BLOG OCTOBER 2017
This blog is celebrating all those born after October 21st.
All those SCORPIOS that are identified as water signs in the Astrological
world.
C. G. Jung studied most if not all the esoteric sciences
that have been evolving over the past many thousands of years before
Christianity. He not only studied the Chinese I-Ching, the Astrological charts,
the Hindu mythology, but also created the idea of the Collective Unconscious and the Arquetypes.
We moderns may call this the “INNER-NET” as Caroline Myss
defined it: “a high speed interconnected psychic network that links every human
being through a vast system of Archetypes.” (Archetypes, 2013). Unfortunately for us (the public)
the Myths and Stories that define those Archetypes are no longer helping us to
define who we are.
In the past, people could clearly define themselves as part
of a tribal collective or being a Hindu, a Christian, a Muslim, an Indian, a
Chinese, a Tibetan, a white or black person, a man or woman and so on. Now it
is not a clear indication that those labels (although still in use) are really
defining a person. Many rely on the modern, contemporary psychology or rely on
the ‘political correctness’ that the media is presenting us daily on TV, social
media and the internet.
This new search for one’s identity is now being reflected in
many countries where each person, group, association or political party is
promoting differing identities based on old patterns and seeking freedoms and
‘liberation’ from the majority.
One major example is the current independist vote in
Catalonia, Spain. This mainly illegal and anti- constitutional move is being
criticised by the European Union and the Spanish democratic government as the
most blatant mockery of the democratic process and totally illegal.
Similar events are being developed in many other countries
that are not in line with free and fair votes but are doing what they please.
The old democracy is failing to get the full approval of many people around the
world and promoting a new struggle for change and identity.
NEUROSIS IN OUR TIMES
For psychotherapists working today, it is worth re-reading
Freud’s book “Civilisation and its Discontents” published in 1929. And the new
book by OSHO “Enlightenment is Your Nature: On the Neurosis of Becoming Human”,
published in 2017.
The authors are from different backgrounds but both have
made a major impact on the world. Freud a Jewish conservative from Austria
developed the new psychoanalysis and Osho Rajneesh, born in India and became a
master guru at the age of 21, established the most advanced spiritual and psychotherapy
centre in Puna, India that is very active today, even after his death in 1990.
Freud and Osho have given the same message to the world and
that is that the Neurotic phenomenon plaguing most people today is mainly because
we cannot tolerate the total obedience to the same rules created by society to
protect us from violence, evil and injustice. However, Osho has given a new
interpretation: our fragmented and split personality is struggling against the
“shoulds” of socially prescribed rules and the “wants” of the heart. The mix of
words, feelings and thoughts and objects are creating major misunderstandings
among people that need to be balanced by spiritual preparation like meditation
and awareness training.
Freud wrote the
following in “Civilization and Its Discontents”:
In this book, Sigmund
Freud enumerates what he sees as the fundamental tensions between civilization
and the individual. The primary friction, he asserts, stems from the
individual's quest for instinctive freedom and civilization's contrary demand
for conformity and repression of instincts. Freud states that when any
situation that is desired by the pleasure principle is prolonged, it creates a
feeling of mild contentment. Many of humankind's early instincts, such as the
desire to kill and the craving for sexual gratification, are considered bad to
the well-being of a human community. As a result, civilization creates laws
that prohibit killing, rape, and adultery, and it implements severe punishments
if these rules are broken. Thus, our possibilities for happiness are restricted
by the law. This process, argues Freud, is an inherent quality of civilization
that gives rise to perpetual feelings of discontent among its citizens.
The third chapter of
the book addresses a fundamental paradox of civilization: it is a system that
we have created to protect ourselves from unhappiness, and yet it is our
largest source of unhappiness. People become neurotic because they cannot
tolerate the frustration which society imposes in the service of its cultural
and religious ideals. Freud points out that advances in science and technology
have been, at best, a mixed blessing for human happiness. Although some states
(like the USA) guarantee people the freedom to pursue happiness. However, the
laws of civilization serve to circumvent the natural processes and feelings of
human development and eroticism. It is no wonder then, that this repression
could lead to discontent among civilians.
Here is a resume of Osho’s
book: “The Fundamental Difference
Between Psychology, Therapy, and Meditation”
Soon after he first settled in Pune and a community of
seekers had begun to gather around him, Osho began to integrate new Western
therapeutic approaches into his work. Known broadly as 'Humanistic Psychology
Movement,' these methods had evolved in the West as a response to the
limitations of Freudian "talk therapy" and B. F. Skinner's
behaviourism.
Osho combined a wide variety of these therapy groups and
processes, as stepping stones, with his revolutionary ‘active meditation
techniques’, which soon earned the community a reputation as the world's finest
growth and therapy centre. It attracted those in search of personal
transformation, some of the most innovative therapists and bodyworkers in the
West, and people interested in meditation. Osho worked closely with both
therapists and group participants to ensure that these offerings were in tune
with his vision of a psychology that aims not to restore people to the
functional neurosis society defines as “normal,” but to open the doors to a
radical transformation of consciousness.
This book, “Enlightenment is Your Nature”, lays out Osho’s
approach as he explains that therapy is used only as a cleansing process, that
it is only a preparation for meditation. In his vision, therapy has a different
function from that used in the “outside world” where therapists and counsellors
try to bring the person back into the mind so they can function efficiently in
society. Instead, Osho uses therapy only to prepare the ground, cleaning out
the weeds of neurosis to plant the flowers of meditation. Rather than trying to
"fix" the neurotic mind, the person is supported to be courageous
enough to take a step beyond the mind – and that happens through meditation.
It is not against the mind, either. It recognizes the mind
as a useful tool in navigating through everyday life and many of its everyday
challenges. But meditation is the key to being able to use the tool of the mind
as a servant, rather than being a slave to all its moods, "problems"
and tensions. Meditation is, according to Osho, a process of dropping from the
outside into the inside, forgetting the world of objects, the world of
thoughts, the world of feelings - and a moment comes when pure consciousness is
there, without any content. To know this consciousness is to understand what
the psychology of the buddhas is: to rest
in the fullness of the inner being. That inner being knows no pathology, no
neurosis, no fears no anxiety.
In “Enlightenment is Your Nature”, Osho deconstructs all
misunderstandings of what enlightenment is, and offers a view freed from all
spiritual and religious beliefs – including the distortions of asceticism and
renunciation that have arisen in both Eastern and Western cultures. Taking the
reader step by step through the history of how both East and West have
approached the mysteries of the human mind and spirituality, he offers a simple
science of consciousness and how it works, how we have lost contact with it,
how consciousness is related to the mind and the brain. In very clear and
scientific terms he shows how one can, through awareness and taking full
responsibility for one’s life, go beyond all the belief systems, habits, and
superstitions that keep us tethered. That process of awareness and
understanding, he says, brings us back to our nature – and that is
enlightenment.
Osho claimed that he is the first person who uses therapy,
but whose interest is not therapy but meditation, just as it was with Chuang
Tzu or Gautam Buddha. They never used therapy because there was no need. People
were simply ready, and you could bring the rosebushes without clearing the
ground. The ground was already clear.
In these twenty-five centuries man has become so burdened
with rubbish, so many wild weeds have grown in his being that using therapy
just to clean the ground, take away the wild weeds, the roots, so the
difference between the ancient man and the modern man is destroyed.
The modern man should be made as innocent as the ancient
man, as simple, as natural. He has lost all these great qualities. The
therapist must help him – but his work is only a preparation. It is not the
end. The end part is going to be the meditation.
Rajneesh (born Chandra
Mohan Jain, 11 December 1931 – 19 January 1990), also known as Osho, Acharya
Rajneesh, or simply Rajneesh, was an Indian Guru and leader of the Rajneesh
movement. During his lifetime he was viewed as a controversial mystic, and
spiritual teacher. In the 1960s he travelled throughout India as a public
speaker and was a vocal critic of socialism, Mahatma Gandhi, and Hindu
religious orthodoxy.
In 1970 Rajneesh spent
time in Mumbai initiating followers known as "neo-sannyasins." During
this period, he expanded his spiritual teachings and through his discourses
gave an original insight into the writings of religious traditions, mystics,
and philosophers from around the world. In 1974 Rajneesh relocated to Pune
where a foundation and ashram was established to offer a variety of
"transformational tools" for both Indian and international visitors.
By the late 1970s, tension between the ruling Janata Party government of
Morarji Desai and the movement led to a curbing of the ashram's development.
In 1981 efforts
refocused on activities in the United States and Rajneesh relocated to a
facility known as Rajneeshpuram in Wasco County, Oregon. Almost immediately the
movement ran into conflict with county residents and the state government and a
succession of legal battles concerning the ashram's construction and continued
development curtailed its success. In 1985, following the investigation of
serious crimes including the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack, and an
assassination plot to murder US Attorney Charles H. Turner, Rajneesh alleged
that his personal secretary Ma Anand Sheela and her close supporters had been
responsible. He was later deported from the United States.
After his deportation
21 countries denied him entry, and he ultimately returned to India, and a
reinvigorated Pune ashram, where he died in 1990. His ashram is today known as
the Osho International Meditation Resort.
Rajneesh's syncretic
teachings emphasise the importance of meditation, awareness, love, celebration,
courage, creativity, and humour—qualities that he viewed as being suppressed by
adherence to static belief systems, religious tradition, and socialisation.
Rajneesh's teachings have had a notable impact on Western New Age thought and
their popularity has increased markedly since his death.
