Osho on Psychotherapy  

BELOVED MASTER,

I HAVE COME ACROSS A STATEMENT BY R.D. LAING THAT MADNESS IS NOT BREAKDOWN, IT IS BREAKTHROUGH. OUR MEDITATION CAMPS, WHENEVER THEY ARE CONDUCTED, ARE SEEN AS A BREAKDOWN, EVEN BY PSYCHIATRISTS. IS IT JUSTIFIED AND ETHICAL FOR PATIENTS OF DEPRESSION TO BE GIVEN DYNAMIC MEDITATION? PLEASE ADVISE. I AM MERELY A SURGEON.

Krishna Teertha Bharti, R.D. Laing is bringing a radical change into the world of therapy. He is not an ordinary psychiatrist; he is a revolutionary psychiatrist. He understands me and what I am doing here. He goes on sending his books to me. He reads what is happening here, what I am saying, what I am teaching. He has been meeting with sannyasins in London — he is immensely interested. But he is a revolutionary and his insight is great, and I agree with him in toto. He is right: madness is not a breakdown; it is a breakthrough.

But one thing I would like to say: all madness are not breakthroughs. But every madness can be transformed into a breakthrough; and that should be the work of the therapist. Even if the madness is a breakdown, the function of the therapist is to help the breakdown to be transformed into a breakthrough. Otherwise, what is your purpose? What are you doing?

Up to now, the function of the therapist has been to normalize the person, to bring him back to his old self. And what was his old self in the first place? It is his old self that has brought this state of madness. If you bring him back to the old self you are simply postponing the same thing happening again. Sooner or later he will again become mad. Maybe you are helping him for temporary relief. Unless his breakdown becomes a breakthrough, you have not been a real help to him.

My methods of meditation are methods for future psychotherapy. The orthodox, the ordinary psychiatrists will be against my methods, because they cling to the old idea. They are afraid of the breakdown — I am not afraid of the breakdown. Breakdown simply means the change has started. Breakdown simply means all the old strategies, all the old securities, have failed. Breakdown simply means that your old personality is of no use anymore. You need a new being, a new birth…

The whole world needs a breakdown! But just a breakdown is not going to help. Before the world goes through that breakdown — and the day is coming closer every day — methods and devices have to be invented, innovated, which can transform the breakdown into a breakthrough. That’s what my meditation techniques are: a preparation for the future, a preparation, an absolutely necessary preparation, for something which is going to happen. Humanity IS on the verge of a breakdown — we have come to the very end of the tether. Now there is no more, we cannot go on any longer in this way. The old patterns have been outlived; they are all outdated. … …

But your psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, are in the service of the past; hence they will be against my methods. Their whole effort is somehow to patch up people. If some hole appears, they simply patch it up, if some wound appears, they cover it up. They keep you functioning efficiently as a clerk in an office, as a deputy collector, as a police inspector, as a stationmaster, etcetera. They are not interested in your humanity. Their interest is only that you should remain a functioning member of society, mechanically useful, that’s all.

My purpose is totally different: I want you to be a human being. I want you not only to be a human being but to rise towards being divine. You ask me, Krishna Teertha Bharti…. He is a surgeon, a doctor; naturally this question has arisen in his mind. You ask me, “Is it justified and ethical for patients of depression to be given Dynamic Meditation?”

What else can be more justified and more ethical, because to be a sufferer of depression simply means he has repressed too much. Depression is nothing but repression. He is depressed so much because he has not been allowed to express himself. Dynamic Meditation is expression. In expressing himself, in catharting all that has been repressed in his unconscious, he will be unburdened, he will become saner, healthier.

Everybody who has been brought up in our societies needs some methods to vomit anger, sex, greed, jealousies, envies. You are sitting on a volcano… and the volcano can erupt at any moment! If catharsis is allowed; and that’s what Dynamic Meditation is all about — the volcano will disappear. You will become saner.

Source:

Listen to complete discourse at mentioned below link.

Discourse series: The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha, Vol 7 Chapter #4

Chapter title: A real man is unpredictable

1. December 1979 am in Buddha Hall

References:

Osho has spoken on ‘meditation, Dynamic meditation, psychotherapy, psychoanalysis’ in many of His discourses. More on the subject can be referred to in the following books/discourses:

1. The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha
2. The Discipline of Transcendence
3. From Death to Deathlessness
4. I Am That
5. Light on the Path
6. My Way: The Way of the White Clouds
7. Sat Chit Anand
8. The Path of the Mystic