ACCORDING TO LAING, THE FIRST NINE MONTHS FROM CONCEPTION ARE NOT NECESSARILY BLISSFUL, AND JANOV’S FINDINGS DO NOT CONFIRM FREUD’S BIRTH TRAUMA THEORY.
To Osho, Freud still remains true. Not only Freud, but Buddha, Mahavir and Patanjali all say that birth is painful, that it is a trauma. But it is difficult to come to a final conclusion. A child is born and nobody knows how the child feels: whether the child feels blissful in the womb or not; or, while being born, passing through the birth canal and coming into the wider world, whether he feels pain when he screams, whether there is pain or not. Who will decide?
There are two ways to decide: one is objective observation. That’s what Freud has done, what Laing, Janov, and others are doing. You can observe what is happening, but observation remains outside. You don’t really know what is happening. Both these interpretations are possible: you can say that the child is blissful inside the womb because there is no worry, nothing for the child to do, everything is supplied, the child simply rests; or, because the child is confined, imprisoned, all that affects the mother affects the child. If the mother is ill, the child is ill. If the mother falls and breaks her bones, the child is hurt. He will carry that wound for his whole life. If the mother has a headache it is bound to affect the child because the child is joined, he is not separate. If the mother is miserable, in anguish, the child must be affected. The child’s very soft, delicate nervous system will be constantly hammered by the feelings, moods, and happenings in the mother. How can the child be happy and blissful inside? If the mother makes love while the child is inside the womb, the child suffers because when the mother makes love, she needs more oxygen for herself and the oxygen supply for the child is cut. There is a power shortage and the child feels suffocated.
Because of this, one scientist has been trying to prove – a Jewish scientist of course, because Jews believe in not making love while the woman is pregnant; he has made much out of this finding – that for nine months when the mother is pregnant, love should not be made to her because the child will suffer. There is a certain ground in this, because the oxygen of the mother will be needed by her own body. That’s why, while making love, a man and a woman start breathing fast and deep. More oxygen is needed by the body and the mother goes into a fever. The body temperature rises high and the child feels suffocated. These are the findings from the outside.
If one has to decide between Freud and Laing, the decision can never be complete because both are outsiders. But Osho has an insider’s view, and that’s why he says that Freud is right and Laing is not right. A Buddha has an insider’s view.
When a man like Buddha is born, he is born perfectly aware. When a man like Buddha is in the womb, he is aware.
How this happens has to be understood. When a man dies in perfect awareness, his next birth will be perfectly aware. If you can die in this life fully aware, not becoming unconscious when you die; you remain perfectly conscious, you see every phase of death, you hear every step and you remain perfectly aware that the body is dying; the mind is disappearing and you remain perfectly aware; then suddenly you see that you are not in the body and consciousness has left the body. You can see the dead body lying there and you are floating around the body.
If you can be aware while you are dying, this is one part of birth, one aspect. If in this one aspect you are aware, you will be aware when you take conception. You will float around a couple making love and you will be perfectly aware. You will enter into the womb perfectly aware. The child is conceived and in that small seed, the first seed, you will be perfectly aware of what is happening. For nine months in the mother’s womb you will be aware. Not only will you be aware, but when a child like a Buddha is in the womb of the mother, the quality of the mother changes. She becomes more aware; a light burns within. How can the house remain unlighted? The mother immediately feels a change of consciousness.
To become the mother of a Buddha is a rare opportunity. The very phenomenon transforms the mother. Just the opposite is true of the ordinary child: he is confined by the mother’s body, mind, consciousness – it is an imprisonment.
When a Buddha is born, when the mother of a Buddha is pregnant, just the opposite happens: the mother is part of the greater consciousness of Buddha.
Buddha surrounds her like an aura. She dreams about Buddha.
In India we have recorded the dreams of these mothers: of Buddha’s mother, Mahavir’s mother, and other TIRTHANKARAS’ mothers’ dreams. We have really never bothered about any other dreams; we have only analyzed the dreams of the mothers of Buddhas. That is the only dream analysis that we have done. That is going to become a part of the third type of psychology.
When a Buddha is to be born, the mother moves through particular dreams because thousands of times the same dreams are repeated again and again. That means that the Buddha consciousness inside the mother creates certain phenomena in her mind and she starts dreaming in a particular dimension. For example, Buddhists say that when a Buddha is inside the mother, the mother dreams of a white elephant. That is a symbol, a symbol of something very rare – because a white elephant is one of the rarest things in India, almost impossible to find. A rare being is there and the white elephant symbol is just an indication.
And a series of dreams follow.
When Buddha says that birth is a suffering, it is an insider’s view. Mahavir says that birth is a suffering, it is pain, it is a trauma. Mahavir and Buddha both say that to be born and to die, these are the two greatest sufferings. That carries more meaning than any Laings or any Freuds can ever carry. But Freud’s view coincides with this, and this is Osho’s own experience also.
The nine months in the mother’s womb are the most comfortable. Of course, a few episodes happen but they are exceptions. Otherwise, those nine months are without any news, because news is always bad news. Almost nothing happens.
One simply floats in a wonderful ecstasy. But birth is a trauma, it is very painful.
it is just as if you pull a tree out of the earth – how does the tree feel?
Now we have instruments to judge how a tree feels when uprooted. A child feels the same when he comes out of the mother. The mother is the earth and the child had roots in the mother up to then. Now he is uprooted, thrown out. The pain is very great. If you can trust Osho, he says that the pain is greater than death.
Death is number two, birth is number one. And it should be so because birth makes death possible. In fact, the suffering that starts with birth ends with death.
Birth is the beginning of suffering, death is the end. Birth has to be more painful – it is! And after nine months of total rest, relaxation, not a worry, nothing to do, after those nine months it is such a sudden shock to be thrown out, that never again will there be such a shock to the nervous system, never again! Every other shock is minor.
If you become bankrupt you will be shocked, but it is nothing, nothing compared to the birth trauma. Your wife dies: you feel, you cry, you weep. But just time is needed; the wound is healed and you are chasing other women. Your child dies, you feel deeply hurt; something will always remain of the hurt in your being. But it is nothing compared to the birth trauma, when you are uprooted from the earth. You can be aware of this uprooting, and only then will what Osho is saying be meaningful.
This can be contradicted by outer findings. To Osho it is irrelevant because whatsoever he is saying, he is saying about his own birth. And if you really want to know, then prepare yourself to be more and more aware so that when you die this time, you die in full awareness. Then you will automatically be born with full awareness. If you die unconsciously, you are born unconsciously.
Whatsoever happens in death will happen in birth because death is nothing but death on this side – on that side it is birth. It is the same door. If you enter the door consciously, you will get out of the door consciously. Death is this side of the door, birth is that side of the door.
Tags: Birth Is Painful Patanjali
