According to Osho, yes—one can become over-addicted to catharsis. The mind loves extremes, and overdoing even helpful practices turns them harmful, leaving you exhausted rather than renewed. The key is conscious balance: stop short of the limit, as with eating three-quarters full. In meditation, end catharsis when vitality drops or heaviness appears, staying in the middle where awareness deepens and the mind subsides.
Yes—if you push release too far, it drains you; listen to your energy and stop before you feel spent.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Can one get over-addicted to catharsis?
Yes. Mind has a very deep-rooted disease I call the disease of O.D: overdose; overdoing. Remain alert for this disease of O.D. You can do anything too much, and then, that which was going to be beneficial will become harmful. Food is good, it is vitality, but you can eat too much, then it becomes poisonous. You can die by overeating -- in fact, medical researchers say that people die more of overeating than of starvation. Newspapers go on reporting that a few people have died somewhere because of starvation, they never report how many people are dying by overeating -- that should be reported first. Always, more people are dying through overeating. A man can live for three months without eating anything at all. But you overeat for even three weeks, and you cannot survive. You try. For three days eat as much as you can.... It happened, Mulla…
Osho, meditation increases sensitivity. But as sensitivity grows, living seems to become more difficult—because the mind’s reactions become sharp and intense, and it feels as if one’s whole life is at stake at every small turn. In such a state, how can one find and hold the point of balance?
Certainly: as meditation deepens, sensitivity will also deepen. And with heightened sensitivity, problems grow too. Sensitivity means you will experience everything—every event—in its full velocity, with full intensity. If someone insults you, the way that hurt reverberates inside a meditator will not be the same for a non-meditator. If a thorn pricks, the meditator’s awareness of that sting will be much clearer than that of the non-meditator—because the non-meditator lives in a kind of stupor, a haze of unawareness. The duller the awareness, the less the pain is consciously felt. Perhaps that is exactly why we reduce our awareness—so we can feel less pain. Ask a psychologist and he will say: every child learns early how to numb their awareness. All children are born sensitive. Then they begin to kill their sensitivity—because living with raw sensitivity is very difficult. A certain blunting of feeling becomes “necessary.” That is why, at…
Beloved Osho, with meditation sensitivity increases, making life more difficult because one's reactions are so sharp and intense, and at every step it feels as though one's very life is at stake. How to attain the golden mean, the balance point, in this situation?
A very rich industrialist in Japan has erected a statue of himself outside his office. A very clever man! His psychologists counselled him to keep a statue of himself opposite his office. In his factory there are some ten thousand employees, and it has been announced to them that they should all feel free to maltreat the statue any way they choose! And it is an easy matter for anyone -- especially an employee -- to get angry. He does not need a reason. To have to serve someone else, to be someone's paid slave, is enough in itself to provoke anger. The workers, and even sometimes the managers, habitually abuse and mistreat the statue before they enter the factory, and this has had important results. What it has done is to create a psychological equality between the owner and his employees. We all behave like this. Even today we…
Af what point can catharsis be dropped?
It drops itself when it is finished. You need not drop it. By and by you will feel there is no energy in it. By and by you will feel that you are doing catharsis but they are empty gestures, the energy is not there -- in fact, you are pretending to do it, acting it; it is not happening. Whenever you feel that it is not happening and you have to force it, it has already dropped. You just have to listen to your heart. When you are angry, how do you know when the anger has disappeared? When you are sexual, how do you know that the sexuality has gone? Because the energy from the thought is no longer there. The thought may remain, but the energy is no longer there; it is an empty thing. You were angry a few minutes before: now, your face may be…
Osho, in the practice of Vipassana, when does catharsis occur? I practice Vipassana. How can my work in music assist me toward awareness?
Vipassana is an age-old method of meditation. It must have been discovered thousands of years ago; who discovered it, no one knows. It is a wondrous process, the simplest device to get acquainted with oneself. The word Vipassana means: to sit silently and become a witness to yourself. Pashy means: to see. Vipassana means: just sit silently within and watch. This breath came in, this breath went out—watch that too. The heart beat—watch that too. Sit silently inside and watch whatever is happening. And by and by, all the noises disappear and a vast emptiness surrounds you. Buddha spread the process of Vipassana throughout the world. But there is a hitch: two and a half thousand years have passed since Buddha. The method of Vipassana is the same, unchanged. But man’s waywardness is not the same—he has gone further and further into it. Vipassana is simple for an innocent, guileless…