What is the proper role of psychotherapy, particularly group pyschcotherapy? Osho outlines it below. SN advocates a middle furrow. Psychotherapy has its place on the spiritual path, those who advocate a sort of anti-therapy line may not realise that it had a clearly defined role, even in early sannyas, which was not dissimilar to what Osho sketches below. Those who somehow dodged that part of their growth in the early days in retrospect do stand out as people who could have benefited from it.
“But remember, these groups are not the end; they only prepare you for meditation. They are not the goal; they are just simple means to undo the wrong of the past. Once you have thrown out of your system all that you have been repressing all along, I have to lead you into watchfulness. Now it will be easier to watch.
But you are not to become a group-addicted person, you are not to become a groupie. There are people now in the world who are group-addicted; they go from one group to another. One encounter finishes—then another marathon, then gestalt, then this and that…. After just a few days the itch arises—because where to express? In the normal society they cannot express, they have to repress. So the group becomes just an outlet. The normal society forces you to repress, the group helps you to express but you are not really growing. Again you will be back in the normal society, again repressing.
And if you express in the normal society, you will be getting into far more dangerous situations. You may murder somebody—you have so much anger. You will be in jail, imprisoned forever. Or if you go on fighting with everybody—if you slap the boss in the office, if you beat your wife, your children, your husband—then your whole life will become a chaos, it will be impossible to live it. So after a few days of accumulation you need another encounter. A few days of encountering and you feel unburdened; back in society you will be burdened again. This is not going to help. This is a temporary relief.
You can scream to your heart’s desire in a primal therapy group, but if you start screaming on the road, then you will be taken to the police station. You can scream in a group context—it is allowed, helped, provoked; you are persuaded to scream, because since your childhood you have been repressing it. It has become a wound; it needs to be opened. If the pus oozes out and the wound is left open to the winds and to the sun and to the rain, it will heal itself, because you have a healing energy; it is inbuilt. But back in the society again…how long can you remain in a primal therapy group? Back in the same old society again, you will have to repress; you cannot go on screaming there. Then the scream gathers, then the steam gathers. Then one day you have to go into the group again. This is a temporary relief; good as far as it goes, but it cannot make you a buddha.
That’s where this commune is different from institutes like Esalen. They end with groups—we begin with groups. Where they end, that’s exactly the point from where we begin.
And it is not a coincidence that thousands of therapists have become interested in my work. They have come here…. Among my sannyasins, the greatest group from any profession is that of psychotherapists. A great need is felt now all over the world that encounter, primal therapy, gestalt, can help a little bit to unburden people, but they cannot help to make them Buddhas—they cannot help them to become awakened.”
“That’s where this commune is different from institutes like Esalen. They end with groups — we begin with groups. Where they end, that’s exactly the point from where we begin.”
That´s where THIS COMMUNE is different from institutes…
It is not just people, creations of masters also can be vasectomised.
His words are not having the same meaning as once they were!
No, Shantam.
Your words have no meaning.
Your words are drivel.
Osho still speaks to millions.
But he refuses to take any more questions for discourse…which is understandable really.
Meditation, especially the ten day camps that Osho used to encourage early on, were a good preparation for many things, if done full-heartedly.
Actually, they were simply what was available in 1974/5, (when I was first in Poona) as the group craze had not arrived at that time at the ashram.
The pattern that arose from around 1977 was basically ordered in a slightly different way to what Osho describes. Meditations were encouraged when people first arrived, and then groups, and then the ‘final’ group of working in the ashram. I thought and still think that last description had and has some merit!
One sad fact was that a small number of power-hungry disciples basically never really did meditations or groups, but found themselves in positions of power within the ashram hierarchy – through connections or pushing themselves forward as if they were in a corporate business, not a place devoted to spiritual growth.
I can’t find the quote but Sheela, for example, boasted, as I remember, of being totally uninterested in meditation and had not done a single group. More’s the pity.
Parmartha, you think Devilish energy, non-meditative energy ended with Sheela?
History repeats itself, perhaps everywhere.
Tragedy is, Masters like Osho don´t repeat their arrivals. Visiting the planet last time and then no more visa, no more resident permit.
Therapies, Meditation, Working, Interacting are part of Osho´s work. Disciples were deciding themselves how long they want to continue anything out of the four. Master provided the base, disciples were free to paint on their canvas.
More than 95% money invested in the purchase and development of Osho Pune has come from groups and therapies, as ‘Essential Osho’ was always at cost price, it includes books, CDs, robes and meditations.
“Sheela, for example, boasted, as I remember, of being totally uninterested in meditation and had not done a single group.”
Does Parmartha’s anecdote remind you of anyone, Shantam?
Time to look in that mirror again….
Shantam says:
“Disciples were deciding themselves how long they want to continue anything out of the four.”
Sad to say, Shantam this was not the case in Poona 1(1974-81). Disciples were in fact definitely NOT deciding for themselves. The mood was of surrender and Osho himself gave me and maybe many thousands of others in darshan the groups we should do, and that after a proper preparation of his meditations.
The common graduation of this was to work in the ashram.
Of course, some people did do ‘their own thing’, but funny, because I never heard of them afterwards.
You yourself are no doubt talking of what seems a less surrendered period where you were in the ashram, Pune 2.
I don’t think Sheela had devilish energy.
The mistake was in the end Osho’s or those he put in charge of administration, or sadly, the old Indian genetic flaw of a sort of corruption within clans. She should never have been allowed to take ‘any’ responsibility until she had gone through some proper grounding in meditation etc. but suddenly, perhaps because of her father’s unselfish encouragement of Osho when he was much younger, she was thrust into a power position.
The same may or may not be true of those who now run the Resort’s affairs. I don’t know. But my life experience both in and out of sannyas does tell me that often quite inappropriate people become CE’s and whatnot, based on high doses of ambitious charm.
The only murderer (outside the armed forces) I ever knew had enormous charm (some call it psychopathetic charm) but was clearly enormously damaged – though the latter was often quite invisible.
Corruption, justice, New Age communes, psychology, growth…Centralized power structures and all that…
How anyone can still maintain that the large financial sums paid to single, growth-promotion individuals who have little evidence for ploughing back the gains made into socially egalitarian provision, a-la not-for-profit model or socially accountable mutual investment models or micro lending or etc. etc. (you get the picture) quite beggars belief and is an act of faith itself.
Take any motivational big name or institution in the world of New Age doo-dah and notice how much they pander to what Stanford University determined to be merchandisable sets of feelings. Now I don’t want to be absolutist about this, people can choose whatever they want in a world of developed choice.
Or even consider what I discovered recently, that the Yazidis of Iraq apparently believe there is no such thing as temptation from outside, that all is our own creation, which is quite an insight imo.
Have a look at this though, it’s also widely available as a download from torrentz etc:
http://tv.naturalnews.com/v.asp?v=98A048057A1347B631C2F5043F16D268
Great link, Martyn.
As a matter of huge interest, I recall the programme maker Adam Curtis being a regular face on the scene at Parly Hill tennis courts and GLC caff, back in the late 80′s…(which clearly makes me pretty important as well).
Satyadeva, with your boasting about Meditation, I will always say, “Fuck…what is this exercise?”
One of the reasons many well-intentioned people feel repulsed by the meditators for the simple reason, their boasting!
Typical, babyish Shantam remark.
Always blame someone else.
Always the victim.
Thanks for demonstrating, Shantam, how, finding itself uncomfortable and in a corner, the mind will seize upon any old fabrications, any old self-made lies and use them to attempt its escape from perceived humiliation.
The joke being, of course, that in so doing it merely exposes the person concerned – you in this case – as embarrassed by the truth and prepared to say anything to pretend the opposite, both to itself (yourself here) and to others (the readers, including me).
Such a puerile façade is simply transparent; in other words, Shantam, you might well be fooling yourself, as stupidity does, but you don’t fool me (or anyone with a modicum of common sense).
No, Shantam,
TRAGEDY is, that the strong medicine, that which was from the very beginning, including showing up then in personalities like Sheela, and also as structures of total untransparency (till nowadays by the way), power trips etc. have not led to a cure – obviously.
So much so, that the turning wheels of time with ‘new and old inhabitants’ and also some bitterness of what Parmartha called sort of ‘calamity cases’ who wouldn´t come on caravanserai-stage,
sometimes with very sophisticated revenge issues and /or on the other side, wellness ideas to deny the past at all and/or re-write history, so to say.
However, the best I can feel in all that is a strong longing for fellow-travellers and to connect with one another as the longing to stay connected to the wisdom whisperer Osho and His lovers.
And somehow it’s true: we also belong to that heritage like living ‘books’ and what a Trust from His side to honour our potential to mature, to grow up.
And the worst I can feel in that context is the greed for some Gurudom role.
Osho did foresee all that in His lifetime in the body and also spoke about it, but with His inconceivable humour and wisdom, which has been grounded in that which is and not in some fantasy fairy tale.
No, the medicine´s either not taken fully, working in body-mind-souls and my guess is, if more of that medicine had been taken individually, there would be MUCH LESS personalised and very abusive fights, ratings etc. (as games) going on in the Chat and elsewhere, and more of a sharing how to deal with friendship amongst fellow-travellers with the dignity and respect and honesty needed to gather courage
to move on, especially in very precarious times.
Madhu
Can someone tell me the point, please, of me writing in, as I’m considering disagreeing with my own opinion, although I need to come up with one to start with..?
I am convinced it might have something to do with being alive…but I could be wrong…
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Martyn, laughing and crying at seeing myself, thank you!
Karima, you’re very welcome.
Some feel ‘alive’, Prem Martyn, if they torture themselves, some feel ‘alive’ if they torture others, and again, not a few feel ‘alive’ when gong into a peep show to look at such distortion.
And some gain their ‘living’, how one says, by torture games and their distribution, and again some of those belong to any obnoxious secret services games with human life.
The ‘Monty Python’ show is but a parable of distorted life.
And I would like to ask you:
What is YOUR reality, and what did YOU here want to share, and to share concerning the issue of the thread?
And with whom? And about what?
Madhu
“The ‘Monty Python’ show is but a parable of distorted life.”
Madhu, first and foremost, ‘Monty Python’ was/is about having a huge laugh at the utterly comic absurdity of human life.
Hasn’t anyone ever suggested you have a worrying (especially for you) tendency to take things far too seriously? I mean, the sort of response you’ve given here could itself easily be ‘sent up’, made into the centre of a ridiculously comic sketch!
Maybe you are alone too much (I know how things can get somehow ‘distorted’ under such conditions), maybe, to use a common English admonition, ‘you need to get out more’?
And (I wonder if the Editor will let me get away with this?!), tell me, does Scorpio figure significantly in your birth-chart, by any chance? Saturn’s been transiting that sign for nearly two years now, causing all sorts of ‘chickens to come home to roost’ (English saying meaning, in this context, that many personal issues previously hidden or avoided have been ‘forced’ into the awareness of those with a strong Scorpio influence, eg me – and you?).
Thank you, Prem Martyn, for sharing some more reference points of yours, mentally, emotionally and spiritually.
What happened to me is that when I went a bit deeper into the ancient culture you mentioned – the Yazidis of Iraq – via the present and some of the past information of the big Wiki brain
me – for the moment ended – (MOD: NOT SURE WHAT YOU MEAN HERE, MADHU: me – for the moment ended) after reading about their culture (with reference points to Gurdjieff too),
I ended in the report of a very young Yazidi woman who in 2007 (!), stoned to death by her own family in her village – and her name was Du´a Khalil Aswad. –
So, I – as a woman – need a break.
And yet – thank you for giving reference as it is clear anyway that our all global problems up to a very individual space are rooted in the ocean of unconsciousnesses, and most of the time we don´t really come to know what´s ruling our actions or prejudices.
Once again, being in deep Gratitude for a Master like Osho for pointing out the latter.
Being a bit shaky, I will have a walk to and into the greenery zones here-now…
And wish you all well – and me too.
Madhu
The basic premise is that something, a soul, consciousness, awareness etc is to be brought about, constructed etc. Often in esoteric teachings, spiritual development is metaphorically described as a building of some kind. For example, Gurdjieff taught that we live on the first three floors of a building. Higher floors are available and open to us, but we have to learn how to access them. Christ said, “in My Father’s house are many mansions.” In New Age parlance we hear of our body being a temple and to treat it as such.
In the Osho construction company it was made perfectly clear that in order to get one’s house in order the first thing to do was clean out the basement. No building will last constructed on a rotten foundation. Therapy is perhaps the best way to get the job done. Catharsis was a big element in Osho’s work. I don’t believe he would have implemented such a messy procedure had he not thought it necessary.
Of course, some got so into that they became stuck there, while others never bothered because they were and are so full of shit they are blind to their situation and when speaking on the matter their ignorance is clearly evident. Those who passed through the process were benefited by it and moved onto the next stage…meditation, a more wholesome life etc.
Osho should be respected for pushing the catharsis agenda. He took risks doing that and those of us who entered the fire did also. For the times we live in it was one of his most intelligent moves.
“Hasn’t anyone ever suggested you have a worrying (especially for you) tendency to take things far too seriously?”
Oh yes, Satyadeva, but up to now not in such a nice, polite and even kind of compassionate way. I got even a private e-mail with the suggestion to cancel my responses here so far -
I still have it as a ‘reminder’ – and a reminder is sometimes worth keeping as long as one is in need of it.
I am not as naive as I may appear here quite often, but yet I am naive and I tend to say sometimes that that is a very beautiful side of myself, precious – also, deserves to be taken care of (by myself).
One possible short excursion may be of the ‘Scorpio’ thing you mentioned.
Another ‘Saturnical’ could be that I broke my left leg bones badly last year, have a lot of metal still inside, as other follow-ups on the body realms – painful and difficult too.
But, you know, somehow, a little more than two decades ago, to be concerned about astrology just dropped me, not the other way round. Ended with books of Liz Greene and her way to look at stuff like that and I was very grateful for the time being.
Madhu
MOD: THIS POST HAS BEEN EDITED.