Interviews & Teachings

THE PURPOSE OF THE THERAPY GROUPS

…is not to bring the participants to their natural self – not at all. The purpose of the therapy groups is to bring you to the point where you can see your unnaturalness. Nobody can bring you to your natural self; there can be no method, no technique, no device, which can bring you to your natural self – because all that you will do will make you more and more unnatural.

Then what is the purpose of a therapy group? It simply makes you aware of the unnatural patterns that you have evolved in your being. It simply helps you to see the unnaturalness of your life, that’s all. Seeing it, it starts dispersing. To see it is to annihilate it, because once you have seen something as unnatural in your being, you cannot persist in it any longer.

And seeing something as unnatural, you have also felt what IS natural – but that is indirect, that is vague, that is not clear. What is clear is this, that you have seen that something is unnatural in you. Seeing the unnatural you can feel the natural. Seeing the unnatural, you cannot support it any more. It existed because of your support – nothing can exist without your support. Your co-operation is needed.

If you co-operate something exists. Certainly the unnatural cannot exist without your co-operation. From where will it get the energy? The natural can exist without your co-operation, but the unnatural cannot exist. The unnatural needs constant support, it needs constant care, it needs constant control.

Once you have seen that this is unnatural, your grip on it becomes loose. Your fist opens of its own accord. The group is not a device to open your fist. It is just to help you see that what you are doing is unnatural. In that very seeing, the transformation.

You ask: IS THE PURPOSE OF THE THERAPY GROUPS TO BRING THE PARTICIPANTS TO THEIR NATURAL SELF?

No, that is not the purpose. The purpose is simply to make you aware of where you are, what you have done to yourself – what harm you have been doing continuously and you are still doing. What wounds you are creating in your being. On each of the wounds is your signature – that is the purpose of the group, to make you alert about your signature. That it is signed by you, that nobody else has been doing it.

That all the chains that you have around yourself are created by you. That the prison you live in is your own work. Nobody is doing it to you. Seeing it, that ”I am creating my own prison,” how long can you go on creating it? If you want to live in the prison, that’s another matter – but nobody ever wants to live in the prison.

The group therapy is to make you aware that neither God is responsible nor is society responsible nor are parent? responsible. If there is anybody who is responsible it is you? A group process is a hammering of this simple fact – that it is you who are responsible. And this hammering has a great significance.

Because once you understand that ”This is ME, I myself am doing wrong to myself, ”then the doors open. Then there is hope. Then something is possible. Revolution is possible through responsibility, individual responsibility. You can transmute; you can drop those old patterns. They are not your destiny. But if you accept them as your destiny they become your destiny. It is all a question of whether to support them or not.

And I am not saying that parents have not done something to you, remember. And I am not saying that the society has not done anything to you – I am not saying that either. The society has done much, the parents have done much, the education and the priest, they have done much. But, still, the ultimate key is in your hands. You can DROP it, you can drop the whole conditioning.

Whatsoever they have done, you can erase it – because your consciousness at the deepest core always remains free. That is the purpose of a therapy group, to bring this truth home: that you are responsible. ’Responsibility’ is the MOST important word in a group-therapy process. Nobody wants to take the responsibility, because it hurts. Just to see the point, ”I am the cause of my misery,” hurts very much.

If somebody else is the cause, one can accept it, one is helpless. But if I am the cause of my misery, it hurts. It goes against the ego, it goes against the pride. That’s why group therapy is a difficult process, hard. You want to escape – from encounter, from tao, from primal therapy, you want to escape. Why do you want to escape? Because you have always believed that you are perfectly right, you are perfectly good – others have been doing harm to you…

NOBODY IS RESPONSIBLE EXCEPT YOU. This is one of the hardest truths to accept. But once you accept it, it brings great freedom, it creates great space. Because with this, another possibility immediately opens up: ”If I am responsible then I can change. If I am not responsible, how can I change? If I am doing it to myself, then it hurts but it also brings a new possibility – that I can stop hurting myself, I can stop being miserable.”

A group process is not to make you natural; it is to make you aware of your unnaturalness, of your phoniness.

OSHO

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