Psychotherapy

Is something essentially missing in western psychotherapies?

IT IS NOT ONLY THAT SOMETHING ESSENTIALLY IS missing in Western psychotherapies -- THE ESSENTIAL is missing! The Western psychotherapies are still objective, from the outside. They have not yet come to the point where meditation becomes the MOST important thing in psychotherapy. They are still looking from the outside -- they are looking at the behaviour. Behaviour is the outermost expression of your psychology, but it is not the source. It is the outcome, the by-product. The Western psychotherapies are still pruning the leaves of a tree. By pruning the leaves of a tree you cannot destroy the tree. They have not yet reached to the roots; those roots are hidden underground. They are looking aboveground. When you look at the tree you rend to forget the roots -- they are not visible, they are not obvious. Roots are not so foolish as to be obvious; roots are not…

Is any religious belief required, or can this technique be practiced as a sort of psychotherapy?

No religious belief is required. Just practice it as a psychotherapy. As I see it, belief has become impossible. You can only force belief, but you cannot believe. It is not possible now. If you believe it is okay; but for ninety-nine percent of the people, it has become impossible to believe. We can only force belief but that becomes a repression again, so I am against it. Don't believe. Just take it as an experiment. If something happens, that will become your belief. But no belief is required as a precondition to do it. You can conclude with .a belief but you cannot start with a belief. And there is no need. If a thing is scientific, belief is never a requirement. You are not the body; you are not the mind. You are one. But the old traditions of the past have divided you. They have created a…

Why are the psychotherapists called shrinks?

BECAUSE THEY ARE. The word exactly describes what the V psychotherapists are doing -- they shrink people. They shrink people from persons into patients. That's their work. They reduce. When you go to a psychotherapist, you go as a person, with dignity. They reduce you immediately to labels: you are a schizophrenic, paranoid, neurotic. Immediately you are reduced! You are no more the same person with the dignity. A label has been put on you. You are a disease! You have to be treated. By reducing you to a patient, the psychotherapist has become much bigger. The more he reduces you to smallness, the bigger he feels. This is an old trip, only the names have changed. In the past it was the priest, now it is the psychotherapist. In the past, the priest was shrinking you -- trying to create the guilt feeling, trying to create the feeling that…

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…