According to Osho, Western psychotherapy is a remedial, adjustment-centered science that repairs the sick so they can function 'normally.' Buddha’s psychotherapy begins where normality ends: it addresses the healthy who sense life’s hollowness and seeks truth. Its goal is 'ultimate health'—awakening—guiding an already stable person beyond comfort and efficiency to freedom from existential madness, death-fear, and futility.
Western therapy helps you work normally; Buddha’s way helps already-normal people find deeper truth and peace beyond mere comfort.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Osho, what is the relationship between meditation and patience?
If you sit to meditate to remove mental restlessness, you will keep looking back again and again: “Has it gone yet?” And the irony is that when you begin to meditate, restlessness will increase. Because what has been repressed will start surfacing; catharsis will begin. The rubbish you have kept hidden within and never allowed to express—meditation will break open those doors too. It will clean the house. Dust piled up for years, for births, will rise again; there will be gusts and storms. For a while even the little peace you had will be lost. Then you will panic: “I came for peace, and even what I had is gone.” Without patience, you could even become unhinged, because meditation brings such a great storm. The disease is not from a day or two; it’s from lifetimes. Meditation will break through all the layers to reach your innermost core. In…
Osho, what is the relationship between meditation and patience?
If you sit to meditate to remove mental restlessness, you will keep looking back again and again: “Has it gone yet?” And the irony is that when you begin to meditate, restlessness will increase. Because what has been repressed will start surfacing; catharsis will begin. The rubbish you have kept hidden within and never allowed to express—meditation will break open those doors too. It will clean the house. Dust piled up for years, for births, will rise again; there will be gusts and storms. For a while even the little peace you had will be lost. Then you will panic: “I came for peace, and even what I had is gone.” Without patience, you could even become unhinged, because meditation brings such a great storm. The disease is not from a day or two; it’s from lifetimes. Meditation will break through all the layers to reach your innermost core. In…
Beloved Osho, what do you mean by "the psychology of the buddhas?" how is it different from the present psychology that prevails in the world?
It has to be understood; the people who came to Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, were all sick people -- obviously, otherwise why should they come to the psychoanalyst? They were seriously sick, their minds were falling apart. Sigmund Freud came in contact only with sick people -- that gave him the impression that man himself is sick. In a way he is logical because everybody he examined, everybody he analyzed, everybody he treated was sick. And these were high-class people, bourgeois -- professors, scientists, very rich people -- because a psychoanalyst's time is the costliest thing in the world today. All these people were basically living an insane life, but because everybody else is also living the same insane life you don't become aware of it. If Sigmund Freud denied that there is any possibility of a soul in man he cannot be blamed. He never came…
Beloved master, you speak on the psychology of the buddhas, the psychology of transcendence, as the essence of the work happening here in the buddhafield. What is the uniqueness of this third psychology? Is there a psychotherapy of transcendence?
Meditation, awareness, watchfulness, witnessing -- that is the uniqueness. No psychoanalyst is needed. You can do it on your own; in fact, you have to do it on your own. No guidelines are needed, it is such a simple process -- simple if you do it; if you don't do it, it looks very complicated. Even the word 'meditation' scares many people. They think it something very difficult, arduous. Yes, if you don't do it it is difficult and arduous. It is like swimming. It is very difficult if you don't know how to swim, but if you know, you know it is so simple a process. Nothing can be more simple than swimming. It is not an art at all; it is so spontaneous and so natural. Be more aware of your mind. And in being aware of your mind you will become aware of the fact that you…
Osho, to rise above mental afflictions like lust, anger, greed and attachment, and states like ego and stupefaction, the Buddha, Mahavira, and all Indian saints have prescribed only practices such as meditation-awakening, devotional singing and chanting, and satsang. But why are you—on what basis—adding new means like therapy-groups (group psychotherapy) along with other methods for Indian friends? Kindly explain.
I have no desire for your respect or your applause. I am not here to reproduce any enlightened one. I will live in my own way. I will say what is mine to say. So drop these expectations. Don’t keep throwing names like Buddha, Mahavira, and the rishis and munis at me; you bore me with them. Let them be. If you meet them somewhere, ask them why they don’t conduct group psychotherapy! I will live in my own way. I am a category unto myself. I am not a repetition of anyone, nor do I have any taste for that. Time is changing. It changes every day. What was needed then, the Buddha would have done. What is needed today, I will do. That need did not exist then. People were simple, straightforward, rural. Understand a little. If a woodcutter who chops wood daily comes here, I will not…