Both are Needed

Question 1:

This raises a very basic question. Existence itself is divine; then from where does the evil come?

From where does the bad, the immoral, the unacceptable come?

The good is okay because we have made it synonymous with God - good means God. But from where does the bad come? This has puzzled humanity for centuries. As far back as we can go, this problem has always been there in the mind of man.

The logical solution, the solution that the mind can find, is to divide existence, to create a duality, to say that there is God, which is good, and there is evil, the devil, Beelzebub, Satan, which is bad. Mind thinks the problem is solved - so all that is bad comes from the devil, and all that is good comes from God. But the problem is not solved; the problem is only pushed back a little.

The problem remains the same. You have pushed it back a step, but nothing is solved - because from where does the devil come? If God is the creator, then he must have created the devil in the beginning, in the first place - or, God is not the supreme creator.

The devil has always been there, just as an enemy, the antagonistic force - then both are eternal.

If the devil is not created then the devil cannot be destroyed, so the conflict will continue eternally.

God cannot win, the devil will always be there disturbing.

This is the problem for Christian theology, Mohammedan theology, Zoroastrian theology, because all these three theologies have followed the simple solution that mind suggests. But mind cannot solve it.

There is another possibility which doesn't come from the mind and will be difficult for the mind to understand. That possibility has arisen in the East, particularly in India, and that possibility is that there is no devil, there is no basic duality - only God exists, there is NO other force. This is what ADVAIT - the nondual philosophy - means: only God is. But we see the evil is there!

Hindus say that the evil exists in your interpretation, not in itself. You call it bad because you cannot understand it or because you are disturbed by it. It is your attitude that makes it bad or appear bad.

There is no evil. Evil cannot exist. Only God exists, only the divine exists.

Now I will take your problem against this background. Two children are born - one is good, one is bad. Why do you call one good and why do you call the other bad? Is it really reality or your interpretation?

Which child is good, and why? If the child is obedient, the child is good; if the child is disobedient, the child is bad. One who follows you is good, one who resists is bad. Whatsoever you say, the one accepts it. If you say: Sit silently - the one sits. But the other tries to disobey, tries to be rebellious - the other is bad. This is your interpretation. You are not saying anything about the children; you are saying something about your mind.

Why is the obedient one good? In fact, the obedient ones have never been brilliant, have never been very radiant, they have always been dull. No obedient child has been a great scientist or a great religious man, or a great poet - no child who is obedient. Only disobedient ones have been great inventors, creators; only the rebellious one transcends the old and reaches to the new and into the unknown.

But for the parents' ego the obedient one feels good, because it helps your ego. When the child follows you, whatsoever you say, you feel good; when the child resists and denies you, you feel bad.

But a really alive child will be rebellious. Why should he follow you? Who are you? Why should he follow you just because you are a father? What have you done to be a father? You have been just a passage - and that too very unconscious.

Your sex is not a conscious act, you have been pushed by unconscious forces to move into it. The child is just an accident. You were never expecting, you were not consciously aware to whom you were giving an invitation to come. The child has suddenly come as a stranger. You have fathered it, but you are not the father.

When I say you have fathered it, it is a biological thing. You were not needed, even a syringe can do that. But you are not a father because you are not conscious. You have not given the invitation, you have not asked a particular soul to enter the womb of your wife, your beloved. You have not worked for it.

And when the child is born...what have you been doing to it? When you say the child should follow you, are you confident enough that you know the truth that he should follow you? Are you confident enough, certain that you have realized something that the child should follow?

You can force yourself on the child because the child is weak and you are strong. That is the only difference between you and your child. Otherwise, you are also childish, ignorant; you have not grown, you are not mature. You will get angry just like the child, you will get jealous just like the child, and you will play with toys just like the child. Your toys may be different, a little bigger, that's all.

What is your life? Where have you reached? What wisdom have you gained so that the child should follow you and should say yes to you whatsoever you demand?

A father will be conscious of it; he will not force anything on the child. Rather, he will allow the child to be himself, he will help the child to be himself. He will give freedom to the child, because if he has known anything, he must know that only through freedom does the inner grow. If he has experienced anything in his life, he knows well that experience needs freedom - the more freedom, the richer is your experience. The less freedom...there is no possibility to experience. If there is no freedom at all, then you can have borrowed experiences, imitations, shadows, but never the real thing, never the authentic.

Fathering a child will mean giving him more and more freedom, making him more and more independent, allowing him to move into the unknown, where you have never been. He should transcend you, he should go ahead of you, he should surpass all the boundaries that you have known. He must be helped, but not forced, because once you start forcing, you are killing, you are murdering the child.

The spirit needs freedom - it grows in freedom and only in freedom. If you are really a father, you will be happy if the child is rebellious, because no father would like to kill the spirit of the child.

But you are not fathers. You are ill with your own illnesses. When you force a child to follow you, you are simply saying that you would like to dominate someone. You cannot do it in the world, but this small child, at least you can dominate him, possess him. You are being a politician to the child. You want to fulfill some unfulfilled desires through the child - domination, dictatorship. At least you can be a dictator to the child; he is so weak, he is so young and helpless. And he depends on you so much that you can force anything on him. But by forcing you are killing him. You are not giving birth to him, you are destroying him.

The child who follows will look good - because he is dead. The child who is rebellious will look bad because he is alive.

Because we have missed life ourselves, we are against life. Because we are already dead, dead before death, we always want to kill others. Subtle are the ways. In the name of love, you can kill.

In the name of compassion, you can kill. In the name of service, you can kill. Beautiful names we find - deep down, the murderer is sitting.

Realize this, then you will not think in these terms - that this child is good and that child is bad. Don't interpret! Every person is unique, every person is different. The divine creative force is such that it never repeats.

So only say this much, that this child is different from that child. Don't say this is good and that is bad. You don't know what is good and what is bad. This child is obedient, that child is disobedient; but no one knows what is good.

And don't force. If this child by his own spontaneity is obedient, then it is good - this is his nature, help it to grow. And if that child is rebellious, disobedient - this is his nature, help him to grow. Let one grow to be a deep yes-sayer; let the other grow to be a deep no-sayer. But don't interpret, because the moment you interpret, you start destroying. This is his nature to say yes, and that is his nature to say no. Both are needed.

Life will be very flat and dull if there is nobody to say no. If everybody is a yes-sayer, it will be absolutely dull and stupid. The no-sayer is needed, that is the polar opposite. Obedience will be meaningless if there is nobody to rebel. Don't choose, simply feel the difference and help. And don't force yourself on them, don't be violent.

Every father is violent, every mother is violent, and you can be violent because you are violent in the name of love. Nobody is going to criticize you, because you say you love your child so much that you have to beat him, you love him so much that you have to put him right. You say because you love him that's why you are trying to put him right - he's going wrong.

Are you certain what is wrong and what is good? Nobody is certain, nobody can be certain - because the phenomenon is such that a thing which is good this moment becomes bad the next; the direction that seems bad in the beginning turns out to be good in the end. Life is a flux, every moment changing.

So a real father or a real mother will give his or her children only awareness, not morals, because morals are dead. You say: This is good, follow! But the next moment the thing becomes bad, and what is the child supposed to do? The next moment life changes. It is changing, it is a continuum of change, and your morals are fixed - you say this is good, this has to be followed. Then you become dead. Life goes on changing and you go on, fixed with your morals.

That's why religious persons look so dull - their eyes vacant, superficial, with no depth, because depth is possible only if you move with the river of life.

So what should a father or a mother give as a gift to their children? Only awareness. Make the children more aware. Allow freedom and tell them: Be alert and move with freedom. Even if you have to err, don't be afraid, because life learns through errors also. One becomes alert through errors also - so don't be afraid. It is human to err.

And if you err with alertness only one thing will happen: you will not commit the same mistake again and again. Once you commit the mistake, you will experience it, you will become alert about it, and it will disappear. It will make you richer, and you will go ahead, unafraid. Just remember one thing, that whatsoever you pass through, be more conscious. If you say yes, say it consciously. If you say no, say it consciously.

Don't get hurt when a child says no - because who are you to fix a child? He comes through you, you are just a passage. Don't become a dictator - love never dictates, and if you never dictate, then this goodness and badness will disappear. Then you will love both, your love will flow unconditionally.

That's how God's love is flowing to this world - unconditionally.

I have heard.... Somebody said to Junnaid, a Sufi mystic: A very evil man comes to listen to you and you allow him too much closeness and intimacy. Throw him out, he is not a good man.

Junnaid said: If God does not throw him out of existence, who am I to throw him out? If God accepts him...I am not superior to God. God gives him life, God helps him to be alive; and that man is still young and fresh and he will live long, longer than you. So who am I to decide?

God is showering on both the good and the bad. The situation is absolutely clear, crystal-clear - that for God there is no good, no bad. When I say God, I don't mean a person sitting somewhere up in the sky. That is an anthropocentric attitude: we conceive of God in our own image. There is nobody sitting there. God means the whole, the totality of existence.

A bad man breathes as beautifully as a good man. A sinner is as accepted by existence as a saint.

Existence makes no differentiation. But because of dualistic thinking - Christian, Mohammedan, Zoroastrian - we think in terms of conflict.

There is a story: There was a town, Sodom, in old Israel. The people were very much perverted in that town, sexually perverted - homosexuals. So it is said that God destroyed the town. The whole town was destroyed. A great fire descended and everybody was killed.

After many, many centuries, one Hassidic saint, one Hassidic mystic, was asked: When God destroyed Sodom there must have been at least a few good persons in the town - all were destroyed.

So the questioner said: We can accept that the bad were destroyed because they were bad - but why the good?

Now look at the cunning mind. The Hassid thought it over and said: He destroyed the good also so that they could be witnesses that these bad people were bad. This is a cunning calculation, this is just saving face. The real thing is: for God, there is no good, no bad. When he creates, he creates both; when he destroys, he destroys both - unconditionally.

This is really foolish, this attitude of good and bad. A person smoking cigarettes becomes bad, a person enjoying alcohol becomes bad, a person who has fallen in love with somebody else's wife becomes bad. We think God is sitting there and calculating: This man smokes, this man is an alcoholic, this man has fallen into adultery, let this fellow come and I will see. This is foolish if God is calculating about such trivial things! This is our tiny mind.

For existence, there is no interpretation and no division. Good and bad are human conceptions, not divine.

Every society has its own conceptions of good and bad: every age changes and has its own conceptions of good and bad. There is no absoluteness about good and bad. Good and bad are relative - relative to society, to culture, relative to us. God is absolute for him, there is no distinction.

And if you are deep in meditation where thoughts disappear, then there is no distinction - because good and bad are thoughts. When you are silent, what is good and what is bad? The moment the idea arises: This is good, that is bad, the silence has been lost. In deep meditation there is nothing - no good, no bad.

Lao Tzu is reported to have said: A hair's distinction, and heaven and hell are set apart. In the mind of a meditator, if even a slight distinction arises then the whole world is divided. Meditation is non-distinction,NO distinction. You simply look, and you see the whole and don't divide it. You don't say: This is ugly, that is beautiful; this is good, that is bad. You don't say anything. You simply are.

You don't say anything, you don't make any division. The non-dual is there.

In meditation you become God. People think in meditation they will see God. This is wrong; there is nobody to be seen. God is not an object. In meditation you become God, because all distinctions disappear. In meditation you become one with the whole because in meditation you cannot divide yourself from the whole - all divisions have fallen! You are so silent that no boundary is there.

Every boundary is a disturbance. You are so silent there is no I, no thou. You are so silent that all boundaries have blurred and disappeared. One exists, unity exists. This is what Hindus call the Brahma - the one, the unity, the ultimate unity of existence.

It is mind that divides, makes distinctions, says this is this, that is that. In meditation there is isness, undivided. You are God when you are in meditation, and only in meditation will you come to know unconditional love.

If you are a father, both your children will be just children - strangers, coming from an unknown world, moving into an unknown existence, growing, maturing. Out of your love you give to them; you share your life, your experiences, but you never force anything. When you don't force, then who is obedient and who is disobedient? When you don't force, how can you decide who is good and who is bad?

Now I come to the last point. When you DON'T force, how can one be obedient and another disobedient? The whole phenomenon disappears. Then you accept the other - the child, the wife, the husband, the friend - as he is, as a fact. If we can accept each other as facts, without any oughts, shoulds, without any good and bad, life will become paradise this very moment.

We reject. Even if we accept somebody, we accept in part. We say: Your eyes are good, but everything else is just dirty. Is this acceptance? We say: This act of yours is good, but all else is bad, cannot be accepted, and I accept only that which is good. That means: I accept only that which is according to me.

You may not know how you are destroying each other, because whenever the parents say to the child: We accept only this part, not anything else - when a wife says to the husband: I accept only this in you, not the other - what are you doing? You are creating a division in the other's mind also.

When the father says: Don't do this, I don't accept this, I am angry about this - when he punishes a child because HE thinks he has done something wrong, what is he doing? When he appreciates the child, gives him a toy, brings flowers for him, sweets, and says: You have done well, you have done something good which I approve - what is he doing? He is creating a division in the child. By and by, the child will also reject the part that the parents have rejected, and he will be divided: he will become two I's.

You may have observed little children - they even punish themselves; they even say to themselves:

Bobby, this is not good. You have done a bad thing. They start rejecting the part that has been rejected by their parents. Then a division is created. The rejected part becomes the unconscious, the suppressed part; and the accepted part becomes the conscious, the conscience. Then their whole life will be a hell, because the rejected and the accepted will go on fighting. Continuously, there will be a turmoil.

The rejected cannot be destroyed. It is YOU, it is THERE! It is always working within you - you may have put it in the dark, that's all. But once you put part of you in the dark that part becomes more forcible because it works through darkness and you cannot see it, you cannot be aware of it and it takes its own revenge. Whenever there is a weak moment and your conscious part is not very strong, it will come out. You may be good for twenty-three hours, but for one hour, when the conscious is tired, the unconscious asserts itself.

So even saints have their sinner moments, even saints have to give leave to their sainthood. They are on holiday, sometimes they have to be. So if you catch a saint on his holiday, don't be disturbed too much, everybody has to have a holiday. Everybody gets tired - unless one is whole. Then there is no tiredness because there is no other part which is constantly fighting, creating trouble, asserting itself, taking revenge.

So we have two words: one is saint, the other is sage. The saint always has the sinner hidden within him; the sage is the whole. The sage cannot be on holiday because he is always on holiday - there is no rejected part; he lives as a whole totality. He moves moment-to-moment as a whole; he never rejects anything. He has accepted himself completely the rejection is created by the parents, by the society.

A small child is always a great discoverer, and of course he begins his discovery with his own body, that is the nearest existence to him. He cannot go to the moon, he cannot go to Everest, they are very far; some day he may go, but right now the nearest part is his own body. He starts discovering it. He touches his body, he enjoys it.

Observe a little child touching his toes - happy, happy as you can never be even if you go to the moon. He has discovered his body! He touches his toe, enjoys it, brings it to his mouth because these are the ways he discovers. He will taste it, smell it, touch it.

But when he comes to his sexual parts, parents become disturbed. That disturbance is in the parents, not in the child. He does not make any distinctions; the toe or the sexual organ are the same. There is no division in his body up to now. The whole body is there: fingers, eyes, nose, sexual organs, toes, are one flow. There is no division of lower and higher.

Hindus have a division; all over the world, all the cultures have divisions. Hindus say: Never touch with your right hand below the navel, because that part below the navel is dirty. Touch below the navel with your left hand; touch above the navel with your right hand. The body is divided, and the division has gone so deep in the mind that by right we mean good - we say you are right - by left we mean bad. So if you want to condemn somebody, just say he's a leftist, a communist. The left is bad.

A child doesn't know which is left, which is right - the child is whole, he is a unity. He doesn't know which is lower, which is higher - the body is undivided flow.

He will come to discover his sexual parts, and parents become disturbed. Whenever a child, boy or girl, touches the sexual organs, immediately we say: Don't touch! We remove the hand. The child is shocked. You have given an electric shock to him. He cannot understand what you are doing.

And this will happen many times. You are hammering into the child that something in his body has to be rejected, the sexual part of the body is bad. Psychologically, you are creating a complex. The child will grow, but he will never be able to accept his sexual organs. If you cannot accept your body in its totality, there will be problems, there will be trouble, because the child will make love, he will move into the sexual act, but there will be guilt: Something wrong is going on, something basically wrong is happening. He is condemning himself.

Making love, the most beautiful thing in the world, he is condemning and is guilty. He cannot make love totally; he cannot move totally into the other, because he is holding back. Half is moving, half is being controlled. This creates a conflict and love becomes a misery.

This happens in all dimensions of life. Everything becomes miserable because in everything the parents have created a division: this is good and that is bad. This is why you are miserable - because of your parents, the society. Don't do the same to your children.

It will be very difficult because you are divided, you would like to divide the child - it is unconscious!

But if you become alert...if you are really meditating you will become alert. Don't create the same schizophrenia in your child; don't divide, don't make a split. You have suffered enough; don't create the same suffering for your child.

If you really love you will not divide him because division creates suffering. You will help him to remain whole, because wholeness is holy, and wholeness gives ecstatic possibilities, opens doors for the peak experiences.

How can you help a child to remain whole? One thing: remain alert so you don't divide him unconsciously. Don't condemn a thing. If you feel it is harmful, tell the child that this is harmful but don't say this is bad - because when you say harmful, you are stating a fact; when you say bad, you have brought a valuation into it.

Parents have to say many things to children, because children don't know. You have to say: Don't go near the fire - but say: This is harmful. If you get burned, you will suffer, but then still it is up to you. Say this is my experience that whenever I was burned, I suffered; and I tell you my experience, but even if you want to do it, you can do it. This is harmful.

Say what is harmful, say what is beneficial, but don't say good and bad. If you are alert, you will drop the words good and bad from your vocabulary - because with good and bad you are bringing your valuation to things. Say harmful - and still allow freedom, because your experience cannot become the children's experience. They will have to experience themselves. Sometimes even harmful things will have to be done - only then can they grow; sometimes they will have to fall and get hurt - only then will they know. They have to pass through things, get hurt and scarred, but that is the only way one grows.

If you protect the child too much he will not grow. Many people remain children, their mental age never grows beyond that of a child. They become old, they may be seventy, but their mental age remains near about seven, because they have been so much protected.

Look at very rich families: Their children are protected too much, they are not allowed any freedom - to err, to experience, to go astray, to go off the road. Almost every moment somebody is following them - the servants, the tutor, the governess; they are never left alone. Then look what happens to them: almost always, rich families produce mediocre children, stupid, silly. Great minds have never come from rich families - it is difficult - innovators never come from them, adventurers never come from them - they cannot. They are so much protected, they never grow.

For growth, unprotectedness is needed, protectedness is also needed - both are needed. Look at a gardener working with his trees: he helps them, he protects them, but still he gives them freedom to move in the sun, in the rains, in the storms. He will not take those trees inside the house to protect them from the storm and from the sun and from the dangers that are always there outside. If you take the tree inside it will die. A hothouse plant is unnatural, and we all become hothouse plants because of over-protective parents.

Don't protect the children. Don't leave them unprotected. Follow them like a shadow. Look after them, be careful and create a balance, so whenever it is so dangerous that they may die, you protect them; but whenever you feel that it is not going to be so dangerous, you allow them. The more they grow, the more you allow. By the time a child becomes sexually mature, you should give him total freedom - because nature has made him a man now. Now no need to be too much worried.

Sometimes accidents will happen, but they are worth it.

Give the child a wholeness. Make him infectious to your awareness. Love him, tell him what your experience is, but don't try to make him follow your experience. Don't force. If he follows of his own accord, it is good; if he doesn't follow, wait - there is no hurry.

It is difficult to be a father or to be a mother, the MOST difficult thing in the world. And people think it is the easiest.

I have heard: One woman was coming in a taxi to her home from the market, and the taxi-driver was just crazy. He was going zigzag; any moment there would be an accident. And he was going so fast...the woman was very, very nervous, sitting on the edge of the seat, and many times she said: Don't go so fast, I'm scared. But he wouldn't listen. Then she said: Listen! Twelve children are waiting for me at my house; if something goes wrong, what will happen to the twelve children?

So the driver said: And you are telling me to be alert?!

Difficult to follow it? He is saying: You have given birth to twelve children! You were not alert, and you are telling me to be alert in driving!

It is easy to give birth to many children; there is no problem, animals do it easily. But to be a mother is very difficult, the most difficult thing in the world. To be a father is even more difficult - because to be a mother is natural, to be a father is not so natural. Father is a social phenomenon. We have created the father; it doesn't exist in nature. To be a father is still more difficult, because there is no natural instinct for it. It is difficult because this is the most creative act, to create a human being.

Be alert. Give more freedom. Don't make distinctions of good and bad; accept both, and help both types to grow. Soon this helping the children to grow will become a deep meditation for you - you will also grow with them. And when your child flowers into a yes-sayer, or a no-sayer...because there have been beautiful no-sayers: Nietzsche is a no-sayer - but beautiful! His genius to say no is such a wonderful and beautiful phenomenon that the world would not be so rich if there were not people like Nietzsche. He CANnot say yes. It is difficult for him. No is his whole being.

Buddha is a no-sayer. He said: There is no Brahma, there is no soul, there is no world. You cannot find a greater no-sayer. He left NOTHING. He says: There is nothing. He goes on saying no, goes on eliminating. It is very difficult to find a yes from him - impossible. But what a beautiful being evolved out of that no! That no must have been total.

There have been yes-sayers, the devotees - the BHAKTAS: Meera, Chaitanya or Jesus or Mohammed - these are yes-sayers. And there are two types of religion, of course: one which is around a no-sayer, the other religions which are around a yes-sayer. You also will belong to one or the other. If you are a no-sayer, then Buddhism will be a great help to you. If you are a yes-sayer, then Buddhism cannot help you at all; it will be destructive. Christianity can help, Hinduism can help.

Both are needed. When I say this, I mean they always exist in a proportion, just like men and women - almost always the number is the same. The whole world is divided - half men, half women. And how nature keeps this proportion is a miracle. In every other dimension the same proportion is maintained: always half no-sayers and half yes-sayers in the world, always half who can follow the path of knowledge and half who can follow the path of love. Love is yes-saying. Knowledge is always no-saying. And this proportion is maintained by nature always.

So if you have got two children, one is a yes-sayer and the other is a no-sayer, this is the proportion!

This is good that you have got both in your home. You can create a harmony out of them. Don't try to destroy the no-sayer, don't try to push and help only the yes-sayer. Create a harmony between the two; these two children are representative of the whole world, the yin and yang, the opposites, the poles. Create a harmony between them and your family will really be a family, a unit, a harmonious unit.

But don't interpret, don't condemn, don't be moralistic. Just be a father, a mother. Love them and accept them and help them to be themselves. This is the base of all love: to help the other to be himself. If you want to pull, manipulate, you are not in love, you are destructive.

Question 2:

There are two types of growth methods. You can pursue your spiritual growth alone, or you can work through a group, through a school. Both types have always existed even in the East. Sufi methods are group methods. In India also, group methods have existed but were never so prevalent as in Islam or Sufism.

But this is a new phenomenon as far as quantity is concerned - that the West is totally group- oriented. Never before have there been so many group methods alive, and so many people working through them as exist now in the West.

So in a way we can say that the East has remained with individual efforts, and the West is now growing towards group methods. Why is this so and what is the difference? And why this difference?

Group methods can exist only if your ego has come to a point where it is a burden to carry it.

When the ego has become so burdensome that to be alone is to be in anguish, then group methods become meaningful, because in a group you can merge your ego.

If the ego is not very evolved then individual methods can help you. You can move to a mountain, you can be isolated, or even living in an ashram with a master you work alone, you do your meditation, others do their meditation. You never work together.

In India, Hindus have never prayed in groups. With Mohammedans, group prayer entered India.

Mohammedans pray in groups; Hindus were always praying alone; even if they went to the temple, they would go alone. It is a one-to-one relationship - you and your God.

This is possible if the ego has not been helped to grow to a point where it becomes a burden. In India, it has never been helped to grow - from the very beginning we have been against the ego.

So you grow in ego, but the ego remains vague, blurred; you remain humble, you are not really an egoist. It is not a penetrating peak in you, it is flat ground. YOU ARE egoistic, because everybody has to be, but not absolute egoists. You always think it is wrong and go on pulling yourself down.

In certain situations you can be provoked and your ego becomes a peak - but ordinarily it is not a peak, it is flat ground.

In India the ego is just like anger - if someone provokes you, you become angry; if nobody provokes you, you are not angry. In the West, the ego has become a permanent substance. It is not like anger, it is now like breathing. There is no need to provoke it - it is there, it is a constant phenomenon.

Because of this ego, a group becomes a very helpful thing. In the group, working with a group, merging yourself in the group, you can put your ego aside easily.

That's why not only in religion, but in politics also, a few phenomena can exist only in the West:

fascism for example could exist, could become possible, in Germany which is the most egoistic country in the West, the most Western. There is nothing like the German ego all over the world.

That's why Hitler could become possible, because everyone is so egoistic, everybody is in need of merging.

Nazi rallies, millions of people marching - you can lose yourself, you need not yourself be there.

You become the march, the band playing, the music, the sound, the hypnotizing Hitler, a charismatic personality. Everybody looking at Hitler, the whole mass around you like an ocean - you become just a wave. You feel good, you feel fresh, you feel young, you feel happy. You forget your misery, your anguish, your loneliness, your alienation. You are not alone. Such a great mass is with you and you are with it. Your individual private worries drop. Suddenly there is an opening - you feel light, as if you are flying.

Hitler became successful not because he had a very meaningful philosophy - his philosophy was absurd; it was childish, immature not because he could convince the German people that he was right...that was not the point. It is very difficult to convince German people, one of the most difficult things - because they are logicians, they have logic in their minds, rational in every way. It is difficult to convince them, and to have been convinced by Hitler would have been impossible. No, he never tried to convince them. He created a hypnotic group phenomenon.

THAT convinced them.

It was not a question of what Hitler was saying; it was a question of what they were feeling when they were in the group, in the mass. It was such an unburdening experience, that it was worth it to follow this man. Whatsoever he was saying - wrong or right, logical, illogical, foolish - it was good to follow him. They were so much bored with themselves they wanted to be absorbed by the mass.

That's why fascism, nazism and all types of group madness, became possible in the West.

In the East only Japan could follow, because Japan is the counterpart of Germany in the East. Japan is the most Western country in the East. The same phenomenon was there, so Japan could become an ally to the Hitlerite madness.

The same is happening in other fields also - in religion also, in psychology also. Group meditation is happening, and only group meditation will happen for a long period to come. When a hundred people are together - you will be surprised, particularly those who don't know the Western mind, they will be surprised - just holding hands, one hundred people, sitting, just holding hands, feeling each other, and they feel elated.

No Indian will feel elated. He will say: What nonsense! Just holding hands with a hundred people sitting in a circle, how can it be an elation? How can you become ecstatic? You can feel at the most the perspiration of the other's hand.

But in the West a hundred people holding hands are elated, ecstatic. Why? - because even holding hands has become so impossible because of the ego. Even wife and husband are not together. The joint family has disappeared, it was a group phenomenon. Society has disappeared. In the West now, no society exists really. You move alone.

In America - I was reading the statistics - every man moves within three years to another town. Now a man in a village in India remains there - not only he, his family has remained there for thousands of years. He is deeply rooted in that soil. He is related to everyone, he knows everybody, everybody knows him. He is not a stranger, he is not alone. He lives as part of the village, he always has. He was born there, he will die there.

In America, every three years on average people move. This is the most nomadic civilization that has ever existed: vagabonds - no house, no family, no town, no village, no home really. In three years how can you get rooted? Wherever you go you are a stranger. The mass is around you but you are not related to it. You are unrelated, the whole burden becomes individual.

Sitting in a group, in an encounter group or in a growth group, touching each other's bodies, you become part of the community. Touching each other's hand and holding each other's hand, just lying near each other, or lying on top of each other in a pile, you feel oneness, a religious elation happens. A hundred people dancing, touching each other, moving around each other, become one.

They merge, the ego is dissolved for a few moments. That merger becomes a prayerful thing.

Politicians can use it for destructive ends. Religion can use it for very creative phenomena - it can become a meditation.

In the East, people are in the community too much. So whenever they want to be religious, they want to go to the Himalayas. Society is too much around. They are not fed up with themselves, they are fed up with the society. This is the difference. In the West, you are fed up with yourself and you want some bridge, how to be communicative with the society, with others; how to create a bridge, how to move to the other, so you can forget yourself. In the East, people are fed up with the society. They have lived with it so long, and the society is all around so much that they don't feel any freedom. So whenever somebody wants to be free, to be silent, he runs to the Himalayas.

In the West, you run to the society; in the East, people run from the society. That's why lonely methods, individual methods have existed in the East; group methods are in existence in the West.

What am I doing? My method is a synthesis. In the first steps of Dynamic Meditation you are part of the group; in the last part the group disappears, you are alone. I am doing this for a particular reason, because now East and West have become irrelevant. The East is turning towards the West; the West is turning towards the East. By the end of this century there will be no East and no West - one world.

This geographical division has existed too long; it cannot exist any more. Technology has already dissolved it, it is already out of existence, but because of a habitual attitude in the mind, it continues.

It continues only as a mental phenomenon, it actually exists no longer. By the end of this century there will be no East, no West - just one world. It is already there. Those who can see, they can see it is already there.

A synthesis will be needed - group and individual both. You work in a group in the beginning; in the end, you become totally yourself. Start from society and reach to yourself. Don't escape from the community - live in the world but don't be of it. Be related, but still remain alone. Love and meditate.

Meditate and love.

Whatsoever happened before is not the question; whatsoever follows is not the question. Meditate and love if you are a man, love and meditate if you are a woman - but don't choose. Love plus meditation is my slogan.

Enough for today.