WHAT VALUE ARE THE ‘CATHARTIC’ THERAPIES…? …OSHO

Sannyas has to be a real break away. A loving surrender to the new....

WHAT VALUE ARE THE 'CATHARTIC' THERAPIES...? ...

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 it, that's why we call it insight.

Have you observed these words: 'insight', 'intuition', 'instinct', 'intelligence'? They all carry the word 'in'. It is there, built-in, but much has gathered around it. The rose bush is there, but hidden behind the weeds. The weeds have to be uprooted. And they have to be uprooted very skillfully, because there is every danger that you may uproot the rose bush itself. And the weeds are many, and the rose bush is one. You need to be helped.

The therapy group is a situation where you can be helped to sort out what is a weed and what is a rose bush. And slowly slowly, those rose bushes have to be protected, and the weeds have to be taken out. And it has to be very very skillful because the roots of the weeds are entangled with the roots of the rose. If you are not very careful you may destroy the rose itself. The insight is there; it has to be uncovered.

You ask: OF WHAT VALUE ARE THE 'CATHARTIC' THERAPIES…?

Catharsis simply means throwing out that which should be thrown out, throwing out that which should not be kept in.

Now in ordinary life it is difficult. You cannot throw your anger everywhere and anywhere. You will get into so many difficulties. It will be too costly, and dangerous too. You need a special situation where you can throw your anger, where anger is accepted. A group is an artificial situation where everything is accepted.

If you become angry, the group is not repressive. Rather on the contrary, the group helps you, provokes you to be angry, brings out all your violence and aggression, accepts it — WELCOMES even, gives you an opportunity and confidence that here you are not rejected, that here there is no expectation.

Nobody's expecting that you should not be angry or this and that. Whatsoever you are, you are given total freedom to be THAT. A group is an artificial situation. The society cannot allow that.

Once your anger has started bubbling up, you will be surprised how much you have been carrying. How much poison is there in your system. And only when this poison has gone, that smoke has disappeared, will you be able to find insight or bliss methods like Sufi Dancing. If a man who is angry participates in Sufi Dancing, his dance will have anger to it. You can watch, you can watch people, and you can see their dances have different qualities. Somebody's dance is a kind of rage; anger is filtering through his dance, through his gestures. Somebody's dance has grace to it, love is flowing, a kind of elegance.

Somebody else's dance has compassion in it. Somebody else's dance has ecstasy in it. somebody else's dance is just stale and dull, he is just making empty gestures, there is nobody behind them — mechanical. Watch. Why this difference? — because they are carrying different layers of repression.

When you dance, your anger will dance if it is there. Where can it go? The more you will dance, the more it will dance. If you are full of love, when you start dancing your love will start overflowing — it will dance all around you, all over the space. Your dance is going to be your dance, it will contain all that you contain. If you are sexually repressed, then your dance will have that.

Now it is a problem for Indians to participate in the Sufi Dance. Many have written to me. One Indian sannyasin, a very honest man, wrote a letter. He was participating in the dance. Three days afterwards, he wrote 'I am feeling very guilty, because I become sexually aroused. Whenever I go into the Sufi Dance, I become sexually aroused. I feel very guilty.' He was asking forgiveness 'Osho, forgive me.' And he became so afraid that he stopped dancing.

Now the whole life of repression… He may never have been able to hold the hands of any woman except his wife, and that too only in the night when everybody is fast asleep. He may not have been able to move with such dancing energy of women, men. It is very natural; there is no need to feel guilt. It is just the whole repressed life.

Now this man who becomes sexually aroused in Sufi Dance, is he going to feel any insight in it? He will feel great guilt, and he will not feel spiritual at all! He will feel sexual, and he will be in a turmoil. He will be very much confused. His whole being will be on a volcano. He may start trembling, and he may become afraid that he may DO something. That's what he wrote to me — 'I cannot participate in Sufi Dance any more, because I may DO something. I may not be able to control myself I become so aroused.'

This is bound to happen. If you are sexually repressed, then sex will bubble up when you dance. So you cannot go directly, you have to go through catharsis. Only then can blissful methods be of help.

Cathartic methods are modern inventions. In Buddha's time they were not so needed because people were not so repressed. People were natural, people lived primitive live — uncivilised, spontaneous lives. So VIPASSANA — VIPASSANA means insight — was given by Buddha directly to people. But now you cannot go into VIPASSANA directly. And the teachers who go on teaching VIPASSANA directly don't belong to this century; they are two thousand years backwards. Yes, sometimes they may help one or two persons out of one hundred, but that can't do much.

I am introducing cathartic methods, so that first what the civilisation has done to you can be undone, so that you become primitive again. From that primitiveness, from that primal innocence, insight becomes easily available. Then bliss methods work — never before that.

OSHO