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Pythagoras

VOL. 2, PHILOSOPHIA PERENNIS

Chapter-8

Escape to Reality

Second Question

 

 

Energy Enhancement          Enlightened Texts         Pythagoras           Philosofia Perennis

 

 

The second question

Question 2

I AM A PSYCHOANALYST, BUT LISTENING TO THE PATIENTS DAY IN, DAY OUT, IS DRIVING ME CRAZY. WHAT SHOULD I DO?

IT'S NATURAL. Psychoanalysts commit suicide more than any other profession. The proportion is almost double. And psychoanalysts go mad more than any other profession -- again the proportion is double. And the reason is that the psychoanalyst is not trained in meditation at all.

He is a so-called normal human being, as others are. And when he starts psychoanalyzing people he has to encounter not only the craziness of the other, the nonsense of the other, but the same nonsense in himself. The other provokes it, the presence of the other. And the rubbish that he pours out, the psychoanalyst has to listen to it. That whole nonsense goes into him, provokes his own nonsense, creates much fear in him, starts driving him crazy.

There is an ancient story:

A great king in Egypt went mad. All kinds of treatment were done, but everything failed. Physicians came from faraway places, but the king was slipping downhill more and more. Then somebody suggested, "Forget about physicians and doctors -- we should ask the advice of some sage." So they went in search, found an ancient sage in a cave and asked him what to do.

The sage said, "Just tell me a few things about the king -- about his hobbies, the way he lives, the things that he eats...." And they told him. The sage said, "Now it is enough. This will do."

They had told him that the king was a great lover of chess, so the sage said, "You find the greatest chess-player in the country and pay him whatsoever he asks, but he has to play chess with the mad king. And come after one year."

The greatest chess-player was found. He was not very willing to play chess with a madman -- chess in itself is very madden-ing, and then to play with a madman.... He asked too much money -- he was hoping that that much money would not be given -- but the people from the king immediately agreed, so there was no way to escape. The chess-player HAD to play chess with the mad king.

After one year, the same people went back to the cave. The sage asked, "How are things?"

They said, "You did a miracle! The king is perfectly sane now. "

The sage said, "That's okay. Anything else?"

They said, "Yes, there is one thing more: the chess-player has gone mad!"

It is bound to happen -- unless the psychoanalyst is rooted in deep meditation. That's where psychoanalysis is missing something very important, absolutely important.

Psychoanalysis should be based in deep meditation. Every psychoanalyst, before he is certified, should go through long meditations, because the meditation will make you able to listen rightly. The meditation will help you to be so silent and quiet and cool and collected that you can listen to the madman and you can be helpful to him, yet he will not be able to disturb you. Otherwise, this is bound to happen. And the only way, experience, psychoanalysts know is...

I have heard:

A young man, a young psychoanalyst, asked one old colleague, "You always look so happy, so cheerful. The whole day's work, and such ugly work... I start getting tired with the second patient, and by the evening I am dead tired. But you never look tired. It is a nightmare to listen to others' nightmares continuously."

The old man laughed and he said, "Who listens?"

This seems to be the only protection if you don't know how to meditate. Then the psychoanalyst only pretends that he is listening.

Freud was very diplomatic about it. He managed the whole thing in such a way that the patient used to lie on the couch, and Freud would sit at the back so the patient could not see him -- whether he was listening or not, had fallen asleep, or was dreaming or doing something else. The patient was Lying down and going through gibberish called 'free association'.

In fact, Freud was very much afraid of looking into people's eyes; he was very phobic about it. He himself was a very ill person. He himself was not aware of anything like meditation or prayer; he had known nothing of deep communion with existence. He was constantly afraid -- he was afraid to come close to the patient. He didn't allow any intimacy between the therapist and the patient, no intimacy. Everything had to be just a professional relationship -- which is not a relationship at all.

But now Freudian barriers are slowly slowly breaking. Psychoanalysts are becoming more and more courageous; they are facing the patient, encountering the patient, looking into his eyes... and that is dangerous. Unless you start getting a deep-rootedness, a deep centering in your being, this is going to be dangerous. Looking into the eyes of a madman may be together but they cannot become one. But if you pour water into water, it becomes one.

At this highest peak where all the seven centers meet, persons disappear, only energies remain, a play of energy, a play of consciousness. And the joy is constant, it is orgasmic. It is a spiritual communion. No meditation is needed for such a couple -- because for such a couple love is meditation enough. It is a mystic phenomenon, it is transcendental. But it is very rare. Amongst millions and millions of people, once it will happen. It will be almost a chance meeting.

Below it, there is another meeting: six centers meeting. That too is rare. If the first is one percent, the second is only two percent. It is union, not unity. It is not a cosmic, mystical union, but still something very close to it -- an aesthetic union, an artistic phenomenon, a poetic experience.

The first can be understood only by those who have known samadhi, satori. The second can be understood by poets, painters, dancers, musicians.

The third, lower than that, is the meeting of five centers. It is three percent possible. It is not even a union; it is duality. Two persons remain two, but still there is great harmony. The two function in harmony -- as if two musical instruments are playing in harmony. The two remain two. There is no union, there is no unity. They are separate.

This is what Kahlil Gibran has described: "Lovers should be like two pillars of a temple supporting the same roof, yet apart and separate." This is a little lower than the aesthetic, artistic, musical experience. It is a moral experience -- chaste, still beautiful.

The fourth is four centers meeting. It has a four percent possibility. Duality. Harmony has disappeared but there is great understanding still -- great understanding about each... for example, Carl Gustav Jung, was so much afraid of death that if you talked about death, just talked about death, he would almost go into a tantrum. He wanted to see the mummies of old Egyptian kings and queens. Remember always: whenever you are afraid of something, you are also attracted towards it. Fear and attraction are two aspects of the same coin. But whenever he arranged, he planned, to go for a visit to Egypt, he would fall ill.

It happened SO many times that he simply became aware that he must be creating the illness. And the moment he cancelled the trip, the illness would disappear. The last time, he even WENT to the airport, but just at the airport he started vomiting, had to cancel the trip. And then he had to drop the whole idea forever.

Freud was very much afraid -- he was even afraid of psychoanalysis. It is said that once he was travelling together with Carl Gustav Jung. Having nothing to do, Jung started psychoanalyzing Freud. Then there came a point when Jung was very close to touching the root neurosis of Freud, and Freud said, "Just stop -- no more talking about it!" He became so frightened; Jung said, "What is the matter with you? Can't you expose yourself?"

And Freud said, "No, I cannot expose more than this. If I expose more, I will lose all of my authority."

For a moment Jung was silent, and then he said, "You have lost it already. If you are so much afraid of being psychoanalyzed yourself, what kind of psychoanalyst are you?" And he was the father of psychoanalysis. He himself was never psychoanalyzed; he never allowed anybody to come that close. He was afraid really that if he came to know about his own unconscious he might never be the same man again.

That's why we go on avoiding. But a psychoanalyst cannot avoid; hence your problem. You will have to learn to be so silent that rather than the neurotic assertions of the patient affecting you, your silence starts affecting the patient. You have to be more potential, you have to be more full of love and grace. And in fact, if you are full of love, that is therapy. that is healing. Love is a healing force.

The psychotherapist, the psychoanalyst, or other kinds of therapists of other persuasions -- existential therapists, or the people who follow Assagioli, psychosynthesis, or the people who follow group therapies -- all the people who are involved in some way or other with the patient have to learn many things. Psychoanalysis is still in its very early childhood; it has to learn many things.

And the East can supply many things to the West, because the East has pondered over the mysteries of the mind for thousands of years. What Freud started in the West is a very ancient understanding in the East. From the very very ancient days of the Vedas we have been encountering the inner reality, we have been exploring the interiority of man, and some basic truths we have learnt.

One: that if you want to help the other you have to be in a higher state of consciousness, otherwise you will not be able to help the other. People who belong to the same level of consciousness cannot be of much help. And the danger is that rather than helping the other, the other may affect you so much, may disturb you so much, that you will lose your own balance. That is the difference between a guru and a psychotherapist.

A psychotherapist exists on the same level of consciousness as the patient; the guru, the Master, exists on a higher plane. He can pull you up from the mess you are drowning in. But he HAS to be on a higher plane, otherwise there is every possibility you may pull him into the same mess you are drowning in.

Once it happened:

I was sitting by the side of a river; a man started drowning. The moment I saw, I ran, but before I could reach and before I could jump into the river, another man jumped. And the man who jumped had forgotten completely that he knew nothing of swimming. Just seeing some man drowning, he forgot completely that he was not a swimmer. So I had to save two persons!

I told the man, "You created more trouble rather than being a help. I had to save you first!"

He said, "I completely forgot."

You ask me: I AM A PSYCHOANALYST, BUT LISTENING TO THE PATIENTS DAY IN, DAY OUT, IS DRIVING ME CRAZY.

DO YOU KNOW HOW TO SWIM? Otherwise, instead of one man being in trouble, there will be two men in trouble. You will have to learn to be so utterly quiet, so still, that your silence creates a milieu around you. That the moment the patient enters your silence, HE starts falling into a silence himself.

That is real therapy -- and that is the meaning of the Eastern word 'satsang': communion with the Master. Just sitting by the side of the Master, things start happening. Nothing has to be said; just being in touch with a higher consciousness, your consciousness starts taking the challenge, starts rising to the occasion. Something is triggered in you.

The modern psychotherapist himself is ill. He is a professional; he knows all about illnesses, all about cures, but his consciousness belongs to the same realm as the patient's consciousness. He is not a Master. In fact, the ancient meaning of the word 'patient' is not really an ill person but a student. It comes from 'patience'.

Patience is required to learn. The patient, particularly the mental patient, has really to be a student. He has to learn the ways of being whole. He does not know how to live a whole life -- that is his illness. But how can you teach him if you are not living a whole life yourself? You have to be a Master, ONLY then will the patient be transformed into a student.

And then there are three stages of studentship. The first is the student, the second is the disciple, the third is the devotee.

The student learns only intellectually, he relates only on the plane of intellect -- but that is the beginning. If he can relate with you intellectually, he will start feeling a trust in you. Then he can relate emotionally; that will make him a disciple. And when he can relate emotionally, then only will communion start happening.

The first is communication. When he is a student, he thinks of you as a teacher. When he becomes a disciple, he thinks of you as a Master. Now communion has started happening; now on the emotional level a relationship arises, a kind of love.

And Freud was very much afraid of this kind of love arising between the therapist and the patient. He was so much afraid of it that he would not allow any intimacy; the relationship had to be utterly formal. The therapist had to keep himself very aloof, detached, far away. He had NOT to function as a human being; he had to function only as an expert. He had not to expose himself.

Then you will not be able to help much -- only on the intellectual plane you may settle a few things; a few misunderstandings may be removed. But the real problem is emotional -- information is not needed -- the real problem is somewhere in the feelings. The patient needs a new way to feel, a new way to see, a new way to perceive. And that can happen only when the therapist allows himself to relate emotionally.

That is possible only if you are on such a high plane that you can relate emotionally and yet not get disturbed; otherwise your disturbance will disturb the patients rather than helping.

And the third and the highest state is that of a devotee. In that state the Master and the disciple are no more separate: union happens -- not only communion but union, a kind of unity. That has been our way in the East. The seeker comes as a student, falls in love with the Master, becomes a disciple; and one day the love has matured, the Master and the disciple have met, really met. In that meeting, the devotee is born.

Then the Master is no more a human being: the Master is thought to be a God. That's why we have called Buddha 'Bhagwan'. It is not in the Christian sense of the word 'God'. It is in the sense that the devotee has come to a point where he can see that his Master only lives in the body but is not the body. Now he can see the transcendental energy of the Master. The Master represents God on the earth. The Master is a penetration of the beyond, of the unknown, into the known.

Psychotherapy will have to move on these lines. Unless psychotherapy becomes religion, this problem will remain.

Dick felt that he needed help with his problems and decided to go to a psychoanalyst. On the first appointment, the analyst told him to lie down on the couch and talk about whatever was bothering him. After a short while, the analyst told him he should go on talking and the tape-recorder would take it all down.

The analyst returned towards the end of the session and another appointment was made upon which the same scene was repeated. On the third session when the analyst departed, Dick, out of curiosity, looked out of the window and saw the analyst walking into the bar across the road.

At the next session, Dick appeared with a cassette and handed it to the analyst and said, "I recorded my session at home, and now we can both go and have a drink."

The psychoanalyst has not only to be a professional person: he has to learn psychoanalysis not as a profession but as a vocation. It has to be his love, his creativity, his prayer. It has to be his offering to God, only then will he not be driven crazy by his patients. Otherwise, it is bound to happen, it is natural.

But remember one fundamental law: just as illnesses are infectious, so is health. If you live with ill people too long, you will become ill. Unless you have such health, such wholeness such integrity, that it is beyond all infections, that you are immune to infections, then only will you be able to help, and you will be able not to be disturbed by the patients.

This is possible. This is what we are trying to do here. My effort here is to transform therapists into Masters. Less than that won't do.

 

Next: Chapter 8, Escape to Reality, Third Question

 

Energy Enhancement          Enlightened Texts         Pythagoras           Philosofia Perennis

 

 

Chapter 8

 

 

 
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