Questions_&_Answers

If you are a driver, you go on talking, you go on thinking, you go on singing, or you can put on your radio, and drive. You are not driving. The robot part of you, the mechanical part, is driving. You will be needed only when something new happens, when some accident happens suddenly; then you will be required. Otherwise you are not required at all. You can be at ease somewhere else: you need not be in your car at all.

When you are driving mechanically, you are not there. You may have already reached the destination, and the robot part, the mechanical part, is still driving. Your soul can fly to the stars or to the clouds, anywhere, but the robot part does everything. This gives you a feeling of convenience. So with everything routinized, you feel a convenience. With anything more, you have to be conscious, aware. When you are learning to drive, then there is a problem. You feel some discomfort in learning because then you have to be conscious.

Unconsciousness is such a drug; consciousness is such an effort. When you learn something, you have to be conscious every moment. That consciousness is felt as a strain. It is not, but because we are always behaving in a mechanical way, it seems to be. The person who is thinking in terms of spirituality must think in terms of awareness – more and more awareness. Awareness comes only when you go on facing new factors.

Biologists say that animals live in a world where awareness is not needed, in a routine circle. They perform acts that are exactly alike. One animal’s birth is not different from another animal’s birth in any way. Death is not different, sex is not different. Everything is similar because everything is done by instinct.

A bird makes a nest, an animal makes a den, still another animal makes something else. They make them through instinct. No learning is needed; they are never taught. This is done by their robot part. It is inherent in their cells. They must go on doing the same things. Even if a bird is hatched without its parents there, and no other birds are allowed to meet him, when the time is ripe he will begin to make a nest. And the nest will be the same, exactly the same, as his ancestors have been making for centuries and centuries. No one has taught them, no awareness is needed. It is just in their cells. It is instinctive, a mechanical thing, so they do it.

With man, there is difficulty. Man has to be taught everything – EVERYTHING! Now biologists say that soon, after this century, we will have to teach sex. You will have to be trained, because now even sex is not as instinctive as it was. You may feel that there has been an eruption, an explosion of sex books all over the world. Just as there are books on how to learn driving, they now have them on how to love – books on how to love, how to achieve perfect sex.

No animal needs anything to know about sex, so why man? With man everything has to be learned. Why? Because the robot part in man is secondary, and consciousness, which is primary, has come in. It is the central force. You have to learn everything; then choice comes in. You have to choose what to learn, what not to learn.

Spirituality will be your greatest choice. It is up to you. You may choose to look at the world in a spiritual way, you may choose to look at the world in a materialistic way. No one will tell you not to choose it and no one can force you. If you choose the materialistic outlook you will have one kind of life, and if you choose the spiritual outlook, you will have a totally different life. This is freedom.

Biologists say that this consciousness came to human life because long before, at least two million years before, some apes, the forefathers of man, came down from the trees and began to walk on two legs instead of on four. Instead of four, they began to walk on two legs.

The two hands were released. With these two hands released many things happened, and the greatest was that the factor of awareness came in. When the apes were on trees, they were not in any danger. They were secured in their trees. No lion could kill them, no tiger could attack them. They were secured in their trees. They were moving in their trees from one tree to another, and that was a mechanical thing – inherent, hereditary.

But it is yet an unknown factor – an X – why certain apes came down to earth. It seems many reasons are possible. It seems that either there was a sudden population explosion: they were so many that they had to find somewhere new to live – trees were less and they became more; or, suddenly there were no rains for many years, and trees died and became dry, and they had to come down. But whatsoever may have happened, these are all guesses.

Someone has suggested recently, a great scientist, that it seems that humanity was born out of illness. Some apes became very ill because of an attack of a certain virus, a certain illness. Apes became so ill that they could not live by hanging on the trees. They became so weak that they had to come to the earth. It is possible, but whatsoever may have been the basic cause, this man is certain that when apes came down to the earth they had to be more alert. Then their mechanical habits alone couldn’t do, their inherited instincts weren’t sufficient. They had to walk on an unknown territory. The very walking, the stature, the posture, was so new, and their bodies were not accustomed to it. With two-legged walking, they became biped from quadruped. In their cells there was no knowledge about it. That is why when a man is born, when a child is born, he still has to learn to walk. Still it is not instinctive.

A horse is born: he can run. A calf is born: he can run. No need to learn to walk. But man has to learn to walk. And if you put a small child somewhere where no one walks and he cannot imitate, then he will not walk for his whole life.

In certain wolves’ caves, some children have been found who had grown up with wolves. They could not walk. Just four or five years back, in a forest of U.P. (India), a boy of fourteen was found in a community of wolves. They must have taken him from the village, and then he was brought up by them. Fourteen years, and he couldn’t walk! He was not a biped: he was still a quadruped. He would walk on all fours, and he would walk like a wolf, not like a man.

Walking is still an effort, so when a child walks parents are so happy. The reason is because this is something valuable, an achievement. We have in our language many things which show this attitude. We say that someone is ”standing on his own legs; he is standing on his own two feet”. This is something valuable, something worthwhile, something to be appreciated. We condemn someone by saying, ”You are still not standing on your own two feet.”

Because man came into a new situation from the trees to the earth – in which everything was new, in which the robot would not work, in which instinct would not help – that is why intelligence developed. He had to be aware, and he had to be aware every moment because there were so many dangers all around. He was surrounded by enemies, and he was weak because no instinct would help now. This dangerous situation was the first school for alertness.

Man had to become alert!

 

 

 

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