Ego is the Barrier

 

The first question:

THE EGO is you. You cannot move towards surrender; in fact you are the barrier, so whatsoever you do will be wrong. You cannot do anything about it.

You simply, without doing anything, have to be aware. This is an inner mechanism: whatsoever you do is done by the ego, and whenever you don't do anything and remain just a witness, the non-ego part of you starts functioning.

The witness is the non-ego within you and the doer is the ego. The ego cannot exist without doing anything. Even if you do something to surrender, it will strengthen the ego and your surrender will become again a very subtle egoistic standpoint. You will say, 'I have surrendered.' You will claim surrender, and if somebody says that it is not true, you will feel angry, hurt. The ego is now there trying to surrender. The ego can do anything; the only thing that the ego cannot do is non-doing, witnessing.

       

So just sit silently, watch the doer, and don't try in any way to manipulate it. The moment you start manipulating, the ego has come back. Nothing can be done about it; one has just to be a witness to the misery that ego creates, of the false pleasures and gratifications that ego promises. Doings in this world and doings in the other world; the spiritual world, the Divine, the material, whatsoever the realm, the doer will re main the ego. You are not supposed to do anything and if you start doing something you will miss the whole point. Just be there, watch, understand, and don't do. Don't ask, 'How to drop the ego?' Who will drop it?

Who will drop whom? When you don't do anything, suddenly the witnessing part is separate from the doer; a gap arises. The doer goes on doing and the seer goes on seeing. Suddenly, you are filled with a new light, a new benediction: you are not the ego, you have never been the ego; how foolish that you ever believed in it.

There are people who are trying to fulfill their egos; they are wrong. There are people who are trying to drop their egos; they are wrong. Because when the witness arises you simply see the whole game. There is nothing to be fulfilled and nothing to be dropped. The ego is not of any substance. It is made of the same stuff that dreams are made of. It is just an idea, an air bubble -- just hot air within you and nothing else. You need not drop it, because in the very dropping or in asking how to drop it, you believe in it, you are still clinging to it.

It happened that a Zen Master awoke one morning and he told his disciple, 'I had a dream in the night. Will you please interpret it for me?' The disciple said, 'You wait, I will bring some cold water so you can wash your face.' He went away to fetch water and returned. The Master washed his face. By that time, another disciple passed nearby and the Master called him and said, 'Listen, I had a dream last night. Will you please interpret it for me?' The disciple looked, and seeing that the Master had washed his face he said, 'Wait, better that I fetch a cup of tea for you.' He brought a cup of tea. The Master sipped the tea, laughed and blessed both of the disciples. He said, 'You did well. If you had interpreted my dream, I would have thrown you out of the ashram, because when a dream is finished and one comes to know that it was a dream, what is the meaning of interpretation?' Even to interpret it shows that you are still in it. You still think that it is substantial.

That's why in the East we have never bothered about interpreting dreams. Not that we did not come upon the reality of it. Four or five thousand years before Freud, the East stumbled upon the reality of dreams, the phenomenon. We were the first to divide consciousness into three realms: the waking, the dreaming, and deep sleep. But we never bothered to interpret, because a dream is a dream; it is not substantial. One has to just awake out of it, that's all. And if you are already awake it is better to wash your face. Cold water will help more than the whole psychoanalysis of Sigmund Freud. If you are awake, then a cup of tea is better than all of the Jungs put together. Be finished with it.

In the first place, dream is false, and then you start interpreting the dream. By your very interpretation it goes on taking on a new reality for you; it again becomes substantial. Not only is this so with the dream, it is so with your whole life. Your whole life is like a dream; it needs no interpretation. To know this much is enough: that it is a dream. You have to come out of it.

       

 

And how do you come out of a dream in the morning? Have you ever observed?

If you have observed, you will know how to come out of the ego. How do you come out of a dream in the morning, or out of sleep? How do you come out? You were fast asleep a second before, and then, suddenly, you hear the noises of the birds, the milkman is knocking on the door, the servant woman has come and started cleaning the floor: the morning noises.What is happening? -- you are becoming more aware. Just a moment before, you were deep in sleep with no awareness; then suddenly, the birds, the milkman, the servant, the wife talking to the children, the children resisting, not ready to get up. By and by, things are arising into consciousness; you are becoming alert. You may still doze a little: you may change sides, close your eyes, doze a little, but even in your half-sleep, half-wakefulness, you go on listening to things. You become aware and sleep is no longer there. The more aware you become, the more the dreams disappear.

The same is to be done while awake: listen more, feel more, be more alert in whatsoever you do. If you are taking a bath, then feel the touch of the water running over you, feel it as much as you can. The very feeling, the awareness, will bring you out of the ego; you will become a witness. If you are eating, then eat; but taste more, be more sensitive, be more in your eating and don't allow your mind to go here and there. Remain there fully alert, and by and by you will see that something is arising out of the sea of sleep; you are becoming more alert, aware.

In your awareness there is no dreaming, no ego. That's the only way. It is not a part of doing something, it is part of being aware; and the distinction must be remembered. You cannot do awareness, it is not an action. You can be aware, it is part of your being. So feel more, smell more, listen more, touch more, be more and more sensitive... and suddenly, something arises out of the sleep, and there is no ego; you are surrendered.

Nobody ever surrenders; one suddenly finds one moment that one is surrendered, surrendered to God, surrendered to the total. When you are not, you are surrendered. When you are, how can you be surrendered? You cannot surrender - you are the barrier, you are the very stuff that the barrier is made of. So don't ask me, 'How do I surrender?' This is the ego asking. When I talk about egolessness or surrender, your ego starts feeling greedy for it. You think, 'How come I have not achieved this state up to now? I? -- and have not achieved such a state up to now? I will have to achieve! This surrender cannot escape me. I will have to fetch it somewhere, somehow; it has to be got, it has to be purchased.'

The ego is feeling greedy for it and now the ego asks, 'How to do it?' The ego is the greatest technician in the world. The ego lives on know how. The ego is the very base of all technology. In the East technology could not develop because people became more and more alert to the ego, and the very root was cut. They lived surrendered lives.

       

 

How can you be a technician, a technologist, if you live a surrendered life? Then you leave everything to life and you float. Then you don't bother about what to do and how to do it. The West has become very, very expert in technology. The reason is that the West has been trying to protect, feed the ego, and the ego is the base inside: the whole structure of technology is based on the ego. If ego drops, the whole structure of technology drops. The world becomes again natural, not man made.

Then it is the creation of God. And God has not finished the creation yet, as Christians think. They think that He finished it within a week, in fact, within six days, and on the seventh day He rested.

God has not finished creation. Creation is a continuum; it continues. It is not ever going to be finished. At every moment God is creating. In fact, to say that God is creating is wrong -- God is creativity, creativity and continuum; an eternal creativity. But man, as the ego, stands against God. Then man starts trying to conquer nature. He starts trying to rape nature. The whole of technology is rape.

Surrendered, you are in love; with technology you are in rape. You are trying to rape the whole of nature, and the base is the ego.

Don't ask, 'How?' Just try to understand me, just try to see the point. Not much intelligence is needed. Everybody has enough intelligence to see the point. Just see the point and try to live with that vision, that understanding, that perception, that's all. Just watch the ways of the ego, and you be the watcher, never be the doer. The distance between the watcher and the doer is not very far if you are not alert. Just by your side is the doer. You slip from the watcher into the doer, and you are the ego; you slip out of the doer and into the watcher, and you are surrendered, you are no longer the ego.

 

VIDEO

 

The Second Question:

Nobody is ordinary. Who told you that you are ordinary.? From where have you got the notion that you are ordinary? Everybody is extraordinary! This is how it should be. God never created ordinary persons. How can God create ordinary persons? Everybody is special, extraordinary. But remember not to feed your ego with it. It is not on your part that you are extraordinary, it is on the part of God.

You come out of the total, you remain rooted in the total, you dissolve back into the total -- and the total is extraordinary, incomparable. You are also incomparable, but all the religions, the so-called religions, have tried to make you feel ordinary. This is a trick to provoke your ego. Try to understand this: the moment somebody says that you are ordinary, he creates a desire in you to become extraordinary, because you start feeling inferior.

Just the other day a man was here and he asked me, 'What is the purpose of life? Unless there is a special purpose for me, how can I live? If there is a special purpose, then life is significant. If there is no special purpose, then life is meaningless.' He was asking, 'For what special purpose has God created me? What have I been sent into the world to do?' This is the ego asking. He feels ordinary; nothing special.'Then how can one live?' You have to be peaks of egos, only then does life seem significant.

Life is significant, and there is no purpose in it! It is a purposeless significance, like a song, or a dance -- like a flower; for no purpose at all it is flowering, for nobody special it is flowering. Even if nobody passes by the road, the flower will flower, the fragrance will be spread into the winds. Even if nobody ever comes to smell it, it is irrelevant. The very flowering is the significance, not any purpose.

But you have been taught that you are ordinary.'Become great poets, become great painters, become great leaders of men, great politicians, become great saints.' As you are, all the religions condemn you, 'You are nothing, a worm on the earth. Become something! Prove that you are something before God' -- as if to prove your mettle.

But I tell you that this is absolutely absurd. These religions have been talking irreligion. There is no need for you to prove anything. The very phenomenon that God has produced you is enough; you are accepted. God has mothered you, it is enough. What more can you prove? You need not be great painters, you need not be great leaders, you need not be great saints. There is no need to be great, because you are already great. This is my emphasis: you are already that which you ought to be. You may not have realized it, that I know. You may not have encountered your own reality, that I know. You may not have looked within yourself and seen the emperor within, that I know. You may be thinking that you are a beggar and trying to be an emperor. But as I see you, you are already the emperor.

There is no need to postpone celebration. Immediately, right this moment you can celebrate. Nothing else is needed. To celebrate, life is needed and life you have. To celebrate, being is needed and being you have. To celebrate, trees and birds and stars are needed, and they are there. What else do you need? If you are crowned and caged in a golden pa1ace, then will you celebrate? In fact, then it will become more impossible. Have you ever seen an emperor laughing and dancing and singing in the street? No, he is caged, imprisoned: manners, etiquette....

      

VIDEO

Somewhere, Bertrand Russell has written that when for the first time he visited a primitive community of aboriginals living deep in some hills, he felt jealous, very, very jealous. He felt that the way they danced... it was as if everybody were an emperor. They had no crowns, but they had made crowns with leaves and with flowers. Every woman was a queen. They didn't have kohinoors, but whatsoever they had was too much, was enough. They danced the whole night and then they fell asleep, there on the dancing-ground. By the morning they were again back to work. They worked the whole day, and again by the evening they were ready to celebrate, to dance. Russell says, 'That day, I felt really jealous. I cannot do this.'

Something has gone wrong. Something frustrates within you; you cannot dance, you cannot sing, something withholds. You live a crippled life. It has never been meant for you to be crippled, but you live a crippled life, you live a paralyzed life. And you go on thinking that being ordinary, how can you celebrate? There is nothing special in you. But who told you that to celebrate something special is needed? In fact, the more you are after the special, the more and more it will become difficult for you to dance.

Be ordinary. Nothing is wrong with ordinariness, because in your very ordinariness you are extraordinary. Don't bother about the conditions to decide when you will celebrate. If you bother about fulfilling certain conditions, do you think that then you will celebrate? You will never celebrate, you will die a beggar. Why not right now? What are you lacking? This is my observation: if you can start right now, suddenly the energy is flowing. And the more you dance, the more it is flowing, the more capable you become. The ego needs conditions to be fulfilled, not life. Birds can sing and dance, ordinary birds. Have you ever seen any extraordinary birds singing and dancing? Do they ask that they first have to be a Ravi Shankar or a Yehudi Menuhin? Do they ask that first they have to be great singers and go to colleges of music to learn, and then they will sing? They simply dance and simply sing; no training is needed.

       

VIDEO

Man is born with the capacity to celebrate. When even birds can celebrate, why not you? But you create unnecessary barriers, you create a hurdle race. There are no barriers. You put them there and then you say, 'Unless we cross them and jump them, how can we dance?' You stand against yourself, you stand divided against yourself, you are an enemy to your self. All the preachers in the world go on saying that you are ordinary, so how can you dare to celebrate? You have to wait. First be a Buddha, first be a Jesus, a Mohammed, and then you can.

But just the opposite is the case: if you can dance, you are already the Buddha; if you can celebrate, you are already the Mohammed; if you can be blissful, you are Jesus. The contrary is not true; the contrary is a false logic. It says: first be a Buddha, then you can celebrate. But how will you be a Buddha without celebrating? I say to you, 'Celebrate, forget all Buddhas!' In your very celebration you will find that you have yourself become a Buddha. Zen mystics go on saying, 'Buddha is a barrier; forget about him.' Bodhidharma used to say to his disciples, 'Whenever you say the name of Buddha, immediately wash your mouth. It is dirty, the very word is dirty.' And Bodhidharma was a disciple of Buddha. He was right because he knew that you can create idols, ideals, out of the very word 'buddha'. And you will then wait for lives and lives to become a Buddha first, and then you will celebrate. That is not ever going to happen.

One Zen monk, Lin Chi, used to say to his disciples, 'When you move into meditation, always remember that if you meet Buddha on the way, immediately cut him in two! Don't allow him a single moment, otherwise he will take hold of you and he will become the barrier.' A disciple asked, 'But when I am meditating and Buddha comes' -- and Buddha comes to Buddhists, as Jesus comes to Christians; not the real Buddha, he is nowhere to be found -- 'how am I to cut him? From where will I get the sword?' The Master said, 'From where you got your Buddha -- imagination -- get the sword from the same place, cut the Buddha in two and move ahead.'

Remember this, that the teachings of the awakened ones, all the awakened ones and all of their teachings, can be summarized into a simple sentence, and that sentence is: 'You are already that which you can be'. You may take many lives to realize it; that is for you to determine. But if you are alert, not even a single moment is to be lost. 'Thou art that,' tattwarnasi swetketu, you are already that, there is no need to become. Becoming, the very effort to become some thing, is illusory. You are, you are not to become.

But preachers tell you that you are ordinary and they create a desire in you to become extraordinary. They make you feel inferior and create a desire to become superior. They create an inferiority complex and then you are in their grip. Then they teach you how to become superior. First they condemn you, create a guilt within you, and then they show you the path to be virtuous.

You will really be in difficulty with me because your mind would like the same, because that gives you time. And I don't give you time. I say that you are already that. Everything is ready. Start the feast, celebrate it! Your mind says, 'But I have to get ready, a little time is needed.' That's why, in this postponement, preachers come in. Through this gap they enter into your being and destroy you. They say, 'Yes, time is needed. How can you celebrate right now? Prepare, train yourself.

Many things have to be discarded, many things have to be improved. You need a long training and discipline. It may take many lives with much long training and discipline. It may take many lives, and only then will you be able to celebrate. How can you celebrate right now?' They appeal to you because then you can relax and you can say, 'Okay, so if it is a question of a long time, right now is not the problem. We can go on doing whatsoever we are doing.' Some day in the future, a golden tomorrow, a rainbow-like thing.... When it is achieved, you will dance.

Meanwhile you can be miserable; meanwhile you can allow yourself to be miserable; meanwhile you can enjoy self-torture -- it is up to you. If you decide for misery, no need to create so much philosophy around it. You can simply say, 'I enjoy misery.' It is really surprising that nobody ever asks, 'How can I be miserable right now? A discipline is needed, training is needed. I will go to Patanjalis, and ask great Masters, and then I will learn how to be miserable.'

It seems that to be miserable needs no training; you are born to be miserable. But then why does bliss need training? Both are two aspects of the same coin. If you can be miserable without training, you can be blissful without training. Be natural, loose, and just feel things. And don't wait -- start! Even if you feel that you don't know the right steps, start dancing.

      

VIDEO

I am not saying that dancing is going to be your art. For art, training may be needed. I am simply saying that dancing is just an attitude. Even not knowing the right steps, you can dance. And if you can dance, who bothers about the right steps! -- dancing in itself is enough. It is an overflowing of your energy. If it becomes an art by itself, it's okay; if it doesn't become, it's okay. In itself it is enough, more than enough. Nothing else is needed.

So don't say to me, 'You are at the peak of consciousness.' Where are you? Where do you think you are.? Your valley is in your dreams. Your darkness is because you remain with closed eyes; otherwise you are there where I am. It is not that you are in the valley and I am at the peak. I am at the peak, and you are also at the peak, but you dream about the valley. I live in Poona, you also live in Poona.

But when you fall asleep, you start dreaming about London and New York and Calcutta, and you visit thousands of places. I don't go any where; in my sleep also, I am in Poona. But you go wandering. You are at the same peak where I am, it is just that you remain with closed eyes. You say, 'It is too dark.' I talk about light and you say, 'You must be somewhere else on a high peak. We are ordinary people living in darkness.' But I can see that you are sitting on the same peak with closed eyes. You have to be beaten out of your sleep, shocked. And then you will see that the valley never existed. Darkness was not there; only your eyes were closed.

Zen Masters do well. They carry a staff and they beat their disciples. And it has happened many times that when a staff is descending on the head of a disciple, suddenly he opens his eyes and starts laughing. He had never known that he was on the same peak. It was a dream that he was seeing.

Be alert. And if you want to be alert, celebration will be very, very helpful. When I say celebrate what do I mean? I mean that whatsoever you do, don't do it as a duty, do it from your love; don't do it as a burden, do it as a celebration.

       

 

You can eat as if it is a duty: long-faced, dull, dead, insensitive. You can throw food inside yourself without ever tasting, without ever feeling for it. It is life; you live through it. Don't be so insensitive to it. Indians have said, 'anam brahman,' food is Brahman. This is celebration: you are eating brahman, you are eating God through food, because only God exists. When you are taking a shower, it is God showering because only God exists. When you go for a morning walk, it is God on a morning walk. And the breeze is also God, and the trees are also God -- everything is so Divine. How can you be a long-face, dead and dull, moving in life as if you are carrying a burden?

When I say celebrate, I mean become more and more sensitive to everything. In life, dance should not be apart. The whole life should become a dance; it should be a dance. You can go for a walk and dance.

Allow life to enter into you, become more open and vulnerable, feel more, sense more. Small things filled with such wonders are lying all around. Watch a small child. Leave him in the garden and just watch. That should be your way also; so wonderful, wonder-filled: running to catch this butterfly, running to catch that flower, playing with mud, rolling in the sand. From everywhere the Divine is touching the child.

If you can live in wonder you will be capable of celebration. Don't live in knowledge, live in wonder. You don't know any thing. Life is surprising; everywhere, it is a continuous surprise. Live it as a surprise, an unpredictable phenomenon: every moment is new. Just try, give it a try! You will not lose anything if you give it a try, and you may gain everything. But you have become addicted to misery. You cling to your misery as if it is something very precious.

Look at your own clinging.

As I told you, there are two types of persons: sadists and masochists. Sadists go on torturing others, masochists go on torturing themselves. There is a question that somebody has asked, 'Why, why are people like that, either torturing others or torturing themselves? Why is there so much aggression and violence in life?'

It is a negative state. You torture because you cannot enjoy. You torture, become violent, because you cannot love. You become cruel because you don't know how to become compassionate. It is a negative state. The same energy that is cruelty will become compassion.With an unalert mind the energy becomes violence; with an alert mind the same energy becomes compassion. In sleep the same energy becomes torture, either of yourself or of somebody else. When you are awake, the same energy becomes love, for yourself and for others also. Life gives you an opportunity, but there are thousands of causes for something to go wrong.

Have you ever observed that if somebody is in misery, you show sympathy, you feel much love? It is not the right kind of love, but you show sympathy. If somebody is happy, celebrating, blissful, you feel jealous, you feel bad. It is very difficult to sympathize with a happy man. It is very difficult to feel good for a happy man; you feel good when somebody is unhappy. At least you can think that you are not so unhappy and you have an upper hand; you show sympathy.

       

A child is born and the child starts learning things. Sooner or later he discovers that whenever he is unhappy, he attracts the attention of the whole family. He becomes the center and everybody feels sympathy for him, everybody feels love for him. Whenever he is happy and healthy and everything is good, nobody bothers about him. On the contrary, everybody seems to be cross. A child may be jumping and dancing, and the whole family is cross; the child may be lying in bed ill with fever, and the whole family is sympathetic. The child starts learning that somehow to be ill, to be miserable, is good; to be happy and dancing and jumping and to be alive is bad. He is learning and this is how you have learned.

To me, when a child is happy, jumping, the whole family should be happy and jumping with the child. And when a child is ill, care should be taken of the child but no sympathy should be shown. Care is okay; sympathy, no. No-love, indifference, will look very hard on the surface: the child is ill and you are indifferent. Take care, give medicine, but be indifferent, because a very subtle phenomenon is going on. If you feel sympathy and compassion and love, and you show it to the child, you are destroying the child forever. Now he will cling to misery, misery becomes valuable. And whenever he jumps and dances and screams all around in happiness and runs all over the house, everybody is cross.

At that moment, celebrate, be with him, and the whole world will be different. If you want to change the world... But up until now society has existed on the wrong lines, and those lines go on persisting. That's why you cling to misery.

You ask me,

No, it is not possible. Nobody has ever allowed you to celebrate. Your parents persist in your mind. Up until the very moment of your death your father and mother follow you. Continuously they are after you, even though they be dead. Parents can be very, very destructive; up until now they have been. I am not saying that your parents are responsible, because that is not the question: their parents did the same to them. The whole structure is wrong, psychologically wrong; there are reasons for them also. That's why such a wrong thing goes on and on and cannot be stopped. It seems to be impossible.

Of course, there are reasons for it. A father has his own reasons: he may be reading his newspaper and the child jumps and screams and laughs, but a father should be more understanding. A newspaper is worthless. Even if you can read it silently, what are you going to get out of it? Throw the news paper! But the father is in politics, in business, and he has to know about what is going on. He is ambitious and the newspaper is part of his ambition. If one has to achieve some ambitions, seek some goals, one has to know the world. The child seems to be a disturbance.

The mother is cooking food and the child goes on asking questions and goes on jumping, and she becomes cross. I know that there are problems; the mother has to cook food. But the child should be the first preference, because a child is going to be the whole world, a child is going to be the tomorrow, a child is going to be the coming humanity. He should be the first, the priority should be his.

Newspapers can be read later on, and even if not read, you are not going to miss much. It is the same nonsense every day: places change, names change, but the same nonsense continues. Your newspapers are just mad. The food can be delayed a little, but the curiosity of the child should not be delayed, should not be postponed, because right now he was in a mood and the mood may not come again. Right now he is hot and something is possible. But do you see mothers dancing with their children, jumping, enjoying rolling on the floor? -- not much.

Mothers are serious beings, fathers are very serious; they carry the whole world on their shoulders. And the child lives in a totally different world. You are forcing him to enter into your sad, miserable attitude to life. He could have grown as a child, he could have kept the quality, the quality of wonder, surprise, and the quality to be here and now, in the moment.

This I call the 'real revolution'. No other revolution is going to help man: French, Russian or Chinese, no revolution is going to help man; they have not helped.

Basically the same pattern between the parent and the child continues, and there is the cause. You can create a communist world, but it will not be much different from the capitalist world. The labels will be different only on the surface. You can create a socialist world, you can create a Gandhian world, but it will not be different because the basic revolution is between the mother, the father, and the child. Somewhere within the parents and the child is the link; and if that link is not changed, the world will go on moving in the same rut.

When I say this, I don't mean that I am giving you an excuse to be miserable. I am simply giving you the explanation so that you can become aware. So don't try to say in your mind, 'Now what can be done? I am already forty or fifty or sixty, my parents are dead and even if they were alive, I cannot undo the past. It has happened, so I have to live as I am.' No, if you understand the thing, you can simply drop out of it. There is no need to cling to it.

You can become a child again. Jesus is right when he says, 'Only those who are like small children will be able to enter the Kingdom of my God' -- absolutely right! Only those who are like small children....

This is the revolution: to make everybody like a small child. The body may grow but the quality of consciousness should remain innocent, virgin, like a child.

You are already where you need to be, you are already in that space which you are seeking. Just make a little effort to come out of your clinging to misery. Don't invest in misery; invest in celebration. You take one step towards life and life takes one thousand towards you. Just take one step out of your clinging to misery. The mind will go on pulling you backwards. Just be indifferent to the mind and tell the mind, 'Wait, I have lived enough with you, now let me live without mind.' That's what a child is: living without mind, or, living with no-mind.

 

 

 

 

The Third Question:

Negative and positive moods will both develop. If you want to be very, very happy, side by side the capacity to be very, very unhappy will develop. If you want that the negative should not develop, then you have to cut the positive also.

This is what has happened. You have been taught not to be angry, but if you are not capable of being angry, compassion will suffer. Then you will not be able to be compassionate. You have been taught not to hate, but love will suffer, you will not be able to love -- and this is the dilemma.

Love and hate grow together. In fact, they are not two things. Language gives you the wrong impression. We should not use the words 'love' and 'hate', we should use lovehate; it is one word. There should not even be a hyphen between them - lovehate - not even a hyphen. Because that too will show that they are two, but bridged somehow. They are one! Light/darkness, they are one; lifedeath, they are one. This has been the whole problem for the human mind. What to do?

 Because, if love grows, the capacity to hate also grows.

So there are only two possibilities: either allow the hate to grow with love, or, kill love along with hate. And hitherto, the second alternative has been chosen. All the religions have chosen the second alternative: hate has to be cut -- even at the cost of love, hate has to be cut, anger has to be cut. So they all go on preaching love and they all go on saying, 'Don't hate.' Their love becomes phoney; it is just talk. Christians go on talking about love -- it is the phoniest thing in the world.

It is how life is: the opposites are together there. Life cannot exist with one pole, it needs two poles together: the negative and the positive electric poles, the man and the woman. Can you conceive of a world with only man? It would be a dead world. Man and woman, they are the two poles, they exist together. In fact, to say man and woman is not good; say 'manwoman' with no hyphen between them. They exist together.

Nothing is wrong in hate if it is part of love. This is my teaching. Nothing is wrong in anger if it is part of compassion -- it is beautiful. Wouldn't you like Buddha to be angry with you? It would be something like a blessing, a benediction; Buddha angry with you! In the greater whole of compassion, anger also becomes beautiful; it is absorbed.

Grow in love and let hate also grow; let it be part of your love. I tell you not to put love against hate, no. I tell you to love with hate, and there will be a transfiguration, a transformation of the energy. Your hate will be so beautiful; it will have the same quality as love. Sometimes one has to be angry. And if you are really in compassion, you use anger for your compassion.

Always remember that the polarity is there -- how to give it a harmony? The old way was to cut them apart: drop hate and try to be loving without hate. Then love becomes phoney because the energy is not there. And you are so afraid of love because the hate will grow immediately. Afraid of hate growing, love is also suppressed. Then you talk about love but you don't really love. Then your love becomes just a talk, a verbal thing, not alive and existential.

I am not saying to go and hate. I am saying to love, grow in love, and of course hate will grow with it. Don't be worried about it. You go on growing in love and the hate will be absorbed by love. Love is so great that it can absorb hate. Compassion is so big, vast, that a little bit of anger can be absorbed by it. It is good.

Really, compassion without anger will be like food without salt. It will not have the salt, the energy in it. It will be tasteless, stale.

Of course, the negative will always grow with the positive. For example, if there exists a society which says, 'The left side of your body is wrong, so don't allow it to grow; only the right side of the body is right, so let the right side of the body grow and the left side of the body has to be suppressed, cut completely,' what will happen? Either you will become a cripple, because if you don't allow the left, the right will not grow, they grow together; either you will become a pigmy, as many human beings have become pigmies, or you will become a hypocrite. You will hide your left side and you will say that you only have the right side. And you will always hide the left side somewhere. You will be a hypocrite -- false, inauthentic, a lie, a living lie -- as religious people are.

Out of one hundred, ninety-nine so-called religious people are liars, absolute liars, because whatsoever they are saying is absurd, cannot be true. They say that they love, and they say that they don't hate. It is impossible! It is against the very mathematics of existence! They must be liars. There is no need to probe into their individual cases; it is against the grain, it is not possible. Ninety-nine percent are hypocrites and the one percent are simple people. These ninety-nine percent are clever, intelligent people. They hide the left side; they grow in both sides but simply hide the left side and talk about the right. They show the right to the world and the left is their private world. They have back doors to their houses.

At the front door they are one thing, at the back door something else. The one percent who are innocent people, simple, not very articulate or intelligent, not cunning, remain pigmies. They really suppress, and when they suppress the left, the right is suppressed. They remain pigmies.

I have come across two types of religious people: ninety-nine percent hypocrites, one percent pigmies. But the whole lot is useless, the whole lot is a burden, the whole lot is a foolishness. I would not like you to become like that, I would not like you to become a pigmy. You have to grow to your total height. But that is possible only if negative and positive both are allowed freedom. Both are your wings. How can a bird fly with one wing? How can you walk with one leg? The same exists on every layer of life: two are needed. In opposition, they give the tension and the possibility of movement. They appear to be against each other, but they are complementary. They are not, in fact, opposites; only the poles are opposites. They help each other to grow. I would like you to grow to your ultimate height, and I would not like you to be hypocrites either. Be true.

Then what is my message to you? My message is: love is great, so great that you need not bother about hate. Let hate be a part in it, let it grow -- it will add salt to your taste. Compassion is vast; a little bit of the sky can be given to anger -- there is no harm. But anger should be part of compassion. Anger should not be apart, it should be part of compassion. Hate should be part of love, and death should be part of life, pain part of pleasure, misery part of celebration, of blessing, darkness part of light. And then nothing is wrong; there is no sin. Sin should be part of virtue.

Be great! Rise to your ultimate height; don't remain pigmies. If you remain pigmies you will always be complaining against God, because how can you feel fulfilled? Rise to your height and don't be afraid. The negative will rise with you; it is beautiful. The negative is part, complementary, but the negative should be part of the positive. It has to be because it is negative. A negative cannot become the whole, and the positive cannot become a part of the negative. This has to be understood.

How can life become a part of death? Death is just an absence. How can light become a part of darkness? Darkness is nothing but the absence of light; but darkness can be absorbed into light.

Look outside -- the sun has risen. So much light is showering under the trees, small parts, fragments of shadow; nothing is wrong. A weary traveller comes and sits under a tree and is sheltered. It is hot outside, and under the tree it is cool. That shadow under the tree is a part. Let everything negative be part of the positive. And the contrary is not possible because the positive exists, the negative is just an absence.

This is possible. I tell you this is possible because this has happened to me. That's why it is very difficult to understand me. You would like me to be one pole and I am both. But this has happened to me; this can happen to you. And this is what has always been happening to people who have moved in the right dimension and who have accepted all. I have not denied anything because from the very beginning this became my deepest observation: if you deny something, you will never be whole. How can you be whole if you deny something? That something will always be missing. This became a deep observation with me, that nothing is to be denied and everything is to be absorbed.

Life has to become not a single note, but a harmony. A single note, howsoever beautiful, is boring. A group of many notes, many even divergent, diametrically opposite notes, when they meet in a harmony, create a beauty. The beauty is neither in the positive nor in the negative; the beauty is in the harmony. Let me repeat it: the beauty is neither in truth nor lie, the beauty is neither in compassion nor anger; the beauty is in the unity. Where opposites meet, there is the temple of the Divine. Where contradictions meet, that is the pinnacle, the crescendo of life.

----//----

 

 

 

 

The last question:

Then indulge! Then be sensual! Why are you so afraid of life? Why do you want to commit suicide? What is wrong with indulgence and what is wrong with being sensual? You have been taught so, and this is what I am saying. Then you become afraid of being sensitive because if you are sensitive, then everything will grow with sensitivity. Sensuality will grow -- it is beautiful, nothing is wrong with being sensual. An alive man will be sensual. What is the difference between a dead man and an alive man? The dead man is no longer sensual; you touch and he doesn't feel, you kiss and he doesn't respond.

I have heard one anecdote about Picasso. A lady was appreciating Picasso's pictures and she said, 'Yesterday I went to a friend's house and there I saw your self portrait. And I loved it so much, and I was so impressed, that I kissed the portrait.' Picasso looked at the lady and said, 'And did the portrait reply? Did the picture kiss you in response?' The lady said, 'How foolish, how can the picture respond?' Then Picasso said, 'Then that was not me. A dead thing; how could it be me?' If you are alive, your senses will function to their total capacity; you will be sensual. You need food and you will taste; you will have a bath and you will feel the coolness of the water; you will move in the garden and you will smell the fragrance -- you will be sensual. A woman will pass and a breeze will pass within you. It has to be so -- you are alive! A beautiful woman passes and nothing happens in you.? _ you are dead, you have killed yourself.

Sensuality is part of being sensitive. Because of the fear of sensuality all the religions are afraid of sensitivity, and sensitivity is awareness. So they go on talking of being aware, but they cannot allow you to be sensitive, so you cannot be aware. k becomes just talk. And they cannot allow you indulgence. In fact, they have coined the word 'indulgence'. It has a condemnatory note in it. The moment you say 'indulgence', you have already condemned.

This is the dilemma: religious people condemn indulgence, and they create indulgence. They condemn sensuality and they create sensuality. How does it happen? When you go on suppressing your senses, the very suppression creates indulgence. Otherwise, a really alive man is never indulgent. He enjoys, but he is never indulgent. A man who has been eating well every day cannot indulge in food. But go on a fast, then indulgence comes. A man who has been fasting goes on think ing about food, food, food. Food becomes the obsession. He eats for twenty four hours. Then, when he comes to break the fast, he indulges to the very other extreme. On one extreme he fasted, on the other extreme he wilt eat too much.

Just two days ago a sannyasin came from England and he told me that he loves fasting. He eats very little and that too on alternate days. I said to him, 'Fasting can become a dangerous thing. Sometimes it can be used, but as a medicine, not as a way of life. Fasting can never become a way of life.' I talked to him and I talked him out of his fasting obsession. For three days he was not seen at all. I waited, 'Where has he gone, what has happened?' After three days he came and he said, 'I was ill. You talked about fasting and you said that it is not good; so I indulged in food. I ate too much.'

This always happens: from fasting you move to too much of an extreme. Just in the middle somewhere, is the right thing. Buddha again and again used the word 'right' with everything: right-food, right-memory, right-knowledge, right effort.

Whatsoever he said, he always joined the word 'right' to it. The disciples would ask, 'Why are you always joining this word 'right'?' He would say, 'Because you people are dangerous. Either you are on this extreme or the other.' If you fast, then indulgence will arise. If you try to be celibate, then in sex indulgence will arise. Whatsoever you force on yourself will finally force you towards indulgence.

A really sensitive man enjoys life so much that the very enjoyment cools and calms him down. He has no obsessions. He is sensual.

And if you ask me, a Buddha is more sensual than anybody else. He has to be because he is so alive. When Buddha looks at the trees, he must be seeing more colors than you can see; his eyes are more sensitive, sensual. When a Buddha eats, he must be enjoying more than you can enjoy because everything within him is functioning perfectly. You can hear, if you pass near a Buddha, the humming of a perfectly functioning mechanism, like the humming of a perfectly functioning car. Everything is going absolutely as it should go. He is sensitive, he is sensual, but there is no indulgence. How can indulgence be? -- indulgence is a

disease, indulgence is an imbalance. But to you I don't say this; I say, 'Indulge and be finished with it. Don't carry it in your head. That's worse than doing it.'

Indulge! If you want to indulge in food, indulge. Maybe through indulgence you will come to your right senses. Maybe through indulgence you will come to a ripeness, a maturity that says that it is foolish.

I remember Gurdjieff reporting that he had a liking for a certain berry type fruit.

It is found in the Caucasus, and it had always been bad for him. Whenever he would take it, his stomach would be disturbed: pains and aches and nausea and everything. But he liked the fruit so much that it was impossible not to eat it.

After a few days he would eat it, again and again. He reports, 'My father went to the market one day, took me with him and bought a large quantity of the fruit. I was very happy and surprised -- why is he buying them? He has always been against it. He had always told me never to eat it. What has happened? What a good father!' When Gurdjieff was only nine years old, his father took a stick in his hand and he said, 'You eat the whole lot. Otherwise, I will beat you to death.'

And he was a dangerous man. Tears were flowing and Gurdjieff was eating, and he had to eat the whole lot. He vomited, but his father was a very, very hard man. He vomited, and for three weeks he was ill with dysentery, vomiting and fever. Then the fruit finished. He said, 'Even now that I am sixty years of age, if I come across the fruit my whole body shakes. I cannot even look at the fruit!' The indulgence created such a deep understanding, to the very roots of the body.

I say to you, 'Go and indulge.' Nothing is wrong with indulgence. If you really indulge and don't withhold yourself, you will come out of it more mature.

Otherwise, the indulgence, the idea, will always persist -- it will haunt you, it will become a ghost. People who take the vow of celibacy are always haunted by the ghost of sex. People who try to be in any type of control are always haunted by the idea of indulgence, of breaking all bounds, disciplines and controls and running headlong into it.

Just allow life to take you wheresoever it leads you and don't be afraid. Fear is the only thing one should be afraid of, nothing else. Move! Be courageous and daring, and I tell you that, by and by, the very experience of indulgence, sensuality, will calm you down. You will become centered.

But I am for sensitivity. Even if it brings indulgence, even if it brings sensuality, it's okay. I am not afraid of indulgence and sensuality. I am afraid of only one thing: that the fear of indulgence and sensuality may kill your sensitivity. If it is killed, you have committed suicide. Sensitive, you are alive, aware; the more sensitive, the more alive and aware. And when your sensitivity becomes total, you have entered the Divine.

       

The first question:

YES, I don't give much value to Freud, Jung, Adler, or Assagioli. Freud, Jung, Adler, and others, are just children playing on the sand of time. They have gathered beautiful pebbles, beautiful colored stones, but when you look at the Ultimate, they are just children playing with pebbles and stones. Those stones are not real diamonds. And whatsoever they have gained is very, very primitive. You will have to go slowly with me to understand.

Man can be physically ill; then the physician, the doctor is needed. Man can be psychologically ill; then a little help can be given by Freud and Jung and others. But when man is existentially ill, neither a physician nor a psychiatrist can be of any help. Existential illness is spiritual. It is neither of the body nor of the mind, it is of the total -- and the total transcends all parts. The total is not just a composition, a composition of the parts. It is something beyond the parts. It is something that holds all the parts into itself. It is a transcendence.

And the illness is existential. Man suffers from a spiritual illness. Dreams won't be of any help towards that. What in fact can dreams do? At the most they can help you to understand your unconscious a little bit more. Dreams are the language of the unconscious; the symbols, indications, hints and gestures of the unconscious; a message from the unconscious to the conscious.

Psychoanalysts can help you to interpret the dreams, they can become mediators, they can tell you what your dream means. Of course, if you can understand your dream, you will come a little closer to your unconscious. This will help to make you more adjusted with your unconscious. You will have a little understanding. Your two parts, the conscious and the unconscious, will not be so far apart; they will be a little closer. You will not be split as much as before. A little unity, a sort of unity will exist in you. You will be more normal, but to be normal is nothing. To be normal is not even worth talking about. To be normal means you are as you should be ordinarily; nothing else has happened, nothing from the beyond has penetrated you. You will be a more adjusted person in the society also. Of course, you will be a little better husband, a little better mother, a little better friend, but only a little.

But this is not self-realization. And when Jung starts talking about self-realization through dream analysis, he is talking very stupidly. It is not self-realization, because self-realization comes only when there is no mind. Dreams interpreted are not interpreted; they belong to the mind, they are part of the mind. And no psychology of the West -- except for Gurdjieff, Eckhart and Jacob Boehme -- no psychology of the West goes beyond mind. And these few people, Jacob Boehme, Eckhart, and Gurdjieff, in fact don't belong to the West, they belong to the East. Their whole standpoint is Eastern. They are born in the West, but their attitude, their way of life, their very understanding is of the East. When I say 'of the East', always remember that I don't mean geographically.

To me, East is a standpoint and West is also a standpoint. I am not concerned with geography. 'West' is a way of looking at things, 'East' is also a way of looking at things. When East looks at things, it looks at the total, and when West looks at things it always looks at the part. The Western attitude is analytical -- it analyzes. The Eastern attitude is synthetic -- it synthesizes, it tries to find the one in the many. The Western attitude tries to find the many in the one.

       

 

The Western attitude has become very efficient in analyzing, dissecting, taking things apart. Even a movement like the Psychosynthesis of Assagioli is not a real synthesis, because the very standpoint is missing. First Freud and Jung have taken things apart, they have broken the whole, and now Assagioli is trying to put those parts together somehow.

You can dissect a man into parts, he was alive; when you have dissected him, he is no longer alive. Now you can put the parts back again, but the life will not come. It will be a dead corpse. And even parts put together again will not make it a whole. What Freud and Jung did, Assagioli is simply repenting for. He is putting the parts together again but it is a corpse. There is no synthesis in it.

You have to look at the whole, and the whole is something totally different. Now even biologists have become aware, even medicine is becoming more and more aware every day that when you take the blood out of a man to examine it, it is no longer the same blood that was running through the man because now it is dead.

You are examining something else. The blood circulating in man is alive. It belongs to a whole, a system; it runs through it. It is as alive as a hand of the body. You cut the hand -- it is no longer the same hand. How can the blood be the same when you take it out of the body, take it to the lab and examine it? It is no longer the same blood.

Life exists as a unity, and the Western standpoint is to dissect, to go to the part, to understand the part and through the part to try to comprehend the whole. You will always miss. Even if you can comprehend like Assagioli, then that comprehension will be like a corpse: somehow put together but with no living unity in it.

       

 

Freud and Jung worked with dreams. It was a discovery in the West, a great discovery in a way, because the Western mind had completely forgotten about sleep, about dreams. Western man has existed for at least three thousand years without thinking about dreams and about sleep. Western man has been thinking as if only the waking hours are life, but the waking hours are only one third. If you live sixty years, you will be asleep for twenty years. One third of life will be in dreams and in sleep. It is a big phenomenon; it takes one third of your life. It will not be simply discarded; something is happening there. It is part of you, and not a small part but a major part. Freud and Jung brought back the concept that man has to be understood through his dreams and his sleep, and much has been done along that line. But when Jung starts thinking that this is something towards self-realization, then he has gone too far. It is good. For psychological health it can be helpful, but psychological health is not existential health.

You may be physically healthy, you may be psychologically healthy, but you may not be existentially healthy at all. On the contrary, when you are psychologically and physically healthy, for the first time you become aware of the existential anxiety, of the anguish inside. Before it you were so occupied with the body and the mind and the illnesses that you couldn't afford to look at the inward being. When everything is set right: body functions well, mind is not in any trouble, suddenly you become aware of the greatest anxiety in the world -- the existential, the spiritual. Suddenly you start asking, 'What is the meaning of it all? Why am I here, for what?' This never occurs to an ill man because he is too occupied with the illness. First he has to look after the body, and then he will think. Then he has to look after the mind, and then he will think. Body and mind, if healthy, will allow you for the first time to be really in trouble. And that trouble will be spiritual.

When Jung talks about his analytical psychology as a way to self-realization, he does not know what he is saying. He himself is not a self-realized man. Go deep into Jung's life, or Freud's life, and you will find them ordinary human beings. Freud got as angry as anybody, even more than ordinary people. He hated as much as anybody. He was jealous, so much so that when a fit of jealousy came to him, he would fall on the ground and become unconscious. This happened many times in Freud's life. Whenever jealousy would take him, he would be so disturbed that he would fall into a swoon, a fit. This man, self-realized? Then what about Buddha? Then where will you put Buddha?

       

Freud lived with ordinary human ambition; the political mind. He was trying to make psychoanalysis a movement just like communism, and he tried to control it. He tried to control it just like any Lenin or Stalin, even more dominatingly. He even declared Jung to be his successor -- and look at Jung's pictures! Whenever I have come upon a picture of Jung, I always look at it very deeply; it is a rare thing. Always look at Jung's pictures; you will see everything written on the face: the ego. Look at his nose, the eyes, the cunningness, the anger; every illness is written on the face. He lived as an ordinary, fear-ridden man. He was very afraid of spirits, ghosts, and very jealous, competitive, argumentative, quarrelsome.

The West really does not know what self-realization is, so anything becomes a self-realization. The West is not aware of what self-realization means. It means such an absolute silence that it cannot be disturbed by anything. Such absolute nonbeing; how can possessiveness, ambition, jealousy exist in it? With a no-mind, how can you dominate, how can you try to dominate? Self-realization means the complete disappearance of the ego. And with the ego, everything disappears.

Remember, the ego cannot disappear through the interpretation of dreams. On the contrary, the ego may get stronger, be cause the gap between the conscious and the unconscious will be less. Your ego will be strengthened, your mind will be stronger. The less trouble there is in the mind, the more strong mind will be. You will have a new lease for the ego. So what psychoanalysis can do is to make your ego more grounded, more centered; to make your ego stronger, more confident. Of course, you will be able to exist in the world better than before, because the world believes in the ego. You will be more able to fight in the struggle for survival. You will be more confident about yourself, less nervous. You will be able to achieve a few ambitions more easily than if you were troubled inside and the unconscious and conscious were in a constant quarrel within. But this is not self realization. On the contrary, it is ego realization.

Up to now, the whole Western psychology has not come to the point of non-ego. It is still thinking in terms of the ego: how to make the ego more strongly rooted, centered; how to make the ego more healthy, normal, adjusted. The East takes the ego itself as the disease; the whole mind is the disease. There is no choice about it -- conscious and unconscious both have to go. They have to go and that's why the East has not tried to interpret. Because if something has to go, why bother about its interpretation? Why waste time? It can be dropped.

Look at the difference: the West is somehow trying to make an adjustment between the conscious and the unconscious and strengthen the ego, so that you become a more adjusted member of society, and also a more adjusted individual inside. With the rift bridged, you will be more at ease with the mind. The East has been trying to drop the mind, to go beyond it. It is not a question of adjustment to the society, it is a question of adjustment to existence itself. It is not a question of an adjustment between the conscious and unconscious, it is a question of the adjustment of all the parts that constitute your whole being.

Dreams are important. If a man is ill, dreams are important; they show symptoms of the illness. But you don't know about the man who has no dreams. Dreaming is a pathology in itself; dream itself is pathology. Buddha never dreamed. What would Freud have done? If Freud had been there, what would he have done with a Buddha? What would he have interpreted about him? -- there was nothing to interpret. If Freud had gone inside Buddha, he would not have found anything to interpret. His whole psychology would have been absolutely useless.

In America, it happened that there was a man who was very, very efficient in reading other people's thoughts -- a mind reader. He was always a hundred percent right. He would sit before you; you would close your eyes and start thinking, and he would close his eyes and start talking about what you were thinking. Immediately that you would think, the thought would be transferred and he would receive it. This is an art. Many people know about it. It can be learned, you can do it, because thought is a subtle vibration. If you are receptive the other mind becomes a broadcasting station, you become the receiver. Thought is a broadcast because ripples arise in the electricity around the man. If you are silent enough, receptive, you will catch them.

When Meher Baba was in America, somebody brought a man to Meher Baba. The man had lived for many years in silence. The man sat before Meher Baba, closed his eyes and meditated and meditated and meditated. Again he would open his eyes and look at Meher Baba. It took too long; people became worried. They said, 'You never took such a long time.' The man said, 'Well, what to do? This man is not thinking at all. There is no thought.'

If Freud or Jung were near Buddha, or if they had come to me, they would not have found anything to interpret, they would not have found any thought to catch.

The East says, 'Dreaming itself is pathology.' It is a sort of illness; it is a disturbance. When you are really silent, thinking disappears in the day and dreaming disappears at night. Thinking and dreaming are two aspects of the same thing: during the day while you are awake, it is thinking, and at night while you are asleep, it is dreaming. Dreaming is a primitive way of thinking; thinking in pictures just as children think. That's why in children's books we have to make many colored pictures. Children cannot move with words very much. By and by, they will move. You have to draw a big mango, and write mango in small letters. First they will see the picture, and then they will become associated with the word. By and by, the picture will become smaller and smaller and disappear. Then the word mango will do.

The primitive mind thinks in pictures just like children do. When you are asleep, you are a primitive. The whole civilization disappears, culture disappears, society disappears. You are no longer part of the contemporary world, you are a primitive in the cave. You start thinking in pictures because the unconscious mind has remained uncultivated.

Dreaming and thinking are both the same. When dreaming stops, thinking stops; when thinking stops, dreaming stops. The whole effort in the East has been how to drop the whole thing. We are not worried about how to adjust it or how to interpret it, but how to drop it. And if it can be dropped, then why bother about the interpretation? Why waste time?

Sooner or later the West is going to realize this, because now meditative techniques are penetrating into the West. Meditations are the way of dropping dreaming, thinking, the whole complex of the mind. And once they are dropped, you attain to a well-being that is not of the mind. You attain something that is right now not even conceivable in your state of mind. You cannot even imagine it, what it will be like when you don't think, when you don't dream, when you will just be.

Psychoanalysis or other trends take such a long time: five years, three years, just interpreting dreams. The whole thing seems to be so boring, and only few people can afford it. Even those who can afford it, what do they gain out of it? Many people have come to me who have been through psychoanalysis; no self-realization has happened. They have been in psychoanalysis for many years. Not only have they been psychoanalyzed, they have psychoanalyzed many others and nothing has happened - they remain the same, the ego is the same. On the contrary, they are a little firmer, stronger. And the existential anxiety continues.

So, yes. I don't place much value on Freud and Jung, because my attitude is how to drop the mind? It can be dropped and it takes less time to drop it, it is easier to drop it. In fact, it can also be dropped without anybody's help.

The East stumbled upon the fact near about five thousand years ago. They must have interpreted, because in the ancient Eastern books there are interpretations of dreams. I have not come across a single new discovery that has not already been discovered in the East somewhere in the past. Even Freud and Jung are nothing new. It is a rediscovering of the old territory. Dream interpretation must have been done in the East in the past, but they must have found that you can go on interpreting the dreaming mind and there is no end to it. It goes on dreaming, it goes on creating new dreams again and again.

       

 

In fact, no psychoanalysis is ever complete. Even after five years it is not complete. No psychoanalysis can ever be complete because the mind goes on weaving new dreams. You go on interpreting, it goes on weaving new dreams. It has infinite capacity; it is very creative, very imaginative. It ends only when life ends, or it ends with meditation if you take the jump and die on your own. Death is needed for the mind, not analysis. And if death of the mind is possible, what is the point of analyzing it? Analyzing & self-realization are two completely different things and you have to be aware of that. Jung and Freud are geniuses gone astray; great intellects, but wasting their time. The problem is: they had discovered so many things about the mind, but they themselves could not use it. And that should be the criterion.

If I discover a technique of meditation and I cannot meditate myself, what meaning can my discovery carry? But that too is different in the East and the West. In the West they say, 'Maybe the physician cannot heal himself, but he can heal you.' In the East we have always been saying, 'Physician, heal thyself first. That will become the criterion of whether you can do it for others or not.' In the West they don't ask, they don't ask that. In the West science goes on its own way. Personal questions are not asked because science is thought to be an objective study, nothing to do with the subjectivity. It may be so in science, but psychology cannot be absolutely objective. It has to be subjective too, because mind is subjective.

The first thing that should be asked of Jung is, 'Have you realized yourself?' But he was really very egoistic. He was thinking that he had realized. He was reluctant to come to India. Only once he came, and he was reluctant to go and see an enlightened mystic, even a man like Ramana Maharshi. He was reluctant, he would not go. What was there for him to learn? He had everything already. But he knew nothing, just a few fragments of some dreams that he had interpreted -- and he thought that he had interpreted life.

You can go on interpreting dreams, and you can think dreams are the reality. In the East our standpoint is just the opposite. We have been looking into life and we have found that life itself is a dream. You think that by interpreting dreams you have interpreted reality. Just on the contrary, we have looked into life and found that it is nothing but a dream. And why this reluctance of Jung? Jung was afraid of the East, and there was something in it: he was afraid of the East because the East would reveal the reality of his own understanding -- that it was false. Had he been to Ramana, had he been to some other mystic in the East, he would have immediately realized that whatsoever he had attained was nothing. He was just on the steps of the temple. He had not yet entered the shrine. But in the West, anything goes. You can call it self-realization without knowing what self-realization is, you can call it self-realization. You can call it anything; it depends on you.

Self-realization is coming to no-self, coming to an absolute emptiness within, coming to the point where you are not. The drop has dissolved into the ocean and only the ocean exists. Then who dreams? Then who is left there to dream? The house is empty, there is nobody.

      

If you wanna make the world a better place

 

 Take a look at yourself and then make a change.

 

The Second Question:

Yes, culture, society, civilization, all are alien to religion. Religion is a revolution, a revolution in your cultural conditioning, a revolution in your social conditioning, a revolution in all the spheres that you have lived and you are living. Every society is against religion. When I say 'religion', I'm not talking about your temples and mosques and churches that society has created. Those are tricks. Those are things to befool you. Those are substitutes for religion, they are not religion. They are to misguide you. You need religion: they say, 'Yes, come to the temple, to the church, to the gurudwara. Here it is religion. You come and pray and the preacher is there who will teach you religion.'

This is a trick. Society has created false religions: those religions are Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism. But a Buddha, or a Mahavira, or a Jesus, or a Mohammed, always exist beyond society. And society always fights with them. When they are dead, then the society starts worshipping them, then the society creates temples. And then there is nothing; the reality is gone, the flame has disappeared. Buddha is no longer there in the statue of a Buddha. In the temples you will find the society, the culture, but not religion.

But what is religion?

In the first place, religion is a personal thing. It is not a social phenomenon. You alone go into it, you cannot go into it with a group. How can you go into samadhi with somebody else? Not even your nearest, not even your closest will be with you. When you go inwards, everything will be left out: the society, the culture, the civilization, enemies, friends, lovers, beloveds, children, wife, husband -- everything will be left, by and by. And a moment comes when you also will be left out. Then only, the flowering; then the transformation. Because you are also a part of the society, a member of society: a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, an Indian, a Chinese, a Japanese. First, others will be left; then, by and by, nearer ones will be left, closer ones will be left. Finally you will come to yourself, which is also a part of the society, trained by the society, conditioned by the society: your brain, your mind, your ego -- given by the society. That too has to be left outside the temple. Then you enter in your absolute aloneness. Nobody is there, not even you.

Religion is personal. And religion is revolutionary. Religion is the only revolution in the world. All other revolutions are false, pseudo, games, not revolutions. In fact, because of those revolutions, the real revolution is always postponed. They are anti-revolutions.

If a communist comes and asks, 'How can you change yourself unless the whole society is changed?' And you feel, 'Right. How can I change myself? How can I live a free life in an unfree society?' The logic seems relevant. How can you be happy in an unhappy society? How can you find bliss when everybody is miserable? The communist hits, he appeals.

'Yes,' you say, 'unless the whole society is happy, how can I be happy?'

Then the communist says, 'Come, let us first have a revolution in the society.' And then you start on a march, morcha, gherao, all types of nonsense. You have been caught in the trap. Now you are going to change the whole world.

But have you forgotten how long you are going to live? And when the whole world is changed, by that time you will not be here. You will have lost your life. Many stupid people are losing their whole lives marching against this and that, for this and that; trying to transform the whole world, but in turn postponing the only transformation which is possible, and that is self-transformation.

I tell you, you can be free in an unfree society, you can be blissful in a miserable world. There is no hindrance from others; you can be transformed. Nobody is hindering you except you yourself. Nobody is creating any obstacle. Don't bother about the society and the world, because the world will continue. And it has continued the same for ever and ever. Many revolutions come and go and the world remains the same.

If all the revolutionaries could be revived from their graves -- Lenin and Marx -- they would not be able to believe that the world has remained the same and the revolution has happened. In Russia or in America, nothing is different, just a formal difference. Forms differ; the basic reality remains the same, the basic misery of man remains the same. Society will never come to any utopia. This word 'utopia' is very beautiful. The very word means: that which never comes. The word 'utopia' means: that which never comes. It is always coming but it never comes; always the promise, but the goods are never delivered. And this will be so. It has been so. There is only one possibility: you can change.

Politics is social, religion is personal. And whenever religion becomes social, it is part of politics. It is no longer religion. Islam and Hinduism and Jainism, they are politics. They are now no longer religion; they have become social.

It is a personal understanding. You, in your 'deepest core of being, realize that a change is needed, that as you are, you are wrong; as you are, you are creating a hell around you; as you are, you are the very seed of misery. You realize this in the deepest core of your being, and the very realization becomes a change. You drop the seed; you move in a different dimension. It is personal, it is not cultural.

And that's why it is so difficult for you to become religious. You would like the society to teach you. If religion could be taught, you all would have become religious. But religion cannot be taught. It is not a teaching, it is a jump into the unknown. It needs courage, not learning. And who can teach you courage? And how can courage be taught? Either you have it or you don't have it, so try to find out if you have courage. And if you try to find it, everybody will find somewhere hidden in him a vast possibility for courage. Because without courage, life is not possible.

Life is a risk every single moment. How can you live without courage? How can you breathe without courage? The courage is there, but you are unaware. Find the courage, give the responsibility of a personal commitment. Forget about the world and the utopias, and change yourself. And this is the beauty: if you change yourself, you have already started changing the world. Because with your change a part of the world has changed. You are an organic part of the world. Even if one part changes, it will affect the whole because the whole is one; everything is related.

If I change, I change the whole world in a way. The world will never be the same because one part -- one millionth, but still one part -- has changed, has become totally different, is no more of this world. Another world has penetrated through me. The eternity has penetrated into time. God has come to dwell in a human body; nothing can be the same, everything will change through me.

Remember this, and remember also that religion is not an imitation. You cannot imitate a religious person. If you imitate, it will be a pseudo-religion -- false, insincere. How can you imitate me? And if you imitate, how can you be true to yourself ? You will become untrue to yourself. You are not here to be like me. You are here to be just like yourself. You are not here to be like me; you are here to be just like yourself, like you.

      

 

I have heard about a Jewish mystic, Josiah. He was dying and somebody asked, 'Josiah, pray to Moses, and ask him to help you.' Josiah said, 'Forget about Moses. Because when I am dead, God will not ask me why I am not like Moses. He will ask why I am not like Josiah. He will not ask me, "Why are you not like Moses?" That is not my responsibility, to be like Moses. If God wanted me like Moses, He would have made me a Moses. He will ask me, "Josiah, why are you not like Josiah?" And that is my trouble: my whole life I have been trying to be like somebody else. But at least now, at the last moment, leave me alone! Let me be myself, because that is the face I should show to God. And that is the only face that He will be waiting for.'

Be authentically yourself. You cannot imitate. Religion makes everybody unique. No Master, who is really a Master, will insist that you imitate him. He will help you to be yourself, he will not help you to be like him.

And all culture is imitation. The whole society is imitative. That's why the whole society is more like a drama than like a reality. Hindus call it maya -- a game, a play, but not real. Parents are teaching their children to be like themselves. Everybody is pushing and pulling everybody else to be like himself -- a whole chaos all around.

I was staying with a family, and I was sitting on the lawn. The small child of the house came, and I asked, 'What are you thinking to become in your life?' He said, 'Difficult to say, because my father wants me to be a doctor. My mother wants me to be an engineer; my uncle, he wants me to become an advocate, because he is an advocate. And I am confused. I don't know what I am going to become.' I asked him, 'What do you want to become?' He said, 'But nobody has asked me that!' I told him, 'You think about it. Tomorrow you tell me.' The next day he came and he said, 'I would like to become a dancer, but my mother won't allow, my father won't allow.' He told me, 'Help me. They will listen to you.'

Every child is being pushed and pulled to become something else. That's why there is so much ugliness all around. Nobody is himself. If you become the greatest engineer in the world, even that will not be a fulfillment if it was not your own urge. And I tell you, you may become the worst dancer in the world; that doesn't make any difference. If it was your own urge, you will be happy and fulfilled.

I have heard about a great scientist who won a Nobel Prize. He was one of the greatest surgeons the world has ever known. And on the day when he received the Nobel Prize, somebody said, 'You must be happy' -- because he was not looking happy at all. His face was sad. Somebody asked, 'You must be happy.

Why are you looking so sad? This is the greatest prize, the greatest reward the world can give to you, the greatest honor. Why are you not happy? And you are one of the greatest surgeons in the world.' He said, 'That is not the point. When the Nobel Prize was given to me, I was thinking of my childhood. I had never wanted to become a surgeon. It has been forced on me. My whole life has been a wastage. What will I do with this Nobel Prize? I would have liked to become a dancer. Even the lousiest, that would have done; I would have been fulfilled. That was my urge.'

Remember this. Why do you feel so discontented? Why do you feel so discontented; why do you feel always so dissatisfied for no particular reason at all? Even if everything is going well, something is missing. What is missing? -- you have never listened to your own being. Somebody else has manoeuvred, manipulated you, somebody else has dominated you, somebody else has forced you into a life-pattern which was never yours, which you never wanted. I tell you, even if it happens that you become a beggar, don't be worried if that is your urge. Find the urge and follow it, because God will not ask, 'Why are you not a Mahavir? Why are you not a Mohammed, or why are you not a Zarathustra?' He will ask Josiah, 'Why are you not a Josiah?'

You have to be yourself, and the whole society is a great imitation, a false show. That's why there is so much discontent on every face. I look into your eyes and I see discontent, unfulfillment. Not even a small breeze comes to you which gives you happiness, ecstasy -- it is not possible. And ecstasy is possible. It is a simple phenomenon: be natural and loose and follow your own inclination.

I'm here to help you to be yourself. When you become a disciple, when I initiate you, I am not initiating you to be imitators. I am just trying to help you to find your own being, your own authentic being -- because you are so confused, you have so many faces that you have forgotten which is the original one. You don't know what your real urge is. The society has confused you completely, misguided you. Now you are not certain of who you are. When I initiate you, the only thing that I want to do is to help you come to your own home. Once you are centered in your own being, my work is finished. Then you can start. In fact, a Master has to undo what the society has done. A Master has to undo what the culture has done. He has to make you a clean sheet again.

That's the meaning of a Master giving you a rebirth: again you become a child - your past cleaned, your slate washed. Again, you come to the first point where you had first entered into this world, forty, fifty years ago, before the society got hold of you, trapped you, led you astray. For fifty years you have wandered and now suddenly you have come to me. I have to do only one thing: to wash clean whatsoever has been done to you, to bring you back to your childhood, to the initial stage from where you started the journey, and to help you to start the journey again.

      

 

 

The Third Question:

If you are impressed by words and personality you can never become a disciple; you will become an imitator. And a disciple is not an imitator. But I understand your trouble -- you know only one way of being related, and that is, being impressed. That's what the society has done to you. If you are impressed, you think you are related. Then you don't know how to be come a disciple. You know only how to become a student, a shadow phenomenon.

When you listen to me, forget about being impressed. When you listen to me, just listen. Be with me, open -- don't try to judge either way. Whatsoever I am saying, you simply be open listen, allow it and allow me to penetrate you, but don't judge. Don't say, 'Yes, it is right,' because then you are impressed. If you say, 'No, this is not right,' then you are trying not to be impressed. One is a positive impression, another is a negative impression, and both ways will be wrong.

Don't say 'yes' to me, don't say 'no' to me. Why can't you just be here without saying 'yes' or 'no'? Listen, watch, allow things to happen. If you say 'yes', that 'yes' means: now you are ready to imitate. If you say 'no' it means: 'no', you are not going to imitate me, you are going somewhere to imitate somebody else. You have some other guru, some other Master whom you will imitate. This man is not for you. You are seeking somebody who can become an ideal for you, and you can become a shadow. And you can find many -- many enjoy becoming the ideals because ego feels very, very good. When so many people imitate a person, it feels wonderful for the ego -- 'I am the ideal of so many people. I must be absolutely right, otherwise why are so many people following me?' The greater the crowd behind a man, the more strong the ego becomes. So there are people who would like you to imitate but I am not one of them, I am just the opposite. I don't enjoy your imitation. Once you start, I feel very sorry for you. I discourage it in every way.

Don't imitate me. Just watch, listen, feel. In this listening, watching, feeling, just being aware here with me, by and by your energy will start falling on your own center. Because listening to me, the mind stops. Watching, the mind stops. Being here with me, open, the mind stops. In that stopping of the mind, the phenomenon is happening -- you are going back to the source of your own being, you are falling to your own center. The disturbance of the mind is not there; suddenly you gain a balance, you are centered.

And that is what I would like. From that falling to your own source and center will arise your life. Not because of the impressions that I leave on you; I don't want to leave any impressions. And if they are left, I am not responsible. You must have done something yourself. You must be clinging to those words, impressions. It is subtle just to be without judgment, just to be listening, watching, being, sitting with me.

My talking is nothing but an excuse to help you to sit with me, to help you to be here with me. I know, because I can sit in silence, but then your mind will chatter. You will not be silent. So I have to talk so that your mind is not allowed to chatter. You become engrossed, involved in listening. The mind stops. In that gap you reach to your own source. I am to help you to find your center, and this is the real discipleship. It is really totally different to what people think that discipleship is. It is not following, it is not imitating, it is not making an ideal of the Master. It is nothing of that sort. It is to allow the Master to help you to fall toward your own center.

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Whenever you listen to the voice of the ego, sooner or later there will be trouble.

You will fall into the trap of misery. This you have to watch: ego always leads into misery, always, unconditionally; always, categorically, absolutely. And whenever you listen to nature, it leads you to a well-being, a contentment, a silence, a bliss. So this should be the criterion. You will have to make many errors; there is no other way. You have to watch your own choice, from where the voice is coming, and then you have to see what happens -- because the fruit is the criterion.

When you do something, watch, be alert. And if it leads to misery, then you know well that it was ego. Then the next time, be alert, don't listen to that voice.

If it is nature, it will lead you towards a blissful state of mind. Nature is always beautiful, ego always ugly. There is no other way but trial and error. I cannot give you a criterion so that you can judge everything, no. Life is subtle and complex and all criteria fall short. You will have to make your own efforts to judge. So whenever you do something, listen to the voice from within. Make a note of it, of where it leads. If it leads to misery, it was certainly from the ego.

If your love leads to misery, it was from the ego. If your love leads to a beautiful benediction, a blessedness, it was from nature. If your friendship, even your meditation, leads you to misery, it was from the ego. If it were from nature everything would fit in, everything would become harmonious. Nature is wonderful, nature is beautiful, but you have to work it out.

Always make a note of what you are doing and where it leads. By and by, you will become aware of that which is ego and that which is nature; which is real and which is false. It will take time and alertness, observation. And don't deceive yourself -- because only ego leads to misery, nothing else. Don't throw the responsibility on the other; the other is irrelevant. Your ego leads to misery, nobody else leads you into misery. Ego is the gate of hell, and the natural, the authentic, the real that comes from your center, is the door to heaven. You will have to find it and work it out.

If you work it out diligently, soon you will be absolutely certain of what is from nature and what is from the ego. Then don't follow the ego. In fact, then you will by yourself not be following the ego. There will be no need to make an effort; you will be simply following the natural. The natural is Divine. And in nature the supernature is hidden. If you follow the natural, by and by, by and by, slowly and slowly, without even making any noise, suddenly one day the natural will disappear and the supernatural will appear. Nature leads to God, because God is hidden in nature.

      

 

First, be natural. Then you will be flowing in the river of the natural. And one day the river will fall into the ocean of the supernatural.

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The Fifth & Last Question:

The immediate jump is the longest way. Because to be ready for the immediate jump, it will take many years, even many lives to be ready for it. So when I say 'immediate jump', do you take it immediately? Have you taken the jump? Just by my saying so, you have not taken it. I say 'immediate', but the immediate for you may take many lives.

A jump is never a shortcut, because a jump is not a way. There are long ways and there are short ways. A jump is not a way at all; it is a sudden phenomenon. To be ready for the jump means to be ready to die. To be ready to jump means to be ready to jump into the unknown, into the insecure, into the uncharted. That readiness will take many, many years.

Don't think that an immediate jump is a shortcut -- it is not. Shortcuts are when somebody says to you, 'Take a mantra, do the mantra for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening, and then you need not do anything else. Within fifteen days you will already be a meditator.'

In the West people are so conscious of time that they are always victims.

Somebody comes and says, 'This is the short cut. My way is not the bullock-cart way but the jet way,' as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says. He says, 'I give you a shortcut, just a mantra to repeat for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen in the evening. And within two weeks, you are already enlightened.'

In the West people are in so much of a hurry: they want instant coffee, they want instant sex, they want instant God; shortcut, packaged, everything prefabricated.

Time is too much in the Western head, too much, and that is creating many tensions inside. Anybody can come and say, 'This is the panacea and everything can be solved within just fifteen minutes.' And what do you do? -- you sit and repeat a mantra.

The East has been repeating mantras for millions of years and nothing has happened. And within two weeks of TM training, you become enlightened?

These types of stupid things continue because you are in a hurry. Somebody or other will exploit you.

I was reading a book the other night, a collection of small essays by Richard Church. The name of the book is A STROLL BEFORE THE DARK. In that book he remembers one incident that happened to one of his friends.

A friend who was much too time-obsessed was travelling by train. Suddenly he became aware that he had forgotten his wristwatch, so he was very worried. The train stopped at a small station. The friend looked out of the window as the porter was passing. He asked the porter about the time. The porter said, 'I don't know.' The friend said, 'What! You, a railway man and you don't know what time it is? Don't you have a clock in the station?' The porter said, 'Yes the clock is there. But why should I be distressed with time?' The porter said, 'Why should I be distressed by time? The clock is there; that is none of my business.'

It's wonderful, the porter saying, 'Why should I be distressed with time?' People are distressed with time, and in the West much too distressed -- time and time and time. They say that time is money, and time is flowing, going out of the hand continuously, therefore a shortcut is needed. Somebody immediately supplies the demand.

Time is not running short. Time is eternal; there is no hurry. Existence moves in a very lethargic way. Existence moves very slowly, just like the Ganges flows in the plains -- slow, as if not flowing at all. Still it reaches the ocean.

Time is not short, don't be in a panic. Time is enough. You relax. If you relax, even the longest path will become the short est. If you are in a panic, even the short path will become very long -- because in panic, meditation is impossible.

When you are in a panic, in a hurry, the very hurry is the barrier. When I say, 'Take the jump' -- and you can take the jump immediately -- I am not talking about shortcuts or longcuts. I am not talking about the way at all, because a jump is not a way. A jump is a courageous moment -- it is a sudden phenomenon.

But I don't mean that you can do it right now. I will go on insisting, 'Take the jump immediately, as soon as possible.' This insistence is just to help you to prepare for it. Some day you may be ready. Somebody may be ready right now -- because you are not new; for many lives you have already been working. When I say, 'Take the immediate jump,' there may be someone who has been working for many lives, and just standing on the brink, on the abyss, and afraid. He may gather courage and take the jump. Somebody who is very far away, thinking that the immediate jump is possible, will gather hope and start walking.

When I say something, it is a device to help many sorts of people in many sorts of situations. But my path is not a short cut, because no path can be a shortcut.

The very word is deceptive. Life knows no shortcuts because life has no beginning. God knows no shortcuts. God is not in a hurry -- eternity is there.

You can work it out slowly. And the more patiently, the more slowly, the more unhurriedly you work, the sooner you will reach. If you can be so patient, so infinitely patient that you are not worried about reaching at all, you may reach right now.

 

 If You Are Happy, Time Disappears.

PATANJALI SAYS that lust for life is a barrier, a barrier to enjoying life, a barrier to being really alive, because lust is always for the future; it is never for the present. Patanjali is not against enjoyment. When you are in the moment enjoying something, there is no lust in it. Lust is a hankering for the future, and this has to be understood.

People who are not enjoying their lives in the present have lust for life in the future. Lust for life is always in the future. It is a postponement. They are saying, "We cannot enjoy today so we will enjoy tomorrow." They are saying, "Right this moment we cannot celebrate, so let there be a tomorrow so that we can celebrate."

Future arises out of your misery, not out of your celebration. A really celebrating person has no future; he lives this moment, he lives it totally. Out of that total living arises the next moment, but it is not out of any lust. Of course, when out of celebration the next moment arises, it has more capacity to bless you. When out of celebration the future arises, it goes on becoming more and more rich. A moment comes when the moment is so total, so whole, that time completely disappears.

Time is a need of the miserable mind. Time is a creation of misery. If you are happy there is no time -- time disappears. Watch it..from another dimension: have you observed that whenever you are in misery, time moves very slowly? Somebody is dying, somebody you love, somebody you would like to be alive, and you are sitting by the side. The whole night you sit by the side of the bed and the night looks as if it is an eternity. It seems not to be ending at all; it goes on, and on, and on. The clock on the wall seems to be moving very, very slowly. In misery, time moves slowly. When you are happy -- you are with your beloved, your friend, you are cherishing the moment -- time goes fast. The whole night has passed and it seems that it has been only a few moments or a few minutes. Why does this happen? -- because the clock on the wall doesn't bother about whether you are happy or unhappy; it moves on its own. It never goes slow, never goes fast with your moods. It is always moving with the same pace, but your interpretation differs. In misery time becomes bigger, in happiness time becomes smaller. When somebody is in a blissful mood time simply disappears.

Christianity says that when you are thrown into hell, the hell is going to be eternal, never-ending. Bertrand Russell has written a book, WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, and he gives many reasons. One of them is this: "Whatsoever sins I have committed, it is impossible to think that eternal punishment can be just. I may have committed many sins. You throw me in hell for fifty years, a hundred years, fifty lives, a hundred lives, one thousand lives, but eternal punishment cannot be just." Eternal punishment seems to be simply unjust, and Christianity believes in only one life. How can a man commit so many sins in one life, a life of just sixty or seventy years, so that he becomes worthy of being punished for eternity? It looks simply absurd! Russell says, "Whatsoever sins I have committed and whatsoever I have been thinking to commit but have not committed yet; if I confess all my sins, committed, uncommitted, imagined, dreamed, then too the hardest judge cannot send me to jail for more than five years."

And he is right, but he misses the point. Christian theologians have not been able to answer. Hell is eternal not because it is eternal, but because it is the greatest misery -- time moves not. It appears that it is eternal. If in bliss time disappears, then in the deepest misery, which is hell, time continues so slowly, as if not moving it all. A single moment of hell is eternal. It will appear to you that it is not ending, not ending, not ending.

The theory of eternal hell is beautiful, very psychological. It shows simply that time depends on the mind; time is a mind-oriented phenomenon. You are in misery, there is time; you are happy, there is no time. The lust for life is lust for more time. It shows that whatsoever you have gained is not enough, you are not satiated yet.'Give me more time so that I can be satiated. Give me more life, more future, more space to move, because all my desires are yet unfulfilled.' That's what a man who is lusting for life goes on praying for, 'Lord, give me more time, because all my desires are still there. Nothing has been a fulfillment, I am not contented, I am not satiated and time is flowing fast. Give me more time.' This is the meaning of lust for life: lust for more time.

What do you mean by life? -- life means more time in the future. What do you mean by death? -- death means no future. If death comes right now, future ends, time ends. That's why you are afraid of death, because it will not give you space and all your desires are unfulfilled. Patanjali is not against life. In fact, because he is not against life he is against lust for life. If you live life to its totality, enjoy it to the deepest possibility, allow it to happen, then there will be no lust for life.

Be more sensitive, alive, aware, and then you will not hanker for more time. In fact, for a man who is satiated with life, death looks like rest, great relaxation, not the ending of life. He is not afraid of it, he welcomes it; a full rich life lived, then death comes in the night, as the night. The whole day you worked, now you prepare the bed and go to rest.

There are people who are afraid of night. I used to stay in Calcutta with a very rich man who was as afraid of night as people are afraid of death. He could not sleep, and he could not sleep because he was resting the whole day. Then how could he expect sleep? He was rich, he had everything, so he didn't do anything. Only poor people walk on their legs, only poor people do things.

Somewhere, Camus writes that a time will come in future when, really, people will be so rich that they will not even love. They will send their servants to do it.

In fact a rich man should not have. Why bother about the whole effort? -- you can send a servant. That's what rich men are doing: servants have to be sent to live life, and they rest.

When you rest the whole day, how can you sleep in the night? The need is not created. A man works the whole day, lives, and by the evening-time he is ready to fall into oblivion, into darkness. The same happens if you have lived a true life, an authentic life. If you have really lived it, death is a rest. Evening comes, night falls, and you are ready; you lie down and wait. When you live rightly you don't ask for more life because more is already there, more than you can ask is already there, more than you can imagine has already been given to you. If you live every moment to its total intensity, you are always ready to die.

If death comes right now to me I am ready, because nothing is incomplete. I have not postponed anything. I have taken my morning bath and enjoyed it. I have not postponed anything at all for the future, so if death comes there is no problem. Death can come and take me right now. There will not even be a slight idea of future because nothing is incomplete.

And you? -- everything is incomplete. Even the morning bath you could not take well because you had to come to listen to me; you missed it. You move according to the future and then you go on missing. If this missing becomes a habit - and it becomes one - then you will miss my talk also because you are the same man who missed the morning bath, who missed the morning tea, who somehow finished it but remained incomplete. It is hovering around your head. All that you have left incomplete is still like buzzing bees around you.

      

 

This missing becomes a habit. You will listen to me but you are getting ready to go to the office, or to the shop, or to the market; you have already moved. You are only physically sitting here. Your mind has moved in the future. You will never be anywhere.

Wherever you are, you are already moving somewhere else. This incomplete life creates lust for life. You have to complete many things.

How can you afford to die right this moment? I can afford to, I can enjoy -- everything is complete! Remember this, Patanjali, Buddha, Jesus -- nobody is against life. They are for life, all for life, but they are against lust for life because lust for life is a symptom of a man who has been missing life.

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MANY OF THE EXISTENTIALIST THINKERS OF THE WEST -- SARTRE, CAMUS ETC. -- HAVE COME TO REALIZE THE FRUSTRATION, HOPELESSNESS AND MEANINGLESSNESS OF LIFE, BUT THEY HAVE NOT KNOWN THE ECSTASY OF A PATANJALI. WHY? WHAT IS MISSING?

WHAT WOULD PATANJALI HAVE TO SAY TO THE WEST AT THIS POINT?

Yes, a few things are missing in the West which were not missing for Buddha in India. Buddha also reached to a point where Sartre is: the existentialist despair, the anguish, the feeling that all is futile, that life is meaningless. But when Buddha reached this point, that everything is meaningless, there was an opening in India; it was not the end of the road. In fact, it was only the end of one road but another opened immediately; the closing of one door but the opening of another.

   

That is the difference between a culture which is spiritual and a culture which is materialist. A materialist says, 'This is all; there is nothing else to life.' A materialist says that all that you see, that is all that reality is. If that becomes meaningless, then there is no door open. A spiritualist says, 'This is not all, the visible is not all, the tangible is not all.' When this is finished, suddenly a new door opens and this is not the end. When it is finished, it is only a beginning into another dimension.

This is the only difference between a materialist conception of life and a spiritualist conception of life -- the difference of world views. Buddha was born into a spiritualist world view. He also realized the meaninglessness of all that we do, because death is there and death will finish everything, so what is the point of doing or not doing? Whether you do or don't do, death comes and finishes everything. Whether you love or not, old age comes and you become a ruin, a skeleton. Whether you live a poor life or a rich life, death annihilates both; it does not bother about who you are. You may have been a saint, you may have been a sinner -- for death it makes no difference. Death is absolutely communist; it treats everybody equally. The saint and the sinner both fall down into the dust -- dust unto dust. Buddha came to realize this, the spiritual world view was there, but the milieu was different.

       

 

I have told you the story of Buddha: He comes to see an old man; he realizes that youth is just a passing phase, a momentary phenomenon; a wave in the ocean rising and falling, nothing of permanence in it, nothing of the eternal in it; just like a dream, a bubble ready to burst any moment. Then he sees a dead man being carried away.

In the West the story, would have stopped here: the old man, the dead man. But in the Indian story, after the dead man he sees a sannyasin -- that is the door. And then he asks his driver, 'Who is this man, and why is he in ochre robes? What has happened to him? What type of man is he?' The driver says, "This man has also realized that life leads to death and he is in search of a life which is deathless."

This was the milieu: life doesn't end with death. Buddha's story shows that after seeing death, when life feels meaningless, suddenly a new dimension arises, a new vision. It is sannyas -- the effort to penetrate into the deeper mystery of life, to penetrate deeper into the visible to reach the invisible, to penetrate matter so deeply that matter disappears and you come to the basic reality, the reality of spiritual energy, the brahman. With Sartre, Camus, Heidegger, the story ends with the dead man. The sannyasin is missing, that is the missing link.

   

If you can understand me, that is what I am doing: creating so many sannyasis, sending them to the whole world, so that whenever there is a man who comes to understand, like Sartre, that life is meaningless, a sannyasin must be there to follow, to give a new vision that life doesn't end with death. A phase ends, but not life itself.

In fact, life starts only when death has come because death ends only your body, not your innermost being. The life of the body is only a part, and a very peripheral part, a superficial part.

In the West, materialism has become the worldview. Even so-called 'religious people' in the West are all materialists. They may go to church, they may believe in Christianity, but that belief is not even skin deep. It is a social formality. One has to go to church on Sunday; it is the thing to do, the right thing to do to remain 'the right people' in the opinion of others. You are the right people doing the right things -- a social formality. But inside, everybody has become a materialist.

The materialist worldview says that with death everything ends. If this is true, then there is no possibility of any transformation. And if everything ends with death then there is no point in continuing to live. Then suicide is the right answer.

       

 

It is simply amazing to see Sartre going on living. He should have committed suicide a long time ago because if he had really realized that life is meaningless, then what is the point? Either he has realized it or he is still hoping against it and has not realized it. What is the point of carrying the whole thing again and again every day, of getting up out of bed? If you have really felt that life is meaningless, how can you get out of bed the next morning, for what? To repeat the same old nonsense again? -- meaningless. Why should you breathe at all?

This is my understanding: if you have really realized that life is meaningless, breathing will stop immediately. What is the point? You will lose interest in breathing, you will not make any effort. But Sartre goes on living and living and doing millions of things. The meaninglessness has not really penetrated very deeply. It is a philosophy; not yet a life, not yet an intimate happening inside, just a philosophy. Otherwise, the East is open; why shouldn't Sartre come? The East says, "Yes, life is meaningless, but a door then opens." Then let him come to the East and try to find the door.

And it is not only that somebody has said it; for almost ten thousand years many have come to realize this point, and you cannot delude yourself about it. Buddha lived for forty years in ecstasy with not a single moment of misery. How can you pretend? How can you live a forty year life acting as if you are ecstatic? And what is the point of acting? And not only one Buddha -- thousands of Buddhas are born in the East, and they have lived the most blissful of lives with not a single ripple of misery arising.

What Patanjali is saying is not a philosophy, it is a realized fact, it is an experience. Sartre is not courageous enough, otherwise there would be two alternatives: either commit suicide, be true to your philosophy, or seek a way to life, a new life. In both ways, you leave the old. That's why I insist that whenever a person comes to the point of suicide, only then does the door open. Only then & there are two alternatives: suicide or self-transformation.

Sartre is not courageous. He talks about courage, sincerity, authenticity, but is none of these. If you are authentic, then either commit suicide or seek a way out of the misery. If the misery is final and total, then why do you go on living? Then be true to your philosophy. It seems that this despair, anguish, meaninglessness, is also verbal, logical, but not existential.

It is my feeling that the existentialism of the West is not really existentialist; it is again a philosophy. To be existentialist means it must be a feeling, not a thinking. Sartre may be a great thinker -- he is -- but he has not felt the thing, he has not lived it. If you live despair, you are bound to come to a point where something has to be done, radically done, immediately done. A transformation becomes urgent, becomes your only concern.

You have also asked,

 WHAT IS MISSING?

The worldview, the spiritual worldview is missing in the West. Otherwise, many Buddhas could be born. The season is ripe -- despair, meaninglessness is felt; it is in the air. The society has achieved affluence and found it lacking. Money is there, power is there, and man feels deep down totally impotent. The situation is ripe, but the worldview is lacking.

Go to the West and give the message. Spread the word, the worldview of spirituality, so that those who have come to the end of their travels in this life will not feel that it is the end. A new door opens; life is eternal. Many times you will feel that everything has ended and suddenly something again starts. A worldview of spirituality is lacking. Once that worldview is there, many will start moving into it.

The trouble is that many so called religious teachers from the East are moving in the West, and they are more materialist than you. They are there simply for the money. They cannot give you the worldview of spirituality. They are salesmen. They have found the market because the season is ripe.

People are hankering for something, not knowing what. People are finished with this so-called life, frustrated, ready to take a jump into something unknown, unlived yet. The market is ready for people to exploit, and there are many merchants from the East. They may be called maharishis, that makes no difference. Many merchants, salesmen, are moving in the West. They are just there for the money.

With a real Master, you have to come to him, you have to seek him, you have to find him, you have to make efforts. A real Master cannot go to the West because just by going the whole point will be lost; the West has to come to him. And it will be easier for Western people to come to the East to learn the inner discipline, the awakening, and then go to the West and spread the new milieu. It will be easier for Western people to learn in the East, to be here in the atmosphere of a spiritual Master, and then carry the message back -- because you will not be materialist if you go and spread the news in the West. You will not be materialist because you have had enough, you are finished with it.

       

 

When poor people from the East go to the West, of course they start accumulating money. That's simple. The East is poor and now the East is not hankering for spirituality, it is hankering for more money, more material gadgets, more engineering and atomic science. Even if a Buddha were to be born, nobody will talk about him in the East, but a small toy sputnik is released by India and the whole country goes mad and happy. What stupidity! A small atomic explosion, and India feels very happy and proud because she has become the fifth atomic power.

The East is poor, and the East is now thinking in terms of matter. A poor mind always thinks about matter and all that matter can give. The East is not in search of spirituality. The West is rich and now the West is ready to seek.

Whenever there is a Master, one has to seek him. Through the very seeking many things happen. If I come to you, you will miss me. If I come and knock at your door, you will think I have come to seek something from you; that will become the closing of your heart. No, I will not come to your house and knock. I will wait for you to come and knock, and not only knock, I will also force you to wait -- because that is the only way that your heart can be opened.

I don't know what Patanjali would have said to the West. How can I know? Patanjali is Patanjali; I am not Patanjali. But this is what I would like to say: the West has come to a point where either suicide or a spiritual revolution will happen. These are the only two alternatives. I'm not saying this only about individual people, individual persons. This is so for the West as a whole. Either the West will commit suicide through atomic war for which it is preparing, or there will be a spiritual awakening. And there is not very much time left. Within this century, in just twenty five years more, the West will either commit suicide or the West will know the greatest spiritual awakening that has ever happened in the history of man. Much is at stake.

People come to me and they say, "You go on giving sannyas without considering whether the person is worthy or not." I tell them that time is short, and I don't bother about it. If I give sannyas to fifty thousand people and only fifty prove to be true, that will be enough.

The West needs sannyasins. The story there has gone to the point where the dead man is being carried. Now a sannyasin has to appear in the West. And the sannyasin should be Western, not Eastern, because the Eastern sannyasin will become a victim, sooner or later, of all that you can give to him. He will start selling; he will become a salesman because he comes from the starved East. Money is his god.

The sannyasin should be Western: one who comes from the roots of the West, who realizes the meaninglessness of life, who realizes the frustration of the whole effort towards materialism, who realizes the futility of all Marxism, communism, and all materialist philosophies. This frustration is in the blood of Western man now, in the very bones.

      

 

That's why my whole interest is to make as many Western people sannyasins as possible and send them back home. Many Sartres are waiting there. They have seen the death. They are waiting to see the ochre robe, and with the ochre robe, the ecstasy that follows.

 

Many things will have to be understood.

First: sex is not an ordinary need, like food. It is very extraordinary. If food is not given to you, you will die, but without sex you can live. If water is not given to you, the body will die, but without sex you can live. If air is not given to you, you will die within seconds, but without sex you can live your whole life.

This is the first difference, and why is it so? Because sex is basically not the need of the individual, it is the need of the race. The race will die if sex is not allowed, but you will not die. Man will die; it is not individual, but collective. Sex is a racial need, not individual. If everybody becomes a brahmachari, a celibate, then humanity will disappear, but you will live. You will live for seventy years or even more, because you will save much energy. A man who was going to live seventy years may be able to live a hundred years without sex, because his energies will be conserved. But without sex the race will die.

This is the first difference: food is needed for you, sex is needed for others. Sex is needed for the future generations to come. You have already come so there is no problem. Your parents needed sex for you to come. If they had remained celibates, you would not be here, but they would have lived, it would have been no problem for them. They would have lived even better because you created many troubles for them.

That's why nature has given you such a deep hypnosis about sex, otherwise humanity will disappear. Nature has made you completely obsessive about sex -- it forces you. You try to escape from the trap, and you feel trapped -- whatsoever you do, wherever you go, sex follows you. Nature cannot afford it. Otherwise, sex in itself is such an ugly act that if you were allowed freedom, then I don't think anybody would choose it. It is enforced.

Have you ever thought about yourself copulating? -- how ugly it looks! That's why people hide themselves when they copulate; they want privacy so that nobody looks at them. But just think, imagine yourself copulating. The whole thing seems to be absurd, foolish. What are you doing? If there were no obsession inside you to do it, nobody would do it. But nature cannot afford not to let you do it, so nature has given you a deep inner hypnosis about it. It is chemical, it is hormonal. In the bloodstream particular hormones are flowing which force you.

Now biologists say that if those hormones can be taken out of you, sex will disappear. Injections can be given to you of those hormones and sex becomes very powerful. Even in an old man of seventy or eighty years old whose body is no longer capable of moving into sex, the hormones can be injected and he will start behaving like a foolish young man. He will start chasing women. He may even be in a wheelchair but he will chase women. It is not that one is chasing, it is the hormonal chemical system in the body.

A child is born, the hormones are not ripe; they will take time to ripen. He will become capable of the sexual urge at about fourteen. Up to that time there is no problem. The sex hormones are getting ripe, the glands are getting ready. Suddenly, at fourteen, they explode and the child goes crazy. He cannot understand what is happening.

The age between fourteen and eighteen is one of the most awkward. The child cannot understand:'What is happening?' Something has taken possession of him. It is a possession! Nature has taken possession -- now you are ready, now the body is ready, now nature forces you to reproduce. Fantasies arise, dreams; you cannot escape. Wherever you look, if you are a man you can see only woman, if you are a woman, only man. k is a sort of madness. Of course, nature has to create it, otherwise there would be no reproduction.

Your individual life is not at stake if you become celibate. No, nothing is at stake. On the contrary, you will live more deeply, more easily because energy will be conserved.

That is why in the East people discovered this: they discovered that sex brings death sooner. So those who wanted to live longer, for their own reasons, they dropped sex completely. For example, Hatha yogis who want to live longer because they have very slow moving methods, bullock-cart-methods, they need a very long time to finish them. They need a long life to finish their Yoga, to come to the final Enlightenment. So they dropped sex completely. And how did they drop it? They created particular postures which change the hormonal flow in the body. They created certain bodily exercises in which the semen is reabsorbed back into the blood. They did tremendous things with the body; even discharged semen could be reabsorbed back into the body.

They created many methods to absorb the sex energy because sex energy is life energy; a child is born out of it. If you can absorb the energy back into your own system, you will be very, very strong. You can live longer. In fact, old age can be simply dropped. You can be young to the very end.

There are differences. Food is an individual need. If you stop it you will die. Sex is not an individual need, it is being possessed. If you can stop, you will gain much out of it. But stopping can be of three types. The first is to suppress the desire, but that will not help: your sex energy will become perverted. That's why I say it is better to be natural than to be perverted. Jaina monks, Buddhist monks, Christian, Catholic monks, who have all lived in exclusively male societies, male groups, and out of a hundred monks, ninety percent are either masturbatory or homosexual. That has to be so, because where will the energy go? And they have only been suppressing, they have not transformed the hormonal system, the chemistry of the body. They don't know what to do so they simply suppress. Suppression becomes perversion. I am against methods of the first type. It is better to be natural than to be perverted, because perversion is falling below nature, it is not going beyond.

Then there is the second type which has tried to change the hormonal system of the body: Hatha yogis, Yoga asanas. And there are many ways to change the chemistry of the body. The second methods are better than the first, but still I am not in favor of them. Why? Because if you change the body, you are not changed.

An impotent man is celibate, but it is useless. Through Hatha Yoga methods you will become impotent; the hormones will not be there functioning, or the glands will be damaged and they cannot function, but this is not a spiritual growth. You have destroyed the mechanism, you have not gone beyond it.

And this too can lead to other types of problems in life. You will become afraid of many things. You will be afraid of woman because the moment she comes near, your changed chemistry will again take the old pattern, a flow. A woman has a certain energy: the feminine energy, which is magnetic and changes your body- energy. So Hatha yogis became afraid of women. They escaped to the Himalayas and the caves. Fear is not a good thing, and if you are afraid, you are in it. It is as if a man becomes blind so that he cannot see woman, but that won't help much.

The third type of method is to become more aware. Don't change the body -- as it is, it is good. Let it remain natural; you become more aware. Whatsoever happens in the mind and in the body, become aware. On gross and subtle layers become more and more conscious. Just by being conscious, by being a witness, you rise higher and higher and higher. A moment comes when, just because of your height, just because of your peak consciousness, the valley remains there but you are no more part of the valley; you have transcended it. The body remains sexual, but you are not there to cooperate with it. The body remains absolutely natural, but you have gone beyond it. It cannot function without your cooperation. This happens in a buddha.

The word buddha means one who has awakened. It does not belong to Gautam Buddha alone. Buddha is not a personal name, it is a quality of being. Christ is a buddha, Krishna is a buddha, and thousands of buddhas have existed. It is a quality of being -- and what is that quality? -- awareness. The flame of awareness goes higher and higher and a moment comes when the body is there, fully functioning and natural, sensitive, sensual, alive, but your cooperation is not there. You are a witness now, not a doer -- sex disappears.

Food will not disappear; even a buddha will need food because it is a personal need, not a social need, a racial need. Sleep will not disappear, it is a personal need. All that is personal will be there, all that is racial will disappear -- and this disappearance has a beauty of its own.

       

 

If you look at a Hatha yogi you will see a crippled being. You cannot see any grace coming from his face. He has destroyed his chemistry, he is not beautiful. If you see a repressed monk, he is even more ugly because from his eyes and face you will see all sorts of lust falling all around. He will have a sexual atmosphere around him -- ugly and dirty. A natural man is better; at least he is natural. But a perverted man is ill and he carries illness around him.

I am in favor of the third, but for the meantime you remain natural. No need to suppress, no need to try any methods to cripple the body -- no need. Be natural and go on working for your buddhahood. Be natural and become more and more alert and aware. A moment will come when sex simply disappears. When it disappears on its own, it leaves behind it such a glow, such grace, such beauty. Don't force it to disappear otherwise it will leave behind many wounds and you will always remain with those wounds. Let it go by itself. Simply be a watcher and don't be in a hurry. Nature is good, nature is beautiful; you be natural. Unless you become supernatural, don't fight with nature. Let the higher come in.

And this is my attitude about everything: don't fight with the lower, pray for the higher. Work for the higher and let the lower be left untouched. If you start fighting with the lower you will have to remain there with the lower; you cannot move from there. Be natural so that nature does not disturb you and you are left alone to rise higher. Pray for the higher, meditate for the higher, try for the higher and leave nature as it is. Soon the supernature will arise. Out of nature comes the supernature, and then there is grace, then there is beauty, then there is incomparable beatitude.

From another dimension it will be good for you to know: sex belongs to the body, love belongs to the subtle body, prayer belongs to the center, to the very ground of your being. Sex belongs to the periphery, prayer belongs to the center, and between the center and the periphery is love. When you reach the center & become a buddha, you are a prayerful compassion. Before you reach the center, just in between  the periphery & the center, you will be loveful, very, very deeply loving. On the periphery you will be lustful, you will be sexual. And it is the same energy.

On the periphery sex is a need, between the periphery and the center, love is the need. The energy is the same but you have changed, so the need changes. At the center, prayer, compassion is the need -- the energy is the same. So Buddha is not starved of sex; the same energy has become compassion. A man of love is not starved of sex, the same energy has become love. So the question of needs has to be understood.

The need exists in the body, but if you move from the body, deeper, the need changes. The need follows you. If you are filled too much with sexual imagery, fantasy, that shows only that you exist on the periphery. Move from there. You go on working on the periphery. For millions of lives you have been working there and the need has not been fulfilled. It cannot be fulfilled. No need can be fulfilled -- remember this. You eat; after eight hours, six hours, you are again hungry. No need can be fulfilled. It is a temporary fulfillment. You have sex -- after a few hours again you are ready. Needs cannot be fulfilled because they move in a circle.

Move higher than your needs. I am not saying fight with the needs; allow them, enjoy them while you are there. Why fight? Enjoy. Don't create guilt because the more guilt you create, the more suppression, the more difficult it will be for you to move from there. Enjoy it while you are there. If you love, you have sex, enjoy it. Don't feel guilty, and don't feel a sinner. Sin well! If you are sinning then at least be efficient.

I am reminded of Luther. Pecca Fortiler, a disciple, asked Luther, What to do? I cannot stop sinning.' Luther said, 'Sin stronger.' Absolutely right. I have never felt very much sympathy with Luther's thoughts, but about this I am absolutely with him: stronger, sin stronger. If you cannot stop then why bother? Sin stronger because only at the extreme is transformation possible. Lukewarm people are never transformed.

Never be lukewarm. That is the only stupidity you can go on committing. Because when you are boiling one hundred percent, only then does the evaporation happen. Lukewarm, you can remain lukewarm for many, many lives and nothing will happen. Move to the extreme. If you are in sex, move into it totally. Don't create any conflict, don't withhold anything. And meanwhile go on working. Let sex be there on its own. You go on working for awareness. Meditate more and more, and by and by, you will see that the same energy is changing, transforming.

When you change, the energy changes because energy belongs to you. When your standpoint changes, the energy has to change its level. When your plane of being changes, then energy has to follow you. It is your energy.

When you move towards the center, by and by, you will suddenly realize that sex is disappearing and love is gaining strength. You are becoming more and more loving. Now the love is not a lust. Love is not like fire, it is a very cool light.

Sex is fiery, it is fire. It is like hot sun. Love is like cool moon; it gives you light, but very cool, calm. A silence pervades love. Then, by and by, sex will become more distant, more distant, more distant, and the same energy will be moving in love. You will not feel starved. Rather, on the contrary, you will feel more fulfilled, because love fulfills more. It is the higher form of sex, and every time you go higher, you feel more fulfilled because higher forms are more subtle energies. They are not gross, they are more subtle. They fulfill, they give you more. Then go on rising into awareness. A day comes when suddenly you are rooted in the center, centered. Now love also takes a new dimension; it becomes compassion.

What is the difference? In sex you are concerned with yourself, not concerned with the other at all. You simply use the other. That's why sexual partners continuously fight, because an inner feeling is there, "The other is using me." Sexual partners cannot come to a point of harmony. They will have to fight again and again, because the woman thinks the man is using her -- and she is right!

Nothing is wrong in it. And the man thinks the woman is using him. And whenever somebody uses you as a means you feel hurt; it seems like an exploitation. The man is concerned with his own sex, the woman is concerned with her own sex -- neither is moving towards the other. The movement is not there. They are two selfish people, self centered, exploiting each other. If they have to talk about love and sing and be poetic, that is just allurement, persuasion, seduction -- but they arc not concerned with the other. Once the man has used the woman, he turns over and goes to sleep, finished -- a thing to be used and thrown away.

      

 

In America they have made plastic women and plastic men. They work perfectly well. A plastic woman, if you play with her breasts, the breasts get an erection, they become warm. You can make love to a plastic woman and it is as fulfilling as any woman; even more because there is no fight, no conflict. Finished, you can throw the woman and go to sleep. That's all that people are doing. Whether the woman is plastic or real makes no difference. And the woman goes on using the man.

Whenever you use another as a means it is immoral. The other is an end in himself, but the other becomes an end in himself only in the second stage of your being, when you love. Then you love for the other. Then you are not using. Then the other is important, significant. The other is an end in himself or herself. You are grateful. No exploitation is possible in love; you help the other. It is not a bargain. You enjoy helping, you enjoy sharing and you are grateful that the other gives you an opportunity to share.

Love is subtle. The grosser realm of sex is left behind. The other has become an end, but still there is a need, a subtle need. Because when you love a person a subtle expectation is hidden somewhere that the other should love you, even though unconsciously. It follows like a shadow that the other should love you. There is still a need to be loved -- better than sex but still an expectation. And that expectation will be the jarring note in love. It is not yet perfect.

Compassion is the highest quality of love, the highest purity. Now expectation is also not there. The other is not a means, the other is an end. And now you don't expect anything, you simply give whatsoever you can give. Expectation has completely gone. A buddha is a total giver. He goes on giving, he enjoys giving. It is simple sharing. Now it has become compassion -- the same energy and the same need on different planes of being. That's why sex disappears in a buddha, because it reappears as compassion.

 

The Fourth Question:

That's the problem in the West with all the thinkers -- they have not tried their own methods. In fact, they have stumbled upon those methods not as part of their spiritual search. They have stumbled upon those methods working on their patients.

   

Freud stumbled upon psychoanalysis, and I say 'stumbled' because it was accidental. It was just groping in the dark. He was working on patients -- he was a doctor, trying to help. By and by he became aware that there are many illnesses which are not physical, so you go on treating them physically and nothing happens. He became interested in hypnosis because something could be done through hypnosis. Through hypnosis he started working. For many years he was a hypnotist working with his teacher and helping people.

Then, by and by, he became aware, that in fact, hypnosis was not helping. There was no need to hypnotize a person and make him unconscious. Even if a person, fully conscious, started relating whatsoever came to his mind, whatsoever floated from the unconscious to the conscious mind, if he went on saying it, that would give a release. He started trying that. That's how psychoanalysis was born - free association of thoughts. He had never tried anything on himself. He remained the same man, he attained to no maturity.

   

The same has happened with others, and with Janov also. He had been working with patients and he stumbled upon the fact that if a patient can live backwards to the very trauma of birth, when the child is born and he screams for the first time -- the primal scream -- if a person can go backwards to the very point when he comes out of the womb and takes his first breath, then many things are simply resolved, many problems disappear. Just by living them again, they disappear. He has not tried it on himself. He is not a healed person.

Freud was very ambitious. He thought himself to be a pro. phet inaugurating a great world movement. And he was jealous, as political leaders are always jealous, conspiratorial, spying on his own disciples and associates, continuously afraid that somebody was going to destroy his movement, take possession of the movement, become the leader; always afraid.

       

 

And it was the same with Jung. If you look into Jung's eyes.... Get a picture of Jung, it is worth studying. Hidden behind his glasses are very cunning eyes; the very face is egoistic. Janov is very ambitious and his new books show his ambition clearly. He has stumbled accidentally upon a small method which is not a system, just a fragment, but now he thinks he has discovered the whole truth. Now he thinks this Primal Therapy is all that is needed, that this will lead everyone to the ultimate nirvana. This is foolish. This is ambition.

The second thing to remember about all the Western thinkers who have become influential there is that they have been working with ill people, patients. They have not come across healthy people, so whatsoever their findings, their findings are based on pathology. A healthy person is absolutely different from a pathological person. Freud never came across a healthy man. There is no question of it because the healthy man never goes to the physician or the doctor. Why should he go? Unless you are mentally ill, why should you go to a headshrinker? There is no need. You go only because you are ill, so only ill humanity goes to these people. Freud, Jung, Adler, Janov they base their philosophies on these ill people.

This is bound to be unbalanced, and not only unbalanced, but also in a certain way very dangerous because these ill specimens of humanity are not the real representatives. They are ill. It is just as if you come to know only blind men because you are a doctor of eyes, so only blind people come to you and then you think about man as blind. Mentally ill people come to you, then you think of man as mentally ill. That is wrong because unless healthy people exist, is illness possible?

       

 

All the Western psychologies are based on pathology, and a real psychology is needed that is based on the healthy person. The perfect psychology has to be based on buddha-like people, not just healthy people.

So there are three types of psychologies. One, pathological: all Western psychologies are pathological. Only very recently some wholistic trends which think about the healthy person are gaining strength, but they are just at the beginning. Even the first steps have not been taken. There are psychologies of the second type which think about the healthy person, which are based on the healthy mind -- those are the Eastern psychologies. Buddhism has a very, very penetrating psychology; Patanjali has his own psychology. They are based on healthy people: to help a healthy person become more healthy, to help a healthy person attain to greater health. Pathological psychologies only help ill people to become healthy.

Then there is a third type. What Gurdjieff used to call the ultimate psychology. But as yet is undeveloped. That type has to depend on buddhas. It has not been developed yet, because where to go to study a buddha, and how to study a buddha? And only one buddha won't do, you will have to study many. Then only can you come to conclusions. But some day that psychology will happen, it is a must. It must be there because only that can give you the total perception into human consciousness.

Freud, Jung, Janov - they all remain ill. They have never worked it out on themselves. Stumbling in the dark, groping in the dark, they come to some fragments and then they think that those fragments are complete systems. And whenever a fragment is claimed as a complete system, it becomes a lie. A fragment is a fragment.

Eastern psychologies are for healthy people, to help you to become more whole. And my effort will be to work out a psychology of the third type, the psychology of buddhas, because that will give you the perfect penetration into the whole of human consciousness.

Psychologies based on pathologies are good; they help ill people. But that can never be the goal. It is good, but just to become healthy, normal, is nothing much. Just to be normal is nothing much because everybody else is normal. It is bad to be ill because you suffer, but it is not much good to be normal because normal people are suffering in millions of ways. In fact, to be normal means only to adjust to the society. The society itself may be abnormal, the whole society may be itself ill. To adjust to it only means you are normally abnormal, that's all. That's not much of a gain. You have to go beyond social normality. You have to go beyond the social madness. Then only, for the first time do you become healthy.

Eastern psychologies: Yoga, Zen, Sufism, all help healthy people to become more healthy and holy. The third type of psychology is needed, urgently needed, because without it you don't have the goal, the perception of the very end. That has to be worked out. Gurdjieff tried his best but couldn't succeed. The climate was not ripe. I am trying towards that again. It is difficult to succeed in it, but the possibility is there and one has to go on trying. If even a little more light is thrown on the perfect, the last, the ultimate psychology of man - even that is good, very helpful.

 

 

TO BEGIN WITH, one is already here, and sooner or later he will turn many of you into buddhas. If one is there, many become immediately possible because the one can work as a catalytic agent. Not that he will do something, but just because he is there things start moving on their own. That's the meaning of a catalytic agent. Sooner or later, many of you will turn into buddhas, because everyone is basically a buddha. How long can you delay in recognizing it? How long can you postpone it? Difficult -- you will try your best to postpone, to delay, to create millions of difficulties, but how long can you do this?

I am here to push you somehow into the abyss, where you die and the buddha is born. The problem is always in finding the one. Once the one is there the basic fulfillment, the basic requirement is fulfilled. Then many become immediately possible. And if many are there, then thousands become possible. The first works like a spark, and a small spark is enough to burn the whole earth. This is how it has happened in the past. Once Gautam became a buddha, thousands by and by had to become. Because it is not a question of becoming; you are already that. Somebody has to remind you, that's all.

Just the other day I was reading one of Ramakrishna's parables. I love it. I read it again and again whenever I come across it. It is the whole story of the Master being a catalytic agent.

The story is...

A tigress died while giving birth to a cub, and the cub was brought up by goats. Of course, the tiger believed himself to be a goat also. It was simple, natural; brought up by the goats, living with the goats, he believed that he was a goat. He remained a vegetarian, eating and chewing grass. He had no conception. Not even in his dreams could he dream that he was a tiger, and he was a tiger.

Then one day it happened that an old tiger came across this herd of goats and that old tiger could not believe his eyes. A young tiger was walking amidst the goats! Neither were the goats afraid of the tiger nor were they aware that the tiger was walking amongst them; the tiger was also walking like a goat.

The old tiger somehow got hold of the young tiger, because it was difficult to catch hold of him. He escaped -- he tried, he cried, he screamed. He was afraid, he was shivering with fear. All the goats escaped and he was also trying to escape with them, but the old tiger got hold of him and pulled him towards the lake. He would not go. He resisted just the way that you are doing with me. He tried his best not to go. He was scared to death, crying and weeping, but the old tiger wouldn't allow him. The old tiger still pulled him and took him to the lake.

The lake was silent like a mirror. He forced the young tiger to look into the water. He saw, with tearful eyes -- the vision was not clear but the vision was there -- that he looked just like the old tiger. Tears disappeared and a new sense of being arose; the goat started disappearing from the mind. He was no more a goat, but he could not believe his own enlightenment. Still the body was shivering a little, he was afraid. He was thinking, "Maybe I am imagining. How can a goat turn so suddenly into a tiger? It is not possible, it has never happened. It never happens that way." He couldn't believe his own eyes, but now the first spark, the first ray of light had entered into his being. He was no more the same really. He could never be the same again.

The old tiger took him to his cave. Now he was not so resistant, not so reluctant, not so afraid. By and by he was getting bold, gathering courage. He started walking like a tiger as he went to the cave. The old tiger gave him some meat to eat. It is difficult for a vegetarian, almost impossible, nauseating, but the old tiger wouldn't listen. He forced him to eat. When the nose of the young tiger came near the meat, something happened: from the smell, something deep in his being which had been fast asleep was awakened. He was pulled, attracted towards the meat, and he started eating. Once he tasted the meat, a roar burst through his being. The goat disappeared in that roar, and the tiger was there in his beauty and splendor.

This is the whole process, and an old tiger is needed. That is the trouble: the old tiger is here, and howsoever you try to dodge, this way and that, it is not possible. You are reluctant, you are difficult to bring to the lake, but I will bring you. You have been eating grass your whole life. You have completely forgotten the smell of meat, but I will force you to eat it. Once the taste is there, the roar will burst. In that explosion the goat will disappear and a buddha will be born.

So you need not worry about where I am going to get so many buddhas to study, I will produce them.

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No, not yet. There are many problems. For the third psychology to be established the first two need to be completed. If you make a three storey house, the first two have to be completed, and only then can the third be raised. In the past, the psychology for the pathological man never existed, the first sort of psychology never existed. Nobody bothered to enter into the realm of mental disease, particularly not in the East. Nobody bothered because the disease could be got rid of without getting into it. There was no need to analyze it, there was no need to travel into the pathological mind, there was no need to do anything about it. Certain techniques existed and still those techniques exist. You could simply cut it off.

For example, in Japan whenever there is a madman, somebody gone neurotic, they take him to the Zen monastery, they take him to the religious people of the town. This has been one of the oldest ways: take him to the religious man. And what is done in the monastery? -- nothing. In fact, nothing is done. When a madman is brought to the monastery, they don't bother to analyze, diagnose.

They don't bother to think about what type of disease this is. There is no need because the disease can be dropped. They put the madman into an isolated room far away from the monastery, just in the corner, at the back. His needs are fulfilled: food is given and whatsoever he needs, but nobody talks about him, nobody pays any attention to his madness. The East knows that the more you pay attention to it, the more you feed the madness. The whole monastery remains indifferent, as if nobody has come in.

Indifference is one of the techniques, because a madman really needs much attention. It may be that he became mad just to get attention. That's why psychoanalysis cannot be of much help, because the psychoanalyst gives so much attention to the mad, the neurotic, the psychotic, that he starts thriving on that attention: for years together somebody is paying attention to you.

You must have observed that neurotic people always force others to be attentive towards them. They will do anything if they can get the attention. In a Zen monastery they don't give any attention, they remain indifferent. Nobody bothers and nobody thinks that he is mad, because if the whole group thinks that he is mad that thinking creates vibrations that help the madman to remain mad.

       

 

For three weeks, four weeks, the mad man is allowed to be with himself. Needs are fulfilled but no attention is given, no special attention; indifference is maintained. Nobody thinks that he is mad. And within three or four weeks, the madman, remaining with himself, by and by gets better. The madness subsides.

Even now they do the same in Zen monasteries. Western psychologists have become aware of the fact. Many have gone to Japan to study what is happening, and they have been simply wonder-struck. They work for years and nothing happens; and in a Zen monastery, without doing anything, the madman left to himself, and things start happening. Madmen need isolation. They need rest, they need indifference, they need inattention, and the waves that were rising in their minds, the tensions, simply dissolve and disappear. After the fourth week the man is ready to leave the monastery. He thanks the people there, the abbot and others, and leaves. He is completely okay.

In the East because of this, because of these techniques, the first sort of psychology was never developed. And unless the first sort of psychology is there, the second sort is impossible. The pathological mind has to be understood in its details. It is one thing to help a madman to come out, it is another thing to create a psychology of madness. A scientific approach is needed, a detailed analysis is needed. In the West they have done that; the first type of psychology is there. Freud, Jung, Adler and others have created the psychology for the pathological man. They may not be very helpful to people who are in trouble, but they have fulfilled another requirement. That requirement is scientific: they have created the first sort of psychology. Immediately, the second becomes possible. The second is the psychology for the healthy man.

Fragments of the second always existed in the East, but always fragments, never a compact whole. Why fragments? -- because religious people were interested in how to make an ordinary healthy man move towards the transcendental. They search a little, not in details, not to the very end, because they were not interested in creating a psychology. They were interested only in finding some foothold, some jumping-board in the healthy mind from where a jump into meditation, a jump into the ultimate could be taken. Their interest was different. They didn't bother about the whole terrain.

When a person simply wants to take a jump into the river, he does not search the whole bank. He finds a space, a small rock, and from there he jumps. There is no need to search the whole territory. Fragments of the second psychology existed in the East. In Patanjali they are there; in Buddha, in Mahavir and in others -- just a few fragments, a part of the territory. The whole approach was not scientific, the approach was religious. More was not needed. Why should they have bothered about it? Just by clearing a small ground, from there they could take off into the infinite. Why try to clear the whole forest? -- and it is a vast forest.

The human mind is a vast phenomenon. The pathological mind in itself is a vast phenomenon. The healthy mind is even bigger than the pathological mind, because the pathological mind is just a part of the healthy mind, not the whole. Nobody ever goes completely mad; nobody can. Just a part goes berserk, just a part becomes ill, but nobody goes completely mad. It is just like in physiology: no one's body can go absolutely ill. Have you seen anyone's body absolutely ill? That would mean that all the illnesses possible to humanity have happened to one man's body. That is impossible, nobody goes that far. Somebody has a headache, somebody has a stomachache, somebody has fever, this and that -- a part. And the body is a vast phenomenon, a universe.

The same is true about the mind: the mind is a universe. The whole mind never goes mad and that's why mad people can be brought back. If the whole mind went mad, you could not bring it back, there would be no possibility. If the whole mind goes mad, to where would you bring it back? Just a part, a part goes astray. You can bring it back, fit it into the whole again.

In the West now the second type of psychology is passing through the birth pains with Abraham Maslow, Eric Fromm, Janov and others. It is a wholistic approach: not thinking in terms of disease but thinking in terms of health; not basically concentrating on pathology but basically concentrating on healthy humanity. The second psychology is being born, but still it is not complete. That's why I say that it is just in the birth pains, it is coming into the world. Sooner or later it will start growing fast. Only then is the third type of psychology possible. That is why I say that it never existed.

Buddhas have existed, millions of them, but no psychology of the buddhas, because nobody ever tried to search the awaken ed mind especially to create a scientific discipline out of it. Buddhas have existed, but nobody has tried to understand the phenomenon of buddhahood in scientific ways.

       

 

Gurdjieff was the first man in the whole history of humanity who tried. Gurdjieff was rare in this sense, because he was a pioneer into the third possibility. As it always happens with pioneers, it was difficult, very difficult to penetrate something which had remained always unknown, but he tried. He has brought a few fragments out of darkness, but it became more and more difficult because his greatest disciple, P.D. Ouspensky, betrayed him.

There was a difficulty. Gurdjieff himself was a mystic not versed in the world of science. He was not a scientific mind. He was a mystic, he was a buddha. The whole effort depended on P.D. Ouspensky because he was a scientific man: one of the greatest mathematicians ever born and one of the most profound thinkers this century has known. The whole thing depended on Ouspensky. Gurdjieff was to sow the seeds and Ouspensky was to work it out, define it, philosophize it, make scientific theories out of it. It was to be a constant cooperation between the Master and the disciple. Gurdjieff could sow, but he could not put it in scientific terms and he could not put it in such a way that it could become a discipline. He knew what it was but the language was lacking.

With Ouspensky the language was there, absolutely perfect. I don't see another comparison -- Ouspensky would write so perfectly that even an Albert Einstein would feel jealous. He had really a very trained, logical mind. You must read one of his books, the TERTIUM ORGANUM. It is a rare phenomenon. Ouspensky says in the book, just in the beginning, "There are only three books in the world: one is Aristotle's Organon, the first organ of thought; the second is Bacon's Novum Organum, the second principle of thought; and the third is Tertium Organum." 'Tertium Organum' means the third canon of thought. Ouspensky says -- and when he says this he is not proud or egoistic or anything, 'Even before the two existed, the third was in existence.' He says in Tertium Organum, "I am bringing the very base of all knowledge." And it is not egoistic; the book is really rare.

The whole effort of Gurdjieff depended on a deep cooperation between Ouspensky and himself. He was to lead and Ouspensky was to formalize it, to formulate it, to give it a structure. The soul was to come from Gurdjieff and the body was to be supplied by Ouspensky, and Ouspensky betrayed him in the middle. He simply left Gurdjieff. That was always a possibility because he was such an intellectual and Gurdjieff was absolutely anti intellectual. It was almost an impossibility that they would continue their cooperation.

Gurdjieff demanded absolute surrender -- as Masters have always demanded; and that was difficult for Ouspensky -- as it is always difficult for every disciple. And it is more difficult when a disciple is very intellectual. By and by, Ouspensky started thinking that he knew all. That is the deception that intelligentsia creates easily. He was such an intellectual man that he formulated everything and he started feeling that he knew. Then, by and by, the rift started.

Gurdjieff was always demanding absurd things. For example, Ouspensky was thousands of miles away and Gurdjieff sent him a telegram:"Come immediately, leave everything." Ouspensky was in financial, family trouble, and many things, and it was almost impossible for him to leave immediately, but he left. He sold everything, he dropped the family and he immediately ran. When he arrived, the first thing Gurdjieff said was, "Now you can go back." This was the thing that started the rift. Ouspensky left and never came back -- but he missed. That was just a test for the total surrender.

When you are totally surrendered, you don't ask, "Why?" The Master says, "Come," you come; the Master says, "Go," you go. Had Ouspensky gone that day as simply as he had come, something deep inside him which was frustrating his whole growth would have dropped. But it was too absurd for a man like Ouspensky that Gurdjieff ask suddenly, and that he went. He must have gone with many expectations because he was thinking that he had sacrificed so much: the family, the problems, the finances, the service -- he had dropped everything. He must have been thinking that he was a martyr. He had gone, and without even greeting him, the first thing that Gurdjieff said, looking at him, was, "Now you can go back." It was too much; he dropped out.

By the dropping out of Ouspensky, the whole effort to create a psychology of the third dimension stopped. Gurdjieff tried and tried; he tried to find somebody else. With many people he worked, but he could not find one of the calibre of Ouspensky. Ouspensky's growth stopped, and Gurdjieff's work for the third psychology stopped. Together they were wonderful; separate, both became crippled. Ouspensky remained intellectual, Gurdjieff remained a mystic. That was the trouble. That was why it could not happen.

I am again trying to work in the third dimension, and I have not taken the risk that Gurdjieff took. I am not depending on anybody; I am Gurdjieff plus Ouspensky. It is hard work to live in two different dimensions, it is very hard. But anyway, it is good because nobody can betray me and stop my work, nobody. I am continuously moving in the world of no-mind, and in the world of words and books and analysis. Gurdjieff had a division of labor: Ouspensky was working in the library and Gurdjieff was working in himself. I have to do both -- so that the same thing is not repeated again. I have been working continuously on both levels and there is every possibility that the effort can succeed. I am studying you and you are growing, by and by.

To become a buddha, in itself, is one thing. The thing happens so suddenly: one moment before you were not a buddha, and one moment afterwards you are a buddha. When it happens in yourself, it happens so suddenly that there is no space in which to study it. But with you, I can study very slowly. The more you dodge and resist, the better I can study you -- what is happening, how it happens.

I have to study many people, only then can it happen. A psychology cannot depend on one man because individuals are so different, so unique. I may have become a buddha, but I am a unique person. You may become a buddha, but you are a unique person. There are at least seven types of people that exist in the world, so at least seven buddhas have to be studied very, very deeply -- one belonging to each type. Only then will the psychology be possible.

Ouspensky talks about seven types of men. All those seven types and their growth have to be understood: what types of obstacles they create, what type of escapes they try, and how their escapes and their resistances can be broken. With each type it is going to be different. Unless all seven types are known, studied deeply, step by step, layer by layer from the very beginning, from A to Z, the psychology cannot be formulated. It never existed before but it can exist in the future.

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The Third Question:

This moment comes to every seeker: when the negative is no more but the positive has not come, when the misery has gone but the bliss has not happened, when the night is no more but the sun has not risen. This is a good indication that you are growing. And then, immediately, one starts feeling relaxed, floating, and everything as it happens is so beautiful. The mind says, 'Why bother? Why meditate at all?' If you listen to the mind, soon the night will be back, the misery will enter. Don't listen to the mind.

Continue meditating but with a different attitude now. Meditate as if you are floating in it. Don't make too much effort in it. That's all that is needed. Meditate effortlessly, but meditate. Don't be lazy. In laziness again the old will come back because the bliss has not yet happened. Once bliss happens -- when you feel absolutely contented, when you come to a point where you even forget about contentment, it is so absolute -- only then can meditation be dropped. It drops automatically.

The idea of dropping comes at two points. The first point is this, what the questioner has asked: when darkness disappears, misery is no more, and you feel so good. This is just an absence of misery. If a mind which has remained in misery is non miserable, it almost looks like happiness, it almost looks like blissfulness. Don't be deceived by the appearance. Much still has to be done. But now, do it in a different way, that's all. Now do meditations very relaxedly; don't strain, float -- but continue doing because much more has to happen yet. The journey is not ended. You may have come to a point where you can relax under a tree and the shade is cool, but don't forget that this can only be an overnight stay. In the morning you have to again walk. Until you completely disappear, the journey has to be continued. But now change the quality; float. Effortlessly move into meditation.

Do you know the difference? Somebody swims in the river, there is effort; but then he simply floats, lies down on his back, remains in the river but with no more swimming. Floating, the river takes him with the current and he floats towards the sea. In the beginning one has to swim in a meditation because there are many resistances created by the mind; you have to fight them.

In the second step, you have to float with the river. In the third step, you have to become the river -- then there is no question. Then you can drop, but there is no question of dropping; it drops automatically. Meditation, when complete, drops automatically. You need not worry about it. When it is complete it will drop just like a ripe fruit drops to the earth.

But don't be lazy. Mind can play games with you and it can destroy whatsoever you have attained. A little you attain with much effort, and the mind can deceive you and can say that now there is no need. You are feeling so happy -- feel happy -- but you are feeling so happy because of the meditations. If you drop meditations, immediately the happiness that you are feeling will disappear and then you will be again in misery.

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The fourth question:

To me, 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. Two 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 is simply resting. But another interpretation is also possible, because the child is confined, imprisoned -- and, 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 I have an insider's view, and that's why I say that Freud is right and Laing is not right. A buddha has an insider's view.

       

 

When a man like Siddhartha Gautama, a.k.a. 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. If a man dies in perfect awareness, his next birth will be perfectly aware. 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 the buddha that is within her. The buddha surrounds her like an aura. She dreams about the buddha that is within her.

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 my 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 up rooted. 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 me, I say 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 in this uprooting, and only then will what I am saying be meaningful.

This can be contradicted by outer findings. To me it is irrelevant because whatsoever I am saying, I am saying about my 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.