Zen Mind

Heal Thyself

Thousands of psychologists in the world, of different schools, are working on people, but in their own lives they are troubled by the same kinds of problems about which they are very great experts. As far as somebody else’s problem is concerned, they can stand aloof. Then they are just observers, they don’t have any involvement. They can give good advice, but their advice cannot have depth. Their advice will have only as much depth as their experience, not as their knowledge.

Western psychology and its schools are immensely lacking in one thing: they are not meditative. They don’t have anything even close to meditation. What psychoanalysis cannot change in a patient in years, can be changed in weeks through meditation. If the psychoanalyst himself would be a meditator, he could look at a problem from a far different space. He would not think of analyzing it because analysis is useless. You can go on analyzing and the mind goes on producing new problems.

Analysis is like pruning trees. You go on pruning leaves and branches, and new leaves and new branches come up. In fact if you prune one leaf, the tree takes up the challenge and instead of one leaf, at least three leaves will come up. You cannot defeat the tree in this way. It is a living being; you have been destructive, it has taken up the challenge.

The psychoanalyst analyzes one problem; the mind takes up the challenge and creates a dozen problems instead of one. Mind is a problem-creating factory – and automatic. You don’t have to start it, you don’t have to turn it off, it goes on and on. It starts only once, in the beginning when you are born, and it dies only once, when you are dead. Otherwise it goes on and on your whole life without any need of lubrication. It is a great feat of nature.

A man who has no experience of meditation knows nothing beyond the mind, and one mind cannot help another mind. It may be more knowledgeable. It may, for a moment, repress some problems, but the problem will come up in another form. You have to be beyond the mind yourself. From that perspective you can see other people’s problems.

In fact, there are not many problems; there is only one problem, and that is to be in the mind. And there is only one solution, and that is to be beyond the mind. To find a way out of the mind is the only answer. It does not matter whose mind: it may be the mind of an uneducated, uncultured, poor man or the mind of a very cultured, very knowledgeable, very educated person. The solution is the same: both have to come out of the mind.

You can help people only if you help yourself. The ancient saying of the alchemist physician, “First, heal thyself,” is of great importance. It is certainly not relevant to the ordinary physician because the ordinary physician may have a headache and still he can prescribe medicine for you and cure your headache. The ordinary physician may have tuberculosis, still he can cure your tuberculosis. Hence that ancient statement, “physician, heal thyself first,” is not concerned with ordinary physicians. Its concern is alchemical, its concern is about the physician of the inner world. There, if you are sick you cannot help anybody.