Christianity, Jesus Christ, Vol. 4 Come Follow Yourself Chapter 4: All Who Hear It Lose Themselves, Question 3

The third question:

Question 3

IN INTENSIVE PSYCHOTHERAPY THE PATIENT MAY EITHER BE TALKING OR LISTENING, THAT IS, TRYING TO HEAR FROM WITHIN. ONLY THE LATTER IS OF VALUE. A GOOD THERAPIST, ESPECIALLY IF LOVE EXISTS, WILL HIT ON MANY WAYS OF HEIGHTENING THIS PROCESS OF LISTENING FOR THE UNEXPECTED. IS THIS A FORM OF MEDITATION? IN FACT, MIGHT IT BE SAID THAT IDEALLY, BOTH THERAPIST AND PATIENT ARE MEDITATING TOGETHER?

Therapy is basically meditation and love, because without love and meditation there is no healing possible. When the therapist and the patient are not two, when the therapist is not only a therapist and when the patient is not a patient anymore, but a deep I-thou relationship arises where the therapist is not trying to treat the person, when the patient is not looking at the therapist as separate from himself -- in those rare moments, therapy happens. When the therapist has forgotten his knowledge, and the patient has forgotten his illness, and there is a dialogue, a dialogue of two beings, in that moment, between the two, healing happens. And if it happens, the therapist will always know that he functioned only as a vehicle for a divine force, for a divine healing. He will be as grateful for the experience as the patient. In fact, he will gain as much out of it as the patient.

When you treat a person as a patient, you treat him as if he is a machine. Just like a mechanic who is trying to change, to adjust a mechanism, trying to put it right, then the therapist is an expert, hung-up in his knowledge in the head. He is trying to help the other person as if the other person is not another person, but a machine. He may be technically expert, he may have the know-how, but he is not going to be of much help. Because this very look is destructive. This very looking at the patient and seeing him as an object creates a resistance in the patient; he feels hurt.

Have you watched? There are only a very few doctors with whom you don't feel humiliated, with whom you don't feel as if you have been treated as an object, with whom you feel a deep respect for you, with whom you feel that you are taken as a person, not as a mechanism. And it is more so when it is a question of psychotherapy. A psychotherapist needs to forget all that he knows. In the moment, he has to become a love, a flowing love. In the moment, he has to accept the humanity of the other, the subjectivity of the other. The other should not be reduced to a thing, otherwise you have closed the doors for a greater healing force to descend, from the very beginning. To be a therapist is one of the most difficult things in the world, because you have to know to help, and on the other hand, you have to forget all that you know to help. You have to know much to help, and you have to forget all of it to help. A therapist has to do a very contradictory thing, and only then does therapy happen. When love flows and the therapist listens to the patient with tremendous attention, and the patient also tries to listen to his own inner being, to his own unconscious talking to him, when this listening happens, by and by, in that deep listening there are not two persons. Maybe there are two polarities....

When you listen to me, healing is happening all the time. When you listen to me so attentively that you are not there -- no mind, no thinking -- you have become just the ears, you just listen, you absorb; and I am not here at all, so when in some rare moments you are also not there, there is healing. Suddenly you are healed. Without your knowing, you are being healed every day. Without your knowing, the healing surrounds you, the healing force surrounds you. Your wounds heal, your darkness disappears, your limitations are broken; this is a therapy.

In the East we have never had anything like a psychotherapist, because the Master was more than enough. Whatsoever psychoanalysis knows today the East has known for centuries. Nothing is new in it. But in the East, we never gave birth to the category of the psychoanalyst, but the Master; not the patient but the disciple.

Just look at the difference. When you come to me as a patient you bring a very ugly mind; when you come to me as a disciple you bring a beautiful mind. When I look at you as a therapist, that very look reduces you to a thing; when I look as Master that very look raises you to the heights of your innermost being. In the East we have never called the Master 'psychotherapist', and he is the greatest therapist that has ever been known in the world! Just sitting by the side of a Buddha, millions were healed. Wherever he moved there was healing, but healing was never talked about. It was simply happening; there was no need to talk about it. The very presence of a Buddha, and the loving look from the Master, and the readiness to absorb from the disciple....

The word 'patient' is ugly. The word in itself is not ugly; it comes from a very beautiful root. It comes from the same root as 'patience', but it has become ugly by association. A disciple is totally different: you have come to learn something, not to be treated, and the treatment happens by itself. All therapy is learning. In fact, why have you become mentally ill? -- because you have learned something wrong. You have learned something so totally wrong that you are caught in it. You need somebody who can uncondition you, who can help you to unlearn it and channelize your energy in a different path, that's all.

For example: one woman came to me. I have been watching her for many years; she has been coming to me for many years. The first time she came she told me that she was not interested in sex at all, but her husband was continuously after sex. She felt very bad about it; she was almost vomiting.'How to stop it? What should I do?' she asked. I talked to the husband and told the husband,'Just for one month, don't be interested sexually. After one month, things will be better and different.' For one month he followed me. The woman came again. She said,'I am feeling very hurt, because my husband is not at all interested in me sexually.' Then I told her,'Now, you have to understand what is happening. When the husband is sexually interested, you have a certain power over the husband. You enjoy that power, but at the same time you also feel that you are being used. Because the husband looks at you sexually, that means that he looks at you as a means towards a certain satisfaction. You feel that you are being used.' Almost all women feel that they are being used, and that is their problem. But if the husband stops taking interest they forget all about being used, and they become afraid. Then they start thinking that the husband is going far away. Now they have no more power over him, they don't possess him. So I told the woman,'Just look at the fact: if you want to possess the husband you will have to be possessed by him. If you want to possess the husband, then you will have to be used by him.'

A mind which is possessive will be possessed. To possess anything is to be possessed by it. The more you possess, the more slavery you create around yourself. The freedom comes when you unlearn possessiveness. When you unlearn possessiveness, then you are not in search of any power over anybody. Then jealousy does not arise. And when you are not trying to possess the other, you create such beauty around yourself that the other cannot look at you as a thing. You become a person -- glorified, vibrant, illuminated -- you become a light unto yourself; nobody can possess you. Whosoever comes near you will feel the tremendous beauty, and will not be able to think in terms of your being a thing.

Now every woman suffers, because in the first place she wants to possess; when she wants to possess, she is possessed; when she is possessed she feels,'I am being used.' If she is not being used, then she feels that power is disappearing. So a woman always remains in a suffering, and it is the same with men.

To look deeply into a problem is to be healed, because the very look shows you that you have learned some wrong trick. Unlearn... there is healing. People are mentally ill because they have been conditioned wrongly. Everybody has been conditioned to be competitive and everybody has been taught to be silent and peaceful. This is stupid; you cannot do both. Either you are competitive, then you remain tense; or you be silent and peace-loving, then you cannot be competitive.

You have been taught dichotomies. You have been told to move in two directions together, and you have learned it. You have been taught to be humble, and you have been continuously taught to be egoistic.

If your son is first in the class at university, you feel very happy. You give a party for his friends, and you go on showing your son that he is a great man; he is first in the class, he is being awarded a gold medal. Now this is an ego-trip, all medals are. And at the same time, you go on teaching him to be humble. Now you are creating a difficulty: if he becomes humble he will not be competitive; if he becomes competitive, he cannot be humble. If he wants to attain the gold medals that this life can give, then he cannot be humble. Then all his humbleness will be hypocrisy. One has to see. Now this man will be in trouble: continuously he will try to be humble, and continuously he will try to succeed in life. If he succeeds, he will never enjoy the success, because he will have become arrogant and egoistic, and he had an ideal of being humble and egoless. If he becomes humble and egoless he will not feel happy, because he has that ideal to succeed in the world, to show to the world the mettle that he is made of.

The society goes on being contradictory, inconsistent, and the society goes on teaching you things which are absolutely wrong. Then illness happens. Then there is psychic turmoil within you, conflict within you. Then you come to a point where everything is in disorder, topsy-turvy. You can either go to a Master, or you can go to a psychotherapist. If you go to a Master you go as a disciple, to learn. You have learned something wrong; it has to be unlearned and something new has to be learned. When you go as a disciple you don't feel humiliated, you feel happy about it. But if you go as a mental case, if you go as a patient, you feel embarrassed. Going to a psychotherapist, you want to hide the facts -- 'People should not know because that means that my mind is not functioning well.' Going to the psychotherapist, you would like to hide it. A psychotherapist is an expert: he himself has problems, almost the same as you have; he may be of some help to you, but he has not been of much use to himself.

But a Master has no problems. He can help you tremendously because he can see you through and through. You become transparent before him. A psychotherapist is a professional: even if he takes care of you, shows a certain love towards you, affection, it is a professional gesture. A Master is not professionally related to you. The relationship is totally different; it is heart to heart.

In the West, now there are so many psychotherapies, but nothing is proving to be helpful. Patients go from one psychoanalyst to another, from one therapy to another. Their whole lives they are moving from one door to another. Masters are needed, realized ones are needed who have attained to love. But even in ordinary psychotherapy, if for some moments it happens that the patient is no longer a patient and the therapist is no longer a therapist -- a certain love, a certain humanity; they have forgotten their profession, their professional relationship, and love flows -- healing immediately happens.

Healing is a function of love. Love is the greatest therapy, and the world needs therapists because the world lacks love. If people were loving: if parents were loving, if teachers and professors were loving, if the society had a loving climate around it, there would be no need.

Everybody is born to remain healthy and happy. Everybody is seeking health and happiness, but somewhere something is missing and everybody becomes miserable. Misery should be an exception; it has become the rule. Happiness should be the rule; it has become an exception. I would like a world where buddhas are born, but nobody remembers them because they are the rule. Now Buddha is remembered, Christ is remembered, Lao Tzu is remembered, because they are exceptions. Otherwise, who would bother about them? If there were a buddha in every house, and if there were buddhas all over the marketplace and you could meet Lao Tzu anywhere, who would bother? Then that would be the simple rule. It should be so.

Lao Tzu says,'When the world was really moral there was no possibility of becoming a saint.' When the world was really religious there was no need for religions. People were simply religious; religions were not needed. When there was order, a discipline, a NATURAL order and discipline, the words 'order' and 'discipline' didn't exist. The idea of order comes in only when there is disorder. People start talking about discipline where there is no discipline, and people talk about healing when illness is there. People talk about love when love is missing. But basically, therapy is a function of love.

This question is from a psychotherapist, Buddhaghosha. I would like him to carry my message in his life. He will be going back soon: Now go, not as a therapist but as a human being. Never look at the patient as a patient. Look at him as if he has come to learn something -- a disciple. Help him, but not as an expert; help him like a human being, and there will be much healing. There will be less therapy and much healing. Otherwise, therapy continues for years and years on end, and the result is almost nil. Or, sometimes the result is even harmful.

I have heard about one man who had a very curious habit: whenever he was in the pub he would drink wine and always leave a little part in the glass and throw it all around, over people. He was beaten many times. Then somebody suggested, the owner of the pub suggested,'Why don't you go to a psychoanalyst? You need therapy because you have been beaten and you have been thrown out of the pub. Again you come and again you do the same. Something seems to be wrong. You are obsessed.'

So he went, and after three months he came back. He was looking better. The pub owner asked,'Have you been to some psychoanalyst? Because for three months you have disappeared.'

He said,'Yes, and it helped me tremendously.'

'Are you cured?' the owner asked.

He said,'Perfectly cured.' But he did the same thing again.

The owner said,'What type of treatment is this? You are doing the same thing!'

He said,'But I am completely changed. Before, I used to do it and I used to feel guilty. I don't feel guilt anymore. The psychoanalyst helped me, cured me of the guilt. I used to feel embarrassed, now I don't bother.'

This has happened in the West: psychoanalysis has helped many people just to feel that nothing matters. It has not given a deeper responsibility, it has only taken away the feeling of guilt. The feeling of guilt is bad; it has to be taken away. But, it should be taken away in such a way that the person unlearns the idea of guilt, but learns the idea of responsibility. Guilt is bad, guilt is very dangerous -- it destroys you. It is like a wound. But to feel responsible is very, very essential -- it gives you soul, it gives you an integration. And unless you feel responsibles you are not a healthy person. A healthy person is always aware that whatsoever he is doing, he is responsible. The very idea of responsibility will give you a freedom, a dignity. An authentic being will come out of it. You will become more present, you will be more here and now.

The idea of guilt is a false coin. It looks like responsibility; it is not. Guilt makes you depressed. Responsibility will give you an intensity, a sharpness of awareness. You will have more integration in you, you will feel more together.

Buddhaghosha, go to the West, but not now as a psychotherapist. Now you are a sannyasin. Feel the responsibility of being a sannyasin. Go to help people, and if you help people you will be tremendous]y helped. If you love people, you will be loved. If you heal people, if you become a vehicle of healing force and energy, you will be healed. And always remember that while healing a person you are part of the process; you are also being healed. While teaching a person, you are also being taught. The best way in the world to learn anything is to teach it. The best way in the world to learn ANYTHING is to teach it. But remember that the Master is also a disciple. He continuously goes on learning. Each disciple is a new lesson, and to work with each patient or disciple is to open a new book, a new life.

Great are the rewards of love. Go as a sannyasin and create a climate around you so that the patient comes to learn, to unlearn, to be transformed. He is not to be taken as a case but as a helpless human being, as helpless as you are. And don't look from a tower: holier than thou, higher than you, more knowledgeable than you. Don't look that way; that gaze is violent, and then love becomes impossible. Look as a human being, as helpless as the other -- in the same boat, in the same plight. You will be helpful, and much healing will happen through you.

I have heard an anecdote about Harvard's famed professor, Charles T. Copeland. He was once asked by a student,'Is there anything I can do to learn the art of conversation?'

'Yes, there is one thing,' said Copeland,'if you listen I will tell you.'

For several minutes there was silence, then the student said,'I am listening, professor.'

'You see,' said Copeland,'you are learning already.'

Listening is learning, because when you listen silently the whole existence starts speaking to you. When you are absolutely silent, that is the greatest moment to learn.

Life reveals its secrets when you are silent.

So, whether helping a disciple, a fellow traveller, a friend, or trying to heal a patient, be a great listener. Listen so passionate]y, so attentively that the other becomes, by and by, capable of revealing his secret-most depths to you -- depths which he has not revealed to anybody because nobody was ready to listen; depths which he has not revealed to himself because he was also not ready to listen; depths which have remained always in the dark. Listen so tremendously that the very milieu of your listening brings out all that is hidden in the patient, in the disciple. He will be surprised that he is saying things to you; he never knew that those things existed in him. Through your listening you will make him aware of his own unconscious, and that is a healing thing. Once the unconscious becomes the conscious, many things disappear. All that is rubbish disappears and all that is significant deepens.

But how can you teach listening? -- by being a great listener. While you are listening to a patient or a friend, don't become bored. If you are bored, please tell him that this is not the right moment:'Some other moment; I am not in a mood to listen.' Never listen to anybody when you are feeling bored, because your boredom creates a climate in which the other immediately feels that he is rejected. Your boredom goes on saying to him that,'Whatsoever you are saying is all rubbish. Stop, shut up.' Whether you say it or not doesn't matter. Your whole being is saying,'Shut up! Be finished with it.'

Because of this, Freud used to use a certain method. The method was to hide himself from the patient. The patient would lie on a couch and Freud would sit just at the back. The patient would not be able to see what Freud was thinking about, whether he was listening or not. He would sit at the back, and the patient would talk a monologue to himself. Freudian analysis takes many years: three, four, five, even ten years. There are even patients who have been in analysis for twenty years, and nothing has happened. It is inhuman. Face the patient; look eye to eye, don't hide like a ghost. Be human, be open, and listen.

Freud taught his disciples not to ever touch the patient. That is absolutely wrong, because then you become inhuman. There are moments when just holding the hand of the patient will do much, much more than all analysis can do. But Freud was very afraid that there was a possibility that intimacy might start between the doctor and the patient. The doctor should remain far away and aloof; he should not come down to the human world. Freud was very afraid, it seems, of his own humanity. He was very much afraid of his own mind. He could not allow intimacy; a very deep fear, a very deep complex must have existed in him. People who are afraid of relationship are afraid of themselves, because in relationship they are revealed, in relationship they are mirrored. Freud was a puritan.

There is no need to be so far away, otherwise healing will not happen. Come closer. The patient has to be taken in deep intimacy, so that he can reveal, so that he can bring his whole heart to you.

And respond! Don't listen like a marble statue -- respond. Sometimes laugh with him, sometimes weep and cry -- respond, because when you respond, the relationship, the moment, becomes alive. If you don't respond, the whole thing goes on like a stale, dead thing. Respond; make the whole thing alive, and much is possible. Much more is possible than through just analyzing, diagnosing. Freud's psychoanalysis remained a head-trip. The real therapy has to be total.

Christianity

VOL. 4, COME FOLLOW YOURSELF

Chapter-4

All Who Hear It Lose Themselves