Astrall
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2. Do I need to understand the roots of my former character in order to get rid of it, or is awareness enough?
____ This is the dividing line between Western psychology and Eastern mysticism.
Western psychology is an attempt to understand the roots of your former character, but it helps no one get rid of them. You become more sober, you become more normal, your mind is no longer in such a mess. The situation has changed somewhat for the better, but every problem remains exactly the same—it simply continues to be dormant. You may understand your jealousy, you may understand your anger, your greed, your ambitions, but all this understanding will remain intellectual. Thus, the greatest psychologists of the West have fallen far behind the Eastern mystics. Awareness takes you beyond the mind. It is not interested in understanding the problems of the mind or their roots; it simply leaves the mind aside, simply exits from it. This is why psychology did not develop in the East.
It is strange that for at least ten thousand years, the East has worked persistently and focusedly in the field of human consciousness, yet it developed neither psychology, nor psychoanalysis, nor psychosynthesis. It is extremely surprising that for ten thousand years no one touched upon this subject. Instead of understanding the mind, the East developed a completely different approach, and this approach consisted of non-identification with the mind: "I am not the mind." When the awareness of this crystallizes within you, the mind becomes p
owerless.
All the power of the mind comes from the fact that you identify yourself with it. And therefore, it was recognized as pointless to dig for roots, find the causes behind the causes, unravel dreams, analyze dreams, interpret dreams. And every psychologist finds a different root, finds a different interpretation, finds a different cause. Psychology is not yet a science; it is still fictitious. If you go to Sigmund Freud, your dream will be interpreted from the point of view of sex. His mind is obsessed with sex. Come with anything—and he will immediately give a sexual interpretation. Go to Alfred Adler—the man who founded another school of psychology, analytical psychology—he is obsessed with a different idea: the thirst for power. So, whatever dream you have, it will be interpreted according to this idea—it is a thirst for power. Go to Carl
Gustav Jung; he interprets every dream as a distant echo of your past lives. His interpretation is mythological. There are many other schools. Great work was done by Assagioli—psychosynthesis—an attempt to unite all schools into one, but his psychosynthesis is absolutely useless. At least in psychoanalysis there is some truth, in analytical psychology there is some truth, but psychosynthesis is just a hodgepodge. He takes one part from one school, another part from another and joins them together. Assagioli is a great intellectual; he was able to put the pieces of the puzzle picture in the right places. But what was significant for Sigmund Freud—was significant in a certain context, but that context no longer exists. He took only what seems significant, but outside of context it loses all meaning. And therefore Assagioli worked his whole life toward a certain synthesis, but failed to create anything significant. And all these schools labored hard.
But the East simply bypassed the mind. Instead of finding causes, roots, and arguments, they discovered one thing: where does the mind draw its strength from? Where does the energy that feeds it come from? The energy that feeds the mind comes from your identification: "I am this." They broke the bridge. This is what awareness consists of—realizing that "I am not the body, I am not the mind. I am not even the heart—I am simply pure consciousness." When this consciousness becomes deeper, becomes crystallized, then the mind gradually begins to live in the shadow. Its influence on you loses all its power. And when consciousness is established one hundred percent, the mind simply evaporates. Western psychology still needs to understand why it is not succeeding. Thousands of people go through psychoanalysis and other therapeutic methods, but none of them, not even the founder of these schools, can be called enlightened; it cannot be said of him that he has no problems, that he has no anxieties, sufferings, fear, paranoia. Everything exists in them just as it exists in you. Sigmund Freud's students asked him many times: "You perform psychoanalysis on all of us, we tell our dreams, and you interpret them. It would be a magnificent experiment if you allowed us to analyze you. Tell us about your dreams, and we will try to analyze and understand what they mean, where they come from and what they signify." But Sigmund Freud never agreed to this. This indicates the enormous weakness of the entire structure of psychoanalysis. He was afraid that in his dreams they would discover the same things he found in their dreams. Then his superiority as a founder, as a master, would be lost...
He knew nothing of people like Gautama Buddha, Mahavira or Nagarjuna. Since these people dream of nothing, there is nothing to analyze. These people have moved so far away from the mind that all connections were severed. They live by consciousness, not by intellect. They react with consciousness, not with the mind or its memories. And they suppress nothing, therefore there is no need for dreams. Dreams are a byproduct of suppression. There are aboriginal tribes in which people dream of nothing or dream very rarely. They would be surprised to learn that civilized people dream for almost the entire night. Out of eight hours of sleep, six are spent dreaming. But aboriginals simply sleep eight hours in silence without any interference. Sigmund Freud knew only the sick people of the West; he was not acquainted with people of consciousness, otherwise the entire history of Western psychology would have been different.
I do not suggest that you make efforts to understand the origins of your mind and its character; this is simply a waste of time. Awareness alone is enough, more than enough. When you begin to be aware, you are freed from the grip of the mind and the mind will become simply a dead fossil. There is no need to seek where greed comes from; the real question is how to get rid of it. The question is not where the ego appears from—these are intellectual questions that are not significant for the seeker. And then there will be many philosophical points of view: where does greed come from, where does the ego come from, where your jealousy comes from, where hatred comes from, where your cruelty appeared—the search for the beginning of all this. And the mind is a huge complex; in fact, a whole lifetime would not be enough to understand all the problems of the mind and their causes. The causes could span thousands of lives. Gradually Western psychology is getting closer to this, for example, "primary therapy."
Janov realized that until we discover the origins of the problems—and for him as a Christian believing in only one life, this means the roots must be sought in childhood. And therefore he began working on reminding you of your childhood, but then he stumbled upon a new fact—in deep hypnosis people remember not only childhood, they remember their birth. They also remember nine months in the mother's womb, and some, the most sensitive people, remember their previous life. And he himself began to fear that he had entered a tunnel that apparently has no end. You enter a past life, and he again leads you down a long corridor into another life. Your mind has already experienced many lives, and therefore you will not be able to discover its roots in the present.
Perhaps you would have to travel back thousands of lives, and that is not so simple. And then, even if you understand where greed comes from, it will change nothing. You will then have to find out how to get rid of it. And there are so many problems that if you get rid of each one individually, you would need millions of lives to completely finish with the mind. And while you are calculating this one problem, other problems will grow, accumulate more energy, more strength, influence. This is a very foolish game. In the East, no person in all past times—in China, India, Japan, Arabia—ever paid attention to this. This is a struggle with a shadow. They worked in another direction and achieved incredible success. They simply brought consciousness out of the mind. They became outside the mind, as witnesses, and they discovered that a miracle happened: when they became witnesses, the mind became powerless, lost all its authority over them. And there was no need to understand anything. The higher consciousness becomes, the lower the mind becomes, in equal proportions. If consciousness is fifty percent, then the mind decreases by fifty percent. If consciousness is seventy percent, only thirty percent of the mind remains. On the day when consciousness is one hundred percent, no mind will remain at all….......
Osho
____ This is the dividing line between Western psychology and Eastern mysticism.
Western psychology is an attempt to understand the roots of your former character, but it helps no one get rid of them. You become more sober, you become more normal, your mind is no longer in such a mess. The situation has changed somewhat for the better, but every problem remains exactly the same—it simply continues to be dormant. You may understand your jealousy, you may understand your anger, your greed, your ambitions, but all this understanding will remain intellectual. Thus, the greatest psychologists of the West have fallen far behind the Eastern mystics. Awareness takes you beyond the mind. It is not interested in understanding the problems of the mind or their roots; it simply leaves the mind aside, simply exits from it. This is why psychology did not develop in the East.
It is strange that for at least ten thousand years, the East has worked persistently and focusedly in the field of human consciousness, yet it developed neither psychology, nor psychoanalysis, nor psychosynthesis. It is extremely surprising that for ten thousand years no one touched upon this subject. Instead of understanding the mind, the East developed a completely different approach, and this approach consisted of non-identification with the mind: "I am not the mind." When the awareness of this crystallizes within you, the mind becomes p
owerless.
All the power of the mind comes from the fact that you identify yourself with it. And therefore, it was recognized as pointless to dig for roots, find the causes behind the causes, unravel dreams, analyze dreams, interpret dreams. And every psychologist finds a different root, finds a different interpretation, finds a different cause. Psychology is not yet a science; it is still fictitious. If you go to Sigmund Freud, your dream will be interpreted from the point of view of sex. His mind is obsessed with sex. Come with anything—and he will immediately give a sexual interpretation. Go to Alfred Adler—the man who founded another school of psychology, analytical psychology—he is obsessed with a different idea: the thirst for power. So, whatever dream you have, it will be interpreted according to this idea—it is a thirst for power. Go to Carl
Gustav Jung; he interprets every dream as a distant echo of your past lives. His interpretation is mythological. There are many other schools. Great work was done by Assagioli—psychosynthesis—an attempt to unite all schools into one, but his psychosynthesis is absolutely useless. At least in psychoanalysis there is some truth, in analytical psychology there is some truth, but psychosynthesis is just a hodgepodge. He takes one part from one school, another part from another and joins them together. Assagioli is a great intellectual; he was able to put the pieces of the puzzle picture in the right places. But what was significant for Sigmund Freud—was significant in a certain context, but that context no longer exists. He took only what seems significant, but outside of context it loses all meaning. And therefore Assagioli worked his whole life toward a certain synthesis, but failed to create anything significant. And all these schools labored hard.
But the East simply bypassed the mind. Instead of finding causes, roots, and arguments, they discovered one thing: where does the mind draw its strength from? Where does the energy that feeds it come from? The energy that feeds the mind comes from your identification: "I am this." They broke the bridge. This is what awareness consists of—realizing that "I am not the body, I am not the mind. I am not even the heart—I am simply pure consciousness." When this consciousness becomes deeper, becomes crystallized, then the mind gradually begins to live in the shadow. Its influence on you loses all its power. And when consciousness is established one hundred percent, the mind simply evaporates. Western psychology still needs to understand why it is not succeeding. Thousands of people go through psychoanalysis and other therapeutic methods, but none of them, not even the founder of these schools, can be called enlightened; it cannot be said of him that he has no problems, that he has no anxieties, sufferings, fear, paranoia. Everything exists in them just as it exists in you. Sigmund Freud's students asked him many times: "You perform psychoanalysis on all of us, we tell our dreams, and you interpret them. It would be a magnificent experiment if you allowed us to analyze you. Tell us about your dreams, and we will try to analyze and understand what they mean, where they come from and what they signify." But Sigmund Freud never agreed to this. This indicates the enormous weakness of the entire structure of psychoanalysis. He was afraid that in his dreams they would discover the same things he found in their dreams. Then his superiority as a founder, as a master, would be lost...
He knew nothing of people like Gautama Buddha, Mahavira or Nagarjuna. Since these people dream of nothing, there is nothing to analyze. These people have moved so far away from the mind that all connections were severed. They live by consciousness, not by intellect. They react with consciousness, not with the mind or its memories. And they suppress nothing, therefore there is no need for dreams. Dreams are a byproduct of suppression. There are aboriginal tribes in which people dream of nothing or dream very rarely. They would be surprised to learn that civilized people dream for almost the entire night. Out of eight hours of sleep, six are spent dreaming. But aboriginals simply sleep eight hours in silence without any interference. Sigmund Freud knew only the sick people of the West; he was not acquainted with people of consciousness, otherwise the entire history of Western psychology would have been different.
I do not suggest that you make efforts to understand the origins of your mind and its character; this is simply a waste of time. Awareness alone is enough, more than enough. When you begin to be aware, you are freed from the grip of the mind and the mind will become simply a dead fossil. There is no need to seek where greed comes from; the real question is how to get rid of it. The question is not where the ego appears from—these are intellectual questions that are not significant for the seeker. And then there will be many philosophical points of view: where does greed come from, where does the ego come from, where your jealousy comes from, where hatred comes from, where your cruelty appeared—the search for the beginning of all this. And the mind is a huge complex; in fact, a whole lifetime would not be enough to understand all the problems of the mind and their causes. The causes could span thousands of lives. Gradually Western psychology is getting closer to this, for example, "primary therapy."
Janov realized that until we discover the origins of the problems—and for him as a Christian believing in only one life, this means the roots must be sought in childhood. And therefore he began working on reminding you of your childhood, but then he stumbled upon a new fact—in deep hypnosis people remember not only childhood, they remember their birth. They also remember nine months in the mother's womb, and some, the most sensitive people, remember their previous life. And he himself began to fear that he had entered a tunnel that apparently has no end. You enter a past life, and he again leads you down a long corridor into another life. Your mind has already experienced many lives, and therefore you will not be able to discover its roots in the present.
Perhaps you would have to travel back thousands of lives, and that is not so simple. And then, even if you understand where greed comes from, it will change nothing. You will then have to find out how to get rid of it. And there are so many problems that if you get rid of each one individually, you would need millions of lives to completely finish with the mind. And while you are calculating this one problem, other problems will grow, accumulate more energy, more strength, influence. This is a very foolish game. In the East, no person in all past times—in China, India, Japan, Arabia—ever paid attention to this. This is a struggle with a shadow. They worked in another direction and achieved incredible success. They simply brought consciousness out of the mind. They became outside the mind, as witnesses, and they discovered that a miracle happened: when they became witnesses, the mind became powerless, lost all its authority over them. And there was no need to understand anything. The higher consciousness becomes, the lower the mind becomes, in equal proportions. If consciousness is fifty percent, then the mind decreases by fifty percent. If consciousness is seventy percent, only thirty percent of the mind remains. On the day when consciousness is one hundred percent, no mind will remain at all….......
Osho