Question 1:

TRANSFORMATION of the mind is a positive effort. Suppression of the mind is negative. The difference is that when you are suppressing your mind, you are positively concerned with being against something. When you are transforming your mind, you are not directly concerned with being against something. You are positively concerned for something: the effort is for something, not against something.

For example, if you are fighting directly with sex, then it will be suppression. But if your positive effort is for transformation of sex energy, your positive effort is for something else, then it will not be suppression. Suppression means you have blocked the natural door for the energy, you have blocked the natural outflow, and you have not opened anything else. It is just a blockage. You are against anger, so you block anger - but where will the energy go? The energy that you have suppressed will create inner complexities. It will even be more perverted. So to be natural is better than to be perverted. Perversion is disease; to be natural is healthy.

Of course, just to be healthy is not the end. One can go even beyond health. So these are three things - suppression, being natural and transcendence. Just being natural is just being healthy. If you suppress and there is no positive outlet, no creative outlet for your suppressed energy, then you will become perverted. You are not healthy: you become diseased, you become a "dis-ease".

Don't be concerned negatively. Change the energy, the door, the path, the outlet, positively, and when there is a creative change, the energy that was flowing into sex will not flow. Whenever you can open a higher passage for it, it will flow through it. Whenever you can create something which is better than nature itself, then there is no suppression. This difference must be understood.

Only man can fall below nature; no animal can fall below nature. There are no abnormal animals.

Sometimes animals also become abnormal, but only when they are with man - never alone. A dog can go abnormal, a horse can go abnormal, but never alone, never in their natural state. They can go abnormal with man, with man's society. They can go abnormal in a zoo.

Man can fall down below nature. This may seem unfortunate. This is not because this capacity comes with another capacity: man can transcend nature. No animal can transcend nature. The higher you can go than nature, the lower you can go also, in the same proportion. Every possibility is a double possibility. Every possibility opens two doors that are diametrically opposite. Unless you can fall below nature, you cannot transcend above it. And if you have the capacity to transcend nature, you will have the capacity to fall below it also.

Animals are just natural; they are neither perverted nor are they transformed. Never do they become sub-animal and never do they become super-animal. They are just animal. Man is a flexible potentiality. He can fall below nature, can be perverted, can become mad. He can transcend nature, can become superhuman, can become a Buddha.

Another thing: animals are born with their nature. In a way they are born perfect. An animal is born developed. Man is born without any nature and is not developed at the time of birth. He develops later. Then many possibilities open, and there is a great range of possibilities. Man is born undeveloped - not only mentally, but even bodily he is born undeveloped. No animal child is born with an undeveloped body; the body is complete. That's why, when the animal child is born, he is capable of living even without parents.

Man's child is born undeveloped, and even in the physiological structure many things develop only after he is born - and it takes years. In the mother's womb he is not completely developed, and because of that, the phenomenon of mother is born - because mothering continues. If the child is born completely developed, then there will be no mothering. The whole institution of the family developed - and, consequently, the whole society - the whole society was born because the child is born undeveloped. He has to be looked after, taken care of. Only after twenty years will he really be out of the womb. In these twenty years, he will need a family, loving care, a society, in which to develop This will be a greater womb.

Even when he is physically complete, mentally he is not. He will have to develop his mind. And, really, the average mind is never beyond fourteen years of age. The average mind remains below thirteen and a half. The average mental age is thirteen and a half. A person who is physically seventy is mentally thirteen and a half. The mind remains in such a primitive, primary state! Body becomes complete, mind remains incomplete, and spirit is not even touched. Man dies without ever having evolved any spirit.

Whenever someone asked Gurdjieff, "Have we souls?" he would say, "No! Sometimes it happens that a man has a soul. Sometimes only does it happen." Gurdjieff would say, "only sometimes, rarely does it happen that a man has a soul. You are not even complete minds, so how can you have a soul?"

An incomplete body cannot have a mind, an incomplete mind cannot have a soul, and an incomplete soul cannot realize the Divine. Really, body works as a womb for the mind, and mind works as a womb for the spirit, then spirit works as a womb for God. So man is not born fixed, complete. He is born only as a multi-potentiality, and he can fall down - below nature. He can be more animalistic than any animal and he can be a superhuman being also, he can be just Divine. This range of possibilities is there.

Now you can do two things. If your mind becomes negative, suppressive, you go on fighting things which are not "good". So you fight sex, you fight anger, you fight greed, you fight jealousy, you fight violence - you go on fighting. But when a person is fighting violence he will never be non-violent, because to fight violence one needs to be violent.

You cannot fight violence without being violent, so your so-called non violent saints are all violent - deeply violent. Of course, their violence is not against others: their violence is against themselves. So no one objects; you can even applaud them. They are against themselves - very violent! You cannot fight violence. How can you fight violence without being violent? How can you fight anger without being angry? The very attitude to fight anger is a subtle anger. The very fight means you are angry. You are not at ease with your anger.

You can take a negative attitude, and you can go on fighting with things which are there. The more you fight them, the more you become like them. A person fighting sex will become sexual. His every gesture will become sexual. His sitting, his standing, his walking, will become sexual. He will be so much obsessed with fighting it that everything will take the tinge and colour of sex.

When you fight with something, you have to use the techniques of your enemy. If you want to win, you have to use the same techniques that your enemy is using. So even if you win in the end, you will not win because the techniques will be the same. Really, you will have been defeated. Fight with anger, and if you are defeated then anger will be there. If you win, then also there will be anger. Only anger will have won against anger.

This negative fight will narrow down your consciousness more and more, and you will become afraid of everything. A negative mind is always in fear. Everything becomes a sin and everything creates guilt and everything creates fear. You are just in a deep escape from everything. Your consciousness will be narrowed down; it will not expand. You will become so much afraid that you will just hide within yourself, and everywhere around will be all the enemies. You have created them because you became negative.

This is suppression, and you will end in a madhouse. Everything that you have suppressed you will have to suppress continuously. The fight will be so continuous that you will not be able to do anything else. If you are fighting sex, then it will be enough - your whole life will be just a fight. If you are fighting greed, then it will be enough; even greed itself will not take so much energy as the fight with greed. Sex will not take so much energy, it will not dissipate so much energy, as fighting with sex - because sex is just natural, and the fight creates negativity: whenever you are negative, you only dissipate energy. Nothing is gained, nothing creative is achieved. You become self-destructive.

So always remember never to be negative; then there will be no suppression. But I have told you that to go against the current is the way for the mind to flow upward. What do I mean by going against the current? The difference is very subtle, but once felt, you can never lose the track.

For example, you are swimming in a river against the current. Two are the possibilities: one, you are just fighting the river, just fearful of being taken away by the river - taken down, taken in the flow - just afraid, trembling, fighting against the river. Then you will be defeated because this very attitude of fear of being taken away, of this trembling mind, cannot win. The defeat has set in. How long will you be able to fight the current? The whole attitude is negative, and the river is very much positive, lifelike. But you are just fear and trembling. How can you win? Sooner or later you will dissipate energy in the fight, and the current will take you away.

There is a second point, another dimension: you are not fighting the river because you are not fearful of it. The first thing: fight is created because of fear. Remember, fight means fear. Fear comes first, then you begin to fight Your fear creates fight, your fear creates the foe. So basically, fear is at the root. You are not fighting the river because you are not fearful of the river. You are not fearful of the river because you know that this is just natural that The river flows downward. Even if you flow downward, there is no guilt. It is natural. Even if you flow downward, it is not a defeat. It is a defeat only if you fight - then it becomes defeat. It is just natural: the river flows downward and you flow with it. You can even enjoy it. You can feel the bliss of the flowing river - without any effort, just moving with the current, and the current takes you away. You can even conserve energy by flowing down naturally.

So the first thing: don't be fearful of a downward flow don't be fearful! Remember, it is natural, and it is better to flow with the current than to be defeated and taken away - because then the whole thing will lose the bliss that is possible naturally. So the first thing: to be natural is not a sin. Remember, because only then can whole effort become positive; otherwise, it will be negative.

To be natural is not a sin. Of course, it is not enough - mm? - that is another thing. But it is not a sin. If you are flowing naturally, that is okay. As far as it goes, it is okay. It is not a sin, it is not a guilt, it is not immoral - it is just healthy. But I say it is not enough. It is not enough because your possibilities are still more. They are not just to be healthy. You can be holy also.

So don't be in fear - first thing. Don't be in condemnation of nature, and then the negative attitude will not be there.

Now don't fight the current - play with the current. You are not fighting the river really, you are just training yourself to go upward. Feel the difference: you are not fighting the river - you are just filled with an abundance, you are just filled with energy and training the energy to go upward. Now the river is not an enemy. Rather, it is a friend, because it gives you the opportunity to go up, to play with it. Now the fight is not a fight at all. It is a game, it is a play. And the river is not your enemy, it is a situation. Life is a situation, it is not an enemy. Nature is a situation, it is not an enemy - it is an opportunity.

So try to train your inner energy to flow upward. You are not really concerned with the river going downward. You are concerned with a different river of energy going upward. Your mind is basically concerned with the inner energy which can go upward.

Feel thankful for the river - because it gives you a background, it gives you an opportunity, it helps you, it cooperates with you. You can weigh yourself only through its current. You can feel yourself only because the river is going downward. The feeling that you can go upward even when the river is flowing down gives you a very different quality of confidence - you can go upward. And now, even if you relax and flow with the river, you know very well that you can go upward. Now even this downward flow with the river is not a defeat. You have known something - something different from nature.

If you have glimpsed something different from nature even for a single moment, then you have known your potentiality. You may achieve it, you may not achieve it, but now you are not just part of the downward flow - the upward flow is possible. Now it will depend on you. You will be the decisive factor, not the downward current. Now there is no enmity! If the river flows downward, it is okay. You need not flow, you need not fight, you need not be in fear. You can go up.

Ultimately, there is another possibility in which tantra has gone very deep. Tantra says there is a possibility when you flow downward with the river and still you flow upward. Then only your body is carried away. How can the river carry you away? It can carry only the body. Tantra tried to create many downward rivers. So go into the river, feel the downward flow, flow with it, and remember constantly that you are not flowing.

I was saying that by fighting with sex you may be obsessed with sex totally. There is another possibility: even going deeply in sex, you may not be sexual at all. But that possibility opens only when your effort becomes positive. This is what I mean by positive effort against the current. It is not really against the current; it is for the consciousness. The current is being used just as an opportunity - just to weigh yourself, just to find yourself out - just to feel the upward, the downward is needed. The more forceful the current, the more forceful will be the feeling of the upward. So use nature as an opportunity, not as an enemy. Use instincts as friends, not as enemies They are friends. Only through your ignorance can you make them enemies. They are friends!

And when someone reaches the original source, the peak of the river from where the river comes down, one is just thankful - thankful towards the river, grateful towards the river, because it is only through the river that he could achieve the source. So when someone reaches the peak of consciousness, one is thankful to every instinct - because they all helped, they all created the situation, they all created the opportunity. And they were flowing in the opposite direction. So their opposite flow is not really against you; the river is not against you. You can be against the river, and if you are against the river then you will never win. The greater possibility is that you may become perverted.

So use nature to transcend it. When you see there is anger, don't fight anger directly. Weigh yourself, feel the energy, transcend the anger. Anger is there: remain silent, feel anger and feel yourself and weigh yourself - begin to flow upward. Take it as a play. Don't be serious! Seriousness is a disease. If you take everything negatively, then you will be serious. Then everything disturbs you: "Why is there anger? Why is there greed? Why this? Why that?" Everything disturbs you and you become serious.

But our so-called saints are very serious. Really, I cannot conceive how a saint can be serious. He can only be playful. The seriousness shows he has been fighting. A soldier, of course, is bound to be serious. A saint need not be, must not be. Really, it disqualifies him from being a saint. A saint must be playful because nothing is against him - everything is for him. He can use everything for himself.

When I say "effort against the current", I mean play against the current - play! Try! See what you can do. The current is flowing downward. Can you flow upward? The anger is there. someone has insulted you, the button has been pushed. Can you remain non-angry? Just play - play with the situation; don't be serious. The moment you become serious, you become angry, really. Anger is very serious. Be playful, laugh, and see that the anger has been put on, that the conditioned mind has been put on. The anger is boiling there. Now, swim against the current. Take it as a play, and see whether it is possible that someone has insulted you. the anger has been created in the metabolism. Can you still swim beyond it? Don't fight it!

That's why I say the difference is very subtle. Standing on the bank you cannot feel the difference - unless you have been in the river and experienced both. You are standing on the bank, and someone is fighting the river and someone is just playing with the river, going upward. What difference can you see from the bank? Only one: one will be serious and the other will be playful - nothing else.

One who is in fear, afraid, fighting, will be serious - dead serious. How can he laugh? How can he play? If the current pushes him, he will feel defeated. The other one who is playing will not be serious at all. He can laugh: he can laugh with the river, he can laugh with the waves. And if the current pushes him down he will not feel defeated - he will try again. He will not be serious. Rather, he will begin to love the river because it pushes. He will begin to love the river! The difference will be inner, qualitative.

Suppression is a serious disease. Transforming oneself is a play - it is not serious at all. It is sincere. but never serious. It is authentic, but never serious. The quality of playfulness always remains there. It is the very spirit. With positivity you are creating something inside. The outward is just an opportunity; the inside creation is the thing. The emphasis is on something else. It is not on fighting the river: the emphasis is on the upward flow.

For example, I am writing something on a blackboard. I use a blackboard but I write with white chalk, because on a blackboard the white chalk becomes clear in contrast. I can write on a white wall also. The writing will be there, but it will be as if it is not because the contrast will not be there. So the blackboard is not against the white chalk. It is not the enemy: it is the friend. Only when they are against it do the white lines become more white. On a white wall they will just lose themselves, they will be nowhere.

So who is the enemy - the white wall or the blackboard? Who is the enemy? The white wall is the enemy because you lose. The blackboard is not the enemy. Really, it is the friend. On it, the white becomes more white and clear and apparent. But when I am writing on a blackboard my emphasis, my intention is not to destroy the blackboard. Rather, my intention is to make the white lines clear. If you are trying to destroy the blackboard, then the blackboard is the enemy. See the difference: if you are trying to destroy the blackboard by whitewashing it, then you will feel the blackboard as the enemy.

You can whitewash it; then there will be a fight. But when you are writing something on it, your emphasis is not on the blackboard. Really, you never remember it, you need not remember it. It is not even in your awareness; it is only on the fringe. You write: the emphasis is on writing, not on destroying the blackboard. You remember what you are writing, and the blackboard helps. It never obstructs you.

So your emphasis must be on what you are trying to achieve. not on what you are against. If you are trying to achieve love, then be positively concerned with love, not with destroying hate. You can never destroy it! You will not be able to destroy hate. But the moment love is there, the whole energy is transformed. It begins to flow "lovewards".

Don't be negative about your energies, instincts, about anything. Be positive. And when you are positively creating something, be playful. It is your nature. Why fight it? you have created it. It is your effort. You wanted to create it, so you have created it. You have chosen it; it is your freedom. If you are angry, it is your choice - so why be against it? It is your choice! For lives and lives you have used anger, so it is there. Why be angry against it? No one has chosen it except you. So whatsoever you are, you are your own creation.

So it is nonsense to think in terms of negativity. Rather, feel that if you can create such a madman inside of you, then, really, you are capable of many things. If you can create such a hell, why not a heaven? But don't be concerned with the hell. Be concerned with heaven and begin to create it. When the heaven is created you will not find the hell. It will have disappeared completely because it exists only as a negative, it exists only as an absence.

Because there is no heaven, hell has to be. Because there is no love, hate has to be. Because there is no light, darkness is there. Don't fight with darkness: create the light, be concerned with the creation of light. When the light is there, where will the darkness be then? But you can fight directly. Don't think about the light at all and begin to fight darkness directly. But no matter what you do, the darkness will never be destroyed. On the contrary, you may be destroyed in the fight. How can you fight darkness directly? It is an absence. Darkness only means that the light is not. So, please, create light.

The river is flowing downward, and you are flowing with it because you don't know the upward flow. You have not known it: that is the only thing. Once you know it, all the rivers may flow downward, but you cannot flow downward. Then go with the river to the very sea, and you will not go downward.

It is difficult to sense the difference. That's why so much suppression is in the world. No one has taught it - everyone has understood it. No one has taught it - neither a Buddha nor a Mahavir nor a Jesus nor a Krishna. This is a miracle. No one has taught suppression because no one can. It is absolute nonsense! But everyone has suppressed and everyone is suppressing - because the difference is so subtle that whenever transformation starts, suppression is understood.

Whenever a teacher is born who begins to talk about transformation, followers gather who begin to understand about suppression - because it is so delicate, so delicate that unless you experience it there is every possibility you will misunderstand it. So try to experience it. The primary requirement: Don't be against anything - be for! Be for something! Don't be against something!

Really, when you are against something your future is not open. Only when you are for something does your future open. When you are against something you are clinging to the past. You can never be against the future. How can you be against the future? You can only be against the past. So let it be understood in this dimension also: when you are against, you are against the past. You are fighting with death. The past is no more, so why fight it? Create the future; be for something. Then you become positive.

There are two types of freedom: one is from something and one is for something. A young man is fighting with his parents to be free; he goes hippie. Then for some time the fight continues. The parents cannot do anything, and they forget. Then for the first time the boy begins to feel, "What to do?" because he was only against. The freedom was from the parents. It was not leading anywhere; it was not for something. It was just against something.

This not only happens to individuals. It happens to races, to nations. It has happened always. You fight for freedom against the British or against someone else. Ultimately you achieve the freedom, and then you begin to feel vacant, empty. What to do? You were never fighting for something, so your force dies with your enemy.

One young man came to me, very educated. He was madly in love with a girl, but his parents were not for it. They didn't belong to the same religion. He was saying, "Whatsoever the future may be - even if I may be just begging on the street - I am going to marry this girl. But my father is determined to disown me if I marry this girl."

His father is a rich man, so I asked the boy, "Are you really in love with the girl or just angry with your father? Decide this - because these are two different things. Are you really in love with this girl or is this love just a by-product and you are really against your father and using this love as a fighting point, as a front?"

He hesitated. He said, "Let me think about it. I have not thought it over. But why do you ask such a question? Really, I am in love!"

I said, "You just go and think it over."

He came and said, "No, I am in love." I just looked into his eyes and he became uneasy. I remained silent and continuously looked in his eyes, stared. He became uneasy and said, "What are you doing? Do you think I am not in love?" I was still silent. He said, "What do you mean? Why are you so silent? Do you think that I am falsifying, or that I am rationalizing?" I remained silent. He said, "It seems you have read my mind. The more I think about it, the more I feel that I am against my father. But still I am going to marry."

So I said, "Okay, marry!"

After five years he committed suicide. He wrote a letter to me: "You were right. The moment I married, the whole love died because with marriage the fight with my father ended. I was disowned and there was no relationship. Everything ended, and in that very moment the romance was not there. It was really a fight against something; it was not for something." And he said, "Now I am committing suicide because life is so boring."

Life will be a boredom if you are always against and never for. Never be against: be always for. So when I say "against the current". I mean for something, for the peak. Sex is not bad, but the peak is better. So never think in terms of bad and good. Always think in terms of good and better. The bad must be thrown out; it must not be given any status in the mind. Always think in terms of good and better and better. Life is that.

Once you create good and bad, soon the good will drop and bad and worse and worse will follow. So nothing is bad, but better things are possible. Always remember, and struggle for better things. Then you have a positive flow.

 

Question 2:

One thing: when you really become free, when you really become free, you cannot even feel freedom. It is always felt against slavery. So when you really become free, you neither feel freedom nor slavery. Then you are free. If you feel freedom, it means still some slavery is there. Freedom is felt only against slavery. When you enter the real freedom, you enter an existence which is lived moment-to-moment, neither as unfree nor as free.

But the very formulation of the question carries our mind with it - the very formulation: "When shall we be free?" We are against something: "When shall we be free?" And especially from sensual things. But why? The old mind, the old preachings, the morality, the religions - they all teach that as long as there is sensuality you will never be free. They say that as long as sensuality is there you can never be free - sensuality must go; then you will be free. That's why we ask.

Really, as far as I am concerned, sensuality will not be there but you will be more sensuous when you are really free. You will be more sensitive, and your every sense will become so cleansed that you cannot even conceive what these senses can give. But there will be no sensuality. Sensuality is something else: it is not sensuousness. Sensuality means a hankering; it means a constant obsession.

For example, one who is constantly thinking about food, he cannot meditate, he cannot pray, he cannot study. Whatsoever he is doing, the food is an obsession inside. He will go on enjoying food in his imagination. Even if he begins to think about heaven, he will think about food: "What type of food will be available in heaven?" So such persons have said that in heaven there is a KALP-VRIKSH - a tree under which you sit and think anything and it is supplied instantaneously, immediately. You think of food and the food is there. You think of a woman and the woman is there. You think of wine and the wine is there. It is a wish-fulfilling tree. Those who imagined this tree must have been very, very deep in sensuality. In the Koran it is said that in heaven there are rivers of wine. So whosoever has thought this must have been deeply sensual - a hankering, such a hankering, that even in Heaven....

When Islam was developing in Arabian countries, homosexuality was just an accepted norm. So only in the Mohammedan heaven is homosexuality allowed - in no other heaven. It is said that not only beautiful girls, but beautiful boys will be available. This is sensuality. You cannot even conceive of heaven without your lusts.

I don't say that there will not be... I am not saying that 'maybe'! - but why do you think about it? I am not concerned at all with what is there or not, but why can your mind not conceive anything except that which you are after? You have to make provisions and you have to make pre-arrangements, plannings. This is sensuality.

And this is the paradox: the more sensual you are, the less you will be sensitive, because sensitivity is always in the present and sensuality is always in the future. So if a person is constantly thinking of food, when the food is given to him, he will not be able to feel the bliss. Really, on the contrary, he will be taking food and thinking of other food. A person who is constantly thinking of sex will not be able to go deep into sex. When he is going into sex he will be thinking of other women, or other men, and then there is a vicious circle.

The less he enjoys, the more he goes after thinking, and everything becomes cerebral, mental. He eats with mind, not with the body. His sex becomes cerebral, his everything becomes cerebral. In everything his mind takes over, and mind cannot do anything except thinking. So mind goes on thinking and thinking. And, really, such a guard is created around the mind that he becomes less and less sensitive. The senses lose life, and the mind exploits everything from the senses. usurps everything. And the mind cannot do anything! It can only think - and thinking cannot give you contentment.

So the more you feel discontent, the more you think. Then you are in a vicious circle, and ultimately you become absolutely incapable of feeling anything through the senses. This is sensuality: senses prostituted by the mind; or mind having taken all the senses into itself. This is sensuality.

A really free consciousness will not be sensual but will be sensitive - deeply sensitive and sensuous. Really, when a Buddha sees a flower, he sees the flower in its totality, in its total beauty, in its total aliveness. The colour, the fragrance, everything, Buddha sees in its totality. He will never think again about this flower - he will never be sensual. He will not hanker again to see it more and more, repeatedly. He will never think again about this flower - not because he is not sensuous, but because he is totally sensuous, and he has lived this experience so deeply that there is no need to repeat.

The need to repeat comes because you cannot live any moment totally - so you eat, and again you have to think to repeat it; you love, and you have to think to repeat it. You are less concerned with living than you are concerned with repetition. This repetitive hankering is sensuality.

A Buddha is not sensual in this sense - he is deeply sensuous. His every sense-door is clear, transparent. He feels everything, he lives every moment totally, he loves every moment totally. And he experiences it so totally that there is no need to repeat, so he never thinks about it. He goes on and on, and every moment is so rich that there is no need to repeat any old moment. There is no need! The need is created because you are incapable of living in moments which are present. You are incapable, so you go on.

If I pass through this city and think, "No - London is better; I must be there," it means only that I am not capable of experiencing this city. That is why the memory comes. Otherwise, if I can live in this city, there is no need. And remember that this type of mind, when it goes to London, will not be able to live there either, because this type of mind cannot live in the moment that is there. This mind will think about Tokyo, about Calcutta, about other places - and we go on missing.

Live! So a totally free mind will not even be aware of freedom - first thing. It will be so free that it cannot be aware of freedom and it will not be aware of any bondage. It will be aware only of a life which is moving - moving moment-to-moment. And this movement is unmotivated. That is what is meant by freedom. This movement is unmotivated! If you move with a motivation, then you are bound.

If I am saying something with some motivation, then I am not free. The motivation is my bondage. And if I am just saying it with no motivation - not even this much: that you may understand or may not understand; not even this much: I must make you understand it - then it has a freedom, unmotivated. Then it is a bliss in itself to have talked, to have said, to have expressed. It is enough!

If there is no motivation beyond it, then it is a free movement. So in freedom you will not live through motivation: you will live directly, immediately. That immediate living is freedom. But there is no awareness of it because you cannot feel it. You can feel it only against some bondage.

Sensuality will not be there, but senses will be there - and more acute, more alive. And this is as it should be. A Jesus can love more. Really, only a Jesus can love - unmotivated. His very being is love. Senses are there - really, for the first time, without the disturbance of the mind, they function totally. Eyes see as they should see. They see without any thought, they see without any prejudice.

They see that which is! Nothing is projected. Ears hear that which is said with no distortion, because the mind is not there. Hands touch that which is with no desire, with no lust, with no motivation, with no longing. Hands just touch - then touch becomes pure, total. With no disturbance, they simply touch, then touch goes deep. Then even by a hand the soul is touched; the hand becomes a passage.

Senses are there - more purified, more acute, more authentic - but sensuality is not there, because such a man lives so deeply that he never wants to repeat. And even if something is repeated, he never feels it is repeated - because everything is so new!

The less you live, the more you have to substitute for it by your dreaming mind. The less you live, the more the mind has to substitute for it. The more you live, the less is the need of the mind to substitute. When you live totally, mind is not needed. When you are in love, why should the mind be needed? When you are eating, why should the mind be needed? When you are walking, why should the mind be needed?

You can move without the mind. You can eat without mind coming in, with no thought process. You can touch someone, you can kiss someone, you can embrace someone, without the thought process coming in. And then you live totally. And any moment that is lived totally, you will never long for it to be repeated, because you long only for something which has remained incomplete.

The mind goes on back again and again to complete it. The mind is a very great perfectionist - everything must be perfect! So if something is left incomplete, the mind goes back again and again.

It is just like when one of your teeth falls out and then you continuously touch the spot with your tongue to feel the absence - the whole day long. You will be bored, but again, unaware, you will touch the absence. You know now that the tooth is not there, but why does this tongue go now constantly to the spot and it has never done so before? When the tooth was there, this tongue never touched it. Why, when the tooth was there, was the tongue not concerned at all with touching it? When the tooth is not there, the tongue goes on, goes on, goes on - it becomes mad. Why? Because now the tongue feels something incomplete, some gap, and the gap calls again and again.

So with any experience lived totally, you will never go again to feel it in the mind. If you have really loved someone, there will be no memory - memory in the sense that the mind is going constantly to it again and again. If you have not loved, then the absence is felt. You feel guilty and you feel that something has been missed, so it must be substituted - then the mind goes on thinking.

The freer you are, the less is the need to substitute with mental activity. And sensuality is substituting. You understand me? Sensuality is substituting something that you are missing. So when consciousness is really transformed and becomes free, there is no feeling of freedom. When consciousness is transformed and becomes holy, there is no feeling of holiness. So a real saint is one who doesn't know that he is a saint. Only sinners know that they are saints. Only sinners know!

A really good man never knows that he is good; only bad ones know they are good. How can you feel your health? Only an ill person, a diseased person, begins to think about health. When you are healthy, you are just healthy. Really, you never remember that you are healthy. You begin to feel about the body only when you are ill. So if someone goes on talking about health, be confident that he is ill.

It happens that in persons will go on creating many theories about health. Ill persons will constantly talk about health and will become experts. They will become experts! It happens daily that if you are ill and cannot get beyond your illness, sooner or later you are going to be a naturopath. If medicines are not going to help, what to do? Constant thinking and reading about health will make you a naturopath. So naturopathy is good in one way because every patient becomes a doctor. If you are really healthy, then there is no need! And the same applies everywhere. When you are free, you don't feel it; when you are good, you don't feel it; when you are moral you don't feel it.

And, secondly, when you are free you will live moment-to-moment totally. In a general way this can be said. We can never be particular because it will depend. It will depend! For example, Mohammed married, and he married nine women. We cannot conceive the same about Mahavir; we cannot conceive the same about Buddha. Buddha was married and he left his home, but Mohammed married nine women. So if you ask a Jain, he cannot say that Mohammed is a Realized soul.

How can he be? And the same is the case with Mohammedans: they cannot conceive how these "escapists", Mahavir and Buddha, were Realized souls - because whenever someone is Realized he is not afraid. He can marry nine women, and this Buddha leaves even one, escapes. Why?

Jains cannot conceive that Krishna was an Enlightened One, because he was just so ordinary, doing such ordinary things! Love is one of the most ordinary things, and he was loving and singing and dancing and fighting and doing everything. So how can he be Enlightened? Jains think that Krishna died and went to the last hell - the seventh hell. According to them, he is now in the seventh hell.

He was the greatest sinner possible, because he seduced Arjuna for the fight, for the war. They say Arjuna was just on the verge of being a mahatma. He was just trying to escape when this fellow Krishna seduced him and forced him to fight. So in Jains' eyes this man Krishna is the most violent person - and he is suffering in hell.

This happens, this is natural. This is natural because we become obsessed with types. Then we cannot allow another type to have Freedom, Enlightenment. This depends! The type, the individuality, goes to the very end, to the very peak. It becomes purified, but it goes on. So a Buddha may feel that now he need not be attached with any woman. It depends on him. It depends - and he is free to move in his way. And a Mohammed may think quite differently, and he is free to move in his own way. And everyone moves, when free, in his own way. You cannot force a type.

For example, Mohammed was not at ease with music at all. He could not be; that was his type. But then Mohammedans think that anyone who loves music is just a sinner, so in a Mohammedan mosque you cannot play music. But Mohammed loved perfume very much, so Mohammedans continue to love perfumes. A very poor Mohammedan, particularly on religious days, will also use perfume sometimes. Perfume is as sensuous as music - even more. So what is the difference? Perfume is music for the nose and nothing else, and music is perfume for the ears and nothing else. But it depends on the type!

When Mohammed became free, totally free, Enlightened, his "type" began to move freely in his own way, and a sudden burst and a sudden feeling for perfumes came - unmotivated. But when followers come, they create motivations. They begin to think that some reason must be there. Nothing is there as a reason. It is simply the freedom of a type.

Meera goes on singing and Chaitanya goes on dancing from village to village. Mohammed cannot conceive: "What nonsense are you doing? Dancing - how is it related with Divine Realization?" And a Chaitanya cannot conceive how you can remain without dancing when that 'Friend' comes. How can you remain without dancing? A Chaitanya cannot conceive how a Buddha likes sitting when the Divine has come to the door: "How can you go on sitting like that when the Light has descended? You must go dancing! You must become mad!" But these are types, and one must be aware to allow every type to be there. Then the world is richer.

So I cannot say what will happen to you when you are free - what senses will become more purified, what senses will begin to be expressive of your soul. No one can say; it is unpredictable. One thing is certain: sensuality will not be there. Senses will be there - more perfect, more pure - and purer will be their experience and deeper. The sensitivity will be there, but no sensuality.

 

The Path of Surrender & The Path of Will

Question 3:

No, it is not possible! You cannot practise both simultaneously because both are diametrically opposite. They lead to one point, but they don't pass through the same road, through the same route, through the same realms. They are quite diametrically opposite.

You cannot practise both, just like you cannot go to one place simultaneously following two roads.

Two roads may be going. You are going to the station and two roads may be going to the station, but you cannot follow both the roads simultaneously. And if you do follow them, you will not reach the station. Both roads go, but then you will not reach because then you will have to go ten steps on one, then come back, follow the other, then come back, follow the first one. Then you can follow much, but you will reach nowhere.

Every way is a particular way. It has its own route, its own steps, its own milestones, its own symbols, its own philosophy, its own methodology, its own vehicles, its own mediums of movement. It has its own everything: every way is a perfect way. So never be in two minds. It will simply create confusion.

Follow one! When you reach to the end, you will know that even if you had followed the other you would have reached. When you have reached, you can try just as a play to go on the other - that's another thing - just to know whether this road also comes or not. But don't follow two simultaneously, because every path is so scientifically perfect that this will only create disturbance.

Really, in the old days, even to know about the other path was prohibited because even that knowing creates disturbance. And our minds are so childish and so curious, and foolishly curious, that if we hear about something else or read about something else we begin to amalgamate. And we don't know that anything which is meaningful on a particular path may be just harmful on another. So you cannot amalgamate. Some part in one car may be meaningful, useful - so useful that the car cannot move without it. But the same part can become a hindrance in another car. Don't use it, because every part is meaningful only in its own pattern, in its own gestalt. The moment you change the whole, the part becomes a hindrance.

So much confusion has come into the religious world because now every religion is known to everybody, every path is known, and you are just confused. Now, to find a Christian is difficult, to find a Hindu is difficult, to find a Mohammedan is difficult, because everyone is just something of a Hindu, something of a Mohammedan, something of a Christian - and that creates very much danger. It is dangerous. It may prove suicidal.

So purity of path is a basic necessity for one who has to follow. If one has just to think about it, then there is no need for any purity. You can go on thinking. But if you are to travel, then purity of the path is very essential. And you must be aware not to confuse anything and not to bring any alien, foreign element in it.

It doesn't mean that the other is wrong. It only means that the other is right only on the other's path. You need not take the other conclusion that "Only I am right and the other is wrong." The other is right in its own way. And if you have to follow another path, just go to the other's way leaving your way completely.

That is why the old religions - and there are only two basic religions: Hindu and Jewish - were never ready to convert anyone. And the only reason was this, that they knew a very old, very deep tradition - that to convert is to confuse. If someone has been brought up as a Christian and you convert him into a Hindu you will just confuse him because now he cannot forget that which he has known. Now you cannot just wash it out. It will remain there, and on that foundation, whatsoever you give him as Hinduism will not mean the same because his old foundation will always be there. You will just confuse him, and that confusion will not make him religious, cannot make him.

So the old religions - really, there are just two old religions, the Jewish and the Hindu, and all other religions are just branches of those - have remained very dogmatically non-converting. The Hindu concept was disturbed by Dayananda. Because his mind was working in a political way, not in a religious one, he began to convert. But that concept has a beauty of its own. It doesn't mean that other religions are bad; it doesn't mean that others are not right. It doesn't mean anything like that. It only means that if you have been brought up in a particular concept, it is better to follow that - follow that! It has gone deep in your bones and blood, so it is better to follow that.

But now it has become impossible, and it will never be possible now again because the old patterns have broken. Now, no one can be a Christian, no one can be a Hindu. That is not possible now, so a new categorization is needed. Now I don't categorize as Hindu and Mohammedan and Christian. That categorization is not possible now. It is just dead and must be thrown away. Now we must categorize every path.

For example, there are two basic divisions: the path of relaxation and the path of effort, the path of surrender and the path of will. This is a basic division. Then other divisions will follow, but these two are basic and quite diametrically opposite. The path of relaxation means surrender just here and now with no effort. If you can, you can. If you cannot, you cannot. If you can, you can. If you cannot, you CANNOT - there is no go. The path of surrender is very simple: Surrender! If you ask how, then you are not for this path, because the "how" belongs to the other path. Mm? "How" means by what effort, by what technique: "How am I to surrender?" If you ask, "How I am to surrender?" then you are not for the path of surrender. Then go to the other.

If you can just surrender without asking how, only then is it possible. So it seems simple, but it is very difficult, very arduous, because the "how" comes instantaneously. If I say "Surrender!" you have not even heard the word and the "how" comes up: "How?" - then you are not for this path. Then the other path is of will, effort, endeavour. Then every "how" is supplied - how to do it. Then there are many ways.

So surrender has only one way, and there are no branches. There cannot be. There cannot be different types of surrender. Surrender is simply surrender. There are no types. Types belong to techniques. There can be different techniques; but because there is no technique surrender remains the purest path, without any division.

Then the second: the path of will. It has many divisions. All the yogas, methods, belong to the second. The second says, "You cannot relax just now, so we will prepare you: a preparation is needed. So follow these methods, and a moment will come when you will drop."

They look difficult - they are not! They look difficult because they say preparation, methods, years of training and discipline are necessary. So they look difficult, but they are not - because the more time is given to you, the more simplified the process becomes. And surrender is the most difficult process because no time is allowed. They say, "Just here and now." If you can, you can. If you cannot, you cannot.

Baso, a Zen monk, would say to whosoever would come, "Surrender!" If the person asks, "How?" he would say, "Go elsewhere!" His whole life he used only two statements continuously - never a third. He would say, "Surrender!" If you would say, "How?" he would say, "Go somewhere else!" Sometimes some persons came who would not ask, "How?" and would surrender. But rare becomes the phenomenon! As our modern mind progresses, rare will be in what the difference is between the two, because surrender means an innocence, a trusting mind, an absolute faith. It doesn't need effort; it needs faith. It doesn't ask for the method and the way and the bridge; it takes the jump. It doesn't ask for the steps - it doesn't ask anything.

But the other path is of effort, tension. And many methods are possible, because to do something there are many techniques. There are many techniques for how to create the ultimate tension so that you explode. But never follow both. You cannot follow! You can just go on thinking about both. And don't confuse. Determine clearly, exactly, which is for you.

Can you trust? Are you ready without any "how" to take the jump? If not, then forget relaxation, then forget surrender, then even forget the very word - because you cannot understand it. Then effort - and this Upanishad is talking about effort: upward effort, a continuous arrowing of the mind towards the peak.

 

The Path of Will & The Path of Surrender

Question 1:

THE END is always the same, but the beginning differs, and all the differences belong always to the beginning. The nearer you reach, the less is the difference between paths.

In the beginning will and surrender are diametrically opposed. Surrender means absolute will-lessness. You have no will of your own, you feel helpless, you feel you cannot do anything. You are so totally helpless that you cannot even say that will exists; the very concept of will is illusory. You have no will. Rather, on the contrary, you have destiny, not will, so you can only surrender. It is not that you surrender: rather, it is that you cannot do anything else.

So surrender is not an act. Rather, it is a recognition. It is not an act! How can surrender be an act? How can you surrender? If you surrender, then how will you call it surrender when you remain the master? If you surrender, then you remain the "willer", the surrender has been willed, and these two things are diametrically opposed. You cannot will surrender. So surrender is not an act; rather, it is a recognition - the recognition of the phenomenon of will-lessness.

There is no will, so you cannot will. You cannot do anything. Everything is just happening. You have happened, and all else that has followed has just been a happening. To feel this, to know this, is a recognition. Suddenly you become aware of the fact that there is no will in you. With this recognition ego disappears, because the ego can exist only if there is will.

So ego means the totality of willed acts. If there is will, then you can be. If there is no will, you disappear. Then you are just a wave in a great infinite ocean - and you cannot will anything. You are as a happening; you will not be as a happening. What can a wave do in an infinite ocean? It has been "waved" by the ocean. It is not: it only appears to be.

If you feel this, and this feeling is a deep search, digging down deep in yourself - is there any will? - then you find you are just a dead leaf blown by the wind. So sometimes you go north and sometimes you go south, and the dead leaf may begin to think that it is going south - only the wind is blowing and the dead leaf following. If you go deep down in yourself you will become aware of a total will-lessness. The recognition of it is surrender. It is not an act. And if you surrender, if the surrender happens, there is no need to offer. You cannot!

So on the path of surrender, really, offering is not possible, because offering is really based on will: you offer, you are there. On the path of surrender offering happens, but the surrenderer never knows. He cannot know; he cannot say, "I have offered my mind to the Divine." Really, he cannot speak in terms of acts; he can only speak in terms of happenings. So at the most he can say. "The offering has happened." Without a will you cannot have an ego, and without an ego you cannot talk of anything as an act. So "happening" is the phenomenon on the path of surrender. Surrender itself is a happening.

But on the path of will there is a different process. The moment I say "the path of will", the will is taken for granted. You do something. This is a fact on the path of will, taken for granted. It is never questioned, because those who follow the path of will say that even to question a thing is to accept will. Even to question a thing means the will is there. To question is an act, to answer is an act, to doubt is an act, to say no is an act. So the will cannot be questioned. On the path of will, the will cannot be questioned. That is a basic hypothesis.

On the path of surrender, will-lessness is the basic hypothesis. You cannot question that. So this must be understood: on every path something is a hypothesis. It is bound to be, because you have to begin somewhere and you have to begin in ignorance. Because of these two factors a hypothesis is needed. So even in science you begin with a hypothesis - something assumed which cannot be questioned - and if you question it the whole edifice falls down.

For example, one of the most accurate, scientific dimensions is geometry, but you begin with a hypothesis. You begin with something taken as an assumption which can neither be proved nor disproved, because only that thing can be disproved which can be proved. So to begin with, you take something in ignorance, in faith. So, really, science is not as scientific as it looks. If you go back to the beginning every science begins with a hypothesis, and if you question the hypothesis no answer is possible. And this is as it should be because you cannot begin from nowhere.

Look at it in this way: if I come to a strange city and I ask someone where the person A lives, he may say, "A is a neighbour of B." But I say, "This is not an answer at all because I do not know B either. So where does B live?" Then he says, "B is a neighbour of C." But I say, "I am in a strange land. I don't know anything about C or D or E, so please tell me in such a way that I can understand. Everything is unknown to me, so from where to begin?"

If he says, "D, E, F, G," they are all hypothetical. So from where to begin? A beginning can only be possible if I assume one thing as known which is not really known; otherwise no answer is possible. And this is the situation, this is how we are in this world: everything is unknown, so from where to begin? If you say, "We must begin with knowledge," then how can you begin? When everything is unknown, how can you begin with something as a known fact? Then you cannot begin. And if you begin with an unknown fact, then too you cannot begin.

A hypothesis means an unknown fact taken in faith as known. A hypothesis means an unknown fact knowingly taken as known. Then you can begin. So a hypothesis cannot be questioned - nowhere, not even in mathematics.

So on the path of will, will is the hypothesis, and on the path of surrender, will-lessness is the hypothesis. So if one path appeals to you, you will not be able to comprehend the other, because both have opposite hypotheses. If will-lessness appeals to you, then will does not have any appeal. Then it is absurd. And if will appeals to you, then surrender is meaningless.

With will, it is taken for granted that you can do, so now the question is - what to do? You can do something which leads you away from the Divine and you can do something which leads you nearer to Him. And you are responsible - I have discussed that yesterday. How can you will, by and by, to be near and, ultimately, totally with That? But remember this fact: that will is taken as a hypothesis. Once you take it as a hypothesis, you go on willing, ultimately you will totally - that is, your mind is arrowed totally towards That - in that total tension, on that c1imax and peak, will dissolves, because perfection is death. The moment anything is perfect it dies.

That is why Lao Tzu says, "Never be perfect. Stop half way - never go to the end!" If you go to the end, success will become failure and life will become death. If you go to the very end, love will turn into hate, friendship will be reduced to enmity - because perfection means death. And when something dies, it dies into the polar opposite.

When will is perfect, when mind is wholly arrowed, will dies, the will disappears - because perfection is the point of evaporation, just like water evaporates at a hundred degrees heat. The hundred- degree limit is the perfection. As far as water is concerned, the heat has come to the peak. Now if heat continues to be, water will not be there. And if water wants to be there, then heat must not come up to the peak. So when you are a hundred percent will, you are on the verge of explosion, you will die, your will will die. The very phenomenon of will disappears. And when will disappears, you come to the same point where one who begins with will-lessness comes. Now it is will-lessness.

So either zero or perfection: both go to the same end. It will depend on you, on your type of mind. If you can conceive of will-lessness, then there is no question. But that is difficult - not only difficult: in a certain way it is impossible. It is inconceivable. It happens, sometimes it happens. But that happening also has a long, long effort of will. Many, many lives lived will then give you the experience that you have been dreaming of. One who has willed for a long time and yet reaches nowhere may come to a point where suddenly he becomes aware that he is working with something which is not.

Buddha, for example: he reaches the Ultimate through will-lessness. But he worked very arduously on the path of will for six years in this life. He went to every teacher, inquired about every path, endeavoured his best, tried everything that was taught and said. He did everything that a human being can do, and with every teacher he worked hard. No teacher was able to say, "You are not achieving because you are not working," because he was working even more than the teacher.

So every teacher had to say to him, "I cannot say that you are not working - you are working hard, impossibly hard - but now this is all I can teach you. You must go somewhere else." So he went around to every teacher, worked on every method. And Bihar was a very potential place in those times. Only twice have such great peaks happened. Once it was in Athens, in the Greek civilization. Athens was a very potential city, and a very potential situation happened in Athens. And another time was in Bihar: it happened that Bihar became the peak of all that mind can do. And in Bihar, in Buddha's time, every method had been evolved and every method had its own teacher, its own Master. And Buddha worked with every one. He worked so hard and so sincerely that every teacher had to ask him to leave, because he had worked totally and nothing was coming out.

Really, he was not the man meant for the path of will. Mahavir, a contemporary of Buddha, reached through the path of will and achieved. But Buddha could not achieve. After working hard in every way, in a sudden moment of helplessness he became frustrated. He felt helpless. He had done everything and nothing was achieved, and he remained the same with no transformation. A total frustration set in, and one day he left everything.

Previously, he had left the world: that was the first renunciation. But the second one, which is not mentioned in the scriptures, was greater. The Buddhists don't talk about it. A second, greater renunciation happened: after six years of tortuous effort, Buddha left the path of will. He said, "I feel helpless - and it seems that nothing is possible, nothing can be done, so I leave all efforts."

That was a full-moon night and he was sitting under a tree. The world he had left; now all religions, all philosophies, all techniques, he left on that evening. He relaxed under the tree. For the first time he could relax after lives and lives - because somehow or other we are always working, doing, achieving. But on that evening there was no achieving mind in him. He was so totally helpless that time ceased, future dropped, desires became meaningless. Effort was not possible; will was not found at all.

So he was really dead - psychologically dead. He was alive only in the sense that a tree is alive - with no desires, with no future, with no possibility. He was just like the tree he was laying beneath. Conceive of it. Try to conceive of it! If there are no desires and no future and no morning to follow, and nothing is to be achieved and everything has been just absurd, and the thought that "I cannot do" penetrates deep, then what is the difference between you and the tree? No difference! He was as relaxed as the tree. He was as relaxed as the river flowing by.

He slept. This sleep was strange. There was not even a dream, because dreams belong to desires, effort, will. He slept as trees sleep. The sleep was total. It was just like death - no movement of the mind, no motivation inside. Everything stopped. Time stopped.

In the morning at five o'clock he opened his eyes. Rather, it would be good to say that eyes opened, because there was no motivation. As the eyes dropped in the evening, in the morning they opened. Refreshed by the night, refreshed by relaxation, refreshed by a deep desirelessness, Buddha opened his eyes. The last star was disappearing in the sky, and it is said that just by seeing the last star disappear Buddha became Awakened. He Realized!

What happened? It was because there was no effort; effort had ceased. There was not even desire. Now there was not even frustration - because frustration is part of desire and expectation. If really expectations cease, there is no frustration. He was not asking, he was not praying, he was not meditating, he was not doing at all. He was just there - empty. When the last star disappeared, something disappeared in him also. He became just space, he became just nothingness. This is surrender, with no feeling of surrender - because who is to surrender to whom? But this also happened as a culminating peak of long efforts.

This is what I mean to say: one has to begin with will. Begin with will! If you are the type who can reach to perfect will, you will just disappear from that peak. If you are not the type then you will reach a perfection of frustration, and from that peace of frustration you will disappear. If the first is the case, will then is known as the path; if the second is the case, then surrender.

But begin with will. You cannot begin with surrender, because surrender cannot have any beginning. Action can have a beginning - but how can a happening have a beginning? You can begin w!th action; you cannot begin with happening - that is the difference. You can begin with something to do, but how can you begin with surrender?

So begin with will and put your whole being into it. Only then will you be able to know whether this path can work for you or not. If it can work, then it is okay. Then you reach to the most perfect ego. And when the ego is perfected, the bubble bursts. Or, if you are not of that type, then you will go round and round and round and round... and frustration and frustration. Then you reach another peak - the peak of frustration - and then surrender happens.

So even for surrender don't think that you have not to do any thing - remember this! Don't think - because mind is very cunning and the mind can say. "Surrender is our way. That means I am not going to do anything. Surrender is my way!" This is a cunning deception. If surrender is your way, then surrender can happen this very moment - because surrender needs no time. There is no tomorrow necessary for it. If you say, "Surrender is my way," then don't wait for tomorrow, because surrender can come just here and now. No effort is needed in surrender so no time is necessary.

If it is not coming just this moment, then know very well surrender is not your way. Mind is deceiving; mind is just trying to postpone effort. And mind can do everything. Mind can rationalize: "There is no need to will because there is no will, so I am ready to be on the path of will-lessness." But remember well that your "readiness" will not do. Your readiness is not really a readiness: your preparedness is not really a qualification for surrender. Your total helplessness is the qualification. Really, are you totally helpless? Have you felt it, that nothing can be done, If you feel it, then surrender can happen this very moment.

Surrender cannot be postponed; will can be postponed. So with will you can take time, lives, and you can go on working slowly. But with surrender there is no go, and you cannot think of the future - future is not allowed. So if you say, "Surrender is my way and someday it will happen," you are deceiving yourself. If surrender is your way, then surrender would have happened already.

Someone asked Mozart, "Who is your teacher? From whom have you learned your music?"

Mozart said, "No one is my teacher. I have learned it myself, alone."

So the questioner said, "Then tell me, can I also learn it myself?"

Mozart said, "But I never asked this question to anybody. Even to know this you have come to ask me, so it will be difficult for you to learn music by yourself. Even this you have to ask someone else - whether you can learn music without any teacher. A teacher is even needed to decide this! So you will not be able."

The man persisted. He said, "Why? When you are able, why am I not?"

Mozart said, "If you were capable of it you would have done it already."

So if surrender can happen and if you are really ready for it, it would have happened. You cannot choose it. Choose will, because with choice will has an affinity. With surrender choice has no affinity. Choice needs will. So choose will, work hard. And there are only two types. Either you succeed or you fail; but work so hard that if you succeed you succeed totally, or if you fail you fail totally, and that totality will decide.

Mild efforts and mediocre efforts lead nowhere, because you can never decide what your type is with mediocre efforts. With mild, lukewarm efforts you can never decide what your type is. You can never know. Work hard! Either succeed totally or fail totally. Both the ways you will reach the same point. If you succeed totally, then will disappears. Being perfect, it dies. If you totally fail, then will-lessness becomes a recognition and surrender follows.

All efforts are on paths of the will. When someone tries with his whole heart and fails, then the other path opens. It is a sudden path! It is like an emergency door. In any air crash you have emergency doors. You may not even be aware of them. You need not be. Ordinarily, you open, you enter and you come out of the common, usual door. The emergency door opens only when there is an emergency and total failure. Now the usual door will not do.

Surrender is an emergency door. You begin with the usual - the will. When will fails totally, the emergency door opens and you are out of it. And if you succeed, then there is no need for the emergency door to be opened. You may not even become aware of it. You may reach your destination without the awareness that there was a door, an emergency door, which could have opened any moment.

So you cannot begin with surrender - no one can. Everyone has to begin with will. The only point to remember is: be total in it so that you can decide either way.

Question 2:

Three points to be understood. First, mind has two meanings: one - the content; another - the container. When I say "content", I mean thoughts, memories, the dead past, the accumulation of it. But that is only the content. If the whole content is thrown out, then the container remains. That container you can offer. These thoughts, memories, the past, are really worthless, not worth offering - but the container is. Mind has two meanings, so whenever mind is written with a capital M it means "the container". That container you can offer, and that is the meaning of the sutra: "The mind constantly arrowed towards That" -- the container.

"Constantly arrowed towards That" means now the container has no other contents than That - no thought, no memory, no past, no desires, no future, nothing. Now the mind as container has only one content - That. This is the offering.

These contents are really dead, because your mind absorbs them only when they are dead. For example, your mind either moves in the past or in the future. When it moves in the past, it moves among the dead - everything has died, nothing is alive. The past is nowhere except in your memory.

Where is the past? It is nowhere! You cannot find it anywhere. It is only in your memory. If I have some memory that is private, secret to me, and if it is just my memory and no one knows about it, then if I die, where will that memory be? It will not be anywhere. What will be the difference? Whether it ever was or not - what will be the difference? Whether it ever existed or not, there will be no difference.

The dead past is only in the memory. It is nowhere else. And because of this past, future becomes projected. Future is there only because of past. I loved you yesterday, so I want to love you tomorrow. I want to repeat the experience. I heard your song, so I want to hear it again, I want to repeat. The past wants to repeat itself, the dead wants to be born again, so the future is created.

These are the contents of the mind - past and future. If both these contents drop and your mind becomes just vacant, thoughtless, contentless, then you are just here and now, in the present, with no past, with no future. And here and now, That is present. In everything, simultaneously, That is present. When your past and future are not, you become aware of That. And in that awareness the experience of the That is the only content. This is what is meant by "Mind constantly arrowed is the offering" - nothing should be a content of the mind except the universal Existence.

When I say "offer the mind", I mean the container - because you can offer the contents, but they are meaningless, they are dead. When you offer the container - the living mind, the living capacity to know, the living capacity to be - when you offer that, it is an offering. And it is not ordinary: it is rare because it is arduous. And it is worth offering. And whenever there is a happening, whenever a Buddha or a Krishna or a Christ offers himself, offers the mind to the Divine, it is not only that a Buddha or a Jesus is enriched: the Divine is also enriched.

This will be very difficult to understand. When a Buddha is offered to the Divine, the Divine is enriched also - because even in Buddha the Divine flowers, even in Buddha the Divine reaches to a peak. So the Divine is not something set apart. It is not something which is not in us. So offering is not something made to someone else. It is to the common pool of consciousness, it is to the common Existence, the common Being. So when a Buddha is offered, Buddha is enriched because Buddha becomes the Total. But the Total is also enriched, because through Buddha a peak has been touched.

The Divine lives through you, so when you fall, the Divine falls. When you rise, the Divine rises. When you laugh the Divine laughs. When you weep the Divine weeps - because, He is not something set apart. He is not an observer sitting far off in heaven just looking. He is in you. So every act, every gesture is His. So whatsoever is done, is done with Him, through Him, by Him, to Him.

Stories are there. They are beautiful, they are poetic, and they show much. It is said that when Buddha achieved Enlightenment the whole universe became blissful: flowers were showered from the sky, deities began to dance around Him, Indra himself - the king of all the DEVAS - came down with folded palms. He surrendered at Buddha's feet. Trees began to flower out of season; birds began to sing out of season. The whole Existence became a celebration.

This is poetic. It has never happened like that, but in a deep sense it has happened. And it is symbolic - because it is how it should be. When somewhere someone achieves Buddhahood, how is it possible that the whole Existence is not enriched? And it will feel the vibrations; the whole universe will become happy. So through poetic symbols a fact has been shown.

But there are foolish, stupid minds, who go on thinking that either this should be a historic fact; otherwise it must be a lie - they have only two alternatives. They say, "This must be a historic fact, so where is the proof that flowers came upon the trees out of season? Where is the proof? Historic proof is needed, and if it is not there, then it is a lie!" They don't know that there is a realm beyond fact and beyond lies - the realm of poetry that expresses many things which cannot be expressed otherwise. It is just an indication that the whole world became a celebration. It must be so, it has to be so, it has been so!

So when this mind is offered, the contentless mind, simply the container - purified, pure, empty - when this container is offered, it is worth offering. Even the Divine is enriched, because the Divine becomes more divine. So another thing: God is not a static entity. He is a creative force, a dynamic force. So it is not only that man is evolving: God is evolving also. For those of us who are confined to ordinary logic, God cannot evolve, because to us, if he evolves, then He is not perfect. How can perfection evolve? Ordinary logic cannot conceive that something can be more perfect than perfect. It cannot conceive - it looks illogical!

But life is not confined to your logic, and there are possibilities that a perfection can be more perfect, more enriched. A perfection can evolve. It is perfection at every moment; still, it is not static. For example, a dancer: every gesture is perfect. Every moment, every gesture, is perfect. Still, there is a dynamic movement, and the total is more perfect than the parts. Each dance is perfect; still, another dance can be more perfect.

Mahavir has a very beautiful concept. He says that there are infinite perfections, multi-perfections, so God is evolving. To me, God is an evolving force; otherwise there can be no evolution. If He is not evolving, then there is no evolution, because through evolution He evolves. This is the concept of That: if there is a flower, then He is flowering there; if there is a man, then He is "manning" there. So whatsoever happens, it happens to Him; and nothing can happen without Him, outside of Him. So when Buddha happens, the Total becomes more.

Buddha says, "Do not go to any deity to worship. Be Enlightened, and they will come to worship you." And he shows and he says it not as a theory - he knows it! Deities have come to worship him. This has been an experience. So this is something to be pondered over. Only Buddhists and Jains have said this: that when you are Enlightened, the deities will come and worship you - because, they say, deities are not without desires, and when you are Enlightened you are desireless.

Even an Indra is not without desires. Deities may be living m heaven, but they are with desires. So with Buddha and Mahavir, human dignity was raised to its ultimate. If you can become desireless then everything will worship you, because the desireless consciousness is one with That. That contentless mind is not only worth offering: the Divine needs it, the Divine waits for it. When a child returns Enlightened, the father is enriched, the home is enriched.

Really, when a child returns Enlightened, when the father sees his child Enlightened, the father cannot be the same. So when a Buddha flowers, the whole universe flowers with him. He shows the potentiality, the peak possibility. Now you may not attain it, but you may rest assured that you can attain it. The whole universe becomes confident with a Buddha happening. The whole universe becomes a promise, a certainty. The same can happen to each particle, to each "monad", to each mind - and now it is up to you.

When Buddha is dying, Ananda says to Buddha, "When will you be back?"

Buddha says, "It is impossible. I will not be back again." Ananda begins to weep. Buddha asks him, "Why are you weeping? You have been with me for forty years continuously. If you are yet not profited by me, why do you ask for my next coming?" Ananda says, "It is not for me that I am asking. Even if we have not attained to That, you have attained, and we have become certain. And it is more than enough. We have become certain! Now this certainty cannot be lost. I am asking for others who have not seen you. So when will you be coming back? Because if they get a glimpse of such a certainty as you, only then can they proceed on the path.

"I am not asking for myself. For lives together I may wander, but this certainty cannot be lost. I have seen you, and I have seen the peak possibility. So it is not for me but for others. When will you be coming back? Because you are the only certainty - we look at you and doubts drop. We look at you - we may not be capable of doing the same, so we follow you - but in that moment of looking at you, we are you in a sense. So when will you be coming back?"

So the offering is not only worthwhile; it is being awaited. The Divine waits, the Total waits, for you to come enriched, to come back home with your potentiality actualized, for the seed to come not as a seed but as a full manifestation. But with a "content-full" mind, offering is worthless - you are offering rubbish.

Question 3:

The first meaning of "total" is that you are in it without any part outside - with no withholding, with no division. So any method of meditation will do. If you are totally in it, absorbed, not a part standing outside, if you can just cry "Ram" totally with not a part as an observer in you, if you become the cry and not even a part is observing that you are crying "Ram", if you become the cry - then it is total, and then a single cry is enough. There is no need to go on repeating "Ram-Ram-Ram" - there is no need. One total cry in which nothing is left is enough. So only you can decide whether you are total in something or not.

The second meaning of totality is that whatsoever you are doing, whatever technique of meditation, your doing must be without any doubt. A very minute doubt will make it partial; a very small doubt will not allow it to be total. But that also you can decide - whether there is any doubt. We go on doing things with doubts inside. Those doubts kill every effort. It is not so much that you are not reaching because of not enough effort. It is more because of your doubts standing behind. So whatsoever you do. that sceptical part of the mind goes on denying, goes on waiting to be sceptical. Even if you achieve something, the doubting mind will create doubts. Totality means there is no doubt. Effort becomes total.

And, thirdly, we have many layers of energy, so you may be making a total effort on the first layer and you may not be aware of the second layer at all. All the layers should become committed, involved, then it becomes total. So when you are doing with one layer and you feel you are doing, totally, don't be deceived so soon. Go on doing - and when you feel that "Now nothing can be done; I have done everything and there is no energy left," continue! This is the moment: continue! And soon you will become aware that a sudden rush of energy is coming to you from the second layer. A new earth has been broken. Then go on doing this. And when you are totally involved with all the layers, how will you know?

There are signs. One sign is that when all the layers have been broken and your total energy is involved, total energy is involved, you will never feel exhausted. You will never feel that the point has come when "I cannot do more." That feeling always comes when one layer is exhausted. When the second layer is exhausted, that feeling will come again. And there are seven layers. When the seventh is broken, that feeling will never come again - never! You will not feel that "Now I cannot do more." You will go on doing more and more and more, and you will feel that still more is left. Then you are total in it.

The total is never exhausted, remember. Only the part is exhausted. The total is never exhausted! You cannot empty it: the more you empty it, the more it is filled. So whatsoever happens with your totality cannot be exhausted. If love happens with your totality, then love cannot be exhausted. If meditation-happens with your totality, then meditation cannot be exhausted.

I am reminded of Bokuju, a Zen patriarch who Realized, who became Enlightened, when he was twenty years of age. But he continued meditating. His teacher came and said, "Bokuju what are you doing? Now there is no need. I see you have become Enlightened."

But Bokuju said, "But how can I end meditation? No end-is coming. I go on and on and on, and I am not exhausted. So how can I end it? How can I come out of it? I see no end to it!"

The teacher said, "When one falls into the Infinite, there is only a beginning: there is no end. Come out of it. Come out and move! Of course, I know now you cannot come out of it. Move! It will be with you. Don't go on sitting!"

He was sitting for seven weeks continuously after his Enlightenment. He was just sitting. For his teacher, for the monastery, there were seven weeks. He became Enlightened: there was light all around; he was transformed. Everyone became aware that something had happened. His teacher came and went, came and went every day. He waited for when he would open his eyes and he would talk about it, but he was not opening his eyes. Then ultimately the teacher had to stop him and ask him to come out.

Bokuju said, "But how can I come out? It is not ending at all. There is no end to it. And they say, 'You have been sitting here for seven weeks continuously. It is so long!' But I don't remember. I feel as if not a single moment has passed. There has been no time for me."

So when the total energy is there working, there will be no end to it and time will drop. You cannot feel time. You will feel time only with partial energy because it is exhausted. Time is felt only with something limited; otherwise time cannot be felt. Time is really a feeling of limitations. So whatsoever has a limit, you will feel time around it. It is relative.

So this strange phenomenon happens: if your whole day has been vacant without any events, just empty, nothing of any note, nothing worthwhile, the whole day just passed by, then time will seem to be more when it is passing. Unoccupied time will look very long. You will feel that the day is not going to end at all, that it has become so lengthy. But that is only when it is passing. If you remember afterwards, then the day will look very small - because later on you cannot feel the time without events, so the day will look very small.

We feel time around certain things. So when you are on a holiday and many things are happening, on that day the day will look small. Because it was so filled, it becomes comparatively small. But if you remember your holiday when you are back home, it looks very long - because each event spread in a sequence becomes very long.

Bokuju said, "I don't know about time. What has happened lo time? It stopped." Mahavir says that the basic element that changes totally when one enters Samadhi is time - there is a stopping of time.

Someone asked Jesus, "What will happen in your Kingdom of God?" and he said, "There will be time no longer." This is a basic indication that time will stop, because time can be felt only with partial energies.

That's why a child feels time less, because he is more full. An old man feels time more, because he is now empty, emptying. So with an old man time becomes a problem. With a child time is not a problem at all; he lives in a timelessness. And the same happens with civilization: whenever a civilization becomes over-conscious of time, it means the civilization is going, by and by, towards death. Whenever a civilization is absolutely unaware of time, it means it is in its childhood - innocent. It is not old. Time consciousness means death is coming near. So the more death you feel, the more time you will feel.

In India we have not felt time so much because we have a conception of a circle of continuous births. So each time you die, it is not death - again you are reborn. So, really, India destroyed the concept of death totally. It is not a death at all if you are reborn again. That's why India never became time conscious. We are so lethargic, and we can waste time so easily. The reason is that death is not there in the Indian mind; after death there is birth. So time is infinite, and there is no hurry.

But the American mind, the Western mind, has become very time conscious, and the reason is Christianity - because once you say that there is only one life and that this death is going to be the final one, that there is no rebirth, then death becomes very meaningful. And everything has to be taken in reference. If death is so final and occurs only once, time becomes very valuable. It cannot be lost. And a strange phenomenon happens: the more you become conscious of time, the less you can use it. You can only hurry and run. The less you can use it, because you are in such a hurry. And to use time you need a very, very patient attitude, a very slow-moving attitude; then only can you use it.

So when your mind is in a total effort of will, there will be no time and there will be no end to the energy coming. But these are all inner subjective feelings. You can ask, "Can we be deceived?" Yes, deception is possible. But whenever deception is there, you will become aware. The awareness will come in this form: in any inner feeling, any inner realization, if you become doubtful whether it is true or imaginary, then it is certainly imaginary - because the Truth is so self-evident that you cannot doubt it. The doubting mind just disappears.

So sometimes someone comes to me and says, "Tell me whether my kundalini has risen or not. My teacher says my kundalini has risen, so tell me." So I tell them that unless it becomes self-evident to you, do not believe anyone. When that phenomenon happens, you will not go to ask anyone whether it has happened or not. If someone comes and asks you, "Tell me whether I am alive or not," what will you say to him? Certainly he is dead! Even if this has to be asked, then certainly he is dead.

Life is a self-evident fact; no proof is needed. How do you feel your life? Do you have any proof of it? Is there any proof? How do you feel your life? How do you know you are alive? Is there ever a doubt whether "I am alive or not"?

Descartes began in that way. He began to seek some indubitable fact which cannot be doubted, so he went on: God can be doubted, heaven and hell can be doubted, everything can be doubted.  Then ultimately he stumbled upon himself. and he began to think. "Can I doubt myself? Can I doubt about myself? Can I say I am or I am not?" Then he stumbled upon a self-evident truth, and he said, "Even if I say I am not, I am; so I cannot doubt this fact." This fact begins to be his foundation. So he says, "COGITO ERGO SUM - I think, therefore I am. Even if I doubt, I think therefore I am. So I cannot deny it."

Life is a self-evident fact; you cannot doubt it. The same happens when more life happens to you. When you enter more life, when you enter total life, it is self-evident, no proof is needed, no witness is needed, Even if the whole world denies it, you can laugh. The whole world may think you are mad, but you can laugh.

These are self-evident realizations. so I can describe them. But when they happen, you know; when they are there, you know. And the knowing is evident in itself: it needs no outer proof, no outer witness. Your knowing becomes the only evidence.

That's why sometimes mystics seem to be arrogant. They are not. They are the most humble people possible. But they look arrogant, and the arrogance is felt by us because they are so self-evidently true. They won't give you any proofs, they won't give you any arguments, they won't give you any reasons. They say, "I know!"

This looks to us like arrogance, but the same is so if I ask you, "How do you know you are alive?" What can you say? You can say only, "I know!" Is that arrogance? It is a simple fact. How can you express it except by saying, "I know and I KNOW IT SELF-EVIDENTLY. Even for me there are no reasons why I am. I simply am."

These Upanishads are such self-evident statements. They won't argue with you. They go on telling, "This is this." You cannot ask why. You can only ask how. They can tell you how you can achieve this. You cannot ask, "Why? Why is this this?" So the moment you happen to be in totality, in that totality you will know it. And it is such a phenomenon that you can doubt everything except it. You can doubt the whole world - except it. If the whole world stands against it as a witness, even then your feeling of its being true cannot be shaken.

That's how a Jesus can die, a Mansoor can be killed. They can be killed, but they cannot be changed, converted. They cannot be converted! You can kill a Mansoor: you cannot convert him. He will go on saying the same thing. Mansoor was saying, "I am the God." In Mohammedan eyes, that is KUFRA - heresy, egoism. It is not a religious expression. A religious person must be humble, and this Mansoor goes on telling, "I am the God - ANAL HAK, AHAM BRAHMASMI - I am the Brahma." So they killed him. They thought that when they began to kill him he would come back to his senses.

But he went on laughing, and someone asked, "Mansoor, why are you laughing?" Mansoor said, "I am laughing because you cannot kill a God. You cannot kill a God! AHAM BRAHMASMI! ANAL HAK! I am the God!" Jesus says as his last words, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." He asked the Divine to forgive all those who were crucifying him because, "They do not know what they are doing." But Mansoor and Jesus, they are very arrogantly certain. That certainty comes from the self- evidentness of Truth. And everything can be doubted, but never a feeling that comes in your totality.

If you are a total will, then you will come to know something self-evident. If you are total surrender, then also you will come to know something self-evident. Even if you are a total doubter, then also you can come to something which is self-evident. But totality is everywhere a basic condition. You must be total in it, wholely into it.

 

Question 1:

LIGHT itself is colourless. All colours belong to light, but light is not a colour. Light is just the absence of colors. Light is white; white is not a color. When light is divided, analyzed or passed through a prism, then it is divided into seven colors.

Mind also works as a prism - an inner prism. The outer light, if passed through a prism, is divided into seven colors; the inner light, if passed through mind, is divided into seven colors. So the experience of colors in the inward journey means that you are still in mind. The experience of light is beyond mind, but the experience of colors is within mind. So if you are still seeing colors, then you are still within mind. The mind has not been transcended.

So the first thing to remember is that the experience of colors is within mind, because mind works as a prism through which the inner light is divided. So first one begins to experience colors; then colors dissolve and only light remains.

Light is white; white is not a color. When all the colors are one, white is created. When all the colors are one, then you feel white. When all the colors are there undivided, then you experience white.

When no color is there, then you experience black. Black and white are both not colors. When no color is present, then there is black. When all colors are present, undivided, then there is white. All the colors are just divided light.

If you are feeling colors inside, then one thing: you are within mind. So the experience of colors is mental; it is not spiritual. The experience of light is spiritual, but not of colors - because when mind is no more you cannot experience colors. Then only light is experienced.

Secondly, there is no fixed sequence of colors. There cannot be because each mind differs. But the experience of light is exactly the same. Buddha experiencing light or Jesus experiencing light the experience is the same. It cannot be otherwise because that which creates differences is no more.

Mind creates differences.

We are here - we are different because of our minds. If mind is no more, then the factor which divides, which differentiates, is not there. So the experience of light is similar, but the experiences of colors are different and the sequence differs. That's why, in each religion, a different sequence has been given. Some believe that this color comes first and that comes in the end; others believe quite differently. That difference is really the difference of minds. For example, a person who is fearful, deeply rooted in fear, will experience yellow as the first color. The first color coming in will be yellow, because yellow is the color of death - not only symbolically, but actually also.

If you take three bottles - one red, one yellow, one just white, plain white - and just put into these three bottles the same water, the yellow bottle will deteriorate first. Then the others will deteriorate.

The red bottle of water will deteriorate in the end, last. Yellow is a death color. That's why Buddha chose yellow as the robe for his bhikkus - because Buddha says that to die from this existence absolutely is Nirvana. So yellow was chosen as a death color.

Hindus have chosen ochre, a shade of red, as the color for their sannyasins, because red or ochre is the color of life - just the opposite of yellow. It helps you to be more alive, more radiant. It creates more energy - not only symbolically, but actually, physically, chemically. So a person who is very energetic, alive, deeply rooted in the love of life, will experience red as the first color, because his mind is more open to red. A fear-oriented person is more open to yellow, so the sequence will differ. A very silent person, one who is very still, will experience blue as the first. So it will depend.

There is no fixed sequence because there is no fixed sequence of your mind. Each mind differs in orientation in tendencies, in structure, in character. Each mind differs! Because of this difference the sequence will be different. But one thing is certain: each color has a fixed meaning. The sequence is not fixed, it cannot be, but the meaning of the color is fixed.

For example, yellow is a death color. So whenever it happens first, it means you are fear-oriented - that your mind's first opening is for fear. So wherever you move, the first thing you will notice will be fear, or the first reaction of your mind in any new situation will be fear. Whenever something strange is there, the first response will be fear-filled. If red is the first color in your inner journey, then you are more rooted in the love of life, and your reactions will be different. You will feel more alive, and your reactions will be more life affirmative.

A person whose first experience is yellow will always interpret everything in terms of death, and a person whose first experience is red will always interpret his experiences in terms of life. Even if someone is just dying, he will begin to think that he must be reborn somewhere else. Even in death he will interpret rebirth. But for the person whose first experience is yellow, even if someone is born he will begin to think that he is going to die some day. These will be the attitudes. So a red-oriented person can be happy even. in death, but a yellow-oriented person cannot be happy even in birth. He will be negative. Fear is a negative emotion. Everywhere he will find something to be sad and negative about.

For example, I said that a very silent person will feel blue, but this means a silent person who is inactive at the same time. A silent person who is active at the same time will feel green as the first experience. Mohammed chose green as the color for his fakirs. Islam has green as the symbolic color. That is the color of their flag. Green is both - silent, still, but also active. Blue is just silent and inactive. So a person like Lao Tzu will first begin to feel blue; a person like Mohammed will begin to feel green first. So the symbolic system of colors is a fixed thing, but the sequence is not fixed.

Another thing has to be noted, and that is that seven colors are pure colors. But you can mix two, you can mix three, and a new color comes out. So it may be that you never experience pure color in the beginning. You may experience three colors, their combination, or two colors or four colors. Then again it depends on your mind. If you have a very confused mind, then your confusion will be shown in the colors.

Now they have evolved in the West a color test in psychology. and it has been proving very meaningful. Just giving you many colors and allowing you to choose the first preference, then the second, then the third, then the fourth, decides much, shows much. If you are sincere and honest, then it shows much about your mind, because you cannot choose without any inner cause. If you choose yellow first, the logic of it is that then red will be the last. It has its own logic. If death is your first choice, then life is going to be your last, you will put red as the last. And one who chooses red first will automatically choose yellow as the last. The sequence will also show the structure of the mind.

But once, twice, thrice - the cards are given to you again and again - and the strange thing is that the first time you choose yellow, your first preference, then the second time you are given the same cards but you don't choose yellow as your first preference. The third time you choose something else, and the whole sequence changes. So the cards are given seven times. If a person goes on choosing yellow as the first color continuously for seven times, then it shows a very fixed mind - very much fixed - a fixation. This man is constantly rooted in fear. He must be living in many phobias, because everything will take the shape of fear. But if he is given the cards another seven times and now he changes - once blue and once green and once something else - then there is a double sequence. One sequence in one series and another sequence in the second series - that also shows much. In the second series, if he never repeats one color as his first preference, that shows he is very fluctuating and nothing can be decisively said about him. He will be unpredictable. And the sequence also changes because the mind is changing constantly.

Recently, because of LSD, marijuana and other drugs, many things have come up from the unconscious mind. When Aldous Huxley told about his experiences with LSD, he talked as if he had entered heaven. Everything was beautiful, utopian, colorful, poetic. Nothing was bad in it.

There was nothing like a nightmare - nothing of fear or death. Everything was alive, abundantly alive, rich. But when Zaehner took it, he entered hell. With the same LSD he entered hell, and it was a long nightmare - horrorfilled. Both misinterpreted their experiences. Aldous Huxley thought that this was a quality of LSD and that because of LSD this heaven experience had come up. Zaehner interpreted quite diametrically opposite from Huxley and he said, "It is just a nightmare, a deep horror. One must not go into it - it can create madness." But the interpretation is on the same lines: he also thought that it was LSD which had created this experience.

The reality is different. It was LSD working only as a catalytic agent. LSD cannot create heaven, cannot create hell. LSD can only open you, and whatsoever is in you is projected. So if Zaehner's experience is absolutely colorless it is because of Zaehner's mind, and if Huxley's experience is colorful it is because of Huxley's mind. LSD can only give you a glimpse into your own mind. It can open your own deeper layers. So if you have a suppressed unconscious inside, then you may enter hell; or if you have nothing suppressed, if you have a relaxed unconscious, a natural one, then you may enter heaven - but that will depend on what type of mind you have. The same happens when one goes deep into an inner journey: whatsoever you encounter is your own mind. Remember this - whatsoever you encounter, it is your own mind.

The color sequence is also your own mind's sequence, but one has to go beyond colors. Whatsoever the sequence, one has to go beyond colors. So one must continuously remember that colors are mental. They cannot exist without mind - the mind working as a prism. When you go beyond mind, there is light - colorless, absolutely white. And when this whiteness begins to be there, only then have you gone beyond mind.

Jaina monk

Jains have chosen white as the color for their monks and for their nuns, and the choice is meaningful. As Buddhists have chosen yellow and Hindus ochre, Jains have chosen white, because they say only when white begins does spirituality really begin. Mohammed has chosen green because he says if silence is dead, then it is meaningless. Silence must be active, it must participate in the world, so a saint must also be a soldier. He has chosen green. All colors are meaningful.

There is a Sufi sect which uses black - black clothes for their fakirs. Black is also very, very meaningful. It shows absence of color, everything absent. It is just the contrary of white. Sufis say that unless we become totally absent, the God cannot be present to us. So one must be like black - absolutely absent, a nonentity, a nonbeing, just a nothingness. They have chosen black.

Colors are meaningful. So with whatsoever you choose you show much. Even your clothes indicate much. Nothing is just accidental. If you have chosen a particular color for your clothes, it is not accidental. You may not be aware why you have chosen it, but science is aware - and it shows much. Your clothes show much because they belong to your mind, and your mind chooses. You cannot choose without your mind having certain leanings, certain tendencies.

So the sequence will be different, but all sequences and all colors belong to your mind. Don't be bothered much about them. Whatsoever color is felt, just go on passing it; don't stick to it. Sticking to it is the natural tendency. If some beautiful color is there, one becomes stuck to it - don't. Move!

Remember that colors belong to mind. And if some color is fearful, one goes back so that it is not felt. That too is not good, because if you go back no transformation is possible. Pass through it! Don't go back. It is your mind: pass through it! Even if a color is fearful, even if ugly, even if chaotic or beautiful or harmonious, whatsoever, go through it.

You must reach a point where colors are not, but only light remains. That entry into light is spiritual. Everything before that is mental.

 

Question 2:

Three things to be remembered: one, you must be consciously frustrated about the life outside - consciously frustrated! We are all frustrated but unconsciously. And whenever we are frustrated unconsciously, we only change objects of desire. But one object changed for another will not help you to go in. You remain outside. You change one thing for another, then for another. Because you are frustrated by object A, you substitute your desire by object B. Then you are frustrated by object B, so you go on to C. You go on changing objects because you are only unconsciously frustrated. If you become conscious, then you will not change objects - you will change direction.

"I can change. I can love one woman, then another, then another. I can love one man, then another, then another."

This is unconscious frustration. So I think that A is not good and B might be, so I choose B. Then B is not good and - who knows? - C may be, so I choose C. This is unconscious frustration. If you become conscious, then it is not a question of A, B or C. It is a question of the very relationship, of the very expectation, of the very desire. This desire to get happiness through someone else is the root. You go on changing persons, but this direction is never changed.

When I say become consciously frustrated, I mean know well that persons are irrelevant. Unless you change your direction in the search for happiness nothing is going to happen. So there are two ways: either change object A for object B or change direction A for direction B. A is outward-going, B is inward-going - so change the direction. By changing the direction you begin to change yourself; by changing objects you remain the same.

Changing Direction

I can go on changing objects for years and years, and lives and lives. I will remain the same. And with every object, since I am the same, the same is going to be the result, the same suffering is going to follow. When I say be consciously frustrated, I mean don't be frustrated by others - be frustrated by yourself, be frustrated about yourself. Then only does the direction change.

We are all frustrated by everyone else. The husband is frustrated by the wife, and the wife is frustrated by the husband; and the son is frustrated by the father, and the father is frustrated by the son. Everyone is frustrated by others. This is the outgoing mind. Be frustrated with yourself, and then the direction changes: you begin to be ingoing. And unless you are frustrated with yourself there is no possibility for transformation.

A Buddha is not really frustrated by the world. If he is frustrated by the world, he must try to change the world for another world, he must try to get another world. He is really frustrated with himself, so he begins to change himself. The object of frustration becomes the object of transformation.

So the inward journey begins, the search for inner life begins. Only when you begin to feel that outside is nothing but darkness. And unless you turn your eyes inwards, light is not to be found. So the first thing: be consciously frustrated. But this much is not enough. It is necessary, but not enough, because you can be frustrated with yourself and can go on living in frustration. Then you will be just a living corpse. You will be just dead - a burden to yourself. This is necessary, but not enough.

The second thing to realize is that whatsoever you are, it is because of you, yourself, are responsible.

Instead, we say, "I am like this because of my destiny, because of the Divine Creator, because of the forces of nature, because of heredity, because of environment, because of society." Whatsoever I am, I am always because of something or someone else. It may be the God in heaven, or it may be the heredity in the books of biology, or it may be just the society of the communists, or it may be just the childhood trauma of Freudians - but something else. Whatever the case is, you are not responsible.

The society has gone on changing causes. Sometimes it is God: then you are at ease. Then whatsoever you are, you cannot help it. Then sometimes it is karma: it is past actions which have produced you as you are, and nothing can be done. Then communism says it is the society. Communism says that it is not consciousness which determines the society; on the contrary. it is the society which determines consciousness. You are just a cog in the wheel. You have been determined. You have been manipulated. You are a by-product, so you are not responsible.

Then Freudians say that it is not economics as Marx says. Really, it is the childhood which determines you. So whatsoever you are, your seven years of childhood have made you that way. Now you cannot be a child again, and those seven years cannot be changed. So whatsoever you are, you are. At the most, through psychoanalysis, you can come to an adjustment with yourself. You can begin to feel: "Okay, now nothing can be done. And, I am as I am." Again you begin to deteriorate.

Your Are Responsible

You can be frustrated with yourself: this is a negative part. The positive, the second thing, is to remember that whatsoever you are, you are responsible. Society may have played a part, and even destiny may have played a part, and childhood also may have played a part, but ultimately you are responsible. This feeling is the base of all religion. So if Freudians win and Marxists win, religion will disappear - because the base of religion is the possibility that you can transform, the possibility that you can change yourself. And this possibility depends on the feeling of whether you are responsible for yourself or not.

If I am just determined by my cells, by heredity, then what can I do? I cannot change my bio-cells. That is not possible. And if my bio-cells have a built-in program, they will go on unfolding. What can I do? And if God has determined everything, then what can I do? And it makes no difference whether it is God or biocells or heredity or childhood - it makes no difference! The basic thing is that if you are putting your responsibility on something else, X-Y-Z, you cannot go in.

So the second thing: remember, whatsoever you are - if you are sexual - you are responsible. If you are angry, anger-filled, if you are afraid, if fear is your chief characteristic, then you are responsible. Everything else may have played a part, but only a part, and that part also can be played only because you cooperated. And if you destroy your cooperation this very moment, you will be different. So the second positive thing is to be constantly aware that whatsoever you are, you are responsible.

It is difficult. To feel frustrated is very easy. Even to feel frustrated with oneself is not very difficult, but to feel that "whatsoever I am, I am responsible" is very difficult - very difficult, because then there is no excuse. This is one thing. And, secondly, if whatsoever I am, I am responsible for it, then if I am not changing. I am responsible even for that. If I am not transforming, then no one else but I am guilty. That's why we create many theories - to escape from one's own responsibility.

Responsibility is the basis of all religious transformation. You may have heard someone say that to believe in God is the base of religion. It is not! One can be religious without any god, and one can be very irreligious with all the gods. Someone else says it is rebirth, reincarnation, that is the base. It is not, because you can believe in reincarnation and your life's duration becomes longer, but how, by just a longer duration, can you become religious? Time is not the factor to make you religious. You may be eternal: how does it help you to be religious?

No, the real thing, the base of all religiousness, is the feeling of responsibility - you are responsible for yourself. Then suddenly something opens in you. If you are responsible, then you can change. With this you can enter inwards. So feel frustrated with yourself.

Nietzsche has said somewhere, very beautifully, that that day will be the doomsday when no one feels frustrated with oneself, because then there is no possibility for further evolution. But I must add hurriedly that even if everyone feels frustrated, but no one feels responsible for it, that will be an even greater doomsday.

Frustration is negative. Feel responsible positively, and you gain much power. The moment you know that if you are bad it is because of you, then you can be good. Then it is in your hands. You gain power, you become powerful. You release much energy, and only this releasing of energy can be used for the inner journey, just as when an atom is split, much energy is released. That is what is meant by atomic energy. Just like that, if in your mind this thing goes deep that "I am responsible for whatsoever I am, and whatsoever I like to be I can be," this concept will release much energy. And only with that energy can you go to the inner light.

And, thirdly, remain continuously in discontent unless the light is achieved - continuously in discontent! Again, that is one of the most basic qualities of a religious mind. Ordinarily we think that a religious man is a contented man. That is nonsense. He looks contented because he has the discontent of another dimension. He looks contented. He can live in a poor house, he can live in ordinary clothes, he can live naked, he can live under a tree. He can look contented, not because he is contented with these things, but because, really, his discontent has gone towards other things, and now he cannot be bothered with these things.

He is so discontented with the inner revolution, so discontented hoping for inner light, that he cannot bother about these things. These things have just become peripheral. Really, they don't mean anything to him. It is not that he is contented - they don't mean anything, they are irrelevant! They are somewhere on the periphery; he is not concerned. But he lives in a deep discontent, in a fiery discontent, and only that discontent can lead you inwards.

Remember, it is discontent which leads you outside. If you are discontented with your house, then you can make a bigger one. If you are discontented with your financial position, you can change it. In the outward journey, it is discontent which leads you on and on. The same is the factor in the inward journey also. Be discontented! Unless you achieve light, unless you transcend mind, be discontent, remain discontented - this is the third point.

These three points:

1) frustration with oneself, not with others;
2) responsibility on oneself, not on others; and
3) a new discontent for something which is inner - these will help.

Even in a single moment it is possible to reach the ultimate goal. But then you must be absolutely discontented. Then lukewarm discontents will not do. Then you must be uncompromising. Then nothing should deter you, nothing should come in your way. Whatsoever happens outside, you must be unconcerned about it, because you have no energy to move that way. All the energy is moving inwards. These three things can help you.

These are just helps. The central thing is meditation. Meditate, and with these helps the inner light can be achieved. It is there, it is not far off - only you have no discontent, only you have no longing for it, or your longing is just dissipated outside. Accumulate it, collect it, and turn the direction. The arrow must not move from you towards the world. The arrow must move from you towards yourself, to the center. So meditation has to be done! These three are just helps. Without meditation these three will not do anything, but meditation can do even without them. They are just helps.

But when I say meditation can do even without them, don't misunderstand me, don't think that they are not needed. For ninety-nine percent of people those helps are a must, because unless these three things are there you are not going to meditate at all. Only for one percent these three are not needed - not because they are inessential, but because meditation is such a whole-hearted effort in itself that nothing is needed as a side help.

I remember a Sufi mystic, Hassan. He went to his teacher and he asked the teacher, "Tell me, what am I to do?"

The teacher began to explain to him; he was going to deliver a long lecture. This Hassan was just new to him, he didn't know him. He simply said, "Meditation.." This was just the beginning word. He was going to tell many things, but first he simply said, "Meditation..." Hassan closed his eyes. The teacher looked at him and said, "Are you feeling sleepy?" but he had gone.

The teacher had to wait for hours. When he came back, the teacher said, "What were you doing here? I just began to explain, and you closed your eyes. For what have you come to me?" Hassan said, "But you said the key word to me. You said 'meditation'. It is more than enough. What more is needed now? I went in, and I am thankful that you gave me the key."

But this one percent type is rare. To find a Hassan is rare. It is rare: just a word can click something. He was just on the verge - just a push: "meditation", he hears a word and takes the jump.

Even this may not have been necessary. Many times it has happened that a bird flies in the sky, and someone achieves Enlightenment. Not even the word "meditation" is uttered. Just a bird flies in the sky against the sun, and someone achieves meditation. A dry leaf falls down from the tree, and someone sees it and achieves - and achieves! These people are just on the verge. Anything absolutely irrelevant-looking can do it. How does it make sense?

Lao Tzu achieved his Enlightenment. He was just sitting under a tree and a dry leaf fell down. He looked at the fallen leaf, and he began to dance. And if anyone would ask him he would say, "How can I teach you? It is very difficult. Sit under a tree, let a dry leaf fall down, look at it, and it happens - and one begins to dance!" And he was really not joking. This had happened to him.

But such a simple, innocent mind is rare. He was meditating and meditating, upon life, upon death - and then a sudden dry leaf drops down, and everything opens. Life disappears, death becomes the reality. And in the dropping of the leaf he sees his own death, and everything is finished. But this is rare. For ninety-nine percent of people helps are musts, so don't misunderstand me.

Nietzsche

Question 3:

It is difficult. First thing: three are the basic types - intellectual (cognitive), emotional (emotive), and, thirdly, active. These are the three basic types.

"Intellectual" means one whose authentic urge is to know. He can stake his life for knowing. Someone working on poison can take poison just to know what happens. We cannot conceive of it. He looks stupid - because he will die! And what is the meaning of knowing a thing if you are going to die? What will you do by this knowledge? But then the intellectual type puts knowing above living, above life. To know is life for him, not to know is death for him. To know is his love, not to know is just to be useless.

A Socrates, a Buddha, a Nietzsche, they are in search of knowing what being is, what we are - to them this is basic. Socrates says an uncomprehended life is not worth living. If you don't know what life is, then it is meaningless. For us it may not look at all meaningful, the statement may not look meaningful at all, because we go on living and we don't feel the need to know what life is. This is the type who lives to know. Knowledge is his love. This type developed philosophy. Philosophy means love of knowledge, to know.

The second type is emotive. To feel! Knowledge is meaningless unless one feels it. Something becomes meaningful to them only when one feels it - one must feel it! Feeling is through a deeper center - the heart. Knowing is through the first center - intellect. One must feel! Poets belong to this category: painters, dancers, musicians. Knowing is not enough. It is just dry, it is without heart, heartless. Feeling! So an intellectual type can dissect a flower in order to know what it is, but a poet cannot dissect it. He can love it, and how can love dissect? He can feel it, and he knows that only through feeling is the real knowing.

So it may be that a scientist knows more about a flower, but still, a poet cannot be convinced that he knows more. A poet knows that he knows more, and he knows deeply. A scientist is only acquainted - the poet knows from heart to heart, he has a talk with the flower heart to heart. He has not dissected it. He doesn't know what the chemistry of it is. He doesn't know! He may not even know the name, to what species this flower belongs, but he says, "I know the very spirit."

Hui-Hai, a Zen painter, was ordered by the Chinese Emperor to paint some flowers for his palace. Hui-Hai said, "Then I will have to live with flowers."

But the Emperor said, "There is no need. In my garden every flower is there. You go and paint!"

Hui Hai said, "Unless I feel the flowers, how can I paint? I must know the spirit. And by eyes how can the spirit be known, and by hands how can the spirit be touched? So I will have to live in intimacy with them.

"Sometimes with closed eyes, just sitting by their side, just feeling the breeze that communicates, just feeling the scent that comes, I can be just in a silent communion with them. Sometimes the flower is just a bud, sometimes the flower flowers. Sometimes the flower is young and the mood is different, and sometimes the flower becomes old and death lingers. And sometimes the flower is happy and celebrating, and sometimes the flower is sad. So how can I just go and paint? I will have to live with the flowers. And the flower that was born, one day will die! I must know the whole biography. I must live with it from its birth to death, and I must feel it in its so many multi-multi moods.

"I must know how it feels in the night when darkness is there, and how it feels in the morning when the sun has come up, and how, when a bird flies and a bird sings, how the flower feels then. How, when storm winds come, and how when everything is silent... I must know it in its multiplicity of being - intimately - as a friend, as a participant, as a witness, as a lover. I must be related to it! Only then can I paint it, and then too I cannot promise, because the flower may prove such a vastness that I may not be capable of painting it. So I cannot promise, I can only try."

Six months passed, and the Emperor became impatient. Then he said, "Where is that Hui-hai? Is he still trying to commune?"

The gardener said, "We cannot disturb him. He has become so intimate with the trees that sometimes we pass just nearby and we cannot feel that a man is there! - he has become just a tree. He goes on contemplating."

Six months had passed. The Emperor came and he said, "What are you doing? When will you paint?"

Hui-Hai said, "Don't disturb me. If I am to paint, I must forget about painting completely. So don't let me remember again! Don't disturb me! How can I live intimately if there is some purpose? How is intimacy possible if I am just here as a painter and just trying to be intimate because I have to paint? What nonsense! No business is possible here - and don't come again. When the right time comes I will come myself, but I cannot promise. The right time may come or it may not come."

And for three years the Emperor waited. Then Hui-Hai came. He came into his royal court, and the Emperor said, "Now don't paint it because you have become just like a flower. I see in you all the flowers I have seen! In your eyes, in your gestures, in your moving, in your walking, you have become just a flower."

Hui-Hai said, "I have come just to say that I cannot paint, because the man who was thinking to paint is no more."

This is a different way, that of the emotive type who knows by feeling. For the intellectual type, even to feel he has to know first. He knows first, and only then can he feel. His feeling is also through knowing. Then there is a third type: active - a creative type. He cannot remain with knowing or feeling. He has to create. He can know only through creation. Unless he creates something, he cannot know it. Only through being a creator does he become a knower.

This third type lives in action. Now what do I mean by "action"? Many dimensions are possible, but this third type is always action-oriented. He will not ask what life means, what life is, He will ask, "What is life to do? What is it for? What to create?" If he can create, then he is at ease. His creations may differ: he may be a creator of human beings, he may be a creator of a society, he may be a creator of a painting - but creativity is there. For example, this Hui-Hai: he was not an active type, so he dissolved himself into feeling totally. Had he been an active type, he would have painted. Only through painting would he have been fulfilled. So these are three types.

Many things have to be understood: one, I said that Buddha and Nietzsche both belong to the first type - but Buddha belongs rightly and Nietzsche belongs wrongly. If an intellectual type really develops, then he will become a Buddha; but if he goes on a wrong path, if he goes berserk and misses the point, he will become a Nietzsche, he will go mad. Through knowing he will not be a Realized soul; through knowing he will become mad! Through knowing he will not come to a deep trust. Through knowing he will go on creating doubts, doubts, doubts, and ultimately, webbed in his own doubts, he will just be insane. Buddha and Nietzsche both belong to the same type, but they are two extremes. Nietzsche can become a Buddha, Buddha can become a Nietzsche. If a Buddha goes wrong, he will be mad. If a Nietzsche goes right, he will be a Realized soul.

In the feeling type I will name Meera and De Sade. Meera belongs to the right kind. If feeling goes right, it develops into a love of the Divine - but if it goes wrong, then it becomes sexual peversity. De Sade belongs to the same type, but his feeling goes on wrongly, and then he becomes just a peverted man, just abnormally insane. If the feeling type goes wrong, he becomes sexually perverted. If the intellectual type goes wrong, he becomes skeptically mad.

And, thirdly, action: Hitler and Gandhi both belong to the third type. If it goes right, then a Gandhi is there. If it goes wrong, then a Hitler. Both belong to action. They cannot live without doing something. But doing can be just insane, and a Hitler is insane. He was doing, but the doing became destructive. If the active type goes right, then he is creative; if wrong, then he becomes destructive.

These are three basic pure types. But no one is a pure type: that is the difficulty. These are just types! No one is a pure type; everyone is just mixed. And all the three are in everyone. So, really, it is not a question of to which type you belong; the real question is which type is predominant. Just to explain it to you I divided. No one is a pure type, no one can be - because all the three are in you. If all three are in a balance, then you have a harmony; if all the three are unbalanced, then you go berserk, insane. That is the difficulty in deciding. So decide which is predominant - that is your type.

How to decide which is predominant? How to know to what type I belong or what type is more significant to me, primary to me? All the three will be there, but one will be secondary. So there are two criteria to be remembered: one, if you are a knowing type, then all your experiences basically will begin with knowing, never with anything else. For example, if a knowing type falls in love with someone, he cannot fall at first sight. He cannot! Impossible! First he must know, be acquainted, and it will be a long procedure. Decision can come only through a long knowing process. That's why this type of person will always miss many opportunities - because a moment's decision is needed, and this type cannot decide in the moment.

That's why this type is ordinarily never active. He cannot be, because by the time he can conclude, the moment has passed. When he is thinking, the moment is passing. When he comes to a conclusion, the conclusion is meaningless. When the moment was there to conclude, he could not. So active he cannot be. And this is one of the calamities in the world - that those who can think cannot be active, and those who can be active cannot think. This is one of the basic calamities, but it is so.

And always remember, the knowing type consists of very few. The percentage is very small - two or three percent at the most. For them everything will begin by knowing. Only then will feeling follow and only then action. This will be the sequence with this type - knowing, feeling, action. He may miss, but he cannot do otherwise. He will think first.

The second thing to remember is that this knowing type will begin with knowing, will never conclude before knowing, and will not take any prejudice unless pro and con have been known. This type becomes a scientist. This type can become an absolutely impartial philosopher, scientist, observer.

So whatsoever your reaction, action, always find out where it begins. The beginning point will decide the predominance. One who belongs to emotion will begin to feel first, and then he will gather all the reasons. Reasoning will be secondary. He will begin to feel first. He sees you, and he decides in his heart that you are good or you are bad. This decision is a feeling decision. He doesn't know about you, but at first sight he will decide. He will feel whether you are good or you are bad, and then he will go on accumulating reasons for whatsoever he has decided beforehand.

The feeling type decides first. Then reasoning follows, then he rationalizes. So see in yourself whether you decide first, upon just seeing a person, whether you become convinced that he is good, bad, loving, non-loving, and then you create reasons, then you try to convince yourself about your own feeling: "Yes, I was right, he is good, and these are the reasons. I have known. I have found out. I have talked with others. Now I can say he is good." But "he is good" was a conclusion first.

So with a feeling type the syllogism of logic is just the reverse: the conclusion comes first, then the process. With the reasoning type, the conclusion is never first. First the process, then he concludes in the end. So go on finding out about yourself. What is your way of deciding things? With the active type, action is first. He decides in the moment to act, then he begins to feel, then in the end he creates reasons.

I told you that Gandhi is an active type. He decides first. That's why he will say, "This is not my decision. God decided in me." Really, action comes to him so immediately, with no process, that how can he say, "I have decided"? A thinking type will always say, "I have decided." A feeling type will always say, "I feel like that." But an active type - a Mohammed, a Gandhi - they will always say, "Neither have I felt, nor have I thought. This decision has come to me." From where? From nowhere!

If he doesn't believe in God, then he will say, "From nowhere! This decision has bubbled up in me. I don't know from where." If he believes in God, then God becomes the decision-maker. Then He says everything, and Gandhi goes on doing. So Gandhi can say only, "I erred, but the decision was not mine." He can say, "I may not have followed rightly, I may not have understood the message rightly, I may not have gone as far as I should, but the decision was Divine. I had just to fall in. I had just to surrender and follow." For Mohammed, for Gandhi, that is the way.

I said that Hitler is a wrong type, but he also talks in these terms. He also says, "This is not Adolph Hitler who is speaking. This is the very spirit of history. This is the whole Aryan mind! This is a race mind speaking through me." And, really, many have felt this in him. Those who have heard Hitler, they have felt that when he was speaking he was not Adolph Hitler at all. It was as if he was just a vehicle of a greater force. The active man always looks like that. Because he acts so immediately, you cannot say that he decides, he thinks, he feels - no! He acts! And the action is so spontaneous that how can you conceive from where the action comes? So either it comes from God or it comes from the Devil, but it comes from somewhere else. And then Hitler and Gandhi will both go on reasoning about it; but they will decide first.

For example, Gandhi decided about a long fast. At midnight he awoke, then he decided. Then in the morning he told his friends, "Now I am going for a long fast." Everyone just couldn't understand what he was saying. They said to him, "We were here - you never informed us, you never talked about it. In the evening we were talking about many things, and you never even mentioned anything about it." But Gandhi said, "It was not on my part, the decision was not on my part. Just in the night, sleep was not there - suddenly I found myself awakened and there was a Divine message that I must go on a long fast." But for what? Then Gandhi finds out all the reasons. Those reasons are added later.

These are the three types. If action comes to you first and then feeling and then thinking, then you can determine your predominant factor. And to determine that predominant factor is very helpful, because then you can proceed straight; otherwise your progress will always be zigzag. When you don't know what type you are, you go on unnecessarily in dimensions, directions. where you should not go. When you know your type, you know what is to be done with yourself, how to do it, from where to begin. The first point: remember what comes first and what second. And the second will look very strange.

For example, the active type can do the opposite very easily; that is, he can relax very easily. The active type can relax very easily! Gandhi's relaxation was miraculous. He could relax anywhere. So it seems very paradoxical. An active type must be so tense that he cannot relax. But this is not the case. Only an active type can relax very easily. A thinking type cannot relax so easily, a feeling type finds it even more difficult to relax, but an active can relax very easily.

So the second criterion is that whatsoever the type to which you belong, you can move to the opposite very easily. So remember, if you can move to the opposite, that is your predominant type. If you can relax very easily, you belong to the active type. If you can go into non-thinking, no-thought, very easily, then you belong to the thinking type. If you can go into no-feeling very easily, you belong to the feeling type.

And this is strange because ordinarily we think, "A feeling type - how can he go into non-feeling? A thinking type, how can he go into non-thinking? An active type, how can he go into nonaction?" But it only appears paradoxical - it is not. It is one of the basic laws that opposites belong together, two extremes belong together, just like the pendulum of a big clock - just like the pendulum it goes to the extreme left, then to the extreme right. And when it has reached to the peak at the right, it begins to move towards the left. When it is going right, it is accumulating momentum for going left. When it is going left, when it looks as if it is going left, it is getting ready to go right. So the opposite is easy.

Remember, if you can relax easily, you belong to the active type. If you can meditate easily, you belong to the thinking type. That's why a Buddha can go into meditation so easily. That's why a Gandhi can relax so easily - even in a car accident.

There is a car accident, and it is time for Gandhi to relax for his afternoon nap. But the car cannot reach the place where he is going, so those in the car have to wait. It is a deadly accident; everyone has become so fearful and afraid. But just by the side of the road he goes to sleep. He cannot wait! This is the time for his afternoon sleep, so he sleeps. When another car comes to find him, he is in deep sleep.

The active type can move so easily to relaxation. A Nehru cannot conceive how this miracle happens - it becomes miraculous for him. He is not the active type; he cannot relax. Gandhi could relax many times in a day. He was sleeping many times. Whenever he would find time, he would sleep. Sleep was so easy.

A Buddha can go into non-thinking, a Socrates can go into non-thinking, very easily. Ordinarily, it looks difficult. A person who can think so much, how can he just dissolve thinking? How can he just go into no-thought? Buddha's whole message is of no-thought, and he was a thinking type. He has thought so much, really, that he is still new.

Twenty-five centuries have passed, but Buddha still belongs to the contemporary mind. No one belongs to the contemporary mind so much. Even a present-day thinker cannot say that Buddha is old. He has thought much - centuries ahead - and he still has appeal. So whosoever thinks anywhere, Buddha has an appeal for him because he is the purest type. But his message is: Go into non-thinking. Those who have thought deeply, they have always said, "Go into non-thinking." Why is it so easy for them? They can just move.

And the feeling type can go into non-feeling. For example, Meera, she is a feeling type; Chaitanya, he is a feeling type. Their feeling is so much that they cannot remain loving just towards a few persons or a few things. They must love the whole world. This is their type. They cannot be satisfied with limited love, love must be unlimited, it must spread to the infinite.

One day Chaitanya went to a teacher. He had become Enlightened in his own right. His name was known all over Bengal, and then one day he went to a teacher, a teacher of Vedanta; he put his head at his feet. The teacher became afraid, scared, because he respected Chaitanya so much. And he said, "Why have you come to me? What do you want? You have Realized yourself. I cannot teach you anything." Chaitanya said, "Now I want to move into vairagya - non-attachment. I have lived the life of feeling, now I want to move into no-feeling. So help me."

Totapuri

A feeling type can move, and Chaitanya moved. Ramakrishna was the feeling type. In the end he moved to Vedanta. The whole life he was a worshipper, a devotee, of the Mother, and then in the end he became a disciple of a Vedanta teacher, Totapuri, and was initiated into a non-feeling world. And many people said to Totapuri, "How can you initiate this man, Ramakrishna? He is a feeling type! For him love is the only thing. He can pray, he can worship, he can dance, he can go into ecstasy. He cannot move to non-attachment, he cannot move to the realm beyond feelings."

Totapuri said, "That's why he can move, and I will initiate him. You cannot move; he will move."

So the second criterion to decide: if you can move to the opposite, you belong. See what the beginning is, and then the movement towards the opposite: these are two things. And search within constantly. Only for twenty-one days, continuously note these two things: first how you react - what the beginning is, the seed, the start - and then to what opposite you can move easily. To nonthinking? To non-feeling? To non-action? And within twenty-one days you can come to an understanding of your type - the predominant one, of course.

The other two will be there like shadows - mm? - because pure types never exist. They cannot. All the three are parts; only one is more significant than the others. And once you know what type you are, your path becomes very easy and smooth. Then you don't waste your energy. Then you don't dissipate your energy unnecessarily on paths which don't belong to you. So, really, to find out one's type is a basic requirement for spiritual search. Otherwise you can go on doing many things, and you create only confusion, you create only a disintegration.

This is what Krishna means in the Gita by swabhav - the type, that which is your nature. So he says it is better to die unsuccessful in one's own type than to succeed in another's type. It is better to be a failure - even to be a failure - according to one's own type than to be a success according to someone else's type, because that success will become a burden, just a weight, a dead weight. And even to fail according to your own nature is good, because even that failure will enrich you. You will be matured through it, you will know much through it, you will become much through it. So even failure is good if it is according to one's own type.

Find out to which type you belong or which type is predominant. Then according to that type begin to work. The work will be easy and the goal nearer.

Question 1:

Side note:

• The Self that one is born with is the uppercase 'S' Self, a.k.a 'Higher Self."
• And, the self that pertains to the ego is denoted with a lowercase 's', a.k.a. the 'lower self', or 'physical self', the 'ego'.

MAN IS born with a Self, but not with an ego. Ego is a social construct, a later growth. Ego cannot exist without relationship. You can exist, the Self can exist, but the ego cannot exist in itself. It is a by-product of being related to others. So ego exists between "I and thou". It is a relata.

The child is born with a Self but not with an ego. The child develops the ego. As he becomes more and more social and related, ego develops. This ego is just on your periphery where you are related with others - just on the boundary of your being. So ego is the periphery of your being, and Self is the center. The child is born with a Self, but unaware. He is a Self, but he is not conscious of the Self.

The first awareness of the child comes with his ego. He becomes aware of the "I", not of the Self. Really, he becomes aware first of the "thou". The child becomes aware first of his mother. Then, reflectively, he becomes aware of himself. First he becomes aware of objects around him. Then, by and by, he begins to feel that he is separate. This feeling of separation gives the feeling of ego, and because the child first becomes aware of the ego, ego becomes a covering on, or over, the Self.

Then ego goes on growing, because the society needs you as an ego, not as a Self. The Self is irrelevant for the society; your periphery is meaningful. And there are many problems. The ego can be taught and the ego can be made docile and the ego can be forced to be obedient. The ego can be made to adjust, but not the Self. The Self cannot be taught, the Self cannot be forced. The Self is intrinsically rebellious, individual. It cannot be made a part of society.

So the society is not interested in your Self. The society is interested in your ego, the lowercase 'self' - because something can be done with the ego, and nothing can be done with the Self. So the society helps to strengthen the ego, and you go on living around your ego. The more you grow, the more you become social, educated, cultured, civilized, the more polished an ego you have. Then you begin to function from the ego, not from the Self, because you are not aware of it at all.

So your essence goes on into the unconscious, into inner darkness, and a false construct, a social construct - the ego - becomes your center. Now you identify yourself with your ego - with your name, with your education, with your family, with your religion, with your country. These are all just part of your ego, not of your Self, because the Self doesn't belong to your parents, the Self doesn't belong to your country, the Self doesn't belong to any religion, the Self doesn't even belong to your self. It doesn't belong! The Self is a freedom. It is total freedom! It exists in its own right. It doesn't belong to anything else, it doesn't depend on anything else. It is!

But the ego belongs. It exists in a pattern. So if you are left alone for a long period, your ego will, by and by, subside. By and by, you will feel that your ego is being starved - because the ego needs constant help from others. It needs a constant energy, food from others. That's why love gives you a very heightened feeling of ego - because in love the other gives you significance, meaning. You become, for the first time, important. And in love, lovers help each other mutually. Love is a very subtle food for ego. The ultimate vitamin for the ego is love.

That's why Mahavir and Buddha and Mohammed and Christ, they all escaped from society. It was not really escaping from society: they all escaped into aloneness. It was not against society. Basically, it was to know whether their egos could exist outside society. And Mahavir, continuously for twelve years, was in aloneness just to dissolve this ego, this social construct, this body politic. He chose to be without a center for the time being so that a real center, the authentic center, could come up.

One has to be in a gap. Mm? That gap is bound to be a chaos, because you are centered in the ego and the real center is hidden behind. Unless you dissolve this false center you cannot reach to the real center - because there is no need. The ego goes on substituting for it.

The ego is enough as far as the world is concerned, society is concerned, relationship is concerned - the ego is enough. If you go on an aloneness retreat in non-relationship, this ego cannot exist because it is a bridge between I and thou. If the thou is not there, the bridge cannot exist on one bank. It needs two banks to be there. That's why this retreating into aloneness became a deep sadhana.

But you can deceive yourself. If you go into aloneness and then begin to talk with God, then again you will create your ego. You have created the thou, the other, again. So if you retreat into aloneness and then pray to God and begin to talk with God, then you have created an imaginary thou. Now the ego can exist again. So to be in aloneness means to be without thou - no thou - to be totally alone. Then this ego Cannot exist. It will wither away, and you will be thrown into chaos because you will be, for a certain period, without any center. This chaos has to be faced. Unless you face it you cannot be centered in your Self. You have to pass through this.

Christian mystics have called this "The Dark Night of the Soul". Really, one just becomes mad, because when you have no center you are mad. You have nowhere to function from; you have no unity now. You are just fragments with no energy in them, with no center, with no focus. You are a crowd. You will be mad. This madness has to be faced. This is the only courage the religious revolution needs: to be mad, to be without a center. This is the real austerity: to pass through it without creating any false center again, to be so honest that unless the real center comes up you are not going to create any center any more. You will wait. This waiting may take any length of time. Nothing can be said.

Mahavir had to be in aloneness for twelve years; Mohammed was in it only for thirty days. It depends on many things. I feel Mahavir had to wait for twelve years because he was the son of a great king. He must have been deeply rooted in a false ego - more than Mohammed. He-was no ordinary man. His ego was greater than Mohammed's. Mohammed was just a poor man with no developed ego, uneducated, really nobody. He was nobody! But Mahavir was somebody. He belonged to a great family. He had a great heritage, a very polished ego, well educated, cultured. In every way he had a very crystallized ego. Twelve years were needed to dissolve it.

Jesus was in aloneness for only forty days. He was also a poor man with nothing to help his ego. The more civilization progresses, the more difficult it is - because every progressive civilization is bound to have a solidifying effect on the egos that constitute that civilization.

This passing through a chaos without any center, being a chaos, ultimately throws you down to the center, the real center, to the Self. There are many methods for how to go through this chaos and how to destroy this ego. But this is a foundational thing: to have the courage to be without a center for a certain period of time.

You can do it by surrender. You can surrender your 'self' to someone, to the teacher. If the surrendering is total, then you will be without ego. You can be a Self, but not an ego; that's why surrender is so difficult. And the more egoistic an age, the more difficult surrender becomes. In surrender you give up your 'self', you become a shadow, you just follow the instructions. You don't think about them - you are no more.

But whenever surrender is to be contemplated, one begins to think: "If I surrender, then I will not be an individual." This is absolutely incorrect. If you surrender, only then can you be an individual, because the ego is not your individuality. It is false, it is just a facade. If you surrender the false, then you are bound to explode into the real. And this is the beauty of surrender: you cannot surrender the Self - mm? - that is impossible; you can only surrender the ego. You can give up only that which has been given to you. You cannot give up your Self; that is impossible. There is no possibility. How can you give up your Self? You can give up something which has been put into you, which is a social penetration. Really, you can give only that which doesn't belong to you, which you are not.

This will look contradictory, paradoxical. You can give only that which you are not. That which you are you cannot give. So in surrender you give up whatsoever you know your 'self' to be. Then only the Self remains, which you really are and you cannot give up. When the false is thrown, the real is encountered.

So there are two ways, two basic ways: one is surrender. Mmm? There are many methods of surrender, but the foundation is always to surrender to someone. It is not significant to whom. It is absolutely insignificant to whom you surrender. The real thing is surrendering. So sometimes it happens that the teacher himself may not be a real one - Self - but if you surrender, you may come to the real Self.

Even a false teacher can be a help, even a dead teacher can be a help - because the real thing is not to whom you are surrendering; the real thing is that you are surrendering. The happening is in you. To whom it is addressed is absolutely irrelevant. Krishna may be there or he may not be there; Buddha may be a historical person or he may not be; Jesus may just be a myth - it makes no difference. If you can surrender to Jesus, whether Jesus was ever there or not, the thing will happen to you. It is the surrendering that is meaningful.

So one way, one basic way, is surrender. Another is absolute will. Don't surrender, but then be absolutely yourself. I said that when you surrender, the Self cannot be surrendered. Whatsoever you surrender is bound to be the ego, the false, the PERSONA - not the essence. Another basic path is to be your 'self' totally, don't surrender - but then be a will.

Again, the ego has no will; it cannot have. The ego is absolutely will-less because a false entity cannot have the quality of will. Will belongs to the real. You are absolutely will-less. In the morning you decide something; in the afternoon you - your self - cancel it. When you are deciding, at that very moment some part of you is cancelling it. You say, "I love." Go deep, and somewhere in the corner hate is hiding - in that very moment. You decide, "I am going to do this," and in that very moment the contrary is there.

Will means nothing contrary in the mind. Will means one - no duality. Ego cannot have any will. Ego means many contradictory wills simultaneously. You are a crowd as far as ego is concerned, and it is bound to be. It is natural, because as I said, ego is created by relationships. It is a by-product. You have many relationships, so your ego is a construct of many relationships. It cannot be one; it is a crowd.

Really, look at it in this way: you have a part of your ego which was created with your mother - a fragment of your ego was created by you in relationship with your mother. Another part of your ego was created by you in relationship with your father; another was created in relationship with your wife. Now the fragment that was created by your wife cannot be the same as that which was created by your mother. They will be antagonistic. They will fight inside you. It is not only that your wife and your mother will fight outside. The ego part which is in you will also fight. It is not only that your father and your mother will fight outside. They have created fragments of your ego and they will fight inside. So you have many fragments, you have a crowd in the name of the ego - a crowd. A constant fight, a conflict, is going on. You cannot will anything.

Gurdjieff used to say, "You cannot will because you are not." Man is not because man is not one. You are a crowd, and a crowd without any real unity. You have many faces, you have many wills. In a certain moment, in a certain situation, one fragment is the master. Then you say something, then you decide to do something. In that moment you feel that you have a will, but in the next moment that fragment has gone down. Another fragment has come up - and this fragment is not even aware of your decisions.

You are angry and then you decide, "I will not be angry again." The part that was angry has not decided this. This is another part, and they both may not meet at any time in your life. The second part which says, "I decide now not tb be angry," is not the part which was angry. And there is no meeting. The part which was angry will again be angry tomorrow, and when that part is angry you will forget completely what you had decided Again you will repent. The other part has come up again - and this goes on.

Gurdjieff used to say that we are like a house, the master of which is either asleep or has gone somewhere else. For years together the house has not known its master. There are many servants. The servants have forgotten completely that there was ever any master. Either he is asleep or he has gone away. For years together the servants have lived in the house without the master. Someone passes by the house; some servant is outside and he asks the servant, "Who is the master?" The servant says, "I am the master." Another day the same man passes by the house and finds someone else there. He asks, "Who is the master?" The second servant says, "I am the master." Every servant claims that he is the master, and nothing can be decided because the master is asleep or has gone somewhere else. These servant-masters can decide something, but they cannot complete it. They can Promise something, but they cannot fulfill it. They are not the masters at all.

This is the situation of the ego. It cannot will. So the second path is to create a will. If you create a will, then the ego will disappear - because only the Self can will. So if you begin to will, if you insist on willing, then by and by you will go in. The ego cannot will; and if you insist on willing, the ego will disappear.

Surrender is one basic path - the path of the bhaktas. Will is the second basic path - the path of the warriors, fighters. Each path has many techniques, but the essential thing is this.

Gurdjieff used the second path - the path of will. He called it crystallization. He said, "If you will, then by and by you will crystallize into your center." The ego cannot exist with a willing consciousness - it cannot exist. So Gurdjieff used very deep methods for inner integration. He would say, for example, "Don't sleep for seven days. Whatsoever happens, don't sleep." You can remain without food for seven days; it is not so difficult. But to be without sleep for seven days is very difficult. To be without food for seven days is not so difficult; a man can be alive without food for at least ninety days without any danger. But with sleep, it is difficult.

Food is a voluntary thing. You may eat, you may not eat. Sleep is not a voluntary thing: it is non-voluntary. Either it comes or it doesn't. You cannot bring it; you cannot force yourself into sleep.

You can force yourself not to take food or to take more food; that is a voluntary thing. But sleep is a non-voluntary phenomenon. You cannot force yourself. And when sleep comes you will not be able, with your ego, to be awake. But you can insist. You can say, "Whatsoever happens, I will not sleep. I am ready to die, but not to sleep."

Gurdjieff's chief disciple, Ouspensky, was dying, but he would not lie down. He continued walking. He was dying, and he was aware that death was just about to come - but he would not lie down. Physicians insisted, persuaded, but he would not lie down. He said, "No, I am going to die walking. I am going to die consciously." He used even death to create will, and he died walking. He was the first man in the whole history of humanity who died walking - consciously.

Consider, contemplate, what was happening inside of him. It is not simply sleep - it is death. And he was not ready to surrender even to death. Mm? This is an anti-surrender path. He was not ready even to surrender to death. He continued to fight. He went on walking for three days and three nights. The body was very ill, old. Those who were keeping watch over him couldn't follow him - they had to sleep. So someone would sleep and someone else would watch him. A group of twelve persons continued watching him, but for three days continuously, night and day, he continued walking. He would not sit. He would not allow any terms, any compromise with death. He died a crystallized man. He used death to create will.

You can fight with sleep, you can fight with food, you can fight with sex, you can fight with anything - but then no compromise! Then no surrender! Then be absolute in it! But ego cannot be absolute in anything. And if you insist on being absolute, ego will disappear and suddenly you will become aware of a different center in yourself. The ego cannot will, so if you will the ego cannot exist.

So either surrender totally or win totally. Then you will understand that these seemingly contradictory parts are not really contradictory, not so contradictory, because one thing is common: totality - total surrender or total will. The ego can never be total in anything. It is always fragmentary, divided. So be total, in any way, and the ego evaporates. And when there is no ego, for the first time you become aware of your real center.

I call it centering; Gurdjieff calls it crystallization. Words don't mean much. Through this centering you become a being through this centering you are in Existence. Before this you are in society, not in Existence. Before this you are part of a civilization, of a culture, of a language, of a religion, but not a part of Existence. Before this you lived in a man-created world. Before this you belonged to "this". And once you are centered, you belong to That which is beyond, which is not created, which is eternal. Then you come to the source. You may call it God, you may call it soul, you may call it whatsoever you like. The Upanishads call it "That" - that which is unborn, that which is deathless, that which is.

This centering is possible, it is not impossible. It looks impossible, it appears impossible; it is impossible for the ego - not for you. It is impossible for the ego because ego cannot attain it. Rather, in attaining it, ego will die.

The old yoga scriptures say, "Hear whatsoever the Teacher says and follow it - because he is your Self. Whatsoever he is saying, it is your own inner voice." So they say the real Teacher, the real Guru, exists in you. Outside you the Teacher is just a help to awaken the inner Teacher. So, really, surrendering to a Teacher is surrendering to the Self. It is just like this: you come to a mirror, and for the first time you become aware of your face - through the mirror. The Teacher is just a mirror. If you surrender you become aware of your own Self.

This is one way. The other is to find out your own will. And decide which is your way, because, as I know, there are many people who just go on thinking: sometimes they think of surrender; sometimes they think of will - rather, this is their way. Whenever you talk to them about surrender, they think about will. If you talk to them about will, they will think about surrender. This is how the fragments of the ego work.

If I say to you, "Surrender," then you will think, "How can I surrender? What will happen to my individuality, my freedom?" And you have none really - no individuality. no freedom. But then you become afraid of losing something which you don't have. "How can I surrender?" Then if I say to you, "Don't surrender! Create a will!" then you say, "I am so weak, how can I create a will? It is so difficult." And both these teachings can have counterparts in your ego. And then you can go on wavering. That wavering will never help you to come to your center.

Decide either this or that, and then follow it - and then follow it absolutely, totally, because that totality ultimately helps to destroy the false structure of the ego. And when the false center is no more, you will come to know the real center. There will be a gap - a gap of chaos. One has to face it. It is painful, but it is a birth pain. One has to pass through it; it is a necessity. But when you come to the center, then you know that you have paid nothing. What you have gained is invaluable, and whatsoever you have done is just nothing. But before you attain it, your effort is very valuable.

And, lastly, you can be in a confusion and you can go on thinking that you have become centered or that you are crystallized - only because you have a crystallized ego. So what is the difference? How can you judge whether you are centered in the ego or centered in the Self?

Three things to be remembered: one, if you are existing in the ego you can never be in silence - never. Then you are in a crowd, in the marketplace. Your ego is a market production. You can never be in silence.

Secondly, you can never find even an iota of happiness, because happiness happens only to the real center, silence happens only to the real center. They are qualities of the real center. You need not make any effort for them; they are just there. So if you are in the ego, your happiness will always be in the future - never attained. always to be attained.

And, thirdly, your life motivation will be fear when you are in the ego. Whatsoever you do, your motivation will be fear-oriented, you will be fear-oriented. If you love, you will love because of fear. If you pray, you will pray because of fear. If you think of God, you will think because of fear. If you accumulate wealth, you will accumulate because of fear. If you make friends... whatsoever you do, your basic motive will be fear-oriented.

These three things. No silence will be possible because there is a crowd, a conflicting crowd of tensions and tensions and conflicts, anxiety and anguish, but no silence, no happiness - because happiness belongs to the center, not to the ego. And there will be fear  orientation because ego is constantly afraid of death - because ego is just a construct. It is not a reality, so it is afraid of death.

The Self is never afraid of death, the Self has never known death. Death is impossible to the center - to the real center. Deathlessness is the very quality of it, its nature. So remember these three things.

Mind will be a constant tension, anguish, a longing for happiness, but no experience; and everything will be trembling, fear-oriented. Your religion will be just a fear, your beliefs, your philosophies, just fear - existing only to hide the fear, to escape the fear, to deceive yourself.

If you are in the real center, silence will be your nature - not dependent on any situation. It is not that the situation is such that you are silent. Whatsoever the situation, you will be silent. You cannot be otherwise. Nothing can disturb you. Disturbance will be there but you will remain unaffected, untouched. Nothing penetrates to your center, it cannot.

Silence, then, is not situational. It is not that the day is good, not that you are successful, not that you are surrounded by friends - no. It is not anything situational. Silence is there. Whatsoever the situation, silence is there and happiness - not in the future but here and now. And this happiness is not a happening. It is a state. It is not that today you are happy - you cannot be otherwise. You are happiness, and fear dissolves. And with the dissolution of fear, the whole world that we have created around fear dissolves. You enter into a world of no-fear. And when there is no fear, only then is freedom possible. Fear and freedom cannot exist together. It is because of fear that we have created all our slaveries, all our bondages. Our imprisonment is because of our fear.

So remember these three things. And once you have known your real center, you are not the same.

The old man has died and a new one is born. It is a new birth! When the child is born, only a body is born. Then the ego is given by the society. You go on living with an ego and a body - with no Self.

Unless you dissolve this ego and find the Self, your life is wasted. The body is given by your parents and the ego is given by your society. Who are you? The body belongs to your parents, to heredity, to a long series, and the ego belongs to the society. Who are you?

Gurdjieff used to say that you are not. You are just a construct. Unless you find out something which has not come through the parents, not come through the society, not come at all to you; which you have always been - before your birth, after your death; that which you will be, which you have been, which you are; unless you find that, you are not a centered being, you go on living on the periphery.

This peripheral existence has been called SANSAR - the world, the 'this'. This centered existence is called the Nirvana - the That.

Question 2:

"How can one differentiate between a projected experience and an authentic one?" -- It is difficult.

Because we have to speculate, that's why it is difficult. For example, how can you feel that you are touching a real fire or just an imagined one? If you have not touched a real fire, it is very difficult to think about it, to make any theoretical distinction. If you have touched a real fire, then it is not so difficult, then you know. A projected experience is just a dream experience.

But we can think certain things. If you have projected something, you have to go on projecting it; otherwise it will disappear. For example, if I project God and I say, "I see Him in the trees, I see Him in the sky, I see Him everywhere," if it is a projected experience, just my projection, my thought imposed on things, not a realization, but an idea, a theory imposed on things; if I project that I can see a tree as Divine - then I have to help this projection constantly. If I drop repeating, if I forget even for a single moment, the Divine will disappear and there will only be a tree.

In a projected experience you have to work for it continuously. You cannot have any leave, you cannot be on any holiday. The so-called saints cannot go on any holiday. They are continuously at work. They are working and working day and night. If you stop them for a single moment, the projected experience will disappear.

Some friends brought to me a Sufi mystic. He was an old man, and he said that for thirty years he had been experiencing God in everything. And it looked so, it appeared so! He was just ecstatic, dancing, his eyes aflame with some unknown experience. So I asked that man, that mystic, "For thirty years you have been experiencing - is there any effort you still have to make?"

He said, "I have to constantly remember. Continuously, I have to remember. If I forget, then the whole thing disappears." So I asked him to stop all effort for three days and be with me.

He was with me only one night. The next morning he said, "What have you done? You have destroyed it! My thirty years' effort, and you have destroyed everything!" He began to weep. The same eyes which had been aflame with something unknown, became ugly. Thirty years' effort - and he said, "How, in what unfortunate moment, did I come to you? What have you done? Why did you say to me to stop for three days. Now how can I get into it again?"

This is the projected experience. So I told him, "It is better not to get into it again, because you have wasted thirty years in a dream. You can waste thirty lives, but what are you gaining out of it?"

Authentic experience needs no effort. You need not maintain it. When it happens, it has happened. Now you can forget everything. You need not go on maintaining it; there is no constant maintenance. It remains. You forget it - it is there. You don't look at it - it is there. You sleep - it is there. Now the tree cannot become a tree again; now it can never again be a mere tree. Whether I remember or not, it is Divine.

So one thing: you need effort before the happening. Mm? - remember, you need effort before the happening. In both, in the authentic and the projected, effort is needed before the happening. In the authentic experience there is no need after the happening, but in the projected experience there is a continuous need, you have to go on making effort. It is just like in a cinema hall. The projector is running continuously so that the screen is filled. If for a single moment the film is broken or the projector stops, the whole thing disappears, the whole dream disappears, and there is just a plain screen and nothing else. You have to run the projector continuously; then there is no screen, but a different world.

The same is the case if you have to run your mind continuously as a projector, or if you have to remember that you are Divine, that everything is Divine, that all around is God: you have to project continuously, with no gap. And if there is a gap, the whole thing disappears. Then it is a projection. It is not authentic, it is not real.

If there is no need of this constant effort, then it is authentic, it is real. Then you can forget. The day you can forget God, only then have you realized. If you still have to remember Him, it is a projection. The day you can stop your meditation and there is no difference - whether you meditate or not it is the same - then it is authentic. If you stop your meditation, if you stop your prayer, if you stop your effort and everything changes and you feel that something is missing, then it is a projection, a projected feeling. Then it is an addiction. Then someone is a drug addict and you are a prayer addict - but it makes no difference.

One of the rarest and deepest treatises on yoga in India is the "Gherand Samhita" - the most foundational one. It says: "Unless you go beyond meditation, your meditations are of no use. Unless you go beyond prayer, your prayers have not been heard. Unless you forget God completely, you are not one with Him." A Buddha will not talk about God; there is no need. Someone has said, "There has never been such a godless man as Gautam the Buddha - and yet such a godlike one." But he could be godless because he was so god-like.

So remember one thing: no constant projecting. There is only one thing you can do. and that is to make your mind thoughtless - because thoughts are the projections. If you have thoughts, then they will be projected. If you have no thoughts, it is just as if a projector machine is there without film. If no film is there, it cannot project. Your mind is a projecting machine, and thoughts are the film. If thoughts run and the machine is working then they will be projected, then the whole world is a screen. You go on projecting.

When you love someone, the person is just a screen: you project. When you hate someone, the person is just a screen: you project. It is your thoughts that you go on projecting. The same face is beautiful today, and the next day it becomes ugly - the same face - because your beauty, your ugliness, your feeling of beauty, your feeling of ugliness, is not concerned with the face at all. The face is just a screen with your thoughts projected on it.

No thoughts, no projections! That's why my insistence is that you come to a point of thoughtlessness, of thoughtless awareness - so that there will be no projection. Then you will see the world as it is, not as your thoughts make it. If you can see the world as it is, you have come to the Divine.

Now you can feel the difference. The world is there: you project the Divine on it: it is a thought. You say, "The world is Divine" - it is a thought. You don't know. You have heard it, you have read it, someone has said it to you. You wish it should be so, you want, you long that it should be so - but you have not known it. You don't know the world is Divine. You know the world as the world.

This concept that "the world is Divine" is a thought. Now you can project. Repeat it constantly, let it remain in the mind constantly, let it be a constant thing between the world and you, then your mind will project through this thought, and some day the world will begin to look Divine. Man? This is a projection: you have thought of it as Divine, and now you feel it.

The authentic realization is totally different. You don't know what the world is. You don't say that it is Divine or not. You say, "I don't know." That's how a real, authentic seeker begins. He says, "I don't know." The false, the projecting one, always says, "I know! The world is Divine. Everywhere there is God." The real seeker will say, "I don't know. I know the tree, I know the stone - I don't know what the inside of Existence is. I am ignorant."

This feeling gives you a humility, a deep humbleness. And when you don't know, you cannot project - because now you will not cooperate with any thought. Then drop all the thoughts and say, "I don't know." Drop all the thoughts. Don't be attached to knowledge. By and by, be aware that no thoughts should be there between you and the world. This is what meditation means - a no-thought relationship. You are here; I look at you with no thought, with no prejudice, with no image, with nothing in between. You are there, I am here, and there is space - unfilled, vacant.

If this can happen between you and the world, then the world is revealed to you in its totality, in its reality, in its essence. Then you know that which is, and that is Divine. But now it is not a thought. There is no thought at all. You are vacant, empty, silent. It is a revelation, not a projection. So a meditative mind reaches to a state of thoughtlessness, and then only is revelation possible; otherwise you will go on projecting, you will go on projecting. Thought cannot do otherwise - it will project.

Go deep in meditation, and remain with reality without thoughts. Sit under a tree without thoughts, look at the tree with no thought in the mind, with no preconception. Let the tree be there, encountered by your consciousness. Be a mirror - silent, with no thought waves - and let the tree be mirrored in it. And then suddenly you will know that the tree never existed as a tree. That was only an appearance, a face, a persona. It was Divine - just clothed as a tree. The tree was just a clothing; now you have known the inside. No need to remember it! Wherever you move with this meditative state, God will be there, the Divine will be there.

I would like to say it in this way: the Divine is not an object; you cannot find the Divine as an object somewhere. It is a state of mind. When you have that state of mind, it is everywhere. And if you don't have that state of mind, you can create a false, thinking state. But that has to be continuously maintained - and you cannot maintain anything continuously.

So you will find saints weeping and repenting and feeling they have sinned because they haven't maintained continuously. How can you maintain continuously? If you are maintaining anything, you will have to relax. Any effort has to be relaxed. If you have tried to remember that the tree is not a tree but God, after a certain period you will have so much tensed the mind that you will need rest. When you rest, the tree will just be a mere tree, and the God will have disappeared. Then try again, and go on trying. With effort, relaxation is bound to come, it will follow.

You can do anything with effort, but it cannot become your nature. You will go on losing it again and again. So if you go on losing a certain feeling, know that it is a projection. When you cannot lose it, do whatsoever you want to do or don't want to do, be whatsoever....

I would like to tell you a story:

A Chinese Zen monk was living under a tree for thirty years, and he was known to be a very realized man. A woman of the village was serving that monk continuously for thirty years. The monk was known as absolutely pure. Now he was old, and that woman was also old. That woman was on her deathbed, so she called a prostitute from the village and asked her to go to the monk in the night, at midnight: "Just go and embrace him, and come back and tell me how he reacted."

The prostitute asked, "What is the purpose of it?" The old woman said, "I have served him for thirty years, but still I feel that his purity is a maintained purity. It is not yet effortless. So before dying I want to know whether I was serving a right man or whether I was just deluded as he is deluded - because I have been a part in this. So just before my death, let me know it. I want to know."

So the prostitute went. It was midnight and the monk was meditating - the last meditation of the night. The moment he saw that the prostitute was coming... he knew her, and he knew well. She belonged to the same village. And he knew well, moreover, because he had been attracted to her so many times before. Really, he was fighting against this prostitute for years. He was bewildered. He just ran out of the hut and cried, "Why have you come here? Don't touch me!" And he was trembling and perspiring. The prostitute laughed, went back, and told the old woman that this had happened.

The old woman said, "Then I was deceived. He is still the same. Nothing has changed - he reacts very ordinarily. He is afraid. His mind is still attached; his mind is still sexual."

Sex can have just the reverse aspect also. You can be attracted in two ways - positively or negatively. Negative attraction may not look like attraction, but it is.

The same happened to Buddha...

Buddha was staying under a tree in a forest. Some young men had come for a picnic, to enjoy themselves. They had brought a prostitute with them. They were eating and they were drinking, and they became so intoxicated that the prostitute escaped. When they became conscious that the prostitute had escaped, they followed her.

There was only one path. The prostitute must have passed where Buddha was sitting. So they came and asked the Buddha, "bhikkhu, have you seen a naked beautiful girl passing by here? - because this is the only path."

Buddha opened his eyes and he said, "It is difficult to say whether she was a woman or a man; it is difficult to say whether she was beautiful or not; it is difficult to say whether she was naked or clothed. But someone has passed - to this much I can be a witness. Someone has passed.

"I cannot say whether that one was a woman or a man because I am not interested - not interested at all, not even negatively. Whether she was beautiful or ugly, I am not interested. Whether she was clothed or naked, I am not interested. For this much I can vouch: someone has passed.

"And one thing more. The night is so silent - is it good, young men, to go after the one who has passed, to find that person? Or is it better to come and sit beside me and to find yourself? The night is very silent, so what do you think? Is it better to find yourself or to go in search of someone else?"

This is a very different mind - no negative, no positive attachment - as if it is meaningless. Meaning can exist even when you are antagonistic. It exists more, rather. Any maintenance for any state of mind, any effort to maintain it, shows that you are still fighting. It is not a realization; it is still an effort to impose something.

So be silent, thoughtless - and then know what is. Don't think about it and don't preformulate anything about it. Don't be concerned with philosophies and metaphysical theories, don't be concerned with ideas - only then is the reality revealed. If you are concerned with ideas, then you will project something onto the reality and the reality will just serve as a screen. And this is the danger: you can come to know anything you want, you can project anything you want.

Mind has two capacities: one is that it can project anything, and the other is that it can be totally vacant. These are the two possibilities. If the mind is used as a positive projection, then you can realize anything you like, but it is not a realization - you are living in a dream. Vacate the mind, and face reality with a vacant mind, with no thought - then you know what is.