Falling Upwards

The first question

Question 1:

Deva Nirguna,

TRUTH ALWAYS TRIGGERS A PROCESS IN YOU, even if the truth is not your own. The very hearing of it creates a parallel process in you. It is not caused by hearing it; it follows not the law of cause and effect but the law of synchronicity.

Listening to great music, music arises in you. There is no necessity: it may arise, it may not arise.

There is no inevitability about it. But if you are open, it arises. If you are available, it arises. Watching a great dancer, something starts dancing in you. This is communion.

The truth of Pythagoras, the truth of the greatest synthesis ever attempted, CAN trigger a process in you, CAN start something so immense that you could not have ever dreamt about it. That is the whole purpose of satsang: being in communion with a Master. His presence, his utterances, his silences, start working on you AND sometimes even in spite of you. Sometimes you become aware of those processes, sometimes you are not even aware of them; they start working underneath your consciousness. One day they explode into great blossoming.

Pythagoras really has tried the impossible. And not only tried - he succeeded too. But the world wants to live in division, because the world can only understand conflict. It cannot understand synthesis. Synthesis can be understood only when some synthesis inside you starts happening; otherwise, synthesis is non-understandable, will be misunderstood.

Everybody was against Pythagoras. All religions, all sects, all the so-called gurus of those days, were against Pythagoras. In fact, they should have been with him, because he was bringing all scattered fragments of truth together. But it hurts....

If I say the Koran is true, AS much true as the Vedas, if people were understanding then Mohammedans and Hindus would both be tremendously happy - but that doesn't happen. Both become angry. The Mohammedan becomes angry because I have compared HIS holy book with the ordinary book - Vedas? And the Hindu becomes angry because I have compared HIS holy book with an ordinary book - the Koran? They both become angry because their egos are hurt.

And you can understand what must have happened to Pythagoras, because it is happening to me, it is happening to you. The SAME process! Hindus are against, Mohammedans are against, Jainas are against, Buddhists are against, Christians are against. Why? And I am bringing Christ and Buddha and Mahavira and Zarathustra and Lao Tzu and Krishna into the highest possible synthesis.

Still they are all against it.

The reason is: they are divided within themselves. They can only understand THAT WHICH THEY ARE. YOU can never understand anything beyond your consciousness. If YOU are split, you can only understand a split world. If you are in a subtle harmony inside, then only will any harmony happening outside be understood.

It is good, Nirguna, that you felt great gratitude arising in you listening to the synthesis. It shows something has started becoming integrated in you - something that is bringing you together, that is creating a kind of unity between the two hemispheres of your brain, the left and the right.

These two hemispheres of the brain have to be understood, and very deeply - because much depends on that. Now scientists are also in deep agreement with the ancient mystic lore, that unless these two brains are bridged and bridged rightly, a man remains schizophrenic. They ARE bridged, but in a very very small way; just a small thread bridges them. That thread can be cut.

Sometimes it happens in an accident, in a car accident, for example - the bridge may be damaged.

It is a very delicate bridge, JUST like a thread. Once it is cut, the person becomes two persons: one person becomes two persons. He starts behaving like two persons. And strange things have been observed.

For example: the left side of the brain is able to read and to remember. The right side of the brain is not able to read at all. So a strange thing happens: you can give the person something to read, he will read it, but only one part of his brain will remember it. If you anaesthetize his left side, he will not even remember that he has read anything. He HAS read something, but he will not remember.

His one hand may be doing something, but the other hand will not cooperate, because those two hands belong to different hemispheres. The right hand belongs to the left hemisphere. That's why the right hand has become so important. The right has become the RIGHT hand, and the left hand has become the wrong hand. Why? It is very symbolic.

The left hand is connected with the right hemisphere, and the right hemisphere represents intuition, psychic powers, meditation, love, poetry - because ALL these things are condemned, the left hand is condemned. The right hand represents logic, calculation, arithmetic, science - because these things are praised, the right hand is praised.

Ten percent of children are born lefthanded; out of ten, one person is lefthanded. You may not be able to find so many lefthanded people, because from the very beginning we start forcing them to write with the right hand, to do things with the right hand. This is destroying a minority. This is very oppressive, because the person who is born lefthanded has to be lefthanded if he is ever to be an authentic person. He will become phony. You will force him to use the right hand and because all are rightists - the teacher, the parents, other students in the school - he will feel guilty if he uses the left hand. He is doing something wrong.

He is NOT doing ANYTHING wrong - he is naturally a leftist. He has the capacity to become a poet.

He has the capacity to become an intuitive person. He may develop prophetic powers. He may be able to read other people's thoughts one day. He may be able to become a great hypnotic medium.

He may even be able to have power of mind over matter. He has IMMENSE capacities! but he is crushed.

The society forces him to move to the right hand. The right hand is his weak hand. He will live a very weak life, unfertile, uncreative. He may have become a great seer; now he will live just as a third-rate mathematician. The person may have been a first-rate poet, or a musician, or a painter; now he will be just a third-rate clerk in some office, or a station-master, or a deputy collector, or a politician - something third-rate. You have been very very violent with him.

These two hemispheres are very slightly bridged; a little communication happens ordinarily. The more one becomes integrated, the deeper the communication that starts happening between these two hemispheres. In a Buddha those two hemispheres become one. He is AS logical as one can be and AS loving as one can be.

The left hemisphere, which is connected with the right hand, is under the law of necessity. And the right hemisphere, which is connected with the left hand, is under the law of power. And if both these laws become one, LOGOS arises, DHAMMA arises, TAO, TORAH, arises - the ultimate law, the law of laws. Then the man has a tremendous beauty and grace. He is the meeting of the earth and the sky, of man and woman; he is the meeting of all that is divided in existence. And in THAT meeting, God is known.

All the secret methods of all the mystery schools are nothing but alchemical processes to create a bridge between these two hemispheres, to bring them SO close, so utterly close, that they almost become one. When logic functions as love, love functions as logic, you have attained to the highest peak. At that peak, ecstasy simply happens - just as when spring comes, flowers start blossoming.

When that synthesis, that spring, has happened in your inner world, you have come home, you have attained the one, the whole. You have become holy.

Nirguna, something is happening in you, as something is happening to all of my sannyasins. In those who are really close to me, those who are not just formally sannyasins, those who are really in love with me, those who have really said a YES to me, without any NO hiding behind it, this synthesis is happening. East and West ARE meeting, the sky and the earth ARE meeting, mind and matter are meeting.

What Pythagoras did was destroyed. His whole academy, his whole school, was burnt. Hundreds of his disciples were massacred. We are trying to do it again, we are taking the risk again - the danger is there. The same can be our fate too. But it need not be. We can learn something from Pythagoras' experiment. He was the first pioneer. He HAD succeeded in his life; he had succeeded with many of his disciples. But maybe he had come too early; the world was not yet ready.

Now the world is scientifically ready. That time the world was not scientifically ready. East was East and West was West, and the bridge was almost impossible. Now science has brought people so close to each other that this is the climate in which spiritually also a synthesis is possible. At that time people were isolated. Once in a while a visitor might come from the West to the East... and remember, it was always a visitor from the West to the East; it was never a visitor from the East to the West. Why?

The West represents the male mind: it takes initiative. The East represents the female mind: it simply waits, it takes no initiative. It is like a man always proposes to the woman and says "I love you." It is never the woman who proposes. And if a woman proposes to you, you would like to escape from her because she is not a woman; she has more of a male mind. You will become afraid. You will be offended. You will not be able to take it easily. The woman has to wait.

That's why the West has always been sending feelers to the East. The East has simply waited; it has not gone anywhere. Once in a while a visitor may come. He will take with him the ancient lore of the East to the West, and he will always be misunderstood. It happened with Pythagoras, and after five hundred years it happened with Jesus.

Jesus had also been a visitor to the East; he learnt all in the East. And when he went back, he was not understood either; it was too foreign. The SAME way it is happening to my sannyasins: when you go to the West you are going to be misunderstood. But you are in a better position - you are so many. A Pythagoras came alone, went back alone; a Jesus came alone, went back alone. They were great adventurers.

Jesus was killed. Pythagoras' academy was burnt, his disciples massacred. I he world was not yet so closely knit as it is today. Science and technology have brought people very close. All the barriers, at least the physical barriers, are re moved. Now the second step can be taken: psychological barriers can be removed - that's what we are doing here.

It is good that the Pythagorean synthesis struck a chord in your heart, because that s my work too.

And the second thing, Nirguna. you say:

GREAT JOY ARISES IN UNDERSTANDING THE PURPOSELESSNESS OF EXISTENCE.

JOY ARISES only when you understand that the whole cannot have any purpose. Parts can have purpose: the whole cannot have any purpose.

Your house has a purpose: it is a shelter for you. a safety for you. The food has a purpose: it nourishes you, it keeps you alive. Your clothes are purposeful. your machines... and everything that you create is purposeful. But what purpose do you have?

Now you start moving into the world of purposelessness. Still a few things you can find. You can say, "I am here to be happy." But what purpose is there in being happy? What purpose does happiness have? You may say, "I am here to love." But then love in itself is purposeless. It is AS purposeless as a roseflower, as a dewdrop slipping on the lotus leaf in the early morning sun. It is AS purposeless as the whole.

The closer you come to the whole, the more purposelessness becomes the law. Purpose belongs to the law of necessity: purposelessness belongs to the law of power. What is the purpose of the whole? No purpose at all - it is a sheer celebration. That's why Hindus have called it LEELA - LEELA means a playfulness. It is just a play.

Play has no purpose. The moment play becomes purposeful it becomes a game, remember - that is the difference between play and game. If you are simply playing cards with no stake, with no money involved, it is a play. The moment you stake money, it is no more play - it is business. Purpose has entered. It is a game. Now you are gambling. Just a few moments before you were playing; now playing has become secondary. Now the question is how to succeed in getting more money. The thing has become serious; it is no longer weightless. It has fallen from the world of grace into the world of gravitation. It has fallen from the world of power into the world of necessity.

These two laws are tremendously beautiful. The law of necessity is equivalent to the law of gravitation. Science has recognized the law of gravitation, the law of necessity. Science has not yet recognized the higher law: the law of grace, the law of power. That's why science goes on thinking in terms of cause and effect. It is still unaware of a higher law.

Religion has discovered the higher law - the law of grace. Gravitation pulls you down... now this should be meditated over. If there is birth, there is death - to counterbalance it. If there is love, there is hate. If there is negative electricity, there is positive electricity. If there is a law that pulls things down, there MUST be a law that pulls things up.

It is simple logic! It need not be proved. It is VERY simple: in life everything is balanced by its polar opposite. So where is the polar opposite of gravitation? I ask. There must be one. And remember, even gravitation was not known before Newton; just for three hundred years we have known it. And it is not that the law of gravitation started functioning after Newton - it was functioning tor ever!

Newton did not invent it: he only discovered it. And now the discovery looks very ordinary.

Newton sitting under a tree, and an apple falls, and he contemplates over it: "Why does the apple always fall downwards? Why not sometimes upwards? or to the right? or to the left? Just going in any direction.... Why does it always come downwards?" And something clicked in his mind, that there must be some power that pulls it towards the earth. But apples have been falling always!

Before Newton too. Apples don't bother whether Newton has discovered the law or not. Apples have simply been falling without knowing any science of falling.

And exactly the same has been happening with the law of grace. There have been people who have been falling upwards. A Buddha, a Jesus, a Pythagoras - these people have fallen upwards. They KNOW that something pulls up - if you allow. If you simply become effortless, if you DON'T do a thing, if you surrender, if you trust, something starts taking you upwards, you start levitating - not physically: spiritually. Something in you starts rising higher and higher and higher and reaches to the ultimate peak of consciousness. Just as the apple falls downwards, you start falling upwards.

There is a famous Sufi parable:

A Sufi mystic who was known as a madman.... Many mystics have been known as madmen. They ARE in a sense. The world thinks they are mad, because they follow something utterly absurd in the eyes of the world. The world accumulates money, the world is in search of more and more power and prestige, and they are simply not concerned with these great things. The world wants to possess and have more and more. And there have been people who are not worried about having more and more. Certainly they look mad. They don't have a thing to their name... remember Diogenes, not having a thing to his name, but still happier than Alexander the Great, utterly joyous. Even Alexander the Great had felt jealous. It is said that he said to Diogenes, "If next time I have to come into the world, I will ask God, 'This time please make me Diogenes. I don't want to become Alexander the Great again."' Must have felt very jealous of Diogenes, the naked madman.

But what did Diogenes say? He laughed and he said, "If I have another chance to come into the world, I cannot ask to be made Alexander the Great - because I am not stupid. And why do you want to wait for another life? You can become Diogenes right now, because to become an Alexander great effort is needed: to become a Diogenes no effort is needed. You can become immediately!"

He said, "Throw you; clothes! Lie down by my side! I am taking a sunbath, you take one also. And forget all about conquering the world... you are a Diogenes THIS very moment! "

These people will look mad. He USED to look mad. Diogenes used to carry a lamp in full daylight.

And whenever he met a person, he would take his lamp up and look into his face - in full daylight!

And people would ask, "What are you doing?" And he would say, "I am searching for a man - I have not come across him yet."

And do you know what happened when he was dying? Somebody asked Diogenes, "Your whole life you have been searching for a real man. even in full daylight with a lamp - did you find him?"

Diogenes opened his eyes and he said, "No, but I am dying happy - at least nobody has stolen my lamp yet."

These people will look mad.

The story, the Sufi story, says:

A mad Sufi mystic stayed in the house of a disciple. The disciple was a little worried because this man was known to do strange things: "He may do something and may create some nuisance. And the neighbourhood and the people, what will they think? They will think that I am also mad, to be a disciple of such a mad man."

And it was known that even in the middle of the night he would start singing, shouting, or dancing, out of joy. So the disciple thought, "It will be better to keep him locked in the basement, so at least he doesn't start doing something in the middle of the night." So he locked him in the basement.

And just in the middle of the night, it started happening - great rejoicing! shouting and dancing. And he was more puzzled because he heard him dancing on the roof! He rushed upwards. He asked, "But how did you manage? How did you come to the roof?"

He said, "What can I do? I opened my eyes and I saw I was falling upwards."

This is a beautiful story - falling upwards. There is a law of falling upwards. And sometimes when you meditate, dance, sing, you will feel it: being possessed by something higher, from the above.

And you are taken to higher plenitudes than you have ever known before.

That is the law of grace, or the law of power.

And when you can use both the worlds.... One belongs to science, one belongs to religion. And the world is waiting for a NEW way of looking at things, in which science and religion will become one.

Call it 'religio-science' or call it 'science-religion' - but the world is waiting for SOMETHING that will make these two laws function as one in a great synthesis.

That's what I mean when I say that I would like my sannyasins to be like Zorba the Greek and Gautam the Buddha - both together. My effort here is to create Zorba the Buddha.

The second question

Question 2:

And habits die hard.

It was a morning in December, and the air was bitter cold. Two Jews were walking down the sidewalk, and one of the pair, amid great puffs of steaming breath, was talking and gesticulating earnestly. The other, however, remained silent. finally the first Jew paused in his discourse long enough to say, "Well, Moe, don't you agree with me, what I say?"

To which Moe replied, "Ikey, you can talk all you want, but I am going to keep my hands in my pockets."

The third question

Question 3:

Anurag,

THE LAW OF NECESSITY means you are unconscious, you are functioning like a robot. Only then does the law of necessity apply. So if you want to de-activate the law of necessity, the only way is to become more aware, more alert.

De-automatize your activities. Walking, walk with aware ness. Eating, eat with awareness. In the beginning it is very difficult, because you have always lived in unconsciousness. You walk mechanically - bring awareness to walking. And to bring awareness to walking, a few things will be needed.

One: don't walk at the usual pace you walk - go slower. Go AS slow as you can, because if you go slower than you usually go, your old habit cannot persist. You are bringing something new into it and the body will have to get adjusted. It will take time, and that time can be used to become aware.

If you smoke cigarettes, go VERY slowly, take time. Take the packet of cigarettes VERY slowly from your pocket, as slowly as possible. Be in slow motion. And then slowly take a cigarette out, VERY slowly, as if you have no energy... and you are BOUND to be aware! Then tap the cigarette on the packet, AS slowly as possible, as if you are almost dead, and go on doing it for a longer time. Then very slowly put it in your mouth. Then wait! Don't be in a hurry. Then bring your lighter... and the same, slow... take time. Smoke one cigarette in one hour. And you will be surprised how much awareness arises in you.

And you will also be surprised to know: the moment you lose awareness, you fall back into the old fast motion. Slow down....

That's the whole process of vipassana. In vipassana you have to do two kinds of meditation: one is sitting, zazen; another is walking. WALK slowly.... It can be done in any way. Just breathe slowly, and breathing becomes a meditation. Let your hand move very slowly from one side to the other.

And you will be aware.

Make your activities de-automatized. And the more aware you are, the more the law of necessity starts disappearing. And when there is no law of necessity functioning, the other law functions automatically, of its own accord - the law of power.

It is said:

One day a great astrologer was coming back from Kashi. He had been learning astrology for twenty years in Kashi; he had become very famous. Now he was going back to his home town.

Passing a river, on the soft, wet sand, he saw a few footprints... he could not believe his eves! "Those footprints can only be of a man who is the ruler of the whole world!" That's what his astrological books had been telling him for twenty years. The ruler of the whole world has a special name in India - he is called CHAKRAVARTIN - whose rule is on all the six continents. "What is a Chakravartin doing in this poor village? Naked, barefoot, in the hot sun, on the bank of this small and dirty river?

Impossible!"

A great doubt arose in the astrologer: "Are my books wrong?" He studied the footprint very well; ALL the symptoms were there. He followed those footprints in search of this man... and he came across Buddha sitting under a tree.

Now there was even more difficulty. The man looked like a great emperor: his grace, his beauty, and the silence that surrounded him, and the festivity that was around. Just by his presence, the tree was glowing, the rock he was sitting on was glowing. "He IS a Chakravartin! But he looks like a beggar too, with a begging bowl."

He fell at the feet of Buddha and asked, "You have puzzled me very much. Should I throw my books?

Twenty years I have wasted! Can I look at your feet?"

He looked at Buddha's feet and he said, "Now it is absolutely certain: you should be a Chakravartin!

- the greatest emperor in the world, the emperor of emperors. What are you doing here? I don't even see a servant around you. And what is this begging bowl, and these old clothes you are wearing?

Are you a beggar?"

Buddha laughed and he said, "Don't throw your books - they are right, but they are right only for the people who live under the law of necessity, those who live unconsciously. Once a person becomes conscious, he goes beyond astrology and astrological predictions. Then the law of necessity no longer applies to him. Then he is part of the infinite power then he is part of God - he IS a God. He lives in a totally different way . You cannot predict him; he is unpredictable.

"Don't throw your books. You will not come across a man like me again in your life. Don't be worried.

It rarely happens - very rarely it happens that a person is born as a Charkravartin; very rarely it happens that a person becomes a Buddha. And, of course, absolutely rare is the case when a Chakravartin becomes a Buddha. A Chakravartin in himself is rare; a Buddha in himself is rare - and the combination of a Chakravartin becoming a Buddha is absolutely rare. You will not come across such a person again in this life, or in MANY lives, so don't be worried. I am an exception - and the exception proves the rule. You can follow your books, you can take your books, and you will ALWAYS be right. It is only this once that you have been wrong."

Become conscious, Anurag. The more conscious you are, the more you are beyond prediction.

Then you live EACH MOMENT in freedom - power means freedom. Power means free from the past karma. Power means you are no more dominated by the past. The past has no more power over you. Your each moment is free from the past moment. Your each moment is fresh, young, virgin. You LIVE it in total freedom! but it never creates a bondage for the moment that will be following it. Your each moment remains unpolluted, pure, crystal-clear.

And to live in the law of necessity is to live in bondage. That's what is meant by SAMSARA - the bondage, imprisoned. That is the whole meaning of the law of karma. In fact, the idea that Pythagoras got of the law of necessity is from the law of karma; that is his way of expressing it. The law of karma says: Whatever you have done in the past is still dominating you. You are possessed by the dead past; you are manipulated by the dead past. Whatsoever you have done yesterday has become a pattern, a structure, a character, and you are simply repeating it today. By repeating it, you will be enforcing it. Tomorrow it will become stronger, and the day after tomorrow even stronger.

And life after life if you go on repeating a certain thing, it creates grooves in your mind - and then it becomes an absolute necessity. You simply live like a robot.

Gurdjieff used to say that man is a machine. It is true. Unless you become a Buddha, you are a machine. What does the word 'Buddha' mean? 'Buddha' means one who is awakened, aware.

Become aware. The man of awareness has no character. You will be surprised: I say the man of awareness is characterless - not in the sense that you give to the word 'characterless', but in a totally different sense he is characterless. Because he has no past to dominate him, no structure, no pattern. He is pure freedom. He is innocent. He responds to the moment, with no ready-made responses, because if a response is ready-made it is not a response at all: it is a reaction. He mirrors the moment as it is, and in that mirroring, he acts.

The unconscious person reacts: the conscious person acts. And if you can act consciously, TOTALLY in the moment, you don't create any karma, you don't create any structures. You always remain free; you always go on moving beyond the past. You go on slipping out of the past like a snake slips out of the old skin.

Then life has tremendous beauty - because then there is power. And it is not YOUR power, so there is no question of any ego trip. Ego comes from the past; it is part of the law of necessity. Ego is your character, good or bad, but ego is the prison that keeps you in bondage. Ego arises out of your whole past.

Just think for a moment: if you have no past, who are you? Suddenly the whole edifice of the ego collapses. The man of power is not really powerful in his own right: he is just a vehicle for the power of God. He has no claims. He simply functions as a representative of the whole. He is utter freedom, utter joy. He knows no boundaries, he is infinite. Space and time are no more relevant to him. He is beyond space, beyond time.

That is the meaning of being enlightened. Disappearing as a character, disappearing as a person, disappearing as an ego... and becoming one with the whole: UNIO MYSTICA. That mystic union...

and you are no more there, and God is. And God is power.

The bridge from necessity to power is consciousness. Anurag, become more and more conscious in whatsoever you are doing. And it is your birthright to enter into the world of power, into the radiant world of power, the luminous world of power.

The fourth question

Question 4:

IT HAPPENED ON A JOURNEY BY SHIP: the parrot felt terribly bored and was really happy when one day he discovered that there was also a monkey on board. To pass the time the parrot said, "Let's play hide-and-seek."

The monkey said, "I don't know this game. How does it go?"

So the parrot explained, "It is very simple. You close your eyes, face a wall and count to a hundred.

In the meantime I hide and when you reach one hundred you start looking for me."

So they did.

But it happened that the ship exploded at the same moment that the monkey reached one hundred.

The parrot managed to find a plank floating in the sea. After a while he saw the monkey as he swam towards the plank totally exhausted. When the monkey had climbed up he looked at the parrot and said, "What a stupid game!"

Whenever you feel life as a stupid game, it is time for sannyas.

The fifth question

Question 5:

AWARENESS IS THE ONLY VIRTUE WITH ME REMEMBER. If you serve with awareness, it is Good. If you serve in an unconscious way, it is bad. It is not a question of a noble cause. If you are unconscious, even a noble cause is going to be very ignoble. It is the consciousness that you bring to it that matters.

You can look in the history books: all kinds of mischief have continued on the earth in the name of noble causes. Christians. Mohammedans, Hindus, have been fighting, destroying each other - for noble causes. Communists, socialists, fascists, have been bringing more and more violence into the world and more and more murder - for noble causes.

Do you think Adolf Hitlers cause was not noble? If it had not been noble, how could a very intelligent race like the Germans have followed him? And remember that the Germans are one of the most intelligent races on the world-map. This age's four great minds who have dominated the whole world, all have come from Germany. Friedrich Nietzsche, Sigmund Freud, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein - these are the four great names of our times. They all came from the German mind, from German sources.

How could such an intelligent people follow this stupid megalomaniac, Adolf Hitler? In the name of a noble cause. The noble cause was: the world is in chaos and the world has to be dominated and ruled by the noble people, by the Aryans. Do you know? - the word 'arya' means noble. The world has to be dominated and ruled by the noblest of the noble.

ARYA IS a Sanskrit word. It means the noblest. Now, behind the word 'noble', Adolf Hitler was hiding all kinds of ugly things. And thousands and thousands of intelligent people followed him, obediently - because the cause was noble! Millions of Jews were burnt - in the name of a noble cause - millions suffered in concentration camps. And the people who were torturing them were not unintelligent people, were VERY efficient and intelligent people. And they were doing their duty, obediently, for a noble cause.

What happened in Russia? Joseph Stalin, another man of the same type as Adolf Hitler, murdered and butchered millions of people - again in the name of a noble cause: Communism has to be established, and any sacrifice is not too much. If communism, the paradise, the classless society, can arrive on the earth, then no sacrifice is too much.

And the same has been happening down the ages: the Christian crusades, the Mohammedan JEHADS - wars of religion to SAVE religion. Of course, when Islam is in danger it has to be saved, and the people who are creating the danger have to be destroyed - in the name of a noble cause. When Christianity is in danger, then everything is allowed. And who decides when Islam is in danger? Who decides when Christianity is in danger? Who decides who is an Aryan and who is not?

Jews think they are the chosen people of God, and Adolf Hitler thinks Nordics, the purest Aryans, are the chosen people of God. Now there cannot live two people who think that they are the chosen people of God: one has to be destroyed, the competitor has to be destroyed. Look at the whole inhuman history of humanity and you will always find it is obedience to noble causes that has caused immense misery, that has made the whole life of humanity a nightmare.

You ask me: IS IT NOT GOOD TO SERVE OBEDIENTLY IN A NOBLE CAUSE?

No. Serve only with awareness. Obey only with awareness. Obedience should NOT be for something exterior. Obedience should be something interior. You should be able to see what is at stake. And you will be able to say yes or no according to your own conscience. Only then can the world become a little better, a little more human.

The people who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - just two persons! - they could have said no. It was so obvious that the one hundred thousand people who lived in Hiroshima were utterly innocent - small children, women, old people. Why drop an atom bomb that would destroy them immediately, within seconds? Within ten seconds Hiroshima was a dead city. Just ten seconds before, it was alive. It was time... people were taking their breakfast, people were singing, people were doing ALL kinds of things. Just a few seconds before, all was so alive. And after just a few moments, the whole of Hiroshima was just a cemetery - all dead people.

The person who dropped the bomb could have said no, but he was obediently serving a noble cause.

What was the noble cause? - democracy. These big words are very dangerous, because behind them you can hide anything. Now in the name of democracy, capitalism hides itself. And in the name of equality, communism hides itself. Watch all big words, and whenever a politician uses a big word, be aware - there must be something fishy about it.

And don't go on following. It is better to die... if the man who was going to drop the atom bomb had said NO, it is possible he would have been court-martialled. So what? He could have said, "You kill me - that seems to be a lesser evil. I would like to die" - and that would have been a noble cause!

- "You shoot me, but I simply say no. I will not drop this atom bomb on innocent people."

The people who were destroying poor Vietnam could have said no. And the same is continuously repeated everywhere, all around the globe. Now it is time we should become more aware.

Obedience has been exploited. Obedience has been a very subtle strategy of the politician and the priest. If it comes out of your awareness, if you see that this is good - not that your leaders, your politicians, your priests, say it is good, but you feel it is good, it has to be your response - then do it by all means. But if you see... your individual conscience has to decide. That's my whole point:

each individual has to create his own consciousness and conscience - only then will we be able to create a better world. Otherwise, this world is going to commit suicide within twenty-five years.

By the end of this century, this foolish idea of obedience to noble causes is going to destroy the whole of humanity, and not only humanity - with humanity, all life on this earth, all trees, all birds, all animals - all kinds of life. And there are millions of kinds of life on this earth. This earth is a festival.

If you go on carrying this stupid idea that has been put into your mind down the ages... throughout the ages, you have been fed this idea with your mother's milk: Obey! I teach you awareness. And, of course, out of awareness a totally different kind of obedience arises. Then you say yes because your heart says yes. and if your heart says no, then say no, and risk all for your no. That is human dignity.

ARTHUR KOESTLER WRITES ABOUT AN EXPERIMENT. Meditate over it:

A series of highly original experiments was started by Doctor Stanley Milgram. The purpose of the experiments was to discover the limits of the average person's obedience to authority when ordered to inflict severe pain on an innocent victim in the interests of a noble cause.

The noble cause was education. It involved three people: the professor, who was the authority figure in charge of the proceedings; the learner or victim; and the experimental subject, who was asked by the professor to act as teacher and to punish the learner each time he gave the wrong reply. Punishment was by electric shocks of growing severity, administered by the teacher on the professor's orders. The learner or victim was strapped into a kind of electric chair. The teacher was seated in front of an impressive shock-generator which had a key-board of thirty switches ranging from fifteen volts to four hundred and fifty volts. There were also verbal inscriptions on the machine ranging from 'slight shock' to 'intense shock' to 'danger: severe shock'.

In fact, the whole gruesome set-up was based on make-believe: the victim was an actor, the shock- generator was a dummy. Only the teacher, at whom the experiment was aimed, believed in the reality of the shocks he was ordered to administer and of the shrieks of pain and cries for mercy uttered by the victim.

The basic procedure was as follows: the learner was given to read a long list of paired words, that is 'blue box', 'nice day', 'wild duck', etc. Then in the examination he was given one test word, for instance, 'blue', with four alternative answers, that is 'ink, box, sky, lamp', and had to indicate which was the correct answer. The teacher was instructed by the professor to administer a shock each time the learner gave a wrong response, and moreover to move one level higher on the shock generator each time the learner gave the wrong answer. There was a fifteen volt increment from one switch to the next.

To make sure that the teacher was aware of what he was doing, the actor who played the role of the learner uttered complaints which increased in stridency according to the voltage, from mild grunts starting at seventy-five volts, in a crescendo, until at one hundred and fifty volts the victim cried out, "Get me out of here! I won't be in the experiment any more. I refuse to go on!"

Remember that the teacher believed that the victim too was a volunteer.

At three hundred and fifteen volts, after a violent scream, the victim reaffirmed vehemently that he was no longer a participant. He provided no answers, but screamed in agony whenever a shock was administered. After three hundred and thirty volts he was not heard from... yet the professor instructed the subject to treat no answer as a wrong answer, and to continue to increase the shock level according to the schedule. After three shocks of four hundreds and fifty volts, he called off the experiment.

How many people, in an average population, do you think would obey the command to carry on with the task of torturing the victim to the limit of four hundred and fifty volts? The answer seems to be a foregone conclusion: perhaps one in a thousand - a pathological sadist.

Before starting his experiments, Milgram actually asked a group of psychiatrists to predict the outcome. With remarkable similarity, they predicted that virtually all subjects would refuse to obey the experimenter. The consensus of the psychiatrists was that most subjects would not go beyond one hundred and fifty volts, that is when the victim asks for the first time to be released. They expected that only four percent would reach three hundred volts, and that only a pathological fringe of about one in a thousand would administer the highest shock on the board.

In actual fact, over sixty percent of the subjects continued to obey the professor to the very end - the four hundred and fifty volt limit. Remember: sixty percent.

When the experiment was repeated in Italy, South Africa and Australia. the percent of obedient subjects was somewhat higher. In Munich it was eighty-five percent.

The act of shocking the victim does not stem from destructive urges, but from the fact that the subjects have become integrated into a social system which is based on obedience. To prove this point, Milgram carried on a further series of experiments in which the teacher was told that he was free to inflict on the learner ANY shock level of his own choice on any of the trials. Though given full opportunity, almost all subjects administered the lowest shocks, the mean shock level being fifty-four volts.

Remember that the victim's first mild complaint came only at seventy-five volts.

In the original experiments, when the teacher acted on orders, an average of twenty-five out of forty subjects administered the maximum shock of four hundred and fifty volts. In the free-choice experiment, thirty-eight out of forty did not go beyond one hundred and fifty volts - victim's first loud protest - and only two subjects went up to three hundred and twenty-five and four hundred and fifty respectively The vast majority of the subjects, far from deriving any pleasure from shocking the victim, showed various symptoms of emotional strain and distress. Some broke into a sweat, others pleaded with the professor to stop, or protested that the experiment was cruel and stupid. Yet two-thirds nevertheless went on to the bitter end.

We have been taught for centuries to obey - and to obey in the noble cause is a virtue; to disobey is a vice, is a sin. Disobeying any noble cause will create guilt in you. Obeying will make you feel good. AND YOU may even be obeying it in spite of your own conscience. You will see the futility, the stupidity, the cruelty of it.

The man who dropped the bomb on Hiroshima slept very well that night, and in the morning when he was asked how he was feeling, he said, "Perfect!" People could not believe it. They said, "Could you sleep in the night? One hundred thousand people have been burnt by you - could you sleep in the night?"

He said, "I slept VERY well, because I had done my duty. And when one does one's duty well, one earns a good sleep."

Truman was the President of the United States when the atom bomb was dropped. When he was asked, "How do you feel?" he said, "I feel great! A noble cause has been served - democracy has won over fascist forces."

Remember always: big words are very dangerous. And big words have a very hypnotic power in them: democracy, God, religion, Bible... great words have a VERY hypnotic power over you. They can create a great unconsciousness in you, and you can go on doing things which you would have never even dreamt of doing without those big words.

So remember, 'noble cause' is a very dangerous game. Who decides what is noble? Let EACH individual decide according to his own conscience.

And why in Munich was the percentage the highest? - eighty-five percent. Because Germans are very obedient. That has been their training, that has been their conditioning - and they have been praised for it. That has become part and parcel of their inner mechanism.

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.

It is very easy to dispense with your responsibility. You can always say, "What can I do? - I have been ordered." And the higher person can say he has been ordered from a higher authority, and so on and so forth. Even the President can say, "I have been advised by the military experts." And so on and on, round and round it goes. Nobody is REALLY responsible. Responsibility can always be shoved on somebody else's shoulders.

And a really religious person is a responsible person. He says, "I am responsible. If I am doing something, then I am responsible, and I have to think it over, whether to do it or not. If my OWN awareness allows it, I will do it; otherwise, whatsoever the consequences, I AM GOING TO DISOBEY. "

So obedience is not a value to me at all, neither is disobedience a disvalue. Your own understanding is the value. OUT of that, obedience is good; OUT of that, disobedience is also good.

Morality does not disappear, but acquires a totally different meaning: the subordinate person feels shame and pride depending on how adequately he has performed the actions called for by authority. Language provides numerous terms to pinpoint this type of morality: loyalty, duty, discipline, obedience....

Great words! Beware of them. Always beware of great words: MY country, motherland, fatherland, church, temple. BEWARE of all great words! They can drive you into an unconscious, robotlike behaviour.

This is now the greatest danger to human survival: the capacity for man to abandon his humanity, indeed, the inevitability that he does so as he merges his unique personality into larger institutional structures. It is not anger, violence, aggression, destructiveness, which is so dangerous, but the greatly valued idea of OBEDIENCE.

It is ironic that the virtues of loyalty, discipline and self-sacrifice that we value so highly in the individual are the very properties that create destructive organizational energies of war and that blind men to malevolent systems of authority.

Remember, if we want to create a new humanity, we will have to reconsider the whole mind of man.

The past has created a a very ugly mind - of course, with beautiful labels, with beautiful painted smiles, and behind is great animality.

My emphasis is on the individual not on the society, not on the nation, not on the religion. My emphasis is on the individual. The individual has to be freed from all kinds of social bondages and slaveries. That's what sannyas is all about. Become aware... and out of your awareness, obedience is good, disobedience is good. But it HAS to be rooted in your awareness - then everything is good.

And out of unawareness, obedience is bad, disobedience is bad.

Let me remind you: I am not telling you to be disobedient, because if it is out of unawareness, and you say NO, it is as bad as saying yes. I am not teaching you disobedience, disorder, indiscipline. I am not doing that kind of thing at all. I can be misunderstood. I AM being misunderstood. What I am saying is: I am making you responsible.

The individual is TOTALLY responsible whatsoever he is doing. So you have to think, meditate, and act out of your meditations - and whatsoever you do will be virtuous, and whatsoever you do will be moral, and it will be a totally different kind of morality.

The last question

Question 6:

Anand Bario,

SERIOUSNESS IS ILLNESS. Seriousness is pathological. Be sincere, but never be serious. And sincerity is totally different. Seriousness is an assumed, pretended phenomenon; sincerity is of the heart. Sincerity is a kind of intensity in everything that you do.

And it was good that you had a whoop of laughter! Now, hiding it behind your hands is phony, is pseudo. Let it be there! Laughter is good - good in every way: physically, psychologically, spiritually.

And this is not being frivolous. We have been taught wrong things - that's why people move with long faces in the world. We have been taught UTTERLY wrong things. Christians say Jesus never laughed. Why? And I know that he laughed, I know him perfectly well. But Christians were afraid:

Jesus laughing will look frivolous. How can a saint laugh? The saint has to be with a long face. The saints come only with long faces. And, in fact, the man who has a long face can never be a saint.

Laughter is something of a very superior quality. No other animal except man can laugh. If suddenly on the road you see a buffalo laughing... you will go mad. You will never be the same again! No other animal can laugh, except man. It is human dignity that man can laugh - it is human dignity, glory.

Laughter is something spiritual. It belongs only to higher its of intelligence. The more intelligent you are. the more capable you are of laughing at things. Not only at things, but at yourself too. You become capable of seeing the whole grand absurdity of life, this great ridiculousness of life.

Christians made Jesus look very sad. That's why paintings of Jesus or sculptures of his face all look a little ugly. They don't have that joy that is expressed by Krishna - his flute, his dance. They don't have that laughter that you will see in Bodhidharma's pictures, Lao Tzu's pictures. They don't have that superb quality that you will find in a genius like Chuang Tzu - the genius of the absurd.

Jesus must have laughed, because he was a very earthy man. He loved good food, he loved good company, he loved people. He ate well, and he was also a drunkard. Now, a drunkard and not laughing? - that is impossible. And he must have been telling jokes. Believe me! A drunkard and not telling jokes? The gospel writers must have dropped them. Even my editors sometimes feel that this is too much, unprintable! But I don't allow them to drop anything.

The gospels were written after Jesus died, three hundred years afterwards, so the editors had absolute freedom to do whatsoever they wanted. I know beautiful jokes have been dropped. Jesus was a Jew - and Jews have the best jokes in the world.

Bario, don't be worried about frivolousness. And sometimes even to be frivolous is beautiful. Even to be frivolous sometimes has a grandeur about it, a weightlessness, a beauty, a benediction. I accept life in all its colours, the whole rainbow: from frivolousness to sincerity.

Just for you I will tell two jokes:

finkelstein's father was very unhappy because his son regularly did the two things that a good Jew is not supposed to do: eat ham and go with non-Jewish women. finally he complained to the rabbi.

"Rabbi," he cried, "I don't know what to do. Whenever my son Ezra sees some ham, he immediately sinks his teeth into it, and when he sees a non-Jewish girl, he hugs and kisses her."

So Ezra had to go and see the rabbi. "What is this your father tells me?" demanded the rabbi in a loud voice. "You sink your teeth into ham sandwiches and kiss Christian girls? What is the matter with you?"

"Rabbi, what can I do?" said Ezra apologetically, "I'm crazy!"

"Nonsense," said the rabbi. "If you bit into the girl and kissed the ham sandwich - THEN you would be crazy! But as things are, everything is in order and you are perfectly normal. Just don't do it any more!!"

And the second:

There was this owner-operator of a bar who was constantly besieged with requests from his male customers for the names of prostitutes and their whereabouts.

One day he decided it was stupid not to tap into this source of income, so he went and got a couple of girls and installed them in a couple of rooms over the bar. Whenever a customer wanted a girl, he merely sent them upstairs.

A couple of days after this new business began, a customer returned from upstairs very unhappy and complained to the man about the lousy blow-job he had just had.

The owner ordered the man to follow him back upstairs, called for the three girls who were working to gather in the bedroom, told the man to get back on the bed, turned to the girls and said, "Okay girls, I am going to show you HOW just ONE more time, so dammit, get it right!!"

Don't be worried about frivolousness - that is part of life. And a real life contains all; it has all the nuances, all the notes and all the colours. So, Bario, you can have a good laugh. No need to hide it.

I would like my place to be a place of laughter, joy, festivity. I want to be a festival to you.