To Create a Balance_

 

The Third Question:

I have not said that - that all women are really soft, feminine and loving. Neither are all men hard, aggressive, violent & ambitious. Because deep down in you the consciousness is neither. The anima and the animus, the male and the female exist in your body chemistry. You can be a man physically, but deep inside you may have chosen the feminine part. A woman may be a woman physically but she may have chosen the masculine part - both parts are available - then the body remains feminine but the woman will become masculine.

That is what is happening to women connected with the Women's Liberation movement: they are dropping their feminineness, they are becoming as aggressive as man. They are trying to compete with all kinds of foolishnesses that man has. They want to have all those foolishnesses themselves, too - they cannot be left behind.

The idea of being equal is creating a foolish idea of being similar. To be equal does not mean to be similar. Equality is a totally different dimension; similarity is different.

Yes, a woman can choose her masculine part too much, she can become identified with it, then her softness will disappear. A man can choose his feminineness, then his hardness will disappear. The body will remain sexually male or female, but the quality surrounding the body, the vibe, will have to be that which you have chosen inside. A man can choose to be a woman inside, a woman can choose to be a man inside.

And it is not a choice that you make once and forever, you can change it every moment. There are moments when a woman is very soft and there are moments when she can be very hard, very cruel.

There are moments when a man is very hard, aggressive, but there are moments when he can be very soft. Even a Ghengis Khan is very soft to his children. To his wife he is very soft.

I have heard...

The plain and strongly-built daughter of a Field-Marshal was engaged to be married to a young officer on her father's staff. 'Couldn't you do something for Frank now that he has asked me to marry him?' she asked her father one day.

'There's not much I can do really,' replied the Field-Marshal, 'except get him a medal for gallantry.'

Another...

He was undersized, meek, diffident, and subdued, and he had applied for a job as a night-watchman.

'Yes,' said the manager, dubiously, 'but the fact is we want someone who is restless and uneasy, especially at night - someone who thinks the worst of everybody, someone who sleeps with one eye open. The kind of person, in short, who, when roused, is the devil himself.'

'Alright,' said the meek lad, as he walked away, 'I'll send my wife.'

It depends on what you choose inside you. It is a choice. The body is not your choice, but the vibe that will surround your body is a choice. And if you choose consciously, you will have great freedom in your being, because you will know who you are and what you are doing with your body.

The body is tremendously potential - much can happen through it - but people take it for granted.

It is as if a beautiful guitar has been given to you as a present and you just keep it, not knowing the potential of it. You can play on the guitar, you can learn to play on the guitar, and great music will be born. And then it depends on you what kind of music it will be. You can create a music which is sad, you can create a music which is celebrating, you can create music which is violent, you can create a music which is soothing, loving, silent.

There are kinds of music. Classical music has a different quality: it soothes, it brings you to a silence, rest. Modern pop music makes you restless, sexual; it drives you into a kind of frenzy. But the instruments are the same - as are bodies.

A really wise person chooses to play what kind of music he wants to play on the body. You can make your body like a Buddha or you can become a Mohammed Ali. It depends on you. Look at Buddha's body - how soft, although he is a man; how feminine, although he is a man. He has chosen grace.

It depends on you. It is your choice. You are not confined by your chemistry. You can be confined only if you remain unconscious in your chemistry, otherwise your chemistry has infinite potential: it can be put to a thousand and one uses. And to learn how to use one's body, how to behave with one's body, how to relate with one's body, is a great art. Millions of people just take their body for granted; they never search for its possibilities. Their body remains a seed. It never becomes a Golden Flower.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

My approach about everything is to bring it to the surface. So I never nip anything in the bud, I help it to become a flower. And after the flowering, the flower starts withering of its own accord. That's the natural way.

So in my commune, nothing is prevented. Ambitions are allowed, accepted, as being part of human beings, their ignorance, their unawareness. But I make my people aware that these are games. So play them, but play consciously. Become more and more alert and never let them become serious.

If they don't become serious, there is no need to become afraid of them. The problem is that when a game becomes so serious then you forget completely that it is a game.

That's where the politician is lost. He thinks he is doing something very serious. He is doing something very silly, but he thinks he is doing something very serious. All that is needed is to make him aware that this is a game. If you want to play it, play, but don't become so serious about it.

Keep a little bit of humour. A sense of humour is one of the greatest keys to transform human personalities.

Yes, you are right! Here also - because these people come from the world and they bring all kinds of infections from the world. They are not coming here fresh, they have been already conditioned.

Ambition has already been put into them - their parents, the society, church, school, college, university. Everywhere they have been poisoned; they bring all that poison here. You cannot nip it in the bud otherwise they will become split and hypocritical. Then on the surface they will show humility, humbleness, and deep down they will think, 'There is nobody more humble than me' - and politics has come in. Deep down they will think, 'I am the greatest egoless person in the world' - but the 'greatest'.

Now a new kind of ambition has entered. It is the same ambition, now the direction is new. And it is more subtle, and, of course, more dangerous too. And now it is pious, because it is in the name of religion. So even the poison no longer looks like poison; it is labelled nectar. It is religious poison, pious poison, and it is more difficult to get rid of the pious poison.

So I don't repress anything and I don't help any kind of repression, I help people to bring whatsoever they have in them to the surface. I help them to be aware of it, to watch it, to see the foolishness of it, to see the stupidity of it - not because I say it is stupid, because if I say something and you only believe it, you will repress it. I help you - my function here is to help you become aware on your own. The day you see the stupidity of it, it will drop of its own accord.

So I have created all kinds of games here. Yes, there is a hierarchy too so people who want to play, they can play the game of hierarchy. But sooner or later - because the whole effort is to make them conscious - they become aware that this is a game. And the moment they see it is a game, they are out of it. Seeing something as a game makes you laugh at it - a hearty laugh at your own self.

And when a man can laugh at his own stupidities he is becoming wise. Laughter has to come out of awareness.

Ambitious people also laugh. Just the other day I was reading that when Jimmy Carter came to power he was laughing so beautifully that you could have counted his teeth. And some people have counted - eleven teeth were showing. Now only seven are showing. Now the smile is disappearing because his prestige is falling every day. People's expectations are not fulfilled: what he has promised he cannot deliver. Only seven! Soon you will see five, three, two. By the time he goes, the smile will have disappeared completely. You will not see a single tooth. This is not real laughter. Even this laughter is political, managed, practised, cultivated.

There is a different kind of laughter that comes to you when you see all kinds of foolishnesses that you have been in - and how seriously. When you see the whole ridiculousness of your life pattern, your whole gestalt and its stupidity - but not because I say or Buddha says or Master Lu-tsu says...

It is not a question of belief, it is not a question of somebody else's belief, it is not a question of somebody else's knowledge and you borrow it - borrowed knowledge never helps - it has to arise in you.

My effort here is to make you aware of all that is hidden in you. All that you have been doing unconsciously has to be done consciously, that's all. And sometimes miracles happen.

Once a professor came to me. His problem, and it was really a problem, because to be a professor and have such a problem is really difficult - his problem was that he walked like a woman. So whenever he passed by students would come and laugh and giggle and he felt really bad. What to do about it? And he had been to the doctors and the psychoanalysts and they could not help. They said, 'What can we do?' From his very childhood he had been walking that way. And he tried not to walk like that, and the more he tried, the more he failed.

There is a certain law - hypnotists call it the law of reverse effect. You try hard to do something and just the opposite happens.

So he was trying hard. His whole effort, his whole mind was concerned with not walking like a woman, but he was walking like a woman more and more. I told him, 'Just do one thing - because it is a miracle that you can walk like a woman, it is really a miracle.'

He said, 'What are you saying?'

I said, 'It is a miracle! A woman can walk that way because of a different musculature. Because of the womb she walks in a certain way. No man can walk like that. You are unique!'

He said, 'What are you saying? And everybody is laughing at me.'

I said, 'You are really unique. You have done something miraculous. It is magical. You forget all about it. My suggestion is that you start walking consciously like a woman. Make it a point to walk like a woman.'

He said, 'What are you suggesting? I have tried my whole life not to walk like a woman, then too I walk like a woman. And if I start walking like a woman what will happen?'

I said, 'You just try in front of me.' And at least twenty, thirty people were sitting there. He said, 'Here?' I said 'Here. You try.'

He tried and he failed! He could not - he could not walk like a woman. And he looked very surprised. He said, 'What happened?'

I said, 'You have to understand the law of reverse effect. Now go to the university, anywhere, and consciously try to walk like a woman - because it is very difficult to walk like a woman unless you are a woman.'

And since then he has not walked like a woman. He became conscious of it. It was an unconscious mechanism. Unconsciousness was the root cause of it. Just become conscious, and it disappears.

Man's problems are rooted in the unconscious. And what do you go on doing? You go on repressing those problems into the unconscious. Where else will you repress them? There is nowhere else to repress them. Whenever you repress something, you repress it into the unconscious. That's how the unconscious is created.

I don't have an unconscious because I never repress anything. The unconscious is created by repressions. The child does not have an unconscious. By and by he will have. And the old man has more of the unconscious than the conscious because he has been repressing his whole life.

The unconscious functions like a basement. Whatsoever is useless, you throw into the basement. It accumulates there. It becomes a junkyard. That is what your unconscious is.

And from the unconscious, things arise and take possession of you. All the ghosts that take possession of you come from the unconscious not from the graveyards. Your unconscious is the graveyard where those ghosts are born, and whenever they can find an opportunity, an occasion, to sneak up and possess you, they will possess you. And they possess with revenge, with a vengeance.

Now, to repress it is to help the unconscious more. That is the law of reverse effect. Your unconscious will become more and more powerful. You are feeding it and nourishing it. My whole approach is that consciousness is liberation. Awareness is the solution. Just become more conscious of whatsoever you are doing.

Once it happened...

Nagarjuna

A thief came to a great Master, Nagarjuna. He had come for a certain reason. Nagarjuna used to live naked - one of the great Indian mystics and one of the greatest alchemists.

He would have been the right person to comment on THE SECRET OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER. C.G. Jung was not the right person to comment on it.

He came into a great capital. The queen was a follower of Nagarjuna. She came with a golden begging bowl and told Nagarjuna, 'Give your wooden begging bowl to me. I will keep it as a treasure.

And I have brought this golden begging bowl for you.' She was afraid that maybe Nagarjuna would say, 'I don't touch gold, I am an ascetic.' But Nagarjuna was an enlightened person, he said, 'Okay.' So he took the golden begging bowl studded with valuable diamonds.

A thief saw Nagarjuna moving with the golden begging bowl, naked, and all those diamonds shining in the sun. He said, 'Look! How long can this man have this? Somebody is going to take it from him. Why not me? This naked man cannot keep it long. From where did he get it?'

So the thief followed Nagarjuna. Nagarjuna was staying outside the capital in the ruins of an old temple where there were no doors, not even windows - nothing - just walls all falling down, just a small shelter. A little bit of roof was still safe. The thief said, 'How will he protect his valuable thing? In the night at least he will go to sleep.'

So he waited outside by the side of the wall near a window. Nagarjuna wanted to have a little sleep in the afternoon - that was his habit. Seeing the thief following him, he knew perfectly well why he was following. He was not following Nagarjuna, he was following the golden bowl, so why force him to wait there? He was going to take it anyway. 'When I fall asleep,' thought Nagarjuna, 'he will take it, so why force him to wait unnecessarily?'

He threw the begging bowl out of the window. The thief could not believe what was happening. But this man looked really charismatic naked, so beautiful, so divine-looking, with such a precious thing with him, and he had thrown it! Now the thief could not leave. He was so attracted by the person, so enchanted, almost hypnotized. He looked in through the window and said, 'Sir, can I come in and have a Little chit-chat with you?'

Nagarjuna said, 'That's why I threw the bowl outside - so that you could come in. You would have come in when I had gone to sleep but that would have been meaningless. Come in!'

The thief came in and he said, 'Looking at you, seeing that you can throw such a valuable thing away so easily - and I know why you have thrown it, you have thrown it away i-or me - a great desire has arisen in me. Will there ever be a time when I will also be so detached, so aloof, so free of possessions as you are?'

Nagarjuna said, 'The time has come. Accidentally you are already caught. I will give you the secret of how to become transcendental to the world, how to go beyond, how not to possess.'

The man said, 'But let me first tell you that I am a thief. And I have gone to many saints before, but they all say - because I am a well-known thief - they all say, "First stop stealing, only then can you meditate." So let me tell you first. You may not know.'

Nagarjuna said, 'Then it simply shows that you have never been to a saint up to now. They must have been ex-thieves; otherwise who cares who you are? And why make it a condition that first you have to stop stealing? I will give you the meditation. It is very simple: you go on stealing. Just do one thing: do it consciously, do it with full awareness. When you are going to steal, move fully aware, alert to what you are doing. And after fifteen days you report to me.'

But by the seventh day the thief was back and he said, 'You deceived me. For seven days continuously I have not been able to steal. And it was not that I was prevented, I reach the places where great treasures are available, but I cannot do it. If I become aware, I start laughing at my foolishness. What am I doing - stealing things which will be taken away from me? Sooner or later I will have to die. The whole thing looks so childish. If I become aware, I cannot steal. If I steal, I lose my awareness. Both cannot go together.'

Nagarjuna said, 'Then you decide. Whichever you choose, you can choose. You can drop awareness and steal or, if you want to have awareness, then drop stealing.'

And the man said, 'I have tasted awareness. It is impossible to drop it. I will drop stealing, because awareness is far more valuable, far more significant. I have only tasted a little bit of it, but it gives such joy. And I have been stealing my whole life, and I have accumulated many valuable things in my house, but they have never given me any joy. They only give me more and more fear.'

Awareness is the only secret key: it transforms. It doesn't matter what your illness is, awareness is the only medicine: it cures all illness. If you are politically minded - and everybody is... In some way or other everybody is trying to be more powerful than the other. Even in relationships politics continue - the husband tries to be more powerful than the wife, the wife tries to be more powerful than the husband - hence the constant conflict, even between parents and children. Everywhere there is conflict. It is all politics, different faces of politics.

So when you come to me I cannot expect you to come without politics - that is impossible. If you are without politics, you will not need to come - wherever you are, God will come to you. When you come here I accept all your human weaknesses. I have no condemnation. I don't tell you to repress; I don't want to make you feel guilty about anything. If you want to play the game of politics you are allowed to play it - with only one condition: become more and more alert while playing it. Have a sense of humour, and then all is well. Sooner or later it will wither away of its own accord.

And so is the case with sensuality, sexuality; so is the case with possessiveness; so is the case with everything that man suffers from.

 

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