You_Are_Responsible

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.

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