The purity of awareness
Question 1:
BELOVED MASTER,
SITTING WITH YOU EVERY DAY, I AM BECOMING AWARE OF A DARK, HEAVY SPACE INSIDE ME. IT FEELS AS IF IT IS NOT PART OF ME, BUT I KNOW I CARRY IT AROUND WITH ME. WILL IT DISAPPEAR IF I KEEP ON WATCHING, OR DO I NEED TO DO SOMETHING MORE?
Shivam Suvarna, the path of meditation brings everyone to the awareness of a dark space within; and simultaneously, the absolute certainty that "I'm not it." All that is needed of you is just to watch and not to do anything.
It seems simple, but it is the most difficult thing in the world, not to do anything.
Just remain silent. Let it be there. Just look more closely, be more perceptive, more clear of all its aspects... but as far as doing is concerned, avoid it completely.
Doing, in the sphere of the inner world, is your undoing. Doing is perfectly right in the outside world - it is needed there. You cannot simply watch and things will start happening - you have to make some effort. The inner follows just the opposite law: if you do something you get caught into doing, you lose your purity of awareness; and the purity of awareness has its own tremendous power.
If you can simply sit, without any judgment about the dark space - not thinking of it as bad or evil, or something that has to be dropped... all these thoughts disturb your purity of awareness, and it is the purity of awareness that is going to dispel the darkness. So you have to be absolutely calm and quiet, and just be a watcher on the hills... looking down in the valleys where there is the dwelling place of the darkness.
The darkness will go - will have to go - as your awareness will become more strong, more pure.
You will also start feeling that you not only have a dark space within you. Your awareness is not only awareness, it is luminous - it radiates light; and that radiation of light will dispel the darkness on its own accord.
It is not your doing - you cannot take credit for it - it is a universal law of the inner world. You have to simply understand the law and allow it to function without hindering it. Any effort on your part is a hindrance.
This is what Lao Tzu has called "action by inaction," and the Zen people have called "effortless effort." If you have followed what I have been saying to you, you will understand the beauty of effortless effort, and actionless action.
In the inner world, at your very center, you are absolutely as you should be. Nothing has to be changed there because nothing has ever become distorted, damaged. The innermost core is beyond all corruption. Around it corruption can happen, and has happened. We are surrounded by dark night. But we are not part of it. We are part of the eternal light of existence itself - we just have to come closer and closer to our being. And once we recognize the luminosity, the tremendous force of light to dispel darkness, you have found the very secret of alchemical transformation.
Just avoid doing anything. This is the most difficult part of meditation, but this is where real meditation begins; before it, everything is just a preparation for meditation. All the techniques of meditation are only a preparation for meditation, they are not meditation themselves. Meditation begins when you understand clearly that doing is an obstruction, and non-doing is the way to allow existence itself to possess you, to transform you, to bring a new life, a new joy, a new birth.
But unfortunately, everywhere around the world only doing is taught; non-doing is condemned as laziness. It is true in the world, non-doing is laziness. But the world outside is not all - not only that it is not all, it is the most insignificant part of the universe. The significant part is within you.
Jesus is right when he continues insisting, again and again, that the kingdom of God is within you.
It is already there, complete and whole; you have to come closer to it, to feel that this is your true nature, the nature which is a magic. It does miracles to your being. It gives you insight into eternity, it takes away all fear, it takes you beyond mind into the silences of your being - which is the only temple of God there is.
I don't want my people to be worshippers. I want them to find the god within themselves. While you are worshipping, you are doing a stupid act - you are forcing the god to worship a fiction. Your God in the skies is a lie. You are the reality; and if you want to find the foundation of all that exists, lives, you have just to go within yourself into your own home.
And this going in is not a kind of doing; you simply sit silently and you will find, slowly slowly, you are slipping - perhaps a certain magnetic force is pulling you. Allow yourself, wholeheartedly, to be pulled... don't hold anything back. You are in the right space from where meditation can begin. You don't need any other technique than just becoming aware of the dark space that surrounds you; and without any antagonism, without any desire to overcome it - these are by-products. It will happen, but not by your desiring; it will happen simply by your waiting, watching, and being patient.
Question 2:
BELOVED MASTER,
IS IT MY INTUITION WHICH GIVES ME AN IDEA ABOUT SOMETHING BEFORE IT ACTUALLY HAPPENS - OR BY THINKING ABOUT IT, DO I CREATE THE SITUATION? COULD YOU PLEASE TALK ABOUT INTUITION AND CREATING MY OWN REALITY?
Indradhanu, the faculty of intuition and the faculty of creating your own reality are absolutely, not only different, but diametrically opposite things. Intuition is only a mirror. It does not create anything, it only reflects. It reflects that which is. It is pure, silent, crystal clear water reflecting the stars and the moon. It does not create anything. It is the clarity which in the East has been called the third eye. Eyes don't create anything, they simply inform you what is there.
Creating one's own reality is called imagination - that is the faculty of dreaming. In the night, you create so many things in your dreams. And the most amazing thing is that your whole life you have been dreaming every night, and you know every morning that it was a dream - not real. But when the night comes again, and you fall asleep and your imagination starts spreading its wings, no doubt arises in you - without any doubt you accept its reality.
This faculty of imagination can function in other ways also. It creates your dreams - which you know are not real. But when they come, and you are surrounded by them, they appear absolutely real - more real than the real world. Because in the real world once in a while you can suspect, you can doubt. For example, this very moment you are capable of doubting whether what you are seeing here or hearing here is real, or you have fallen asleep and you are seeing a dream. It can be a dream. You will know only when you wake up.
This is the only distinction: in reality, you can doubt - it could be a dream - but in a dream you cannot wonder if it is a dream... that's the only distinction between dream and reality. Reality allows you reason, imagination does not allow you reason.
The same faculty can create daydreams... you are just sitting silently, not doing anything, and a dream starts floating in your eyes; you are awake but you start thinking about being the president of the country. Because you are awake, an undercurrent knows that you are having stupid ideas; but still they are so sweet that one goes on dreaming that one has become a world conqueror, or the richest man in the world. He's awake, but he's creating a dream. If this becomes too much, you lose your sanity. You can go into any madhouse, any psychiatric hospital, and you will be surprised how people are living in their imaginations: talking to people who are not there - not only talking, but even answering from their side - and there is no doubt, no skepticism.
Once a young boy was brought to me. His parents were very much disturbed; they had taken him to psychoanalysts, to other doctors, but nothing had worked. And his problem was not very great, but it was disturbing his whole life and his whole future. He had got this idea that while he was sleeping - he used to sleep with his mouth open - two flies had entered his mouth, and they were going around inside his body. Now they are here, now they are there, now they have moved towards the head. The whole day the boy could not do anything else, there was no way to get rid of those two flies.
He was examined, there were no flies. And even if you swallowed two flies, they could not go on moving this way. There are no superhighways like this, that the flies are going to the head, and to the feet, and to the heart, and to the stomach, and they are continuously going around and buzzing...
he could hear their buzz. And how could he remain at ease? Even in the night he could not sleep well.
When the parents brought him to me they must have taken him to many people already. Somebody suggested that perhaps I might be of some help. I listened to the story and I said to the parents, "You are absolutely wrong, and the boy is absolutely right."
The boy looked at me. I was the first man to whom his parents had taken him who had given him self-respect, dignity. Others were all telling him, "You are crazy. There are no flies."
I said, "You are all crazy. I can see his flies."
The father and the mother both became disturbed... where had they come? Now I was going to strengthen the idea of the boy even more. But it was too late. I said, "You sit down. You have been torturing him unnecessarily. First, he's being tortured by these two flies, and you are taking him all around. You have been humiliating him."
First, I talked to the boy's parents, and convinced the boy that I was absolutely with him. He said, "You are the first man who knows something about these deeper problems."
I said, "I absolutely agree with you. You have been tortured by these two flies, so we will take them out."
He said, "It will be very difficult because they go on changing their place."
I said, "You don't be worried."
I took him inside the room, left the parents outside and told him to lie down. Because I was absolutely favorable to him, he listened to me. He lay down, and I told him to close his eyes and watch those flies - where they were going - so that he would have an exact idea where they were. "When they are very close to your mouth, I will pull them out."
He said, "That seems to be logical. They have entered from the mouth."
So I put him on the bed with his eyes closed, and I rushed all over the house to find two flies. It was a difficult job and it was just by chance... Hindu women use coconut oil for their hair - which is a dirty habit. You can smell from far away that a Hindu woman is coming close. And I had seen dead flies many times in their bottles of coconut oil, so I rushed around looking for a coconut oil bottle.
And by chance, I found not only two, but three flies.
Strangely, it seems almost every coconut oil bottle catches these flies - they go in and they get caught, they cannot fly. When they are in the bottle, taking a holy dip in the coconut oil, then they cannot fly - their wings get sticky. And particularly if it is winter time, then the coconut oil becomes solid. It was winter time, so it was very easy for me to take those three flies.
I cleaned them, washed them, brought them in, and I told the boy, "Keep your eyes on the flies - where are they?"
And he said, "They are very close. They are just near my throat."
I said, "This is the moment. Open your mouth." And as he opened his mouth, I took the flies out of his mouth which I already had in my hands. I told him, "You were wrong, there were not two, there were three."
He said, "My God! You are the right person." I showed him three flies. He said, "It feels so peaceful inside - no buzzing, no flies."
He rushed out with the flies to show his parents, and the parents were shocked. They said, "We have been to the doctors, you have been x-rayed. We have been to the psychoanalyst, you have been psychoanalyzed, and nobody has detected any flies. But now we cannot say anything. This man has even caught them."
The boy said, "Can I take these flies with me to show to all those doctors? They are idiots because they were condemning me that I'm crazy. Now I want to show all of them that they are crazy. My only fault was that I was counting two, and there were three."
I said, "You can take these without fear, and if at any time any fly enters again, I'm available. You can come to me. You need not go anywhere else."
He said, "Now it won't happen because now I sleep with a bandage on my mouth. I have suffered enough - it has been almost two years I have been suffering."
And he went to the doctors, he went to the psychoanalyst; and one of the doctors was very friendly with me. He was a Rotarian, and I had gone the next day to speak in the Rotary Club. We met there... he said, "You are something. Where did you get those three flies from? Now that boy is making a fool of us. And he was saying, 'All your X-rays, and all your education is just nonsense.
You don't know anything about flies when they enter into somebody's body. And these are the flies, as a proof.'
"I inquired of him, 'Who has caught them?'
"He mentioned your name, very respectfully, and he said, 'He is the only man in the whole city who treated me as a human being, not as a madman - who realized my difficulty. And once he accepted my difficulty, it was not much trouble because they were roaming all over my body. He simply said, 'When they come close to your mouth, just tell me. Keep your eyes closed, so I can catch hold.' And I was thinking there were only two... there were three!'"
Imagination can create a kind of insanity if it starts believing in its own daydreams - it can create hallucinations. As far as I'm concerned, your so-called saints, great religious leaders who have seen God, who have met God, who have talked with God, are in the same category with this crazy boy who had two flies moving inside him. Their God is just their imagination.
There is a certain method if you want to check it. The time needed is at least three weeks, and you have to do two things to prepare the ground to create a hallucination. Then you can see Jesus Christ standing before you, or Gautam Buddha, and you can have a good chit-chat. You can ask questions and you will be answered - although nobody else will see that somebody is there, but that is their fault. They don't have the spiritual height to see the invisible.
Two basic things are needed: one is a three-week fast. The more hungry you are, the less your intelligence functions, because intelligence needs a certain amount of vitamins continuously - if they are not supplied, it starts getting dim. In three weeks time, it stops functioning. So the first thing is to put the intellect to sleep. That's why all the religions prescribe fasting as a very great religious discipline. But the psychology behind it is that within three weeks your intelligence starts to go to sleep. And then imagination can function perfectly well - there is nobody to doubt.
The second requirement is aloneness - move to a place in a mountain, in a forest, in a cave where you are absolutely alone. Because man is brought up in a society, he has always lived with people.
He's talking the whole day - yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak. At night he's talking in his dreams, and from the morning he starts and goes on till he goes to sleep. If there is nobody to talk to, he starts praying to God. That is talking to God, that is a respectable way of being crazy.
Within three weeks time... after the second week, one starts talking loudly. After the first week, one starts talking to himself. But he knows that nobody should hear it; otherwise, they will think him mad. But by the end of the second week that fear is gone, because intelligence is getting dull. By the second week, he starts talking loudly. By the third week, he starts seeing the person he wanted to meet: Jesus Christ, Krishna, Mahavir, Gautam Buddha, a dead friend, or anybody else.
After three weeks, he's capable of visualizing the person so clearly that our ordinary reality looks pale. Hence, religions have supported both these strategies: fasting, and going into isolation. That is the way, the scientific way, to go into a hallucinatory experience.
You can create your own reality: you can live with Jesus Christ again, you can have a good conversation with Gautam Buddha, you can ask questions and you can get answers - although you will be doing both the things. But it has been found that when you ask the question, your voice will be one way, and when you will answer the question, your voice will be different. Naturally, this is happening in all madhouses everywhere - people are talking to the walls.
I have heard about a madhouse.... A new doctor is taking charge, and the old doctor is being retired.
All the inmates of the madhouse arrange a farewell party. When the old doctor speaks, they remain silent - no clapping, no response from them. But after the new doctor speaks, they laugh, they clap, they giggle. The new doctor is a little puzzled. When the old doctor was speaking, they were sitting absolutely silently, keeping their eyes down and heads lowered.
He asked them, "What is the matter? You were looking so sad, so dull and dead. Now you have come alive."
They said, "There is a reason... because you look just like one of us." The doctor was shocked to hear that he looked like one of them. "That old doctor," they said, "has been here, but he always remained an outsider. You are one of us, an inmate. Things will be very good between us. You are talking such nonsense that even we can see that you are mad. But in a madhouse, what is the purpose of appointing a doctor who is not mad? How he can understand us? You will understand us absolutely, without any trouble. We will understand you. We are in the same boat."
The old doctor told him, "Don't be worried. These are insane people. What happened to them? I don't know. Something in you has triggered the idea in them that you are also mad."
All the history of the saints who have experienced God, talked with God, has to be researched with more psychological insight. They are not different than madmen. All their pretensions, declarations that they are the only son of God, that they are the only prophet of God, that they are the only reincarnation of God are nothing but mad assertions.
It will be a real shock if you can realize that these people were surrounded by hallucinations; they had created their own reality around themselves. Their gods are their imagination, their messages are from their own minds, the scriptures they have left behind are manufactured by them. No book is written by God, because I have gone through all those books - they are not even worth calling good literature. What to say about their holiness? They are third class literature, but people have worshipped them.
The whole history of man can be reduced to a single statement: It has been a history of hysteria.
All these saints and sages are hysterical. Only very few have dropped imagination, have dropped the whole mind and all its faculties - but these few have not experienced God.
Buddha never saw any God. He experienced only tremendous silence, he experienced the great joy which remained for forty-two years after his enlightenment. His enlightenment is not a fiction, because fictions cannot last that long; dreams cannot transform a man's life.
After his enlightenment, he was another man. His joy remained with him just like breathing. He does not talk about gods, he does not talk about heaven and hell, he does not talk about angels. He has not seen all these things. These things have to be created first, you have to arrange yourself in a certain situation where whatever you want to see, you can see. And if a person is dying to see Jesus Christ, is ready to do anything: fasting, isolation, going into a monastery...
There is a monastery in Athos, in Europe - one thousand years old - perhaps the oldest monastery in Europe. The rule of the monastery is that you only enter into it, you cannot come out of it again.
And there are nearabout ten thousand monks inside the monastery. Only when they die... then their dead bodies are put through a hole, and other Christians who are outside - who are not monks - make a grave for them. But insiders cannot even come with the dead body. The body has to be forced through a hole to fall out of the monastery, and it is on a high mountain.
Now what are these people doing? - just chanting, "Ave Maria." The monastery is dedicated to the mother of Jesus, Mary, or Maria. The whole day their only work is to go on chanting, "Ave Maria."
Fasting, in isolation, cut off from the world... soon they start hallucinating that mother Maria visits them. They have their cells, living alone, separate from each other. They are not allowed to talk to each other, only to the abbot.
In one thousand years, no woman has been allowed inside the monastery - not even a six-month-old baby. Those monks are sitting on volcanoes of repressed sexual energy.
This repressed sexual energy is also helpful in creating hallucinations. Everybody knows young men start hallucinating about girls, girls start hallucinating about boys. Their dreams become more and more sexual; sex becomes the dominant factor in their minds.
And because these monks have repressed sex and are fasting, living in isolation, just thinking only of Jesus Christ or Ave Maria, naturally they start hallucinating. And those who start hallucinating become more respected, more honored. The greatest madman inside the monastery becomes the abbot.
For the rebel, there are many things to do to release these people from these madhouses called monasteries, nunneries... to bring them back to sanity, bring them back to the world of reality and not of dreams. You don't have to create your reality, you just have to cleanse your senses to feel the reality and its psychedelic beauty, its colorfulness, its greenness, its aliveness.
And inside, you have to discover the reality, not create it; because anything created by you cannot be but imagination.
You simply have to go in, in silence, and watch - just be alert and aware so that you can see whatever is real. And those who have seen reality say you will experience tremendous silence, great joy, infinite blissfulness, immortality; but you will not see any God, and you will not see any angels. Those things have to be created to be seen.
Indradhanu, intuition, imagination, intellect, all have to be transcended. You have to come to a point which is beyond mind: a deep serenity, coolness and calmness that is your true nature, that is your buddha nature. That's what you are, that is the stuff you are made of, and that is the stuff the whole universe is made of. We can call it universal consciousness, we can call it universal godliness - any name will do. But remember, millions have befooled themselves in imagination. And it is very cheap, very easy - just a certain strategy has to be followed and you can create the reality.
I was once staying with a friend. In India there is a holy festival, and on that festival people use something similar to marijuana - it is called bhang. The man I was staying with was also a professor in the same university... very simple, and a very good man. And I had told him, "Don't do that stupid thing." But he went to meet a few friends, and they managed to give him sweets which were full of marijuana, and some cold drinks that were also full of marijuana.
He did not return, it was the middle of the night. I had to go to find him - what was happening?
He was standing naked, surrounded by a crowd, shouting obscenities, and people were throwing stones at him.
I could not figure out what had happened. I stopped the people; I said, "I know this man. It seems he has taken some drug. I had told him not to do that." Somehow, I put his clothes back on him - he was very much against it. I was pulling his pants up and he would jump out of them. I said, "These people will kill you." And then he ran away.
The city was unknown to me, but well known to him. I followed him for a few minutes through small streets, and then lost track. In the morning, the police phoned me that my friend was in their custody; so I went. By then he had come a little bit to his senses, yet there was a hangover. But he recognized me, and said, "I'm sorry that I did not listen to you." He had wounds on his body because people had thrown stones.
I brought him back, and since that day the fear of police had caught his mind, possessed his mind, because the police must have beaten him. Otherwise he was not going to wear his clothes, and he must have misbehaved with them. Such a fear entered, such a paranoia, that life became difficult.
In the night, a policeman was guarding the street. He would hear the sound of the boots, and he would just jump under the bed. I would say, "Balram" - that was his name - "what are you doing?"
He would say, "Keep quiet. The police are coming."
I had to ask the principal to give him fifteen days leave so he could rest, because it was so difficult to bring him to the university. Everything became suspicious... two persons would be standing by the corner of the street, talking, and he would say, "Look, they are all conspiring. And I tell you that they will finally catch hold of me, and they will put me in jail, and beat me. Do something!" A police van would pass, and he would say, "My God! They have come."
I tried in every possible way to show that it was just a fear. I could understand how it started, but now it was too much. He wouldn't listen... neither would he sleep, nor would he allow me to sleep.
Finally, I had to go to a police inspector, and I told him the whole story. I told him, "You need to give me some help. This man is very simple, innocent, he has not committed any crime - he has just taken marijuana. I don't know what else was mixed in the sweets and the drinks he has taken. The police must have beaten him... and he needed it; otherwise, he was not going to put his clothes on.
I had tried to help, but he jumped up and ran away."
He said, "In what way can I help?"
I said, "You have to come with the file, because he's saying again and again, 'They have a file against me, and they are waiting for the right moment to arrest me.' So you bring any file, handcuffs, and an arrest warrant - any paper. Just seeing you, he will lose all intelligence. And come in the night, he has to be arrested at night.
"And then I will persuade you, and I will give you five thousand rupees to leave the poor guy. And, very reluctantly, you should leave him, and I will ask you to burn the file. So burn the file; and leaving us, tell me so he can hear, 'Now there is no problem because the file is burned, and there is no longer any charge in the hands of the police.' And I can take those five thousand rupees back later on."
The man was very good. He said, "I will come." He came in the night, and the moment he came my friend slipped under the bed. The inspector had to pull him out, and he said, "Listen, look, I have been telling you that they will come... and he has come, and this is the file."
The inspector gave me the arrest warrant and he said, "He has to be arrested." And he put the handcuffs on him. I tried to persuade him, but he said, "I cannot do anything. He will spend at least five years in jail."
And Balram looked at me and said, "Look, now do something; otherwise, I'm gone."
So I gave five thousand rupees to the inspector, and told him, "He's a simple man. Just do me a little favor - leave him. If he does anything again, then I will be the first man to deliver him to the police.
But this is his first crime, and he has committed it under the influence of a drug."
With difficulty, I convinced the inspector to burn the file; and we burned the file. The handcuffs were taken off, and he told me, "It is okay. If he does anything again, then I cannot help it. Right now, all that was reported to the police against him has been burned. Now the police have no power to arrest him." And from that day, Balram became perfectly okay.
Next day, I had to go again to the police station to get those five thousand rupees back. The man was really good. He could have refused to give the money back, but he gave it to me, and he asked, "How is he?"
I said, "He's perfectly okay. Now he even sees the policeman walking by and he does not care. I told him once or twice, 'That policeman is standing there.' He said, 'I don't care. The file is burned.'" He had created a hallucination around himself.
And the so-called religions are living in such hallucinations. You will be surprised to know that the ancientmost scriptures of the Hindus talk about a certain drug, somras, which used to be found in the Himalayas and perhaps is still available but we don't know how to recognize it. It was the usual practice for all religious people to drink somras.
One of the most intelligent men of this century, Aldous Huxley, was very much impressed when LSD was discovered - he was the first promoter of LSD. He lived under the illusion that through LSD you can achieve to the same spiritual experiences that Gautam Buddha had, that Kabir had, that Nanak had. Thinking of the somras of the VEDAS, he has written in his book, HEAVEN AND HELL, that in the future the ultimate drug will be created by science - synthetic. Its name will be in the memory of the first drug used by the religious people: somras. Its name will be soma.
And since RIGVEDA, in India, Hindu sannyasins, Hindu religious people have been taking all kinds of drugs in order to experience their imaginary gods. To such a point, that I have come across a follower of Kabir... they go on drinking all kinds of drugs, and a point comes when they become immune. Then they start keeping cobra snakes, and they make the cobras bite on their tongues.
Only that gives them the religious experience. I have seen one monastery of the followers of Kabir where they had big cobras, dangerous cobras - just one bite and you are finished, there is no cure.
But those monks needed it because no other drug was effective anymore.
It is not just a coincidence that in the West the younger generation has become interested in both the things together: in drugs, and in the East. They come to the East to find some way to experience something beyond the ordinary, mundane world of which they have seen enough. Now sex is no longer appealing, alcohol is no longer interesting, so they start coming to the East to find some techniques to create a reality. And in most of the ashramas in the East, they will find techniques which help your imagination. They are subtle kinds of drugs. And in the West, many have taken to drugs. Now there are thousands of young people - men and women - suffering in jails in Europe and America for taking drugs.
But as far as I'm concerned, I see it in a different light. I see it as the beginning of a search for something beyond the ordinary world; although they are searching in a wrong way - drugs won't give them the reality. They can create a reality, but it is going to last for a few hours; then you have to inject the drug again. And each time you have to inject more and more quantities because you go on becoming immune.
But there is a great upsurge in the younger people, which has never been seen before, for drugs.
They are ready to suffer imprisonment, and they come out and they are still taking drugs. In fact, if they have money, they even manage in jail to get drugs from the officers of the jail, the staff of the jail; you just have to give money to them.
But I don't see it as a bad sign. I simply see it as a misdirected young generation. The intention is right, but there is nobody to tell them that drugs won't fulfill your desire and your longing. Only meditation, only silence, only transcending beyond your mind is going to give you contentment and fulfillment.
But they cannot be condemned as they are being condemned and punished. The older generation is responsible because you don't have alternatives for them.
I propose the only alternative: as you become more and more meditative, you don't need anything else. You don't need to create a reality because you start seeing the reality itself. And a created reality is just false, it is a dream - maybe a sweet dream, but a dream is a dream, after all.
The thirst is right, just that they are wandering. And their religious leaders, their political leaders, their governments, their educational institutions are not capable of giving them a right direction.
I take it as a symptom of a great search which has to be welcomed. Just a right direction has to be given - which the old religions cannot give, which the old society is impotent to give. We need, urgently, the birth of a new man; we need, urgently, the rebel to change all this sickness and ugliness which is destroying many, many people in the world.
Everybody needs to know himself, his reality. And it is good that the desire has arisen. Sooner or later, we will be able to turn our younger people in the right direction. The people who have become sannyasins have gone through all the drug trips. And as they became sannyasins and started meditating, by and by their drugs disappeared. Now they don't need it. No punishment, no jail, just a right direction - and the reality is so fulfilling, is such a benediction that you cannot expect more.
Existence gives you - in such abundance - richness of being, of love, of peace, of truth, that you cannot ask for more. You cannot even imagine more.
Okay, Maneesha?