“No analyst, nobody from the outside, can interpret, because each individual dreams in his own way.”
[A new sannyasin runs his own centre and therapy based on a process called re-dreaming. He says: It’s a system of moving a person back into the dream state and unfolding the essence of the dream.]
That’s good. That can be helpful… far more helpful than the analysis of the dreams. Because in analysis the analyst starts imposing his interpretation on the dream. So if you go to the Freudian, he has one interpretation; if you go to the Jungian he has another, and the Adlerian has something else. You go to as many psychoanalysts as are possible and each has his own interpretation – and the dream is one. The real interpretation can be done only by the dreamer; nobody else can interpret it. One can only have help… help to remember, help to be reminded, help to join fragments, help to go through it.
The problem of interpretation arises only because the dream is ordinarily never remembered in full; only fragments are left and they look absurd. The tail-end is remembered and many parts are missing. Maybe the vital parts are missing, because the mind won’t allow those vital parts to be known by the dreamer. It represses; immediately the conscious mind is awake it represses the vital parts. So only the non-vital parts – which are not of much significance, which cannot give any clue – are there. And from those non-vital, non-essential parts, psychoanalysts go on working. Their work is more invention, their own invention.
But this can be of immense help if you help the person to go into the dream so that the dream can unfold again. With that unfolding, the person himself will start recognising the meaning. Slowly slowly he will become aware of the meaning himself, and that will be the true meaning. Neither the Freudian nor the Jungian nor the Adlerian – no analyst, nobody from the outside, can interpret, because each individual dreams in his own way. At least that much freedom is still available in the world, that each one can dream his own way, each one can have his own private dream. Everything else has become public. Everything else is dominated by the church and the state. Only dreams are still available; and they will not be available for long – sooner or later the state is going to enter into people’s dreams.
In Russia they are doing much work trying to teach people in their sleep. Sooner or later sleep is not going to remain private property – it will belong to the state – and from the very childhood the state will catch hold of the sleeping time. Because it is a long time: for eight hours out of twenty-four hours the person is asleep; for one-third of his life he is asleep. The state cannot afford to leave so much time to the person – he may be dreaming dreams dangerous to the state. He may be dreaming rebellious dreams. He may be anti-communist or anti-marxist, or this or that. His dreams have to be probed into. Sooner or later the state is going to find ways to know the dreams of people; then it is going to become very very difficult. But right now, fortunately, it has not yet happened, and people are free to have their own dreams to their own heart’s content.
This method can be of great help. Go deeply into it, and help people. If they can understand their dreams, they will understand their lives.
Osho, The Madman’s Guide to Enlightenment, Ch 16
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