Osho,
How to be a Taoist psychotherapist within a very Confucius-oriented mental institution? In other words, how to be a nut healer instead of a nutcracker?

“You can be a Taoist anywhere; nobody can hinder you, no obstacles can prevent you, because to be a Taoist means taking the ultimate risk. I am not saying that you will not be in trouble; I have never said that.

“You will be in trouble, certainly you will be in trouble, but that trouble is good, beneficial. It is a birth pain.

“Yes, when you become natural you will be continuously in trouble – from everywhere. Nobody is natural, so everywhere you will be an odd person. Nobody will feel at ease with you in the beginning.

Because you are at ease with yourself, nobody will feel at ease with you – because they are not at ease with themselves.

“They are very tense people. They fit with a tense person, but they are simply at a loss with a non-tense person. What to do?

“Once I was traveling in a train and there was only one other passenger in the compartment. He wanted to talk to me, to somehow get into conversation with me. Seeing his restlessness I remained very cool.

“When he tried to ask something I simply answered with yes or no. I didn’t take any interest in him or the topic. When he offered me some paan I said, ‘I don’t take it.’ When he offered me a cigarette I said, ‘I don’t smoke.’ When he prepared a drink – he was a doctor – I said, ‘I don’t drink.’

“He went crazy. He said, ‘Then how can I be friendly with you? How? We are going to be here together in this compartment for forty-eight hours and there seems to be no bridge.

“I said, ‘There is none.’

And I watched him. He started becoming crazier and crazier.

“He would open his suitcase and close it again and arrange his clothes and then arrange them again, and then open the window, close the window, read the same newspaper again, and in between he would look at me as if to say, ‘What is the matter?’ I sat there cool and silent, and I enjoyed it.

“After two hours he called the conductor and said, ‘I want to go into another compartment.’ The conductor asked if there was something wrong.

“He said, ‘Nothing is wrong but this man is too silent. It hurts. It drives me crazy. He is just sitting there and I have to see him because I am here alone. And there seems to be no possibility of communicating with him.’

“Now, I was not doing any harm. I had not said even a single word to him, but he had become very disturbed.

“When you are silent you will find that people become very uneasy with you. Your silence brings a totally different world, a world that they are not attuned with.

“You bring a totally new music, a music they don’t know at all. You introduce them to a new way of being for which they are not ready.

“You ask me: ‘How to be a Taoist psychotherapist within a very Confucius-oriented mental institution?’

The whole world is a Confucius-oriented mental institution. Confucius is the master of millions, of the whole world really. And the whole world has become a mental institution. It is very difficult to find a man who is sane. Insanity is normal.

“So if you are in a mental institution don’t be worried very much, because whether you are in the institution or in the world it is the same. There is not much difference – just a little difference of degree.

“You can be Taoist anywhere because Taoism has no conditions to be fulfilled.

The first thing you will have to understand is: don’t think of the mad people as nuts, don’t think of them as mad. That is disrespectful.

“Their family thought them mad, hence they were hospitalized or institutionalized. The politicians thought them mad, the priest thought them mad, everybody thought them mad.

“But I tell you they are only different, not necessarily mad. Certainly they are different but who knows who is mad?

“Jesus was thought to be a madman, Mansoor was thought to be a madman, Francis was thought to be a madman, Ramakrishna was thought to be a madman. But who is mad?

“They are different, that much is certain. Be respectful. Maybe by being respectful you will help them to come back, to become more alert.

This must be understood: when a person goes mad it simply shows that he was the weakest link in the group in which he used to live – for example, in a family.

“If the family is neurotic – as families are neurotic – then the person who is the weakest in the family will become neurotic.

“Then through that person the whole neurosis of the family will start flowing. He will become the scapegoat. He may be weak, he may be fragile; he may be more sensitive than the others. He may be of a softer heart and softer build.

“But the whole neurosis of the family will start flowing through him and the whole family will start calling him mad. And they will start thinking to take him to the psychiatrist, to the institution.

“He had been helpful; he had been a safety valve for the neurotic family. In fact the family was neurotic.

The family’s neurosis created the neurosis of the person; he was the most vulnerable in the family.

“Maybe he was the most intelligent, the most sensitive, the softest of them, so certainly he became affected first. Others were harder, more insensitive, more stone-like – he was more like a rose, so he was crushed.

“Then he goes to the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist is ready to label him: he is a schizophrenic, or a manic-depressive, or this or that. He is labeled. The family is happy – they were right.

“The man cannot say anything because the family says he is mad, and the people where he works say he is mad, and now, finally, the psychiatrist confirms that he is mad.

The psychiatrist is in the service of the society. The psychiatrist is part of the politics.

“Just as in the old days the priest was in the service of society, now the psychiatrist is in the service of society. Now the psychiatrist is doing the same function as the priest. The old conspiracy continues.

“The priests and the politicians were together – they conspired against man. Now the priest has lost his prestige, so he is being replaced by the psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. Now he is doing service and the politician is using him.

“You force the person into a mental hospital. The moment you force a man into a mental hospital you absolutely fix in his mind the idea that he is mad. The idea that he is mad, which you have given him, is irreversible.

“Now everything will prove that he is mad – the treatment, the medicine, the doctors, the nurses, the whole atmosphere. You are hypnotizing him into madness.

If you really want to be a Taoist in a mental institute, the first thing to do is to help the person to feel that he is not mad, only different.

“Do you see the difference it will bring? Just the word ‘different.’ Nothing is basically wrong with him; he is just not like others.

“Then you are not destroying his self-respect, then you are not destroying his dignity, you are helping his dignity.

“Then you are not giving him a hypnotic idea that he is mad, you are helping him to be dehypnotized.

“Help him as a person but not as a patient. Nobody is a patient. Help him respectfully, not with any derogation on your part.

“Don’t label him, because persons cannot be labeled. People are so infinite people are so glorious – how can you label them ‘manic-depressive or schizophrenic’?

“These labels are dangerous, very dangerous. And nobody knows exactly what schizophrenia is, nobody knows exactly. There is no exact definition of who is abnormal, who is mad. So don’t play with words.

“Help the person to understand that he is different. Help the person to understand that he will be existing in a crowd which is totally different from him so he has to be a little careful – that’s all.

If you can bring a little more awareness into him, you will be a great blessing to him. That’s all that is needed.

“In the East we have done it for centuries. In the East, in the old days, if a person was going mad they would not take him to a doctor, to a physician, they would take him to a certain sacred place, to a temple.

“Why? Because madness was thought to be something divine. It is beautiful to think of madness as divine. It has something in it of the divine of the divine spontaneity, of the divine chaos.

“It has something that transcends ordinary intellect. They would take him to the temple and in the temple he was not thought to be a mad person, he was thought only to be in a higher stage.

“People would pray for him and he would be left surrendered to God.

“And in almost all cases people were helped. They would again become normal – whatever that means. They would come back home, they would be able to fit with people more easily.

“In Japan, in Zen temples, they still do that. They don’t consider a person to be mad, they simply accept him as a person in trouble, a person who is different. They help him to be in the monastery but nobody does anything else for him. He is left alone. His needs are fulfilled.

“And by and by, within three or four weeks, he settles. The stirring that was inside him settles. In fact, to take a person out of his family reference and context is to help him.

“But mad institutions should not be called mad institutions. They should be houses to help different kinds of people, with respect.

Don’t think of yourself as a doctor, think of yourself as a friend. Don’t think of yourself as higher than the patient. You are nobody to prescribe; you have just to understand the person and help him come to more awareness.

“Many things can be helpful. Music will be more helpful than medicine.

“Meditation will be more tremendously helpful than anything else and Dynamic Meditation particularly will be helpful. Just help him to cathart.

“He has gathered much rubbish in his heart which he has not been allowed to throw off anywhere. Help him to throw it off.

“Don’t repress him any more. His family was repressive, his society was repressive, now at least you can help.

What I call the dynamic methods of meditation can be of tremendous value to future psychiatry.

“Just help him to bring his madness out, whatsoever he feels like. If he wants to scream, let him. And don’t let him feel guilty that he is doing something wrong. It is perfectly okay.

“In screaming nothing is wrong. He must have been waiting from his very childhood. He wanted to scream and scream and scream and nobody allowed it.

“Now the scream has become too much of a burden. It needs release. Let him scream. Let him cry and weep. Let him roll on the ground.

“And by and by you will see all violence disappearing. By and by he will cool down, he will settle down.

“Then give him silent methods of meditation – zazen, Vipassana, and other methods.

“First give cathartic methods, then silent methods. These two things.

Be respectful. Serve him, don’t treat him – and you will be able to treat him.”

END

Excerpted from Osho, Tao: The Pathless Path, Series 2, Talk #8 – Harmony in Conflict

To read this complete talk and see all the available media formats, click here.