Mind is elusive, you cannot hold it in your hand. You cannot force it into a test-tube. The only way to know it is to know it from within, from your witnessing self. The more you become aware, the more you can watch your mind -- its subtle functioning. The functioning is tremendously complex and beautiful. Mind is the most complex phenomenon on the earth, the most subtle flowering of consciousness. If you want to really understand what the mind is, then you will have to detach yourself from your mind, and you will have to learn how to be just a witness. That's what meditation is all about.
Psychology can become helpful to religion, but then psychology will have to change tremendously. A radical change will be needed. And psychology will have to become more meditative, introspective; and psychology will have to listen more to the East, to the great meditators -- Patanjali, Buddha, Mahavir. It will have to listen to their understanding.
Psychology has developed through the study of the pathological mind. That too is something unbelievable, ridiculous. Psychology has developed through the study of the neurotic, psychotic, schizophrenic -- the ill mind. Because who goes to the psychoanalyst? A healthy person never goes to a psychoanalyst. For what will you go to a psychoanalyst if you are healthy? You go only when something goes wrong, you go only when some illness takes possession of your mind. When you are not normal, then you go to the psychoanalyst. Then he studies the pathological mind. Studying the pathological mind he come's to certain conclusions. Those conclusions are applicable only to the ill mind. They are not applicable to the normal mind, and certainly not to a mind which has gone beyond mind. They don't say anything about a Buddha. They cannot say. No Freud, no Jung, no Adler, has ever studied a Buddha. In fact, the fault is with the psychoanalysts, because Buddhas have always existed.
When Carl Gustav Jung came to the East, there was a Buddha alive -- Raman Maharshi -- but he wouldn't go to see him. It was even suggested, many friends suggested to him, that he go, but he wouldn't go. Maybe a subtle fear that his knowledge would prove futile there, a certain ego that he is a great psychoanalyst -- why should he go to anybody?
Psychology can become helpful to religion, but then psychology will have to change tremendously. A radical change will be needed. And psychology will have to become more meditative, introspective; and psychology will have to listen more to the East, to the great meditators -- Patanjali, Buddha, Mahavir. It will have to listen to their understanding.
Psychology has developed through the study of the pathological mind. That too is something unbelievable, ridiculous. Psychology has developed through the study of the neurotic, psychotic, schizophrenic -- the ill mind. Because who goes to the psychoanalyst? A healthy person never goes to a psychoanalyst. For what will you go to a psychoanalyst if you are healthy? You go only when something goes wrong, you go only when some illness takes possession of your mind. When you are not normal, then you go to the psychoanalyst. Then he studies the pathological mind. Studying the pathological mind he come's to certain conclusions. Those conclusions are applicable only to the ill mind. They are not applicable to the normal mind, and certainly not to a mind which has gone beyond mind. They don't say anything about a Buddha. They cannot say. No Freud, no Jung, no Adler, has ever studied a Buddha. In fact, the fault is with the psychoanalysts, because Buddhas have always existed.
When Carl Gustav Jung came to the East, there was a Buddha alive -- Raman Maharshi -- but he wouldn't go to see him. It was even suggested, many friends suggested to him, that he go, but he wouldn't go. Maybe a subtle fear that his knowledge would prove futile there, a certain ego that he is a great psychoanalyst -- why should he go to anybody?
hans-wolfgang - am Freitag, 1. April 2005, 01:18
