According to Osho, so-called "transpersonal" or "spectrum" psychologies - even Ken Wilber's mappings - remain confined to the mind: images, conditionings, and conceptual frameworks. He is not doing psychology at all; his work is Zen: jumping beyond mind through meditation to no-mind, the source of life and consciousness. Therefore, analytic models may catalog mental contents, but they cannot deliver awakening; only direct meditative transcendence can.
Even advanced psychologies like Ken Wilber's still study the mind; Osho says stop analyzing and meditate to go beyond it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
The other day you spoke about fritjof capra. Can you speak about the movement of transpersonal psychology, and in particular about the work and meditation of ken wilbur, who is said to be the founder of the spectrum psychology? Why don't such people come here? Are they imprisoned in being too established? Is your vision and its practical consequences the problem for them?
The first thing to be understood is that I am not dealing with psychology. Psychology remains attached to the mind; it is the science of the mind. And my whole work is how to take you out of the mind, so these people will take me as if I am their enemy. They are working out how the mind functions, whether it is personal or interpersonal, what are its conditionings and how those conditionings can be changed with new conditionings. Their whole work -- whether they call it interpersonal psychology or spectrum psychology -- remains confined to the mind. And my world, the world of Zen, is the world of no-mind. We simply don't want to bother about all the rubbish that mind is carrying from centuries. If you get involved in it, you can go on digging and digging, and you will find more bullshit coming out. It is…
'there is a new "fourth force" in psychology -- transpersonal psychology -- which seeks to explore the needs and aspirations that go beyond self-actualisation and humanistic psychology.' so says assagioli. Are 'transpersonal psychology' and your 'psycho-logy of the buddhas' synonymous?
Now what has Assagioli done? He has put that flower together again. That flower which had been pulled apart by Freud has been put together by Assagioli -- he calls it psycho-synthesis. But this flower is dead, it is not that unity which existed before Freud analysed it. Assagioli presupposes Freud -- without Freud there can be no Assagioli, remember this. If Freud had not existed there would have been no Assagioli. Freud does half the work and the other half is done by Assagioli. Freud dissects, Assagioli unites. But in the dissection the primal unity has disappeared. No, you can put it together but it will never be the same thing again. The flower cannot become alive again. Just by putting it together -- you can put it together very cleverly, you can glue it together with the best glue, invisible glue -- but still it will not be…
Western psychotherapy has gone only on the lower steps of the ladder. And the reason why they have gone on the lower steps of the ladder is because Western psychology started studying sick, mentally deranged people. They were on the lower steps, so naturally they started finding out more and more about those lower steps. Eastern psychology has simply mentioned that these steps are there to be avoided, but they have not been studied. No thesis is available in the East which goes into details about these steps, they have simply been mentioned. But in the East the higher steps have been very deeply studied, because they were studying the meditators, not the sick people. Because the objective study was different, the whole approach became different. They were studying the meditators so they became aware of the no-mind, of superconsciousness, of cosmic consciousness.
Question: BELOVED OSHO, ONCE YOU DESCRIBED YOUR WORK AS A SEARCH FOR THE PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BUDDHAS. YOU EXPLAINED THAT FREUD ESTABLISHED ONLY A PSYCHOLOGY OF PATHOLOGY. THEN CAME MASLOV, JANOV, ASSAGIOLI, PERLS AND THE PEOPLE WHO ELABORATED ON THE PSYCHOLOGY OF HEALTH. YOU ADDED THAT YOUR WORK WAS GOING FURTHER -- TRYING TO ESTABLISH A PSYCHOLOGY OF THE AWAKENED ONE, A PSYCHOLOGY OF THE BUDDHAS. YOU SAID THAT YOU WERE STUDYING US IN ORDER TO FIND OUT WHICH ARE THE DIFFICULTIES THAT A SEEKER FINDS ON THE PATH TOWARDS THE REALIZATION OF THE SELF, TOWARDS HIS OWN AWAKENING. NOW, YOU'VE BEEN STUDYING US FOR FIFTEEN YEARS, AND I WOULD LIKE YOU TO GIVE US SOME HINTS ON WHAT YOU FIND IN YOUR LIVING EXPERIMENT.
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…