The Lamp of Awareness_

Scientists - particularly Soviet Russian scientists - thought that we cannot change man unless we change the cells.

There is a school, a Behaviouristic school of psychologists, which thinks that Buddha is a failure, that Jesus is a failure, that they are bound to be failures. There is nothing strange in it because without changing the very structure of the body, the chemical structure of the body, nothing can be changed.

These Behaviourists - Watson, Pavlov, Skinner - say that if a Buddha is silent, it only means that somehow he has a different chemical constitution and nothing else. If he is silent, if peace surrounds him, if he is never disturbed, never angry, it only shows that somehow the chemicals are lacking which create disturbance, which create anger. So Skinner says, "Sooner or later we will be able to create a Buddha chemically. There is no need of any meditation, there is no need of becoming more aware. The only need is to change chemicals."

In a way he is right, but very dangerously right, because if certain chemicals are put out of your body, your behaviour will change. If certain hormones are introduced into your body, your behaviour will change. You are a man and you behave like a man. But it is not you who behaves like a man: it is only the hormones in you that make you behave like a man. If those hormones are changed and other hormones are introduced which belong to the feminine structure, you will behave like a woman. So it is not really your behaviour: it is hormonal behaviour. It is not you who is angry, but a certain hormone in you. It is not that you are silent and meditative; it is certain hormone in you.

Skinner says, "That is why Buddha is a failure: because he goes on talking about things which are irrelevant. You say to a man,'Do not be angry,' but he is filled with chemicals, hormones, which create anger." So for a behaviourist, it is just as if a person is in a high fever - a one hundred and six degree fever - and you go on talking about beautiful things to him and say, "Be silent, meditate, do not be feverish!" It looks absurd - what can the man do! Unless you change something in his body, the fever will remain. Fever is created by a certain virus, certain chemical things. Unless that is changed, unless the proportion is changed, he will remain feverish. And there is no need to talk. It is absolutely absurd.

The same is with anger for a Skinner, for a Pavlov; the same is for sex. You go on talking about brahmacharya - celibacy - and the body is filled with sex energy, sex cells. That sex energy is not dependent on you. Rather, you are dependent on that energy. So you go on talking about brahmacharya, but nothing is possible by these talks. And they are right in a way, but still, only in a way. They are right that if the chemicals are changed, if every sex hormone is thrown out of your body, you will not be able to be sexual. But you will not become a Buddha. You will simply be impotent, incapable. You will lack something.

Buddha is not lacking anything. Rather, on the contrary, something new has come to his life. It is not that he has no sex hormones. They are there. So what has happened to him? His consciousness has deepened, and his consciousness has entered even into the sex cells. Now the sex cells are there, but they cannot behave independently. Unless the center orders them to act, they cannot act. They will remain inactive.

In an impotent person sex cells are not. In a Buddha they are there and more strong than in an ordinary person - stronger, because never used, not used. Energy is accumulated in them, they are bubbling with energy, but consciousness has penetrated into the cells now. Now the consciousness is not only a starting point: it has become the master.

Skinner may prevail in the coming days. He may become a very great force. Just like Marx suddenly became a great force for the outer economy of society, just like Marx, any day Pavlov and Skinner may become a very central force for the inner economy of the human body and the human mind. And they can prove whatsoever they say - they can prove it! But the phenomenon has two aspects.

You see an electric bulb. If you destroy the bulb, the light will disappear; it is not that the electricity will disappear. The same happens when you put off the current: the bulb is there intact, but the light will again disappear. So the light can disappear in two ways. If you destroy the bulb, electricity will be there, but because there is no medium through which to express it, it cannot become light. If your sex cells are destroyed, sexuality will be in you, but with no medium to express itself. This is one way.

Skinner has experimented with many animals. Just by operating on a particular gland, a ferocious dog becomes Buddha-like. He sits silently, as if in meditation. You cannot tempt him to be ferocious again. Whatsoever you do, he will look at you without any anger. It is not that the dog has become a Buddha, nor is it that the inner mind has disappeared. It is there all the same, but the medium through which anger can be expressed is absent. This is impotency. The medium has disappeared, not the desire. If the medium is destroyed, when the bulb is not, you can say, "Where is your light and where is your electricity?" It is there, but now it is hidden.

Religions have been working from the other corner - not trying to destroy the bulb: that is stupid, because if you destroy the bulb then you will not even be aware of the current meaning behind. Change the current, transform the current, let the current move in a new dimension, and the bulb will be there intact alive, but with no light.

Skinner can prevail because he shows a very easy way. You are angry: you can be operated upon. You feel sexual: you can be operated upon. Your problems will be solved not by you, but by a surgeon - by someone else. And whenever a problem is solved by someone else you have missed a very great opportunity, because when you solve it you grow. When someone else solves it, you remain the same. The problem can be solved through the body and there will be no problems - but you will also no longer be a human being.

The religious emphasis is on transformation of consciousness, and the first thing is to create a greater force of awareness inside to help that awareness to spread. This sutra is beautiful. It says, "To be established in the sun of awareness is the only lamp."

The sun is very, very far away. Light takes ten minutes to travel to the earth, and light travels very fast - 186,000 miles per second. It takes ten minutes for the sun to reach the earth; it is very, very far. But in the morning the sun rises, and it reaches even to the flower in your garden.

"Reach" has a different meaning. Just rays reach, not the sun. So if your energy becomes a sun deep inside your center, if your center becomes a solar center, if you become aware, centrally aware, if your awareness grows, then the rays of your awareness reach to every part of your body, to every cell. Then your awareness penetrates every cell of the body.

It is just like when the sun rises in the morning, everything begins to be alive on the earth. Suddenly there is light, and sleep disappears; the monotonous night disappears. Suddenly everything seems to be reborn. The birds begin to sing and they are again out on the wing, the flowers flower, and everything is alive again just from the touch, just from the warmth, of the sun's rays.

So when you have a central consciousness, a central awareness in you, it begins to reach to every pore, to every nook and corner; to every cell it penetrates. And you have many, many cells - seventy million cells in your body. You are a big city, a big nation. Seventy million cells, and now they are all unconscious. Your consciousness has never reached them.

Grow in consciousness and every cell is penetrated. And the moment your consciousness touches the cells, it is different. The very quality changes. A man is asleep; the sun rises and the man is awakened. Is he the same man who was asleep? Is his sleep and awakening the same? There was a closed, dead bud, and the sun has risen, and the bud opens and becomes a flower. Is this flower the same? Something new has penetrated. An aliveness, a capacity to grow and blossom, has appeared. A bird was just asleep, as if dead, as if just dead matter, but the sun comes up and the bird is on the wing. Is it the same bird? It is a different phenomenon. Something has touched and the bird has become alive. Everything was silent, and now everything is singing. The morning is a song.

The same phenomenon happens inside the cells of a Buddha's body. It is known as BUDDHA-KAYA - the body of an Enlightened One, of a Buddha. It is a different body. It is not the same body as you have, not even the same body as Gautama had before he became a Buddha.

Buddha is just on the verge of death, and someone asks him, "Are you dying? Then where will you be?" Buddha says, "The body that was born will die. But there is another body - the buddha-kaya, the body of a Buddha, which is neither born, nor can it die. I have left that body which was given to me, that came to me from my parents. Just as a snake leaves the old body every year, I have left it. Now there is the buddha-kaya - the Buddhabody."

What does this mean?

Your body can become a Buddha-body. When your consciousness reaches to every cell, the very quality of your being changes, becomes transmuted, because then every cell is alive, conscious, Enlightened. Then there is no slavery. You have become the Master. Just by becoming a conscious center, you become a Master.

 

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