According to Osho, cathartic therapies are valuable as preparatory 'spade work': they don't create insight or bliss, they clear the repressed layers—anger, fear, sexuality—that obscure it. In a safe, accepting group, you can discharge this 'poison' skillfully, protecting the inner rose. Then insight or bliss methods like Sufi dance become authentic and luminous; otherwise your practice merely recycles your repressions—rageful, dull, mechanical.
First clean out the hidden junk inside, then your dance or meditation shows the real you instead of your buried anger.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
Of what value are the 'cathartic' therapies: the reliving of one's traumatic moments or acting out of fears etc? Is not insight enough? Or bliss methods, such as sufi dance?
Mantra, insight is enough, but how to get the insight? It is hidden in much rubbish. The diamond is there, but it is hidden under much debris, dirt. The dirt has to be removed only then will the diamond be available, will the insight be available. The therapies do the spade work. If insight were available directly, it would have been very easy. Then you could become blissful any moment. But you are layers upon layers of repression. You have repressed your fear, you have repressed your anger, you have repressed your love, you have repressed your sex. You have repressed so many things! The insight is there, but these layers of repression have to be thrown out. The cathartic therapies help. They will not produce your insight, they will only clear the way. They will only make the insight available to you. The insight is there. Everybody has brought…
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…
So the first thing is, the first step is to revive your heart; hence my emphasis on dancing, singing creativity, painting. So something that needs your heart and put the mind aside as much as possible. To be here with me simply means to commune with me through the heart. It should not become an intellectual relationship, it should be a love relationship. The relationship between the master and the disciple cannot be intellectual. First it has to be a loving relationship, heart to heart -- and then finally it has to be an existential relationship, even deeper than the heart. These are the three centres. First, the most superficial, is the head; the second, is the heart, which is just in between the three centres; and the third is your being.
Osho, you have earlier said, “Live moment to moment, live in the present.” Now you are saying, “Return to the past.” What should we do?
So it is with the mind—there are ruts. The past means endless grooves. However much you understand, your intellect agrees, you make decisions, you resolve—at the moment of resolve you feel something is going to change. But not even an hour passes before your decision breaks. Then only self-condemnation is produced, nothing else. Your saints, your fakirs, your priests and pundits—most of the time they only succeed in producing self-condemnation in you, nothing else. Their words are logically correct. You cannot even say they are wrong; you have to admit they are right. In that admission you take a decision. But against what are you deciding? Inside are grooves carved since who knows when, deep tracks. Walking in them has become a habit. It is easy to walk in them. They will pull you again and again. The meaning of returning into the past is: these grooves must be erased.…
Osho, when I do catharsis, only negative emotions like anger, jealousy, sorrow come out. Why don’t love, devotion, joy and religious feelings appear? Are they not within me?
The head servant got very angry. “Why did you hide it so long?” The servant said, “Even now I lack the courage to say it, but it has become unbearable; first hear my whole story.” The head said, “First tell me his name. Who is he? He will be punished.” The servant who had come to reveal the secret lowered his head and sat silently. The head asked, “Why don’t you speak? Say his name. What are you afraid of?” The servant said, “You won’t be able to believe it. It was our master who threw the seeds. Those weeds—our master himself sowed them.” Then both decided to keep this to themselves, to tell no one. Jesus’ story says: What you build in the day, you erase in the night; in sleep, in unconsciousness, you undo what you created in wakefulness. There are people who somnambulate—walk in sleep. Such cases…