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Part VII : Controversy about Sex and Violence in Therapy
In this commune, I have arranged for many psychotherapies. They
will be misunderstood by the masses, bound to be misunderstood - because
in a psychotherapeutic situation you have to bring all the denied
parts to the surface.
If somebody has been denying his anger, it has to be allowed
in a psychotherapeutic situation. Only then can psychotherapy
be of any help - can it be therapeutic, can it heal you. It
has to open all your wounds: much pus starts flowing.
If you watch the encounter group you will feel sick. You will
feel sick because you will see such animality coming out; you
could never have imagined that human beings can be such animals.
But that animality is within you too, just repressed. By repression
you cannot dissolve it.
In the encounter group - that is the meaning of the word
'encounter' - you have to encounter yourself in your totality.
You have to bring out all that is repressed; you have to bring
out all - without any evaluation about what is good, what
is bad. And suddenly you see great animals roaring inside you.
They are violent, and you have been taught to be non-violent.
Your non-violence has repressed your violence.
Great rage, for no reason at all, will arise. You will start
beating the wall; you may start beating yourself. And you will
say, "What am I doing? I have never done it before. From
where is it coming?" But it is coming in great surges, in
great waves. And the whole process is to let it be.
And when all the parts have been expressed - your sex, your
anger, your greed, your jealousy, your rage - when all parts
have been expressed, a great calmness arises, the silence that
follows the storm.
This cannot be understood by the masses. In fact they are very
much on their guard. They don't want to understand either - because
to understand means they will have to look within, and they will
find the same things inside themselves.
But if you go on keeping these things inside yourself, you will
remain always in a kind of disease. This is what your society
has given to you - your society has made you a very ill person.
This whole society is pathological. And whenever a pathology is
social you never become aware of it, because everybody else is
suffering from the same thing.
To be total means: think of yourself as if you are the first
man - you are Adam or you are Eve - and you have not yet
met any priest and you have not yet met any puritan. You have
not yet met any Morarji Desai. Nobody has told you how to be,
what to be. Think of yourself as the first man or the first woman,
and accept - because there is no other way of transcendence
than acceptance.
Buddha called it 'suchness' - tathata. Accept it: if God
has given you these things, there must be a meaning in them. They
must be seeds of some unknown flowers - they have to be used.
In the soil of acceptance those seeds fall, disappear, and great
trees of understanding arise, and millions of flowers of ecstasy,
of joy, of celebration. peren110
In one of our therapy groups a man's hand was fractured, and
it got immense publicity against me - although I was not involved
in any way; I was not present in the therapy group. But nobody
asked the man himself.
I called him and asked him, "What is your feeling? How are
you feeling?" - the fracture was now healed, the plaster
had been removed.
He said, "I am amazed. I have always had the feeling that
I could murder somebody. Since the fracture of the hand that feeling
has disappeared. I don't know what has happened, how it has happened,
but since that time I am feeling very humble; otherwise I was
very arrogant." Perhaps his hand was collecting violence
and he was repressing it. The fracture released the energy.
I was condemned all over the world by the newspapers, that in
my therapy groups violence is being used. But I was amazed: not
a single journalist had the sense to have an interview with the
man and enquire what had been his experience. His experience was
totally different. He was feeling fortunate that it happened,
because a load that he was carrying from his childhood had simply
disappeared.
So one thing: we should understand every energy - its mechanics,
its working - and give it expression. mystic31
A journalist asks about the controversy over groups
In Poona there were few groups, and I was deciding people, which
group they should go and in what sequence. These groups were therapies;
so first silent therapies were given, meditative therapies were
given. Those who could not succeed in them, then more active therapies
were given to them. If even that was not enough, then therapies
were given to them in which they can beat the pillows, shout,
scream…but not to touch anybody. Mostly this was enough.
Rarely there was a person who still needed something more, was
yet not cleansed. Then for these there were therapies where they
were allowed to have physical pushing. But there was a therapist
to take care that nothing harms anybody. And these people were
to fill the form that they are accepting certain therapy on their
own - if they don't want, they need not. It was their individual
choice. And these therapies helped these people immensely. And
all these therapies whatever they were doing, they had constantly
to remember witnessing - that was part which has not been
known to the world - that even if they are hitting somebody
they are just like a puppet, inside there was a watcher. And after
hitting they will hug each other and they will cry and weep and
great compassion will come out.
In sexual therapies, I asked the men, the women that "What
is your experience? What you have gained out of it?" And
it was again surprising. That one woman told me that she had always
dreamt that she is being raped. And she woke up in the middle
of the night afraid, trembling, perspiring. And it was a constantly
recurring dream. But after this therapy the dream has disappeared
and the sleep has become silent and quiet.
Was she raped?
Not raped, but in a sexual therapy she was a participant. It was
all playful, nobody was being raped. Nobody was forced against
his or her will. And if anybody wanted to get out of it at any
moment, he was free to get out of it.
Did you ever participate?
No, because I was not leading the groups, my therapists were leading
the groups. last421
In 1979, Osho comments:
The modern growth movement is stuck. Encounter groups, primal
therapy, gestalt, bioenergetics…and so many beautiful things
are happening in the world, but they are stuck at a certain point.
Their problem is: they teach expression - and it is good,
it is far better than repression. If there is only this choice,
repress or express, then I would suggest express. But this is
not the real choice; there is a third alternative far more important
than both these. If you express, you become habitual; you learn
by doing it again and again - you can't get out of it.
In this commune there are at least fifty therapy groups running,
for a certain reason. It is just to balance the thousands of years
of repression; it is just to balance. It is just to bring to light
all that you have repressed as Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans,
Jainas, Buddhists. It is just to undo the centuries' old harm
that has been done to you.
But remember, these groups are not the end; they only prepare
you for meditation. They are not the goal; they are just simple
means to undo the wrong of the past. Once you have thrown out
of your system all that you have been repressing all along, I
have to lead you into watchfulness. Now it will be easier to watch.
But you are not to become a group-addicted person, you are not
to become a groupie. There are people now in the world who are
group-addicted; they go from one group to another. One encounter
finishes - then another marathon, then gestalt, then this
and that…. After just a few days the itch arises - because
where to express? In the normal society they cannot express, they
have to repress. So the group becomes just an outlet. The normal
society forces you to repress, the group helps you to express
but you are not really growing. Again you will be back in the
normal society, again repressing.
And if you express in the normal society, you will be getting
into far more dangerous situations. You may murder somebody - you
have so much anger. You will be in jail, imprisoned forever. Or
if you go on fighting with everybody - if you slap the boss
in the office, if you beat your wife, your children, your husband - then
your whole life will become a chaos, it will be impossible to
live it. So after a few days of accumulation you need another
encounter. A few days of encountering and you feel unburdened;
back in society you will be burdened again. This is not going
to help. This is a temporary relief.
You can scream to your heart's desire in a primal therapy group,
but if you start screaming on the road, then you will be taken
to the police station. You can scream in a group context - it
is allowed, helped, provoked; you are persuaded to scream, because
since your childhood you have been repressing it. It has become
a wound; it needs to be opened. If the pus oozes out and the wound
is left open to the winds and to the sun and to the rain, it will
heal itself, because you have a healing energy; it is inbuilt.
But back in the society again…how long can you remain in
a primal therapy group? Back in the same old society again, you
will have to repress; you cannot go on screaming there. Then the
scream gathers, then the steam gathers. Then one day you have
to go into the group again. This is a temporary relief; good as
far as it goes, but it cannot make you a buddha.
That's where this commune is different from institutes like
Esalen. They end with groups - we begin with groups. Where
they end, that's exactly the point from where we begin.
And it is not a coincidence that thousands of therapists have
become interested in my work. They have come here…. Among
my *sannyasins, the greatest group from any profession is that
of psychotherapists. A great need is felt now all over the world
that encounter, primal therapy, gestalt, can help a little bit
to unburden people, but they cannot help to make them buddhas - they
cannot help them to become awakened. dh0105
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