Swami Chaitanya KeertiEnlightened masters in the past used very simple methods of meditation to help millions of people to transform themselves. And the people did get transformed and self-realization happened to them. But if we look at the world situation today, we come to know that for most of the people it has become impossible to enter into the meditative space easily. They have become very complicated, even though they have more comforts than the previous generations. They are more depressed and the suicide rate in the world has been increasing steadily. According to the World Health Organisation: Close to 800 000 people die due to suicide every year, which is one person every 40 seconds. Many more attempt suicide. Suicide occurs throughout the lifespan and is the second leading cause of death among 15-29-year-olds globally. It is reported that a person dies by suicide about every 11.7 minutes in the United States. 25 million Americans suffer from depression each year. Over 50 percent of all people who die by suicide suffer from major depression. If one includes alcoholics who are depressed, this figure rises to over 75 percent.
This is very scary that people are committing suicide at such an age 15-29 year when they have a tremendous amount of energy to create a solid foundation of their life. Such youthful people are supposed to enjoy and celebrate their life. Why is this happening? There can be reasons but one thing is clear that such people do need therapy urgently to become normal and when they have become normal, they need meditation to be able to celebrate their life.Osho understood this 50 years ago when people started coming to him from around the world. His ashram in Pune was the first spiritual center of the world where various kinds of psychotherapies were introduced and developed alongside hundreds of methods of meditation. Most of the top therapists of the world became his disciples and they offered therapy sessions under the guidance of an enlightened master Osho.
In The Dhammapada: The Way of the Buddha ( Vol-7, Chapter-6) Osho says: I must be the first enlightened person who is using therapeutic groups as a help to meditation, for the simple reason that in the past man was so simple there was no need for him to pass through therapies first. He was healthy in a way, saner in a way, authentic, truer, sincere and honest. Modern man is cunning, very cunning, and very repressed, so much so that he himself is not aware of what he has repressed in his being. And modern man is very clever, he is not simple. He is so clever that he can go on deceiving even himself. By deceiving others continuously he has become skillful in deceiving. The skill has become so ingrained that now no conscious, deliberate effort is needed for him to be cunning. He can simply be cunning without any effort on his own. This changed situation demands new methods, new approaches, new windows, so new that your mind is at a loss what to do. If your mind knows what to do, the device cannot be of any help. The mind, when it is unable to find a way out, is at a loss -- that is the great, precious moment when something of the beyond can happen.
Meditation is beyond psychology and psychotherapy. Osho adds in the Light on the Path: My therapists are not only therapists, they are meditators too. and therapy is a superficial thing. It can help to clean the ground, but just to clean the ground is not to have a garden. You will need something more.
That something more is meditation--which is really therapeutic. Meditation gives us joy and does not allow any depression to overpower us. Meditation surrounds us as a protective aura.
