According to Osho, therapy is finished only when the divided person becomes whole—ego dissolves, fragments integrate—and life naturally turns into prayer. This authentic, spontaneous prayer (not ritual) marks oneness with existence, flowing with the river rather than fighting it. Without this heart-born prayer and felt unity, therapy is just a better rearrangement of fragments, not true completion.
Therapy is truly done when you feel whole and a real, effortless prayer rises in you as you move with life instead of against it.
From the Discourses
Passages where Osho speaks to this question — each links to the complete discourse.
When can a therapy be called 'finished'?
Therapy is the need of the divided person. Therapy is the need of the person who has fallen into fragments. Therapy is complete when you have become a whole, when you are one piece. But no therapy, as it is known in the modern world, brings you to wholeness. Therapy is, at the most, nothing but a rearrangement -- maybe a little better than before, but you remain fragmentary. It is the same furniture rearranged in the same room -- maybe a little bit more conveniently -- but it doesn't make you whole, because when a person becomes whole his life becomes prayer. Prayer is the by-product of wholeness. Wholeness makes you holy. Unless your therapy brings prayer to your heart it is not complete yet. The basic need is that of prayer. Jung is reported to have said -- and his observation is absolutely right -- that one half…
Osho, while in therapy myself, I spent much time praying. Over the years I felt better. I never knew whether it was the therapy or the prayer. As a therapist I want to urge others to pray but feel embarrassed.
Whenever a person is different from you, wants to live a different life, wants to be free from the bondage you have created in the name of the society, you declare him mad. Jesus was declared neurotic, Mansoor was declared mad, Socrates was declared dangerous to the youth of the society: "Kill them now!" Now the society can kill them without any prick of conscience. In fact, the society is doing the right thing: first condemn somebody, put a label on him; if you kill somebody without putting a label on him, you will feel guilty; to avoid guilt declare him mad, and then it is so easy to kill, so easy to destroy. Now we have the technology too -- to destroy the mind, to give the mind a complete brainwash, and to force the man to say yes to the established order, whatsoever it is: communist, capitalist, fascist.…
In a different garb, different terminology, again the same game starts. And there are many people in the West whose whole lives are being wasted in therapy. Therapy can be very helpful but one needs to know its limits. If you know the limits you can be very helpful. If you forget the limits you can be very de'structive. Then psychotherapy itself becomes like an occupation for the patient he starts depending on it. It becomes an escape so he can avoid life, because he says that he is under therapy and he is not yet healed and there are a thousand and one problems yet to be solved. Unless they are solved, how can he participate in life? And that can become a disease in itself. Sometimes medicines can create a greater disease than what they were meant to cure.
Beloved master, I love the different meanings of the word "therapy." its greek root, therapeuein, shows the socratic approach to educating a human being. Therapeuein means: accompanying the other, taking him seriously, listening to him patiently, helping him to understand, and above all, bowing down in reverence to the other person's godliness. How come all western psychotherapy and education seem oblivious to their cultural roots? Instead, they keep circling in the thin air of deductive analysis and proven symptoms. Please speak about your vision of spiritual therapy as a means of showing peo
Yes, therapy is hearing the patient, respecting the patient, accepting whatever he is, giving him encouragement to be himself, destroying the idea of becoming somebody else, helping him to stand on his own feet, helping him to drop all divisions between materialism and spiritualism, making him an organic unity, an orchestra. Then life is a benediction. Out of this orchestra will arise what I call religiousness -- the fragrance, the song, the music -- but it will be total. It will have all the ingredients that constitute you, it will have all the instruments that nature has given to you. It will not be just a harp, angels playing on it, "Alleluia, alleluia." That is boring. And just think of those poor angels -- for eternity they have been playing on those harps, the same "Alleluia." Perhaps they have completely forgotten what it means. Perhaps it has become just a…
Question: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS BEYOND PSYCHOTHERAPY? Jung himself was a disciple of Sigmund Freud. And the reason they had to part was a very funny one. Sigmund Freud was very much afraid of ghosts. Even the word "ghost" was enough to make him go into a fit, and he would start foaming at the mouth. So every disciple knew that the word "ghost" was never to be mentioned before him. And this is the founder of psychoanalysis! These people are sick themselves. Because Jung continued to use the word "ghost," and three times made Freud go into a fit, that was too much. The third time, when he came out of the fit, Freud told Jung, "You just get lost! I don't want to hear anything that makes me sick." But what is the fear in ghosts? Why is he so afraid -- such trembling, such fear?