MAN IS FREEDOM, absolute freedom, so spirituality is a choice. There is no force compelling you to be spiritual; there is no cause forcing you to transform. If there were any cause forcing you to transform, then no spirituality would be possible.

 

Causality is materialism. You seek food because hunger is there. It forces you; there is no choice. You cannot choose whether to seek or not to seek: you have to. Spirituality is not that type of seeking. No one is forcing you. You alone have to choose.

Spirituality is a choice. It is not causality. Everything else is causality: there is a cause, and the effect follows. The effect has no freedom. It is caused. Spirituality is beyond causality. It is not caused by anything; it is your inner choice. You may choose, you may not choose. For lives together you may not choose it, but no one is going to force you. This has to be understood, and this is a very significant thing – because if everything is caused, then, I say, there is no spirituality. Then someone can cause you to become spiritual. If the cause is present, then the effect will follow. Then a Buddha can be caused; then we can create the cause, and then you will be a Buddha.

But we cannot create any situation in which you can become a Buddha, and you cannot create a situation in which you can be stopped from becoming a Buddha. You are free. Any moment you can choose to be one, and you may not choose for lives together.

 

This has been a long discussion between materialism and spirituality. This is the basic debate – not whether God exists or not. That is not the basic debate because one can be spiritual without any God. Buddha never believed in any God; Mahavir denies any existence of God – but no one is as spiritual as Mahavir or Buddha. So God is not the most significant thing; even the soul is not the most significant thing. Buddha says there is no self, no soul, and he is spiritual par excellence. Then what is the basic thing in spirituality? It is the concept of freedom – whether man is free to go beyond humanity or not.

If everything is caused, then there is no freedom for you. You have a certain body because of certain causes – because of a certain father, a certain mother, a certain country, a certain climate, a certain heredity. You have a certain body; it has been caused. You have a certain mind because of a certain country, a certain culture, a certain education. You have a mind because of certain causes. You speak a particular language because it has been caused. If you were born in China and were never taught any other language than Chinese, it is difficult to conceive that you could speak any other language. Language is caused. Certain factors are needed, then you will speak a certain language.

So there is no freedom in these things. Only spirituality is uncaused, and that is the debate between science and religion – because science says that nothing is possible which is uncaused: everything has a causality. You may know it, you may not know it; that is another thing. The factor of causality may be unknown, but ”everything is caused”. This is the contention of the scientific approach toward life: everything is caused. The cause is known or not known, but ”everything is caused”.

If everything is caused, then there is no freedom. Then if a Buddha is a Buddha, it is not any achievement of his. He was ”caused”! Then anyone else in his situation, X-Y-Z, will become a Buddha. Only a particular situation has to be there.

Then Buddha is replaceable by anyone. Then if you are put into the same situation, you will become a Buddha, just like water boils at a particular degree – any water. So it is irrelevant which water, whether it is from the Ganges or from the Godavari or from anywhere. Any water will boil at a particular degree and will evaporate at a particular degree. At one hundred degrees, water will evaporate – in any country, in any climate, in any age. So which water is irrelevant: at one hundred degrees heat, evaporation is caused. So use any water, A-B-C.

Science says the same is with Buddha. They say put any man, A-B-C, in the same situation, and given the same situation a Buddha will be caused. It is only that we do not yet know all the causal factors – that is another thing – but they think we will know one day.

That is absurd! No one can create the situation for someone to be a Buddha, no one can teach it! If I say to water, ”Now evaporate,” water cannot evaporate. But create the situation and water evaporates. Water has no freedom to choose. The situation is the significant factor. If the situation is there, automatically water will evaporate. Science says that man’s situation is very complex. It is not so simple as creating heat for the water to evaporate. It is complex, but still ”everyone is caused” and ”everything is caused”.

If this is the case, then there is no freedom. Really, in this country, this thought has become very deeply rooted in the human mind. Because of this, now psychologists say that no criminal is a criminal: he is caused; and no Buddha is a Buddha: he is caused. Everyone is just a slave; there is no responsibility. With the concept of freedom gone, there is no responsibility. So when you ask me why people are not interested in transforming their lives, their inner energy into spiritual light, the ”why” is irrelevant. It cannot be asked. With freedom, ”why” disappears. But you can ask why this water is not evaporating; then you have to find out the ”why” in the situation. Go deep down into the situation, and you will find out the answer to why this water is not evaporating. Some factor is missing. Bring the factor in, and the water will evaporate.

 

Why is a particular man ill? Diagnose, and something will be found: the answer will be there. Why is a particular man not spiritual? The answer is that the question is not valid, because with the question ”why?” you assume that somewhere in the situation something must be there which is obstructing the process. There is no such factor. If you want to be spiritual you can be; if you do not want it, it is up to you. It is up to you!

Given all the factors of the situation, a Buddha cannot be produced, cannot be manufactured.

 

 

 

 

These are polar opposites: an emperor of the whole world and a sannyasin, a monk, a beggar in the street. Everything else comes in between. These are the two polar opposites. So the father was worried and he asked the pundits of the court. He called a great meeting of all the wise men of the capital and asked them what to do so that his son may not become a sannyasin, so that he may live in the world and not leave the world. He asked them what type of situation should be given to him and what type of education so that he would never feel any urge toward spirituality.

This was a great experiment – an experiment in causing a person to be a particular thing. He must be a great emperor, and both the possibilities were open. How to close one possibility and how to help only one possibility to grow? They decided. They must have been very scientific. Never was such an experiment done before and never after. It was a very great experiment in human destiny.

So they planned the whole thing. The childhood of Buddha was a planned childhood, absolutely planned. What he should eat, what he should do, with whom he should talk, who should teach him, when he should move – everything was planned. They were great wise men. They said he must not see any suffering. He must not see any old man, he must not see any deceased man, he must not see illness or poverty. He must not become aware of the great suffering that life is. He must be in a world of dreams, a utopia, a euphoria. He must live in illusions so real that he will never feel the urge to leave the world.

So three palaces were built for him, one for each season. In his gardens not even a dry leaf was allowed. In the night everything dying would be thrown away. He never saw a flower dying. He would only see flowers that were young and fresh. Wherever Gautam was, no old man was allowed to move – only young, healthy, beautiful men and women.

All the beautiful girls of the capital were brought for his service. They would serve him, and there was music and song and his whole life was just a sing-song, just a dreamy life. Absolute planning was possible because he was a king’s son. When he was young he had never seen any old man, any ill man, any dead man; he did not even know that death existed. Of course, when there is no death, no old age, no suffering, where is there a question of becoming a renunciate? Why renounce the world? The world is as beautiful as you can wish.

He lived in this dreamland, and then suddenly everything shattered. One cannot go on in it. It is such a false thing, one cannot continue in it. One day or another something will enter and shatter the whole thing. And it happened that because of this planning, I say because of this planning, when he came to know the facts of life it was a great shock. They are not such a great shock to us; we are accustomed to them. But when Buddha saw an old man for the first time, he was not accustomed at all, so he asked, ”What has happened to this man?” When he saw for the first time a dead body, the whole dream-world disappeared.

We see these things every day, so we become insensitive, accustomed. But he was not accustomed so he asked, ”What has happened to this man?” He had to be replied to, and that was such a shock – such a great shock. There was such a big gap between his life and the facts of death that he is reported to have said, ”If this man is dead, then the whole life is meaningless. Then I am also going to be dead. Then everything is useless. If death is the end, then life is meaningless, so I must go and find that which is deathless – if there is such a thing. And if there is not such a thing, then we are living only in dreams – wasting time, wasting energy, wasting ourselves.”

The father had had a plan in his mind. He had been trying to cause, trying to force, a particular alternative. But the result was quite the contrary – because when you force a particular thing the inner freedom begins to rebel. Buddha’s life was a manufactured life – artificial, false, unreal. And because everything was forced upon him, the inner freedom must have revolted. Because of that inner freedom, he moved into quite the opposite polarity. Buddha’s father was just unable to understand what had happened. He had done everything in his power, and then the whole plan failed.

You cannot cause man to be something – and if you can cause man to be something, then there is no humanity. Man is the uncaused factor in the world. So I cannot say why, because if I can say that because of this or that, man is not spiritual, then you can provide the factors, and man will be made spiritual. Then spirituality becomes a part of a great economics. Supply ”this”, and the demand will be fulfilled. I create a demand, and the supply will be there.

No, nothing can be done with man. Spirituality is not a commodity. And because of this, because spirituality means freedom, so few people become spiritual: because you never use your freedom. Rather, on the contrary, you go on forcing yourself into slavery, because slavery is convenient – very convenient, comfort able – and freedom is inconvenient, uncomfortable.

When everyone is a slave, you can adjust with everyone – if you too are a slave. If you begin to act as a free agent, you become maladjusted. The whole world has progressed only through maladjusted individuals. The adjusted ones are always orthodox, traditional. They do what all the others are doing. They are adjusted. Freedom means you begin to move in a direction where no one is moving. Fear grips you; you begin to feel uneasy. You cannot be certain because no one is moving there. Because freedom is such a responsibility, and such a dangerous responsibility, you go on deceiving yourself.

At the most, you choose one slavery over another; you go on substituting slaveries. A Hindu becomes a Christian, a Christian becomes a Hindu: they exchange slaveries. A man belongs to a particular party, and then he leaves it and he thinks, ”I am free.” Then he joins another party. We simply change bondages. A new bondage is not a freedom. Freedom means to be without any bondage, moving without a bondage. That means moving moment to moment without any certainty, moving into insecurity. We are always interested in securities.

Only two or three days before, one old lady was here. Her husband is doing meditation deeply. Now she has become worried because he has become more silent. She came to tell me, ”My husband has become more silent, and I fear that if this goes on he may become a sannyasin. He may leave us, he may renounce us. So stop my husband from meditation.”

You are afraid of your freedom and everyone else is also afraid of your freedom, so we have a society of slaves. And in our families we have such a deep investment. That is why we do not move toward freedom.

Every moment you are free to choose. You can choose spirituality every moment, or you can choose old habits. To be with old habits is easy. You know them; you have lived them. Nothing is new. With the new you are in the unknown, in the dark. You have to learn again. So a person who is moving in freedom has to be a learner every moment. And he cannot rely on the past. The past will not help.

 

But we are all past-oriented. Only because the past once helped, we are habit-oriented. This is the mechanism of the inner mind. Whenever you know something, you need not bother about it. When you know something as a habit, it is transferred from your consciousness to your robot mechanism inside. It is transferred to the mechanical part of your being. Then you need not bother about it. The mechanical part will go on doing it.