According to Osho, psychic health is not fully possible without a religious view; at best it is partial. Human wholeness spans body, mind, and soul, and the mind stays lopsided without the soul’s dimension. As awareness of death emerges, religion becomes the doorway to meaning and integration; neglecting spirit breeds inner starvation, anxiety, and a sense that something essential is missing.
To feel truly okay inside, you need to care for your spirit too, not just your body and thoughts—especially because knowing we’ll die makes us seek deeper meaning.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Is psychic health possible apart from a religious view of the world?
No. Only partially is it possible. Man has three planes of his being: the body, the mind and the soul. The mind is just in between, it is a bridge. Half consists of the body, half consists of the soul. So if you drop the religious dimension completely, the mind can never be whole; it will always be half, something will be missing. That's what Carl Gustav Jung came to know at the latter stage of his life. He must have treated thousands of patients. In the end he asserted, "This has been my observation: that the age of forty-two seems to be bringing something new in the life of man. Just as at the age of fourteen sex enters, so at the age of forty-two religion has to enter. All people who suffer after forty-two are suffering somehow or other from the lack of the religious dimension." That is…
Osho, is psychology not sufficient for the transformation of man? After the birth of psychology, what need remains for religion?
Naresh! Psychology is not even interested in transformation. Psychology is interested in adjustment. It wants you to be adjusted to the crowd—so that you don’t slip out of it, don’t fall apart, don’t become isolated, but remain a part of the herd. Its entire strategy ensures you never become an individual, only an organ of society. The moment someone starts drifting from the social stream, shows signs of privacy, of individuality, we rush him to a psychologist: “Adjust him. Bring him back. He’s beginning to stray; he’s started to make his own footpath—put him back on the highway!” Psychology is not at all interested in transformation. Transformation means revolution. And the first revolution is freedom from society—becoming an individual. The first revolution is to be centered in the self. The first revolution is to drop the herd mentality. Ordinarily man is like sheep: wherever the flock goes, he goes. Ask…
Osho, this Kundalini sadhana—Is it psychic or spiritual?
You know that eating is physical, yet if one does not eat, the soul’s presence in the body will very quickly come to an end. Even though food goes to the body, if the body is in a certain condition, the soul can remain in it. So Kundalini is mental, psychic. But when Kundalini is in one state, there is movement toward the soul; in another state, there is no movement toward the soul. So it is psychic, but it becomes a step toward the spiritual. It is not spiritual in itself. If someone says Kundalini is spiritual, they are mistaken. If someone says food is spiritual, they are mistaken. Food is physical. Yet it becomes a foundation for the spiritual. Breath is material, and thought is also material; everything is material. Their subtlest form we are calling “psychic”—the subtlest form of matter. But all these become the basis for…
Can't psychoanalysis help people to know themselves? Is religion really necessary?
Sugeet, psychoanalysis can help a little bit, it can prepare the ground, but it cannot be a substitute for religion. In the West it is becoming a substitute for religion, and that is going to destroy something immensely beautiful. Religion is a totally different phenomenon from psychoanalysis. Religion is not analysis at all, religion is meditation. It is not thinking, it is not analysis. Psychoanalysis is concerned with the mind and helping the mind to become adjusted to society, to whatsoever is thought to be normal. It may be, it may not be. Usually the average is thought to be the normal, but the average is not necessarily the normal. The word normal comes from 'norm'; norm means the law. Normal is one who lives according to the law, the ultimate law, the ultimate norm. A Buddha is normal, a Jesus is normal, a Zarathustra is normal, a Bodhidharma is…
Beloved master, cannot psychoanalysis solve man's problems? Is religion really needed at all?
For example, in India, sex is taboo -- you should not talk about it -- but death is not taboo. You can talk about it; in fact, all the religious teachers talk about death. They make people so much afraid of death, talking again and again and again about it. They create so much fear in people that out of fear people start becoming religious. All Indian scriptures are full of the description of death. Death seems to be one of the most talked about subjects in India -- not sex. Sex is taboo. Sex is life, and if you choose death you cannot choose sex -- either/or. Freud did a great service to humanity; he brought sex from the dark corners of the soul into the open world. But immediately death became taboo; he himself became afraid of death. They are polar opposites, and the total man will be…