Osho on Western psychoanalytic movement & Eastern movement of Meditation

Osho on difference between Western psychoanalytic movement and Eastern movement for meditation.

Osho - To me, to be natural, to be spontaneous is enough. All guides have been misguides. And you can see it: the whole universe of humanity is living in tremendous misguidance. Otherwise why should there be so much insanity? Why there should be so much misery, so much agony and spiritual suffering? The reason is that nobody has been allowed to be just himself, his natural being.

Your so-called religions don't trust nature; they trust in holy scriptures; they trust in dead words spoken thousands of years before by people we do not know. Whether they knew anything, or they were just creating fictions... unless you know, you can never be certain. But they are molding you according to patterns created in the past. This process of molding people into Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Buddhists, goes against the very basic human right; it does not allow you to be your natural self. And unless you are yourself, you cannot be happy.

Osho on Western psychoanalytic movement

Just think, if there were teachers teaching roses that they have to become lotuses... Fortunately, roses don't care about teachers and religions and churches. But just think for a moment: if people were there who were telling the roses to be lotuses, the marigolds to be roses, what would be the ultimate outcome of it?

Roses would try to become lotuses, which they can never become; it is not their self-nature. They can only be roses, beautiful, immensely graceful, fragrant. But if this idea of being somebody other than what their nature is, is imposed on them, two things will happen: they will never become lotuses, but their whole energy will be wasted in trying to become lotuses. And the second thing is they will not be roses either, because from where will they find the energy to be roses? That whole energy is making an effort for the impossible.

Actually the same has happened with humanity. Everybody is giving you an idea; everybody is ready to tell you how you should be. All "shoulds" and all "should nots" have to be abandoned. You simply have to listen to your own inner voice. And wherever it leads, just go without bothering whether people think it is right or wrong.

If you can become just your own self, if you can blossom into your intrinsic nature, then only you will have blissfulness -- a peace which cannot be expressed in words, and a certain poetry to your being; a certain dance to your being, because you will be in tune with existence. To be in tune with yourself is the only way to be in tune with existence. Nobody needs personal guidance, because all personal guidance is a beautiful name for dependence on somebody and he is going to distort you.

I don't give you any discipline -- I don't tell you, you should be this or that. I simply say you should become silent, so that you can listen to your still, small voice. That is your real guide; the guide is within you. I know hundreds of psychoanalysts, psychologists, so-called counselors. They are burdened with all kinds of problems, but they have just learned the technique, either from education or from the libraries. And they go on advising -- to advise is so simple. In their own lives they are not what they are advising. If you watch the life, as I have watched very closely the life of people like Sigmund Freud -- the topmost counselors in the world: Karl Gustav Jung, Alfred Adler, Assagioli -- I have been simply shocked to see that these people have become the guides to millions of people.

I remember one small incident... Wilhelm Reich, as a young psychoanalyst, was deeply interested to meet Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis. He had read in the universities and he was a genius, perhaps of a far greater quality than Sigmund Freud himself. Sigmund Freud was in his old age, just the last years, and this Wilhelm Reich was asking again and again for an appointment. Finally he got the appointment. And the way Sigmund Freud treated him is so inhuman, just because he was a young man, fresh from the university.

He had come with some significant questions, and he had created in his own mind a great image of Sigmund Freud, naturally. He asked, "I have come from far away to inquire a few things: One, you insist that unless a man is psychoanalyzed, completely psychoanalyzed, he will never be out of confusion and misery. Can you show me a man who has been completely analyzed, so I can just meet him and see what a completely clear man would be like? I have read about it, but I don't have any personal experience of meeting somebody who is beyond confusion and is pure clarity."

Sigmund Freud became angry, and he said, "What kind of nonsense... psychoanalysis is not a simple thing. It takes decades for anybody to become completely psychoanalyzed."
Reich was shocked, but he said, "You have been working your whole life. Have you psychoanalyzed any person completely, so that I can go and see the person? Because other than that there is no proof that what you are saying has any significance as far as science is concerned."

And seeing Sigmund Freud getting angry... because Sigmund Freud was not accustomed to such questions, he was surrounded with cronies, yea-sayers. Whatever nonsense he would say, they would say that it was a great truth. Seeing Sigmund Freud getting so angry, Reich said, "Drop that subject. I want to know whether you have been psychoanalyzed totally or not." And Sigmund Freud had to tell him, "Get out! And never again try to come to me; you don't know how to behave."

The reality is that all his life Sigmund Freud was being asked by his colleagues again and again, "Just as you psychoanalyze us, now we know the technique, why don't you get psychoanalyzed, by any of us you choose? We would like to have a look into your inner world of dreams, imaginations, desires, to see whether what you claim to be absolute clarity, peace, integrity is there inside you or not?"

He refused continuously; he never allowed himself to be psychoanalyzed, and he is the founder of psychoanalysis. Why was he so afraid to be psychoanalyzed? He knew perfectly well that it is easy to advise others, but it is difficult to transform yourself. He was suffering from ordinary human problems, the same tensions, the same misery, the same repressions, the same inhibitions, the same taboos. And he was afraid to open up his dream world because that would show things which would be a proof that although he was the founder, he himself was not what he was trying for the whole of humanity to be. The same is the situation today. Psychoanalysts themselves once in a while go to another psychoanalyst to be psychoanalyzed, because they have become too burdened with problems. It is such a stupid game.

If Gautam Buddha says anything about meditation it is his own experience, not just a theoretical, intellectual formulation. If he says something about the inner light, he has seen it. If he says it is possible to go beyond mind, he has gone beyond mind, only then he says it. And the people who watched him for forty-two years continuously never found any flaw, never found him at any time angry, at any time miserable, at any time sad. One cannot pretend for forty-two years continuously; one needs holidays! Even to pretend for a few hours to be what you are not is such a tension and such a burden that you are going to drop it and expose yourself at the slightest excuse. This is the difference between the Western psychoanalytic movement and the Eastern movement for meditation.

Source _ Osho Book "The Invitation"

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