A danger to the crowd

Question 1:

Dhyan Senshi, the rebellious spirit is basically the experience of one's own individuality, absolutely free from any kind of psychological slavery. It is a revolt against being reduced to a cog in the wheel; it is against the crowd mind. The crowd mind is the lowest mind in existence. It is the minimum sensibility, minimum consciousness, minimum love, minimum life. One simply survives, one does not live, because life is not a dance.

The crowd never wants anybody to be unique - it hurts the crowd mind. The unique person is a humiliation because it reminds people of what they are and what they could have been. The presence of the unique person makes them aware of what they have missed - and they have missed their whole life. They cannot forgive the unique person, although he has done no harm to them. He has always done great service to humanity: he has brought more beauty to existence, more poetry to life, has created more songs in the souls - he is the very salt of the earth.

All that man is, whatsoever is great in man, belongs to only a very few unique individuals' contribution. But the crowd cannot forgive them. It can forgive criminals, it can forgive murderers, it can forgive politicians, it can forgive any kind of person in the world, but it cannot forgive a man who has an individuality of his own, who is not part of the collective mind.

It reminds me of the crucifixion of Jesus. The man was absolutely harmless. He had not done anything wrong to anybody, he was not a criminal. And the governor general of Judea was Roman, he was not a Jew. Judea was under the Roman Empire. And every year at the annual festival of the Jews, they were allowed to forgive one person from all the persons who were going to be murdered on that day. On that day it was decided, for all the criminals who had been sentenced to death.

Millions of people gathered in Jerusalem and it was a great entertainment to see people crucified - such is the barbarous instinct in the crowd.

Governor General Pontius Pilate was perfectly aware that this young man, Jesus, was not a criminal.

But the whole crowd of the Jews, their priests, the high priest, were unanimously asking that he should be crucified. He tried to persuade the priests, but they were absolutely deaf to any persuasion. Finally Pontius Pilate talked to Jesus and felt immensely sorry for the young man. He was only thirty-three, he had not seen more than thirty-three springs in his life, and it was absolutely unjust.

But Pontius Pilate was a politician - and the politician knows nothing about justice or injustice, right or wrong; he always thinks in terms of power. Everything is decided to help him to be in power. He was afraid that if he refused to crucify this young, harmless, innocent person, his political career would be jeopardized. All the Jews would appeal to the Roman emperor that this man should be removed from Judea. His whole career, respect, power, richness - in Judea he was almost the king - were at risk. But still he tried his best; he talked with Jesus and he became even more convinced that Jesus was innocent.

There was only one hope - because there were two other criminals to be crucified with Jesus Christ:

he would ask the crowd, "Whom do you want to be forgiven?" And he hoped that for their own son, utterly innocent, they would come to their senses and would ask that his life should be saved. And in comparison to him the other two were as great criminals as there could be. One had committed three murders, a few rapes; the other had committed seven murders, was a drunkard, was a nuisance. He had been in the jail almost his whole life. He would come out and within two or three days he was bound to do something and he would be back again - jail was his home.

His name was Barabbas; and when Pontius Pilate asked the crowd, "Whom do you want to be released on this religious festival, your festival, your national festival?" - with one voice, the crowd shouted, "Barabbas, we want Barabbas back."

Even Barabbas could not believe it. Looking at this young man... he had heard about him that he was absolutely innocent. Even he felt ashamed and guilty that he was being saved. And these idiots who were shouting his name - he had harassed them his whole life! But Barabbas was saved and Pontius Pilate, just out of frustration, went inside and washed his hands.

His washing of the hands had remained without any commentary until Sigmund Freud, almost two thousand years later. Why did he wash his hands? Sigmund Freud, who was always looking deeper into symbols, said that whenever people feel that they have done whatever they could do, then they wash their hands of it completely; they are no more a part of it. He was not responsible for the crucifixion of an innocent and harmless person. But why was the crowd so against Jesus and not against Barabbas? - because after his release, just the third day, Barabbas murdered again and was back in jail.

The psychology of the crowd has to be understood. You are asking, "Why is it that so many people abandon their intelligence, their sensitivity, their responsibility and their individuality, when they become part of a group?"

When you become part of a group, a crowd, a mass, a collectivity, you surrender yourself; you say, "Now the group exists, I am no more." As an individual, you have committed suicide. Now you will think the way the group thinks, you will live the way the group lives. You will be obedient, subservient, a perfect slave, because the more you are a perfect slave the more respect you will gain from the crowd, from the group, from the collectivity you have become a part of. The collectivity honors those who sacrifice themselves.

Yes, your ego will be fulfilled. Dhyan Senshi, it is to fulfill your ego that you sacrifice everything - your intelligence, your sensitivity, your responsibility, your individuality - and just become a mechanical part which cannot say no to anything.

The rebel has to remain an individual. That does not mean that he cannot be friendly with others, that he cannot love others, that he cannot join people. But he loves without losing his individuality, without losing his freedom. He can become part of a group, making it clear to the group that "I am not surrendering to you or anybody. I am just joining you with my individuality intact, my intelligence free, my individuality undamaged. I will respect you and I expect the same from you; neither are you my slave nor am I your slave - we are friends." But such groups have not existed up to now.

This is my dream, this is my hope, because all groups - religious, political, social - have been against the individual. I would like communes in the world which are not against the individual, but which are a support and a nourishment to the individual. The group in itself has no soul, the soul belongs to the individual. The group exists for the individual, not vice versa. The individual does not exist for the group.

But up to now, this has been the rule: if you are a Christian, then you exist for Christianity - Christianity does not exist for you. If you are a Hindu, then you exist for Hinduism, and if there is a need to die, you will have to die for Hinduism. But Hinduism is neither living for you nor dying for you. Just words, ideologies, fictions, have destroyed the reality. The individual is the only reality, the very crown of existence, the highest peak that existence has been able to reach up to now.

Hence, I teach the rebel. That does not mean that the rebels will not have their friends, that they will not live in communes; that they will all be solitary, living in caves in the Himalayas absolutely alone - that is not my intention at all. I want to change the structure. The society should be for the individual, then there is nothing harmful in it. It should be a help, a nourishing ground for growth, for intelligence, for consciousness, for sensitivity; and it will allow enough space, enough territory to every individual.

The past has been utterly ugly. Even in small relationships, even in families, the individual is crushed.

Even two persons getting married, and their individualities are in danger. Their intelligences are in danger. We have become so accustomed, through thousands of years, to possessing each other.

Freedom is only a beautiful word. Poets sing songs of it, dreamers dream about it, but reality is simply a sick slavery.

Tom was thinking about getting married, so he wrote to his father for some advice. His father wrote back: "I can't tell you how happy I am to hear about your impending marriage. You will find marriage the most wonderful state of bliss and happiness.

"As I look across the table at your dear mother, I realize with great pride how full and wonderful our years together have been. By all means, get married. You have our blessings. It will be the happiest day of your life... Sincerely, Dad.

"P.S. Your mother just left the room - stay single, you idiot."

This is how things are. Everybody is trying to enslave everybody else; and in slavery, naturally, a few things which are very delicate start dying: intelligence, sensitivity, responsibility, individuality.

And marriage is the smallest group, only two persons. Then the groups go on becoming bigger and bigger; the bigger the group, the more you are lost.

And then there are nations, great religions - there are seven hundred million Catholics. Once you become a Catholic - or unfortunately you may have been born a Catholic - you don't have any scope, any space to expand. From everywhere your wings are cut, you are kept reduced in every possible way. Because if you are allowed freedom, there is a danger you may not be Catholic at all.

You may even go against Catholicism....

A small boy in a school was crying and his teacher asked him, "What is the matter, Johnny? You have never cried like that. Has somebody died?"

He said, "It is worse than that. My dog has given birth to seven small puppies, and when I asked those puppies, 'Are you Catholics?' they all waved their heads, so I was feeling very happy."

The teacher said, "Then why you are weeping?"

He said, "Today, their eyes opened, and when I asked, 'Are you Catholics?' they started looking at each other, they didn't answer at all."

You have to be blind to be a Catholic, to be a Mohammedan, to be a Hindu, to be a Buddhist. If your eyes open, it becomes impossible for you to remain confined to superstitions, lies of all kinds, and to go on believing in fictions when your intelligence raises doubts. Your church demands of you, never to doubt - that is the greatest sin.

But intelligence never grows without doubting, without questioning. It is the natural growth of intelligence to question. Just to believe means the intelligence need not grow - for what and why?

There is nothing to seek and nothing to search for, you simply have faith in the priest and keep your eyes closed. This has been so, but this need not be so forever.

And those who understand me clearly can see it happening here already. Nobody is dictating anything to you, nobody is giving you any discipline, nobody is telling you what is right and what is wrong. Because of this, I am condemned all over the world. Perhaps no man has been condemned so aggressively, so violently, and on such a large scale.

And what is my crime? My crime is that I am trying to create groups where people are individual, intelligent seekers, meditators, lovers. Not believers, not faithful to any holy scripture, not faithful to any dead prophet - trusting only their own intelligence and their own still, small voice, heard in the silences of the heart, in deep meditation.

Who am I to give you a moral code? You have to find your morality yourself, and only the morality that you have found for yourself will give you dignity. It will not be a bondage, you will not feel burdened, enslaved, imprisoned. On the contrary, you will feel integrated, crystallized, more pure and more clear. You are living according to your own light, and the more you use your light, your intelligence, your silence, the more it grows. Remember always, if you stop using anything it dies.

Don't use your eyes for a few years and then you will not be able to see.

Just here in this city, a few years before, there was a very beautiful man, Meher Baba. He had remained silent for perhaps more than fifty years. He had taken the vow of silence for only three years in the beginning, but then he enjoyed the silence so much that he continued for three more years. But after three years, if you continue to be silent... three years is the limit. After three years, if you continue, then your vocal chords start dying. Unused, any machine, any mechanism becomes just junk.

And then he became world famous, and people began asking him to start speaking. He would promise, "From the coming birthday, I am going to speak." This he declared almost twenty times; and each year, when the day came to speak, he didn't speak. And people wondered, what is the reason, why has he not fulfilled his promise? - a man of truth. But nobody thought of a simple thing...

When I used to go around the country, his private secretary, Adi Irani, used to come to see me while I was visiting Ahmed Nagar. That is where Meher Baba used to live most of the time. He had a place here also, but most of the time he was in Ahmed Nagar. Whenever I used to go to Ahmed Nagar, Adi Irani would tell me many things about Meher Baba and asked many questions. He asked me why he was not speaking - there was so much contemplation going on amongst the disciples.

I said, "It is nothing to contemplate, he has remained too long in silence. He tries, he makes an effort - that's why he goes on promising - but the mechanism has failed. And I can say to you," I told Adi Irani, "that he will never speak. Not that he is lying - he is trying hard; he will try up to his last breath to manage to speak. But how can you speak if your mechanism of speaking is non-functioning?"

Adi Irani said, "This is strange, none of us has ever thought about it. But perhaps you are right." And that's what happened... he never spoke, and until his death he continued to promise, but he could not do anything.

If you don't use your intelligence - and every religion wants you not to use your intelligence... their strategy is: believe, have faith. They don't say directly, "Don't use your intelligence;" but in an indirect and in a cunning way, they stop you from using intelligence. If you have faith there is no need for intelligence. If you have beliefs there is no need for intelligence; and a man who has become retarded because of beliefs and faith cannot be sensitive.

Sensitivity needs great intelligence. The higher your intelligence, the more sensitive you are.

Buffalos are not sensitive, neither are donkeys; it needs intelligence to be sensitive. But no religion wants you to be sensitive, they are all afraid of your becoming a power unto yourself. A sensitive person becomes a power, a tremendous powerhouse. He has his own intelligence, he has his own love, he has his own insight into things. He has clarity of vision, he has an aesthetic sense for beauty - all these things are dangerous.

The wife does not want the husband to be sensitive towards beauty, because that is a danger. There are so many beautiful women; it is better that all sensitivity for beauty is completely crushed. Then the husband remains henpecked forever. In the same way, no husband wants his wife to be sensitive about beauty; because there are so many men, and the wife, if her heart is still alive and beats and if she can still feel the spring... there is danger. She can fall in love with somebody and it is beyond your power. If you fall in love, you cannot do anything, you are simply helpless.

The group demands that you kill yourself and just survive - don't live. Just survive enough so that you can be used as laborers, as clerks, as police commissioners, as presidents, as prime ministers...

but just survival, not more than that. Living totally, intensely, burning your torch of life from both sides together, you become a tremendous danger to the crowd. Because everybody starts feeling he could also have lived the way you are living - this dance could have been his too, this song could have been his too. And because you remind him about the wounds that he is carrying and hiding within himself, because you make him utterly nude and exposed to himself, he cannot forgive you.

Socrates and Jesus and al-Hillaj Mansoor and Sarmad - these beautiful people, these individuals who had not become part of any group, any society, who remained like solitary cedars of Lebanon high in the sky, alone, almost touching the stars... They created jealousy in people, fear in people, and most importantly they opened their closed wounds. It hurts, it hurts so badly that it is better to remove them so that millions of people who have lost their souls, who have sold themselves in the market place, can be at ease again.

Dhyan Senshi, the reason for crippling the individual in the past is very clear. But the future has not to repeat the past. The future has to bring a new dawn to man's consciousness. Individuals can live together, share their love, share their joy, share their wisdom; but there is no need to possess anybody, not even your own children. You don't have any right to possess them. They come through you but you are not their owners.

There is no need of any marriage - these are the ugly institutions created by the collective mind.

There is no need of any nations. With the disappearance of the nations, wars will disappear automatically. There is no need for organized religions because religion is a private phenomenon. It is nobody's business to interfere into my religion.

And my religion does not belong to a tradition. Those who belong to a tradition don't have a religion, they only have a belief system. They have not found any truth by their own efforts, they have not created anything that they can call their own contribution to existence. They don't have any right for prayer. The existence has been giving you life and all that life implies - its gifts are immeasurable.

And if you cannot contribute anything creatively, all your prayers are just deceptions. There is no God to listen to them, you are talking to yourself.

If people start talking to themselves you call them mad, but if they say they are doing prayer you call them great saints, religious people. These are also mad because there is no God, no evidence, no proof. It is better if they start talking to the trees - at least there is someone. But they raise their eyes towards the sky, hoping that, sitting on a golden throne, God is listening. For millions and millions of years your prayers... either he must have gone mad and jumped out of his golden throne and committed suicide, or he must have become frozen, a fossil. Nobody's prayer is ever heard and nobody's prayer is ever answered - all your prayers are monologues.

But society has been playing with individuals in such inhuman ways that even madness is praised if it is helpful to keep people in control. All the morality - also called religious discipline - is nothing but to keep people in control. I want you to be in your own control, to take responsibility in your own hands. Be alert and aware, and out of your awareness will come all your relatedness, friendships, loves, societies, communes; but there is no need for anybody to sacrifice.

Hymie Goldberg rang his wife from his office: "I would like to bring Cohen home to dinner tonight," he told her.

"To dinner tonight?" she screamed. "You idiot, you know that the cook has just left, I have got a cold, the baby is cutting his teeth, the furnace is broken and the butcher won't give us any more credit until we pay up."

"I know, I know," Goldberg interrupted quietly. "That's why I want to bring him - just to see the whole scene. The poor fool is thinking of getting married."

All our relationships have become poisonous, and a great revolution is needed to change all this garbage of centuries that has collected around our beings. But it is possible - not only possible, it has to happen because there is a limit to everything. This insanity that we have lived with for thousands of years has come to the peak.

Because of this madness we have created nuclear weapons, knowing well that if any war happens it will be the destruction of all. Nobody will be defeated, nobody will be victorious. Still nations go on creating nuclear weapons. Even poor nations, which are not able to feed their people, want to join the race, want to put billions of dollars into destructive war material.

By scientific calculations, by the end of this century twenty-five nations will join the nuclear club - right now there are only five nations which have nuclear weapons. Of the remaining twenty that will join by the end of this century, India is one, Pakistan is also one. In this country alone, five hundred million people will be dying by the end of the century, but nobody is interested in that. Your politicians are interested in getting more uranium, more materials to create nuclear weapons.

You will be surprised that almost half of this country is hungry, people go to sleep with no food in their stomachs. If they can manage one meal a day they are very fortunate. And India is ready to give wheat to purchase more of the war materials necessary for creating atomic energy, nuclear weapons, and being ready for a third world war. It is not a question of some individual gone mad, it is the whole humanity which has gone crazy.

This is the very limit, unbearable. Either we have to commit suicide because of all these idiots who are creating the situation for a global murder, or we have to change the whole past: its institutions, its education, its ways of living, its ways of being religious. Unless we are ready for a total revolution, man cannot be saved.

My hope is that howsoever far man may have gone crazy, he still wants to live. His will to live is the only hope left. We have to put more fire into the will to live. We have to create wildfires around the world - for more life, for more love, for more songs, for more music - so that it becomes impossible for humanity to go along with these political, scientific, and other kinds of madmen to commit suicide.

It all depends on the vast humanity in the world. If they simply say, "We have decided to live and we have decided to make this world more beautiful, and we have decided to dissolve nations so that we can dissolve wars, and we have decided to dissolve religions because they are also causes of war and discrimination..." Unless such a miracle happens man's history has come to its last chapter.

Question 2:

Punit Bharti, you have asked many questions in one. First, "How will your new man express himself?"

Nobody knows. If you know it already, it is not much of a new man. You cannot conceive of it, because whatever you will conceive will be something of the old - modified, changed a little bit here and there, painted in new colors, but it will remain a continuity with the past. So only negatively can something be said, not positively.

One thing is certain: the new man will not express himself the way the old man has been expressing.

Just look at modern art, look at the paintings of Picasso and you will wonder what this painting is.

Once Picasso made a portrait of a very rich woman. He said beforehand, "Listen, my portrait is not going to be like others. If you want a photograph, go to a photographer. My portrait will be an original painting."

The woman said, "Don't be worried. I want a portrait by you, whatsoever the cost - don't think about money." He made the portrait. The woman looked at it and she said, "Just one question - I want to know where my nose is? Because I will have to show it to people; it will be hanging in my bedroom and if somebody asks, 'Where is your nose...?' So just tell me."

Picasso looked at the painting and he said, "I told you beforehand that if you want a photograph, go to a photographer. This is a painting and this is modern art. When I was painting I knew where your nose was, now I don't know. And I have other work, too. I cannot remain concerned with such trivia as where your nose is. It is a portrait by Picasso, that should be enough explanation to anybody. So don't be worried, just take it home."

Looking at Picasso's paintings you will feel like falling sick, a kind of nausea, a dizziness, because this man... and he is the representative of the whole of modern art, the most important representative. It shows the insanity of the painter; he is not painting anybody's portrait, he is painting the way he sees the woman's face - through his insanity. So everything goes topsy-turvy:

eyes come down, nose goes up... his mind is moving, he is not at peace, he is not at ease. His confusion, his tensions, his worries, his anxieties, everything is poured into color.

Look at modern music, from the Beatles to the Talking Heads. It seems some people have gone mad and millions are appreciating it. And with their madness, millions are affected: they are dancing, they are shouting, and they are creating a tremendous wave of madness all around - and this is modern music. It shows again that modern man has come to the very limit, now there is nowhere to go.

In sculpture, you will find the same thing repeated again; in poetry, you can read it but you cannot understand it - even the poet does not know what it means. Out of a whim, just like a man speaking in his sleep... when he wakes up you ask him and he remembers he must have said something like this, but now he does not remember the context, the reference, the meaning. The same thing goes on in literature and in other fields of creativity and expression.

This much I can say: the new man will express himself intelligently, objectively, meditatively. He will not be vomiting on the canvas. He will be painting some ecstasy that has happened to his innermost being. The painting will be an expression of sharing what he cannot say by words; what nobody can say by words, he is trying to say by colors. Somebody may be saying it by sculpture, somebody may be saying it by making a garden.

The new man will not be insane. His expressions will show sanity and will bring you a feeling of well-being, a health, a certain joyousness - a certain song will start resounding in your heart. And when you will be coming back from seeing a painting or listening to poetry or to music, you will find you are not walking, you are dancing. Something has touched you, something has bypassed your mind and reached your being. But exactly what he will do, we will have to wait for him to come and do it.

You are asking, "Will he find new ways...?" Certainly, he will find new ways about everything. He will not have to seek far away; his very being will be creative of new ways, new expression, new art, new forms of poetry, new ways of relating with people - "or will the existing ways just develop into higher forms?"

No, absolutely no. The existing ways have developed to their highest form already. Their highest form is nuclear weapons, their highest expression is Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their greatest men are Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Benito Mussolini, Ronald Reagan - they have come to their highest form. The old man has exhausted himself, has spent himself.

Mr. Levy had given his friend, Goldstein, some of his first red wine, which Goldstein tasted and drank, but he made no comment. Mr. Levy felt very disappointed in Goldstein's apparent lack of appreciation, so he decided to offer him some strong, inferior wine that he had kept in his store.

Goldstein had no sooner tasted it then he exclaimed, "What excellent wine this is!"

"But you said nothing of the first," remarked Levy.

"Ah," replied Goldstein, "the first required no comment. It spoke for itself. The second was so poor, it required somebody to speak on its behalf. I thought the second needed someone to speak up for it."

The new man will not be a reformed, developed, modified continuity of the past. He will be absolutely discontinuous. He will be as fresh as a fresh leaf coming out of the tree. It is not the refined old leaf, fully developed, highly developed; the old has gone, the new has taken its place. The new will be absolutely fresh, otherwise it is not worth calling it new.

And you are also asking, "What is art?" Art is the expression of your heart. When your heart overflows in any dimension - in painting, in poetry, in dancing, in singing - it becomes art. Art is not something of a technique. It is the overflowing heart which creates its own technique. It is alive enough to bring its own technique into existence.

The artist is not a technician, that you should remember. A technician only copies, imitates. The artist brings something new into existence which has never existed before. He himself is surprised; unless you are surprised by your art, it is not of much value. If you recognize it, it means it is old - otherwise how can you recognize it?

"And what do you feel is lacking in it today?" Everything. There is nothing in it except sheer madness.

"How will it be connected with the new man?" There is no need to connect. The new man will bring with himself his new ways of seeing things, his new ways of loving, his new ways of living. He will have new tastes - they will not even reflect the old and the dead.

"What can we do to create a new beginning?" Please, just don't do it. You are old, anything you will do will remain old. You have to disappear, that's all you can do. You have to die as an ego and you have to become almost absent, a nobody. Out of your nobodyness, something absolutely new will be born. And that will be the sunrise of a new humanity, of a new man, of a new future.

The young minister was in the pulpit for the first time and he was a little nervous. He read the text, "Behold, I come." Then his mind went blank. He could not remember what he was going to say. So he repeated, "Behold, I come." Still, his memory was a blank. Trying to cover up his embarrassment, he repeated again, "Behold, I come."

Suddenly the whole pulpit gave way, and he landed in the lap of the wife of one of the elders. "I am awfully sorry," he stammered.

"Ah, that's all right," the lady smiled, "I should have been ready after you warned me three times - 'Behold, I come.'"

... So don't be surprised if the new man suddenly comes. I have been warning you millions of times:

Behold, I come!

Okay, Maneesha?

Yes, Beloved Master.