Osho talks about psychoanalysis

Question:
What does the revelation of the unconscious, as in psychoanalysis, bring to humanity — according to you?

Osho:
Almost nothing. Psychoanalysis is a futile exercise because it changes nothing: it does not create a new man, it does not bring peace to you. In fact even the founders of psychoanalysis like Sigmund Freud were so much afraid of death that you cannot believe it. No normal being is so afraid of death.

The founder of psychoanalysis was so afraid that even the word “death” was not to be pronounced in front of him — it was taboo. It was not to be talked about. Three times it had happened that somebody mentioned death and Sigmund Freud fell in a swoon, in a fit, became unconscious. He was so afraid of death that he avoided going to any cemetery, he avoided going to anybody who was dying, even a friend or disciple. Wherever there was anything concerning death he was absolutely panicked — and this man gives you psychoanalysis!

His problems are not solved. He gets angry just like anybody else. He is jealous, more jealous than anybody else. He is greedy. He wants to monopolize, he wants to dominate people. He creates almost an empire of psychoanalysts around the world, but everybody has to repeat like parrots whatever he says. Anybody who says anything different is immediately expelled. It seems it is not science but a political party or a fanatic religion — not scientific research.

And the same is true about Jung. Jung came to India to meet someone… because in the East people have been working on the mind for thousands of years. But they have never developed anything like psychoanalysis; they developed meditation — a totally different approach.

What is the use of analyzing the rubbish of the mind? — sorting it out… it takes years. There are people who have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years and they have reached nowhere. They have changed their psychoanalyst in the hope that perhaps somebody else will help, but they have not reached anywhere else. They cannot, because all that psychoanalysis does — all the schools, whether Adlerian or Jungian or Freudian — is to sort out the rubbish of your mind, interpret it according to their minds. And what is the point of it all?

In the East we have not developed psychoanalysis, we have developed meditation. Meditation simply takes you away from the garbage, takes you beyond the garbage — it is not worth bothering about. And if you want to bother about it you can go on bothering for lives. You will not come to an end.

But just being a witness to your mind, without doing anything to the mind — just being aloof, just seeing it as if thoughts are moving on a screen and simply watching it without any judgment of good and bad — a strange experience happens: thoughts slowly start disappearing. Soon a moment comes when there is only an empty screen — no thoughts. And when there is no object, no thought for your consciousness, it turns back upon itself because there is nothing preventing it; that is exactly the meaning of the word ‘object’ — it prevents, it objects.

When there is no object the consciousness goes… and just as everything moves in circles in existence, consciousness also moves in a circle. It comes back upon its own source. And the meeting of the consciousness with its own source is the explosion of light, the greatest celebration that a man is capable of, the greatest orgasmic experience.

And it is not something that happens and is finished. No, once it has happened, it continues. It remains with you. It becomes almost like your breathing. You live in it twenty-four hours a day.

Jung had come to India in search of someone, to find out what the East has done to create so many people like Gautam Buddha — not one but hundreds who have gone beyond mind and all its troubles and problems, worries, anxieties. What is the secret? He was going to universities, meeting psychoanalysts, and everywhere he was told, “You are wasting your time. These people are not the right people. These people have gone to the West to learn psychoanalysis and they are teaching psychoanalysis in the universities. You have come to search and seek somebody who is absolutely untouched by the West. And there is a man.”

And there was a man — Shri Raman Maharshi. Wherever Jung went — and he was there for three months — everywhere the same name was given to him. “Go to Arunachal in South India and meet this man who is uneducated, who knows nothing of psychoanalysis; he is the man the East has been able to produce. Just go and sit with him and talk with him and listen to him. If you have some questions, ask him.” But you will be surprised: Jung never went there.

And later on, feeling that he will be criticized, Jung wrote, “I consideredly did not go to Raman Maharshi because the East has its own way, the West has its own way, and they should not be mixed” — just to protect himself from criticism. Then why did he go to India at all? He was told again and again to go to a man who was available, which is rare, and he did not go there, although he went up to Madras, from where it was only a two hour journey to Arunachal!

Jung did not go to the man, whom just by meeting he would have seen how a clear man is, how a man is who has cleaned his mind completely — his eyes, his gestures, his words, his authority. He does not quote scriptures, he knows himself.

Jung did not go there, and he himself felt guilty. To defend himself he started writing that the East and the West have different ways. This is nonsense, because man — whether in the East or in the West — is the same. And it is strange that he was teaching Eastern students Western psychology. He should have refused because this is mixing East and West. If he was really honest then he should have said, “You go back to the East.”

He was teaching Eastern students Western psychology, but he was not ready to go to an Eastern meditator, just to meet him. What is the fear? The fear is that Jung is as normal a person as you are — just knowledgeable. He has gathered from books, but he has no authentic experience of his own.

Western psychoanalysis is just a business. It is cheating people. It is simply exploiting people without any help, and because there is no other alternative people have to go to it. The psychoanalysts themselves go to other psychoanalysts. And psychoanalysts go mad more than any other profession! They commit suicide more than any other profession; they are more perverted in every way than any other profession.

It is a very strange phenomenon. It is not a science at all, it is just a fiction. But it has become a big profession. In fact, Jews missed Jesus — who created the biggest firm, that of Christianity — and Jews have never been able to forgive themselves. Their own son was going to create such a big firm, and they crucified the poor boy!

Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx are also Jews — and these two have tried hard to compensate for what Jews missed when they crucified Jesus. This time they did not crucify Karl Marx. Neither did they crucify Sigmund Freud. They have learned the lesson that crucifixion is costly: the whole business goes into other people’s hands!

Osho – ‘The Path of the Mystic’, chapter 1
4 May 1986 pm in Punta Del Este, Uruguay.