who knows what this man is going to do. He said, "Don't be nervous at all. Just take the bowl for which you have come. You have not come for me. So it is none of my business to interfere between you and the bowl. You take it, but be careful. It is a gift from the queen. Don't get into unnecessary trouble. So be careful, and just run away before anybody sees you." The thief could not believe this man. He is giving him such a precious thing, and even suggesting ways how he can protect himself. And finally Nagarjuna said, "If you are caught, dont be worried, just tell I have given it to you. And this is the truth. You have not stolen. I have given it to you, and I have every right over my begging bowl. So don't be worried if you are caught -- and I cannot think that you will not be caught. Where you are going to sell this begging bowl? Where you are going to sell these precious stones? Everybody knows those precious stones belong to the queen. Be careful. And I will be here two, three days more. If any trouble arises, you can always send a message to me." The thief listened to Nagarjuna and said, that "In my life I have never seen such a man. Now that you have given me such a precious gift, can I ask you one thing: how you became so courageous, so non-greedy, so beautiful? What has made you the man you are?" Nagarjuna said, "You can try it. It is a simple method of meditation. Do everything with consciousness, awareness. Anything done in awareness is right; anything done in unawareness is wrong. That is my whole philosophy." The thief said, "I will try. I have never tried anything in my life, but whatever you are saying I can believe in it. I can trust you." The next day the thief came back. He said, "You are really dangerous. Last night I entered into the richest man's house. I opened the lock of the room where he is preserving tremendously valuable things. But a trouble arose: I could not enter the room. The door was open, the things were available, the man was fast asleep. Such an opportunity has never happened before. It must have been your blessing, just that I came to you. This fortune came on me from nowhere. But the trouble was whenever I will take my step up I lose my consciousness. I became interested into things what to take, what not to take. Can I manage everything in one time, or I will have to come twice? I started thinking and forgot being aware. And as I remembered it, I had to pull my feet back because I had promised you. And I cannot go against the promise of such a man. So I had to return empty-handed. I have brought your begging bowl; you take it back. And initiate me into your disciple. Now I cannot steal any more -- my awareness prevents me." Nagarjuna said, "It is your life. If you want to become a disciple, perfectly good. But you are deciding it. I never decide anybody's life." There will be people who may be on drugs, who may be thieves, who may be doing all kinds of crimes. And it is human to tell them not to do this, not to do that. And then strangely you start playing the God, you start managing other people's life. Don't ever do that, because that is simply inhuman. It is worse than his stealing, than his drugs, than his wrong kind of life. Playing God is worse than all of that. Remember to be a friend. And you will be able to help many, many people, just by being friend. Source: from book “The Last Testament, Volume 2” by Osho   ^Top                                                            Back to Therapy