Psychologists, the New Priesthood
A question and answer with OshoQuestion: Years ago I had contact with certain psychologists, and their ideas seemed to set me free. I found new ways to understand myself, and met people with integrity that I respected. I still love the poetry of psychology. Now, reading some psychologists writing about so-called cults, they sound like fanatics, priests and politicians. They want to control people, not to free them. Can you please comment.Answer: That first idea of yours about psychologists was childish. There is no poetry in psychology.Psychology is the latest instrument to keep people oppressed. Because the priests have failed, new priests are needed. The psychologists are the new priests, and obviously they have come with a new jargon, but the basis is the same.
The politician has been conspiring against you with the priest for centuries. But now it seems the priest has lost hold of people. Churches are empty, so empty that my people have purchased a church in Holland and are turning it into a disco. In fact, that is a good beginning. I would like all beautiful cathedrals and churches to be turned into discos. Now nobody goes there. They are cold and dismal and dead.
The politician is very cunning. He can see the priests have lost their hold - at least on the younger generation. He has to find a substitute. The psychologist has come in handy, because he speaks a different language than the priest. He pretends that his psychology is a science. That is absolutely wrong!
It is not science; how can it be science when Freud, Jung, Adler, Assagioli, are not agreeing on a single point? The four great psychologists—and not agreeing on a single point! Science always comes to an agreement. When the truth is known about anything, the scientist is humble enough to drop his prejudices and accept it. It does not matter who has discovered it, what matters is that it has been discovered.
But the psychologists are divided in so many schools—the same way as religion was divided in so many religions, so many subdivisions of religions, cults, creeds. The same is the situation now of psychology. But the psychologist does not bring God in, does not bring heaven and hell in. He has found different names for these entities. He does not talk about man in the old terms the priests have always used; hence, you got caught in their jargon.
The psychologists don't say that you have to become and ascetic, that you have to practice a certain discipline for years together, or perhaps for lives together, and then you will be liberated, no. They say psychoanalysis will do, just go on being psychoanalyzed.
I have never come across a single man whose psychoanalysis is complete. In fact, even Sigmund Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, is an unpsychoanalyzed person. I have been trying to psychoanalyze him, and I am finding treasures. I would not have believed it if somebody had told me that Freud was so afraid of ghosts that even the word 'ghost' was enough, and he would freak out.
Once, talking to Jung, his most intimate follower at the time—and Jung was very much interested in ghosts. He started talking about ghosts, and Sigmund Freud fainted. These are your founders of psychoanalysis. That was the point where Sigmund Freud and Jung parted. Jung could see, "This man, who cannot even listen to what I have to say about ghosts, and faints, is not going to be my master." And Sigmund Freud also realized, "This man is not going to be my successor." Sigmund Freud and Jung parted.
Listening to me, you may be thinking that Jung was very much more courageous that Sigmund Freud, because he was so interested in ghosts, but that is not true. He was interested in ghosts because he was very much afraid of death, and afraid of becoming a ghost!
Jung wanted to go to Egypt to see the ancient mummies of kings and queens preserved there. Almost ten times he booked his trip, but at the last moment he would find some excuse and cancel the trip. The tenth time, he even went to the airport; and the moment the departure of the plane was announced, he chickened out. After that, he never made any attempt to go to Egypt. He was very much afraid of a dead body. These people are certainly in need of much psychological help.
You say you were very much impressed. It was not that you had come across something very impressive, it was only because you were ignorant, impressionable—anything would have impressed you, you were just soft clay. Otherwise, to see poetry in psychology is insanity.
There may be some psychology in poetry, but in psychology?... In psychology you will find you psychologists talking about masturbation, schizophrenia, nightmares, all kinds of madnesses. I don't think you can find any poetry in all this. Nobody has found poetry in a medical book, and the psychologist is dealing with far worse sicknesses than any medical book can.
But the politicians found that a substitute is urgently needed, and psychoanalysis has become a worldwide movement. It was bound to. Sigmund Freud was a Jew, and whenever a Jew starts a business, it is going to become a worldwide chain.
What did Jesus do? He was a Jew. And Jews have not forgiven him yet, for the simple reason that they are angry with themselves for losing the great business that Jesus had made available to them. Now Christianity is the biggest business firm in the world. Sigmund Freud also made a great business out of psychoanalysis. Jews know how to do business.
Seeing that psychoanalysis was spreading fast, and people were trying to find the meaning of life, some hope, trying to get rid of despair—it was simple for the politicians to use psychology, psychoanalysis, psychiatry, in the service of the vested interests. That's what they have been doing.
Now you are a little more mature. Seeing what the psychologists are writing about cults, new movements—they are all against new movements, new religious beginnings—it is very simple to see that they are in the service of the past, not in the service of humanity's future.
They have been purchased. They are the new priesthood! Beware of these people. Because they are new they are more dangerous.
Now psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, are providing deprogramming. If somebody moves out of Christianity—bored with all its nonsense—and joins a new movement, the psychologists are offering their services to the parents, to the society. "Bring your boy or your girl and we will deprogram the person." And they do it. Of course, they charge enough money.
They can deprogram any cult: Jehovah's Witnesses, Jesus freaks... I am surprised... Jesus himself was a freak. In fact, Jesus freaks are really doing the right thing; to follow Jesus you have to be a Jesus freak. Jesus was not a gentleman, not dressed in a gray business suit. You can think of him as a freak, as a hippie, or anything, but he was not part of the old conditioned mind. That's why he was rewarded with crucifixion.
At that time deprogrammer psychologists had not arrived; otherwise Jesus would have been saved from crucifixion. Just deprogramming would have been enough. He had just to be constantly hammered: "You are not the only son of God. Drop this nonsense. If you are the messiah for whom the whole Judaic tradition is waiting, let them recognize you. Why do you go on shouting that you are the awaited messiah?" It would have been very easy to deprogram that poor carpenter, but the psychologists were not around there.
In America they are doing great business, especially in California. They are spreading in other countries also.
You have found now the right attitude about these people. They don't want any revolution in the world. They don't want any kind of religiousness in the world. They don't want the new man in the world. And they are against humanity, because only the new man can save it. Only the new man can throw these politicians with their nuclear weapons into the Pacific—pacific, certainly, so they can be at peace forever.
These deprogrammers are writing against cults, dogmas, and they don't know anything about them. They don't come here. Not a single deprogrammer psychologist has appeared, because he knows he will be deprogrammed.
We have our own deprogrammers, who are certainly far more efficient, for the simple reason that they are not giving you any program. So their work is simple: they simply deprogram you and leave you alone to yourself. They do not REprogram you. They give you freedom. Deprogrammed you are no longer a Christian, no longer a Hindu, no longer a Mohammedan. You are no longer an American, a Russian, a German. Completely deprogrammed, you are simply an innocent, reborn child.
My sannyasins are again reclaiming their childhoodness, their innocence, which has been disturbed by the priests, by the politicians, by the educationalists. In every way you have been cut to a certain size, according to the dress that they have prepared for you. This is strange! The dress should be cut according to you, and for centuries they have been cutting you according to the dress. The dress is already available - the Christian dress, the Hindu dress, the Buddhist dress - and you have to fit into it. It is imprisionment.
It is good that you have understood that these psychologists are the new jailers. Beware of them.
If anybody needs deprogramming, these are the people who need it. So if you can catch hold of a deprogrammer, bring him here. We have to start deprogramming the new priesthood, because we want the whole humanity to be one.
We don't want any priests, we don't want any religions and we don't want any nations. We want the world to be one. Because only in one world is there no need for nuclear weapons, is there no need for war. Right now, seventy-five percent of human energy, income, resources are going to create more and more weapons. And these politicians who go on piling up nuclear weapons also go on shedding crocodile tears for Ethiopia.
Ethiopia, with all its wounds, can be immediately healed. Half of the population of India need not be existing below survival level. In America itself, thirty million people are so poor that it is simply ugly and insane for the American president to go on pouring money into nuclear weapons.
And the amazing thing is, you have enough nuclear weapons to destroy humanity seven hundred times! Strange, I don't see the arithmetic. Have these politicians forgotten even the basic three R's? Russia and America can destroy this planet seven hundred times. There is no need, one time is enough! You have already got weapons seven hundred times more than you need. Just an average mind can see the foolishness of it.
Stop nuclear weapons, stop this whole idea of war. But the politician knows if the priest disappears he will be in difficulty. He wants to substitute the priest with the psychologist—a more up-to-date version of the same priesthood. There is no difference.
It has to be stopped. So whenever you see a deprogrammer, catch hold of him and bring him here. The way they are catching hold of people... what a strange world! Parents are hijacking their own children and giving them into the hands of the psychologist, and he hammers them.
The method is very simple. He goes on hammering for two days, three days. The man had been a Christian, now he has become a Hare Krishna. The Hare Krishna ideology is only on the surface, very fragile, new; his Christianity is centuries old in his unconscious. It is very easy to deprogram him; his unconscious will be in your support. You have just to scratch a little and his unconscious will start coming up.
You have to make him feel guilty: "You betrayed Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God; you betrayed your country, you betrayed your community." You have just to make him feel guilty—that is scratching—and soon his unconscious will be coming up.
But nobody can deprogram my sannyasins, because we already do it and we never give another program to people. We leave them completely free, individual. We give them the dignity of being an individual and not just a member of some religion. We give them the pride to be themselves and not be an American or a Russian.
My sannyasins, nobody can deprogram.
In fact, if you find yourself in a situation where you are forced to be deprogrammed, don't be afraid. Deprogram the deprogrammer! Don't miss the chance. And I know you can do it!
From the collection of Osho's work: Beyond the Frontier of the Mind