Your mind gets sick when it’s stuffed with too much and you keep doing what doesn’t work; sit quietly to digest and let go, and learn to stop the dead ends.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
What is neurosis and what is the cure for it?
This was my experience. When I was a student I was surprised at my professors' knowledge because it was thirty years old. It was when they were young that they had gathered it from their teachers. Since then they had not looked at what had happened That knowledge was absolutely useless. I was constantly in conflict with my professors, I was thrown out of many colleges, expelled, because the professors said that they could not cope with me. And I was not creating any trouble, I was simply making them aware that what they were saying was out of date. But that hurts the ego. They had learned it in their own university days and they were thinking that the world had stopped then and there. Now students cannot depend on teachers and children cannot depend on their parents, hence a great rebellion is on the way all over the…
Question: it is an interesting coincidence that your meditation technique of release through intense chaotic breathing evolved at the same time that certain chaotic therapy techniques were happening in the west, such as r.d.laing's theory that schizophrenia is not something to be fought, but something to be experienced voluntarily. Laing has said that you cannot be sane until you have been non-sane or insane. Then there is wilhelm reich's use of sexual energy to release body blocks that coincide with neurosis; this technique was the inspiration for the therapy which is called bio-energetics, a
Ordinarily, it may look very difficult to be non-neurotic in a neurotic world. It is difficult in a way. If you get too serious, it is very difficult. If you start fighting with insane men and you start fighting with everything they have created, it will be difficult. But you can fight only if you are still insane. Otherwise you will laugh; there is no need to fight. There is no need to fight! You will laugh! Then you will act. A wise man is an actor; he is not serious because there is no need to be serious. You know that all around you are madmen, so there is no need to be serious with them. You can act, and only if you act can you help them. There is a proposal of R.D.Laing's that doctors in asylums for the mad should not be there as doctors but as…
A master who lived as a hermit on a mountain was asked by a monk: 'what is the way?' 'what a fine mountain this is,' the master said in reply.'I am not asking you about the mountain,' said the monk, 'but the way.' the master replied: 'so long as you cannot go beyond the mountain, my son, you cannot reach the way.'
In the East, particularly in Japan -- because of zen -- a totally different treatment has existed for at least one thousand years. In zen monasteries... these are not in any way hospitals, not meant for ill people, but in a village, if a zen monastery exists, it is the only place; if someone goes mad or neurotic, where to go? In the East always they bring the neurotic people to the master because if he can treat normal people, why not neurotics? The difference is only of degree. So they will bring the neurotic people to the zen monastery, to the master, and they will say, 'What to do? You take charge of him.' And he will take charge. And the treatment is really unbelievable! The treatment is -- no treatment at all. The man has to be given a solitary cell somewhere at the back of the monastery,…
Why is modern man so neurotic?
Adolf Hitler shouted from the housetops. He was not whispering. He gave slogans -- clear-cut, well-defined. All that he gave is nonsense, but that is not the point. People are not worried about sense or nonsense, their whole thing is they want somebody who can shout so confidently that they can follow easily without any turmoil in their being. They followed Adolf Hider. It happens again and again in the history of man, intelligent people follow very unintelligent leaders. And this has been a problem for psychoanalysts: why does it happen? Now, just look at India -- a country which has cultivated intelligence for at least ten thousand years, and now following a man like Morarji Desai. This seems just unbelievable. Why should it happen? There is a reason for it. People who think, the MORE they think, the more they become hesitant. They start talking in ifs and buts;…
How exactly to treat the following ailments: first: miserliness. Second: nagging, worrying perfectionism. Third: actor personality, that is, always behaving as if on show. Fourth: pride. This includes pride about what I have lately begun to think is my peacefulness. Is meditation sufficient to deal with these, or is anything additional needed, such as consciously indulging in them to the extreme or trying to ignore them or perhaps consciously avoiding them?
Perfection is a false ideal, but the ego wants it The ego wants to be perfect, so it goes on nagging you: "Become perfect." Then it creates tensions, madness, insanities, and the ego goes on creating ego trips. Just the other day I was reading a definition. The definition says, "The neurotic person is one who makes castles in the air, and the psychotic person is one who lives in those castles, and the psychiatrist one who collects the rent." If you want to become neurotic, psychotic, then try to become perfect. And all the religions on the earth up to now -- organized religions, the church -- have been teaching people to become perfect. Jesus has not taught that. Christianity has. Buddha has not taught that. But Buddhism has. All the organized religions have been teaching people to become perfect. Buddha, Jesus, Lao Tzu, they told something totally different;…