Questions_&_Answers

Question 2 - [02 August 1972 in pm] - 

This is one of the most significant problems, and much confusion exists about it. So first, know well that religion is not ethics, religion is not morality. Morality goes on endeavouring against that which is evil, bad, immoral – that which is sin. So morality is a conflict, a struggle, against that which is evil. Morality is trying to create a moral world where no immorality should exist. That is impossible! Only you can change, but the balance remains the same.

This is one of the deepest laws of nature – that it exists as polar opposites. If you destroy one, the opposite will also be destroyed. In a world where there is nothing bad, nothing will be good. Where there is no sinner, there will be no saint. The saint exists as a polar opposite to the sinner; they are interdependent. So moral effort cannot create a world where only good exists. This is an unfulfilled hope, and it will remain unfulfilled. It cannot come to happen because it is denying the basic law.

Now physicists say that matter exists only because there exists something like anti-matter; a parallel world of anti-matter exists. Nature is a balance. You cannot destroy the balance. If you go on emphasizing one polar opposite, really, two things are possible. Either you will be able to make it stronger – then the other polar opposite will also become stronger – or, you will be able to destroy the other; then the one that you were trying to make stronger will also be destroyed.

Life is a balance, so morality is a futile effort. when I say this, — I do not mean do not be moral, because then again you destroy the balance. So be whatsoever you can be.

Religion is a totally different realm. Religion is not after creating a good world against the bad. Religion is after a balanced world – not against anything. Where good and bad both balance, they negate each other. And when a man is neither a saint nor a sinner, this man becomes a sage. This is a balanced person – neither a sinner nor a saint, just a deep balance, an inner balance between the polar opposite forces.

When two polar opposites are balanced, you transcend them. Look at it in this way. Sometimes you feel that you are healthy: this is an imbalance. Sometimes you feel that you are ill: this is again an imbalance. Sometimes you do not feel yourself as either ill or healthy: this is balance. To feel that you are 'healthy' means that you have moved to the other extreme. Now you will fall ill. Remember this: whenever you begin to feel you are healthy, you are on the verge – you will fall ill. This happens every day, but you are not aware of it. Whenever you feel, ”I am happy,” happiness ends. Whenever you become aware of anything, it means you have moved very far. Now come back. The balance must be regained, and to regain the balance you will have to move to the opposite.

It is just like a NATA – an acrobat – walking on a rope, constantly moving from left to right. But have you observed that whenever s/he has moved too much to the left, then suddenly s/he will have to move to the right, to balance? When s/he feels that now s/he will fall if s/he goes further to the left, to balance this s/he will have to move to the right. We are all acrobats moving on a rope continuously – from good to bad, from bad to good, from health to illness, and illness to health – continuously! A sage is one who has come down from the rope. Now he is not bothered about going from left to right. He has gone beyond.

Religion is a transcendence. The sage knows that the bad cannot be destroyed because it is part of the balance; the good cannot remain alone – both are necessary. So through these polar opposites, Existence exists. Seeing this, realizing this, the sage simply balances himself between the two. There is no choice. He has not chosen good against bad. If you choose good against bad, sooner or later you will have to choose bad against good. Because you have moved in one direction, now you will have to move in the other.

So saints are always moving toward sin and sinners are always moving toward sainthood. Saints have their sin moments and sinners have their saint moments. In each saint the sinner exists as a possibility, and whenever the saintliness is too much the sinner brings the balance. So they say, those who know say, that you cannot be a saint for twenty-four hours a day. You have to have some holiday. You cannot be – it is too much, it is boring and heavy. One has to escape. So saints have their own tricks to escape from their sainthood.

You cannot be the whole time a sinner. It is difficult – impossible! You will fall down, you will die. You will have to move! So it happens sometimes that sinners will do such saintly acts that you cannot even conceive of saints doing them. Sometimes sinners are so saintlike that it seems unbelievable. But they balance.

Religion is not concerned with good and bad – with choice. Religion is a choiceless transcendence. Realizing this polarity of Existence, the sage, the one who knows about the polarity, just leaves choosing. Then he never moves to the right, never to the left. He remains in between. Buddha has called this majjhim NIKAYA – the middle path. Buddha says, ”I will not choose. I will remain in the middle – just exactly in the middle.”

When you do not choose, you transcend. It is possible. It may be; it may not be: but it is possible. A world is possible in which we have transcended this constant wavering between right and left, between sinner and saint, between good and evil, between good and sin – in which the whole world is balanced. That will be a religious world. It will not be moral; it will not be immoral. It will be religious! So this constant confusion between religion and morality must be discarded. Religion is not morality. Morality is a choice against something and for something.

I will tell you a story:

Once Mulla Nasrudin was a listener to a very learned scholar. He was listening to him: the scholar was a religious man – a great religious teacher also. So in the end, when the discourse was just over, the religious scholar said to everyone present, ”Who wants to go to heaven? Those who do, raise your hands.” So everyone raised his hand except Mulla Nasrudin, and he was sitting just in the front row.

This happened for the first time. The teacher had asked the same question in many villages and towns, and never had he seen anyone just sitting there without raising his hand for heaven. So for the first time he had to ask the other question. He had never asked it. Then he asked, ”Who wants to go to hell? Those who do should now raise their hands.” No one raised a hand – not even Mulla Nasrudin. Then the scholar asked, ”Are you hearing me? Are you deaf? Where do you want to go! I asked for heaven and you remained silent; I asked for hell and you remained silent. Where do you want to go?”

Mulla Nasrudin said, ”Just in between. I do not want to go anywhere – not to heaven, because I have seen those going to heaven fall down into hell. I do not choose hell either, because from hell where can you go? You can only go to heaven. So please allow me, if it is possible, to be just in between. Only then can I be at peace, otherwise it is impossible. In heaven, hell becomes an attraction. In hell one is hankering after heaven. So if it is possible, allow me to be in between.”

This is the attitude of no-choice. Religion is no-choice – choicelessness. But we go on thinking in terms of morality and confusing it with religion. Morality is a day-to-day necessity, and through morality you have not been able to create a moral world. Really, the more man becomes conscious of morality, the more immorality is found. Everyone says that the world has gone immoral. The real case is this, that you have become too morality conscious. The world has not gone immoral. Man has become too conscious of morality; that is why the world looks so immoral. It is a balance.

Now we are condemning war everywhere. Now war looks like total immorality. Are you aware that never in history, never before, have we condemned war? We have fought. We have never condemned. For the first time we are condemning war and we are creating atom bombs. We never condemned war because we never created atom bombs. They both create a balance. The more fatal, suicidal war becomes, then the more we will be against wars. The more we are against, the more fatal war will become.

So whatsoever you deny you also create. The world was never so poor, and when I say this I mean that the world was never so conscious of poverty. It has always been poor – more poor than it is now; the world has always been poorer. The further back we move, the poorer a world we will find. But poverty was taken for granted, and it was not immoral to be rich. Now to be rich is immoral. One feels guilty, and the poor man by your side is your sin. For the first time we have become so moralistic that to be rich is guilt-creating, and to have poverty around is a sin committed by the rich.

This is one thing: too much consciousness, too much awareness, too much morality. And then, simultaneously, the poorer have become more poor. Economically they are not, but now they feel poverty to be heavy upon them. So whatsoever we do goes in two directions. It develops both ways simultaneously, and a balance is always achieved.

Religion is not for a richer world, because a richer world can only exist with a deep poverty, a great poverty. In every dimension, you can change circumstances, you can change names, and then the same thing will become apparent with a new face.

Religion is for a balanced world – neither rich nor poor. Try to understand this: neither rich nor poor, but a balanced world where no one is conscious of poverty, no one is conscious of richness. That is why a religious world is a very deep affair. It seems to be the impossible revolution. These polar opposites are there and they will always be there. All that you can do is to go beyond them.

For example, let us look from some other direction: man has been fighting with death continuously. The whole history of science is nothing but a fight against death. The history of medicine, the history of the human mind, is a fight against death. Now we have prolonged life. Man is now living the longest, but no human society was so much afraid of death as we are afraid of death. Now, in the West, they have achieved the longest life on earth.

We hear and we go on saying that in the old, golden days man lived to be a hundred. That is not a fact; it is simply a fiction – but it has a reality behind it. Everyone felt that he had lived a hundred years because no one ever counted. Counting is a new thing; remembering one’s birthday is a new thing. But, remember, when you remember a birthday, then the death-day will be continuously before you.

No animal is afraid of death because no animal is aware of birth. Primitive societies are not afraid of death, but they are not aware of birth either. Death happens as birth happens, and there is no counting of how long they have lived. The more precise your counting becomes, the more afraid you become of death. Now America is in the grip of death because time consciousness has come to apeak. Everyone is aware. The longest life becomes possible and death becomes more black. Why? It is a deep balance. If you go on prolonging life, you are prolonging your death also. If you live long, your death will also be a long spread-out affair. Both grow continuously and simultaneously. You cannot escape; you cannot choose.

Really, we have found every possibility for fighting diseases. But man is ill – more ill than ever. With all the scientific growth in medicine, man is more ill than ever. Why? Why does your progress in medicine also create somewhere a progress in illnesses, in diseases?

Carl Gustav Jung proposed a very fantastic idea. He called it ”synchronicity”. He said, ”For whatsoever is being done, there is also a parallel world growing.” And you cannot do anything. If knowledge grows, ignorance will deepen. If health grows, then illnesses will explode. If you become good, somewhere someone may become bad. And nothing is wrong about it: it is simply a balance. The world cannot exist with good people only. It will be such a boring world. Can you conceive a world of only MAHATMAS? The whole world will commit suicide because even to exist for a single day will be such a tedious affair. All around MAHATMAS! You will simply die of them.

Now life is a constant polarity. The richness comes from the polar opposite – from both opposites existing together. Religion is not a choosing between these two. Religion is just understanding this polarity and then remaining in a non-choosing attitude.

A religious man lives without choosing. If he is healthy, he is healthy. If he is ill, he is ill. When he is ill, he is at ease with his illness. He is not longing for health. When he is healthy, he is at ease with his health. He is not conscious of it. He moves easily between these polar opposites without any choice. And, by and by, his movements are slowed down. They become shorter and shorter and shorter, and a moment comes when there is no wavering. This non-wavering comes through non-choosing. If you choose, you will waver. If you choose, you will create the opposite.

This looks very paradoxical, but I would like to say do not try to be good: otherwise you will be bad. Do not try to be something: otherwise you will become quite the contrary. Just remain in a non-choosing attitude. Whatsoever happens, let it happen, allow it to happen.

This is very difficult. If anger happens, allow it to happen: do not choose. If love happens, allow it to happen: do not choose. And soon a day will come when neither love will happen nor anger. If you choose, then you are in the grip. Then you are in the wheel, and then the grip is automatic. When you go on changing from one to the other – and this is a constant, repetitive process – the whole life becomes just a wavering from one point to another. Do not be an acrobat on the rope – just come down.

Look at it in this way: you are walking on the ground. You can walk even on a very narrow strip. We can make a chalk strip, a white strip on the ground, and you can walk on it without any movement to the right or to the left. Why? Now the same size strip can be set up between two houses, two roofs. Now walk on it! You will find you cannot walk. Why? You can walk the same strip on the ground very easily balanced, but when the same strip, when the same size strip is hanging between two roofs, you cannot walk a single step. You begin to waver. Why? Now you have become aware that you may fall down. Now you have chosen something: you have chosen not to fall down. Now you are not walking at ease. There is a choice not to fall down. You have chosen. Because of this choice, every step is toward falling down, so you will have to move right and left to balance.

Life is just a rope – a very narrow rope. If you choose, you choose wavering. Neither good nor bad – that is the only good. Neither this nor that – this is the only religion. Upanishads have said, ”Neti, neti – not this, not that.” You do not choose! It is an effortless understanding. It is a simple understanding.

 

 

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