In fact, that has already started happening – by the name of psychoanalysis because “professional listener” will not look like a very grand name. If you put a board on your house that says, “I am a professional listener and this is my fee – fifty rupees per hour,” people will simply laugh at you – you must have gone mad. But that’s what psychoanalysts are doing.

And the couch is one of the greatest inventions of Sigmund Freud. The patient is lying down…Your position, whether you are sitting, standing, or lying down, makes differences in what you say. You cannot sleep standing – for sleep you need to be lying down. But what actual process is happening – why does lying down help? And if you are lying down without a pillow, sleep will be difficult; you need a pillow too, to keep your head a little higher than the rest of your body. Then the flow of blood, the circulation of blood moves through the head very slowly – otherwise, it will keep you awake.

Secondly, when you are lying down, you are again in the same position that all animals are, horizontal…more simple, more humble, less cunning, innocent. You can say things lying down which you cannot say standing up because standing up you are vertical, different from all the animals of the world; and this verticalness is your own discovery, it is not natural. That’s why standing or sitting you get tired. Lying down you feel restful, relaxed; in the morning you are fresh, rejuvenated, because lying down you have dropped the artificial position that you have created: the standing up.

While standing up, very little blood moves through your mind because it is going against gravity. Less blood moves in the mind…the mind becomes more clever, more efficient, more cunning, more intellectual. It starts thinking about what it is saying, what will be the consequences, whether it is to be said or not – all these things. But lying down you are in a relaxed situation, and your mind too is relaxed.

And the psychoanalyst sits behind the couch, you cannot see him. It makes a difference when somebody is watching you, you are more alert and more cautious: how to be, how to behave, what to say, what not to say? But when nobody is watching, and you are talking almost to yourself….

In fact, people are idiots to go to psychoanalysts and pay their great fees; and psychoanalysis is now the most highly paid profession. You can do this lying down on your bed alone, but the difficulty is that you think talking alone looks like you are mad – you need somebody to listen to you. But do you think the psychoanalyst is really listening to you? If he goes on from morning till evening listening to many insane people, what will be the outcome for him? Will he be able to sleep in the night? His life will become a nightmare.