Once Catharsis Has Happened, Only Then Can Yoga Techniques Be Used

It’s been an interesting experience to feel it coming together with Yoga.

Yoga is significant, but many more things have to be added to it.

The discipline is very ancient and man has changed a lot. It is one of the most ancient things in the world, but the discipline was created for a certain type of man who no more exists. A rift has come. Man has changed tremendously and the discipline has remained very orthodox. It is necessary in a way, otherwise the purity of discipline cannot be protected. So guardians of every school protected the purity. But the problem is that they succeeded in protecting the purity of the discipline, but then the rift became bigger and bigger between man and the system – because man goes on changing.

Tremendous change has happened – not only in the mind of man, but in the biology, in the physiology of man – and Yoga has to keep pace with it. So, many more things have to be added to it. Many people try Yoga but few succeed. At the most it can become a sort of exercise. It is good as far as it goes. It gives you a certain health, a certain well-being, but that was not the aim of Yoga.

It is as if you have an aeroplane and you are using it as a truck.

You can use it as a truck and it is good as far as it goes, but you could have flown in it. So Yoga is just a means towards the ultimate. The physiological part is not the most essential part, but it has become the most essential. Many people are lost in it. For their whole life they go on practising in the body and they feel good. But to feel good is not enough.

Unless you feel God, to feel good is not enough. Unless you become a god, nothing is enough.

…all
repressions
have to be
released.

And one should continuously remember that one has still far to go, so much more work is needed. Whatsoever physiology has discovered in the human body, whatever new insights have come to biology, to genetic science, whatsoever new lights have been thrown on sexual energy by Freud, whatever has become much more possible through acupuncture – all these things have to be added to Yoga. Then Yoga can really become the supreme science.

And that synthesis is going to happen somewhere in the West – not in the East, because the latest developments are happening in the West. Much has to be done. I would like you to come back for a longer time and be here, because unless it happens within you, you cannot have the vision. It is absolutely subjective. So if you come to an integration inside – and you can feel that the integration has happened within you and everything is clear – then you can have your own approach as to how to integrate with the ancient science of Yoga all that the modern mind has done. What has happened to the modern mind has always to be kept in view.

When Patanjali was working, a totally different quality of man existed in the world – very simple, primitive, unrepressed, with no neurosis, no enforced pattern; natural, more spontaneous, more in tune with nature. Trust was easy, doubt was difficult. In fact, to find a doubter was almost impossible. Trust was as natural as breathing.

First a great
and intense
catharsis
is needed.

Now just the opposite has happened. Trust is almost impossible, doubt is as natural as breathing. And the whole energy is repressed. Man is no more streaming. He is no more a flow, but frozen; many limbs are completely cut or paralysed.

Those things have to be considered. Otherwise, if you give Yoga to the modern man and he is repressed too much, Yoga can become a repressive system in him and it will not help him to grow. He will start shrinking. Bodily he may feel good. Spiritually he will disappear.

First a great and intense catharsis is needed. That’s why I insist so much on cathartic methods. Once catharsis has happened, only then can Yoga techniques be used, because then there is nothing to repress. Otherwise Yoga is such an intense control that if you have something to repress and you practise Yoga, that repressed energy will fall to the very bottom of your unconsciousness and it may take lives for you to come back to it.

So all repressions have to be released. Before one enters on the path of Yoga, at least now, one has to drop all repressions whatsoever. So new growth methods can be of tremendous help. Encounter, Gestalt, Marathons, can be of tremendous help. But yogis seem to be against them and new growth people seem to be against Yoga. Growth-group people think that Yoga is a Son of repression and yogis think that this is a sort of indulgence. And I think that both are wrong.

Before a repressed mind can move on the path of Yoga, he has to go almost through indulgence. Only then can those repressions be thrown out and his system can be purified. Then he can move into Yoga.

Osho, The Cypress in the Courtyard, Ch 13