Osho,
It is an interesting coincidence that your meditation technique of release through intense chaotic breathing evolved at the same time that certain chaotic therapy techniques were happening in the West, such as R.D.Laing’s theory that schizophrenia is not something to be fought, but something to be experienced voluntarily. Laing has said that you cannot be sane until you have been non-sane or insane. Then there is Wilhelm Reich’s use of sexual energy to release body blocks that coincide with neurosis; this technique was the inspiration for the therapy which is called bio-energetics, as well as the primal scream therapy. Is there a significance in this coincidence?

Man as such is neurotic. It is not that just a few men are neurotic, but humanity is neurotic. It is not a question of correction for a few persons, it is a question of curing humanity as such. Neurosis is the “normal” condition. As you are born, you are born neurotic. There are reasons for it. Understand the reasons which make man “normally neurotic.”

The neurosis is inborn. The first reason is that man is the only animal which is born not totally evolved in the womb. Every human birth is immature. Except for man, every animal is born mature; the mother is not really very much needed. The human child is totally helpless. Without mother, without family, without parents there, he cannot survive. He is born unmatured.

Scientists say the nine months is only half the necessary period. The human child needs eighteen months in the womb. But there are problems: women cannot carry a child for eighteen months. Thus, every birth is abortive. This happens because man is the only animal who is standing on two feet, erect. The womb, the human body, was not made for an erect posture. This erect posture creates problems, and the child has to be born before he is really mature and ready to be born. That gives a neurotic beginning – an unevolved child.

Secondly, even if the situation could be changed, there would be problems. And some day we will be able to change it. When we are able to give a scientifically created womb to the future humanity, then only will we be able to change it. But even then there will be problems. The second problem, which goes even deeper than physiology, is a psychological one. No animal is cultured, but man is cultured. He has to pass through training, conditioning. He is not allowed just to be whatsoever he is, he has to be moulded into a particular pattern. That pattern creates neurosis.

You are not allowed to be yourself. The society gives you a pattern, a mold. You are cultured into a certain shape and form. That means repression. The remaining part of your being is repressed. Only a fragment is allowed to be expressed. This creates a division, a schizophrenic. A fragment of your mind is allowed to be expressed at the cost of the whole. The major part is not allowed to be expressed. It is not even allowed to be alive. It must move into the darker corners of your being.

But it remains there, and then there is a constant conflict. The fragment that society allows and the major part which society doesn’t allow are in tension, in conflict – in constant internal conflict. So you are against yourself: that is the neurosis.