Usually we have two extreme approaches towards childhood: either it is a “golden childhood”, or the root of all misery we feel as adults — a concept generated by the Western psychologists. The idea of golden childhood is just a fantasy. It never existed while we were living our childhood. It is harboured after we grow up and compare the present life to the bygone days of younger years. Ask the children, they all want to grow up fast because the elders seem to have all the power in the world which they are using against the kids. Then there is Freud and his predecessors who say that all your misery is created in the childhood by the parents. Psychoanalysis asks you to go down the memory lane and unearth your memories, eradicate them. It is an endless process. It is kind of an eternal damnation because there is no way you can erase those memories like a computer does.
Does it mean the human being is destined to be unhappy all his life ? No, there is a third way, according to Osho way. A meditative therapy devised by Osho. It is called “Born Again.” It cleans the mind and body and frees the energy arrested in childhood traumas and makes you fresh and innocent like a child. Research shows us how early brain development, along with our earliest experiences, affect our health and well-being throughout our entire lives. The first three years are a crucial period for social and emotional development. During the first three years, children’s brains are more active and develop more rapidly than later in life. As a result, experiences and interactions during these earliest years have a profound effect on how our brains organise themselves.
As children develop, their early experiences become embedded into the architecture of their brains. If we think the essence of childhood is playfulness. As the child becomes an adult this quality of playfulness goes on missing from its life. Child psychologists like Douglas Winnicott say, “It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.” Born Again meditative therapy restores this quality. By doing this meditative therapy you rediscover the beauty of childhood without verbalizing or analysing your past psychological experiences.
It is a two-hour process in which in the first hour you enter the childlike state within yourself. It is like revisiting your childhood not outside but inside. Do all that you were not allowed to do but you wanted to. Screaming, shouting, laughing, crying, getting involved into meaningless antics. It is great fun! We are not aware that there is lots of suppressed energy in the body and mind. That energy has to be expressed. This playful expression cleans the mind and body. The body becomes so supple and light, it relaxes the mind deeply. And then in the second stage you can easily experience the fresh innocent silence created within. When you come out of it you open your eyes as if for the first time. You feel you are born again.
