I need your intelligence, not your surrender

Question 1:

The attitude of not surrendering is in everyone. It is something natural. It simply means that nature wants you to be yourself, not somebody else's idea of you.

So when such a situation arises in childhood, that you have to constantly fight against surrendering, the idea goes very deep. It is a natural idea. Nothing is wrong in it. This has to be understood very clearly, that there is nothing wrong in it. It can be used in a right way, it can be used in a wrong way, but the idea itself is very natural.

People can exploit you, using your own natural instincts; people can also help you to grow in the right direction, using the same natural instincts.

So the first thing you have to do is you have to drop the idea that there is something wrong that you have repressed within yourself. There is nothing wrong in it. It is perfectly good that you did not surrender, that you resisted, that you kept your identity safe and well guarded.

As far as the world is concerned, up to this point everything is absolutely right. The problem arises only with the wrong kind of teacher, who again asks you to surrender.

The right master never asks you to surrender. His very presence is enough.

There is no need for him to ask for any surrender. Just in his presence you feel so perfectly accepted that the question of rejecting him, the question of creating a wall between him and you, does not arise. There is no passive resistance.

The problem arises only if you happen to be with a wrong kind of teacher; one who is not a master, one who has not a presence, one who has not yet realized himself, one who is simply repeating somebody else's words, quoting scriptures - the kind of man who is between inverted commas. He will insist for surrender.

And anybody who insists on surrender, resist him, because the very effort by anybody to impose himself upon somebody else is against human dignity.

I don't want you to surrender. I want you to be yourself, purely and simply just your natural being.

That's enough. It will create the bridge between me and you.

I am not here to enslave you spiritually.

I am here to make you free from all spiritual enslavement.

The people who have been asking for surrender are asking for slavery in the name of spirituality.

And millions of people on the earth are just living in a spiritual slavery - with different names - Christians, Hindus, Jews, Buddhists. It doesn't matter what name, but they have surrendered their freedom, they have surrendered their awareness, they have surrendered their capacity to choose what is right and what is wrong.

The real master simply teaches you what is right and what is wrong. To accept it or not is simply left to your intelligence, not to your surrender.

I need your intelligence, not your surrender. I need your consciousness, not your slavery.

So there is no problem at all. However deep the idea has gone, let it remain there; it is a perfectly good protection in a society where everybody is trying to make the other in some way dominated, possessed. It is good to have great stamina - that whatever happens, you are going to remain yourself.

Question 2:

Relaxation is not something big. It is a simple matter. It is just waking sleep. You need every day a few hours of sleep. Try to understand the phenomenon of sleep.

The child in the mother's womb sleeps twenty-four hours a day for nine months continuously. After he is born, slowly, slowly the sleep hours are cut - twenty-two hours he will be sleeping, twenty hours he will be sleeping, eighteen hours he will be sleeping, sixteen hours he will be sleeping.

And as he becomes mature, it comes to a fixed normal routine of seven or eight hours. This will continue until he starts feeling old. This will be different with each individual, because somebody will die at seventy, somebody will die at eighty; and some fellows are so stubborn, they will die at ninety, a hundred - and there are people who have gone beyond a hundred.

So as a person starts feeling old, tired, his sleep is cut even more - he is sleeping three to four hours, then slowly to two to three hours.

Why does this happen? - that in the mother's womb a child is sleeping twenty-four hours a day, and an old man is sleeping only two or three hours in the night?

The reason is that in sleep your body functions perfectly without your interference. For nine months in the mother's womb, the body works so much - it will not work that much in the whole remaining life - because in those nine months the body has to pass through all the evolutionary steps that humanity has taken since the very beginning.

The scientists now say that life was born in the ocean, and the child in the beginning is exactly like a fish. In nine months he covers almost two to three million years of progress. The body is involved in such a work that it does not want any interference; and if a child is awake, there will be interference.

The old man, as he gets older his body is no longer building any new tissues, any new nerves. The old nerves are dying, and they are not being replaced by new ones. The inner work of the body is lessened because the man is going to die. Now the preparation for death is cutting off the sleep.

Just as in preparation for life twenty-four hours of sleep a day was needed, now preparation for death needs almost no sleep.

Relaxation is a deliberate effort to allow the body to do its work without your interference. You simply become absent; you leave the body as if it is a dead corpse - and it is needed. As human life has become more and more tense, more and more frantic, more and more speedy, the ordinary sleep is not enough. Relaxation leads you to a deeper realm of sleep.

Hypnos means sleep. The word simply means sleep, but a sleep of a different kind - consciously produced, not biologically but psychologically. Biologically, sleep can go only to a certain extent, but psychologically, sleep can penetrate very deep. It all depends on you.

The society certainly prepares you for activity, for ambition, for speed, for efficiency. It does not prepare you to relax and to do nothing and to rest. It condemns all kinds of restfulness as laziness.

It condemns people who are not madly active - because the whole society is madly active, trying to reach somewhere. Nobody knows where, but everybody is concerned: "Go faster!"

I have heard about a man and his wife driving on a road as fast as they can. The wife was telling the man again and again, "Just look at the map."

And the man was saying, "You keep quiet. Shut up! I am the driver. It doesn't matter where we are going, what matters is that we are going with speed. The real thing is speed." Nobody knows in the world where they are going, and why they are going.

There is a very famous anecdote about George Bernard Shaw. He was traveling from London to some other place and the ticket collector came. He looked in all his pockets, in the bag, he opened his suitcase. And the ticket collector said, "I know you. Everybody knows you. You are George Bernard Shaw. You are a world-famous man. The ticket must be there, you must have forgotten where you have put it. Don't be worried. Leave it."

George Bernard Shaw said to the man, "You don't understand my problem. I'm not looking for the ticket just to show you. I want to know where I am going. That stupid ticket - if it is lost, I am lost.

You think I am looking for the ticket for you? You tell me where I am going."

The ticket collector said, "That is too much. I was just trying to help you. Don't get disturbed. Maybe you can remember it later on by the time you reach the station. How can I tell you where you are going?"

But everybody is in the same position. It is good that there are no spiritual ticket collectors around, checking, "Where are you going?" Otherwise you will be simply standing without any answer. You have been going, there is no doubt about it. Your whole life you have been going, somewhere. But actually you don't know where you are going.

You reach a graveyard, that is one thing that's certain. But that is the one place you were not going to, the one place nobody wants to go, but finally reaches. That is the terminus where all trains end up. If you don't have a ticket, wait for the terminus. And then they say, "Get down. Now the train goes nowhere anymore."

In my village we had a beautiful graveyard just by the side of the river. It was a very silent place, and nobody came there unless he was brought. Nobody wanted to come there. I had found it a beautiful place to meditate, to relax, to rest. Beautiful marble graves - big trees with great shadow. It was a beautiful place.

My father was very angry when he came to know - that when I suddenly disappeared, and I could not be found anywhere.... Somebody told him, "You will not find him whatever you do, because one place you will never look and that is the graveyard. And I have seen him, because going to the river is my business." He was a fisherman. He said, "I have seen him many times going to the graveyard; and he disappears there."

My father said, "This is strange. Why should he go to the graveyard? Let him come home." Nobody even tried to look for me in the graveyard; nobody wanted to go there.

When in the evening I came home, everybody was angry, and they stopped me outside. They said, "First you take a bath. And every day you have been going to the graveyard?"

I said, "Finally one has to go there. Why are you getting so angry? You all will be going there. I am simply visiting the place where finally one has to rest. I am learning already to rest there. One day I will be resting underneath the marble, right now I rest on top of the marble. And it is a tremendously beautiful and silent place."

They said, "We are not concerned about these strange explanations. First, you take a bath."

I said, "I can take a bath. I will take a bath every day, that is not a trouble for me. That will not prevent me going to the graveyard, because your temple is continuously crowded, it is a marketplace - it is in the marketplace. Every place is full of people - wherever you go, there are people. That is the only place where there are many people, but they are all relaxing, in deep relaxation, with no way to wake up again."

In the night my mother asked, "But you must be feeling afraid."

I said, "Why should I feel afraid? Those people are dead. One should be afraid of the living, because those are the people who can do something. These poor people are dead, they cannot do anything.

They cannot even get out of their graves. And you are afraid of them, and they are simply relaxing, relaxing forever."

The whole society is geared for work. It is a workaholic society. It does not want you to learn relaxation, so from the very childhood it puts in your mind anti-relaxation ideas.

I am not telling you to relax the whole day. Do your work, but find out some time for yourself, and that can be found only in relaxation. And you will be surprised that if you can relax for an hour or two hours out of each twenty-four hours, it will give you a deeper insight into yourself.

It will change your behavior outwardly - you will become more calm, more quiet. It will change the quality of your work - it will be more artistic and more graceful. You will be committing fewer mistakes than you used to commit before, because now you are more together, more centered.

Relaxation has miraculous powers.

It is not laziness.

The lazy man may look, from the outside, as if he is not working at anything, but his mind is going as fast as it can; and the relaxed man - his body is relaxed, his mind is relaxed, his heart is relaxed.

Just relaxation on all three layers - body, mind, heart - for two hours he is almost absent. In these two hours his body recovers, his heart recovers, his intelligence recovers, and you will see in his work all that recovery.

He will not be a loser - although he will not be frantic anymore, he will not be unnecessarily running hither and thither. He will go directly to the point where he wants to go. And he will do things that are needed to be done; he will not be doing unnecessary trivia. He will say only that which is needed to be said. His words will become telegraphic; his movements will become graceful; his life will become a poetry.

Relaxation can transform you to such beautiful heights - and it is such a simple technique. There is nothing much in it; just for a few days you will find it difficult because of the old habit. To break down the old habit, it takes a few days.

So go on using the hypnotic technique for relaxation. It is bound to come to you. It will bring new light to your eyes, a new freshness to your being, and it will help you to understand what meditation is. It is just the first steps outside the door of the temple of meditation. With just deeper and deeper relaxation it becomes meditation.

Meditation is the name of the deepest relaxation.

Question 3:

Our whole structure of body and mind is made of matter. And unless you transcend your body-mind structure and become a watcher - beyond both - they will deeply affect your behavior, your thinking, your emotions, your sentiments. Hormones, chemicals or anything - they are the components of our body, but they are not the components of our consciousness.

That's why, when you are sitting here with me, you forget all about the body, all about the hormones, and without your effort a certain transcendence happens. You reach a quality of silence, watchfulness. That's why their effects are no longer felt - because you are far away, beyond the boundary line of their effect.

One Western seeker of truth, in the beginning of this century, was moving in the Middle East, in India, in Tibet, in Japan, in China, and he reported many strange experiences and people that he came across.

One of the men he describes is a very well-known Hindu mystic, Brahma Yogi. He became famous in the 1920s all over the world. His only quality was that he could drink any kind of poison, and no poison affected him. And he moved around the world in every university, every scientific lab to show the experts. And they were all puzzled, because poisons which will kill immediately... and that man was taking twenty, thirty times more and he was not even affected. He would not even become unconscious.

But in Calcutta he died just by accident. At Calcutta University he exhibited his capacity, drank the poison, but nobody knew his secret. His secret was simple. The secret was that he could keep his witness for thirty minutes without any wavering. In those thirty minutes he would drink the poison, finish the show, rush back to his hotel, and vomit everything.

And yogis know how to vomit - because that is one of the parts of their training - to drink water as much as you can and then throw it up. I have seen people drinking two, three buckets of water with living fish in the water; and then they will throw up the water, and the fish will come out alive.

His whole expertise was that for thirty minutes he remained a witness, but more than thirty minutes he could not. The accident happened because there was a problem on the road and the traffic was blocked, and he could not reach the hotel in time. He died in the car because after thirty minutes he became again identified with the body and the mind.

Paul Brunton is the man who went around the whole of Asia finding out all these strange kinds of people. Naturally everybody was impressed, although there is nothing spiritual in it; the strategy was part of a spiritual technique which he was using for trivia, wasting his time.

If he had not wasted his time, if he had continued to practice witnessing - forty-eight minutes is enough. One who can be a witness for forty-eight minutes continuously, without any coffee break - that man has gone beyond the body-mind complex. Now he can live, but he is living almost above his body, not within his body.

So what is happening to you here is that you forget your body, you forget your hormones and the pill and everything; you become so silent, so peaceful, so attuned with me. If you can remain the same way afterwards, the effects will not show; if you can remain the same way the whole day, the effects will not show.

But out of old habit we immediately fall back - get identified with the body - and then anything that the body feels, we think we are feeling. Now we have lost the distinction.

In fact, you know that that body is feeling it. When you are feeling thirsty, it will be a little complex to say every time, "I think, I watch, that the body is thirsty." Your family and people will get angry at you, saying, "Stop this nonsense; just say simply that you are feeling thirsty."

But for your inner self it is worth remembering that you are always a watcher, you never feel; the body feels and you watch, and you are like a mirror. The body feels and the mirror reflects, but the reflection does not change the mirror, it does not leave any marks on the mirror. The mirror remains pure.

Then you can be having immense trouble with the body, and yet you can remain calm and quiet.

You know that there is trouble and there is pain, but you are simply a watcher.

Learn the art of watching, and you have learned all the religion there is.

Question 4:

It can happen both the ways. It depends on what kind of method you are using. There are gradual methods in which enlightenment comes very gradually, part by part. And there are sudden methods in which for years nothing happens; and then suddenly one morning like a lightning bolt, you are awakened.

Because of these two - and there are only two possibilities - Zen has two schools. You are aware only of the sudden school, because I go on telling you stories from the sudden school, for the simple reason that the gradual school has no stories. The enlightenment happens, but there is not anything that makes a story. Even the man to whom gradual enlightenment happens does not know with certainty that the process is complete, unless his master says so.

It is something like this. If you put two buckets - one with boiling water and one with just ordinary cold water which is slowly becoming warmer, the fire is there.... And you put a frog in the boiling water, he will simply jump out. If you put the same frog in the gradually heating water, which is going to boil at some point, the frog may settle there. It is cozy and lukewarm and good, and it is becoming so gradually warmer, that he cannot see the difference.

And the moment comes, the water is boiling, and the poor frog is boiling but he cannot jump. From the lukewarm to the boiling point, the change has been so slow that the poor frog cannot make the distinction.

The same is the situation.... There are methods of gradual enlightenment - vipassana is a gradual enlightenment method. Slowly, slowly, changes will go on happening; you will feel better and better and better. But the koan is a sudden school method. Sudden school methods create beautiful stories.

For example, one of the great masters, Rinzai, was given the famous koan of "the Sound of One Hand Clapping." He meditated over it; and he would find something, and he would come to the master. And the master just seeing his face would say, "No, no! Get lost! Meditate; don't waste time." He wouldn't even listen - that he had brought a conclusion.

And Rinzai would go again and sit in his bamboo grove to meditate. Again it had gone wrong. It continued to happen.

One day he insisted, he said, "You have to listen to me. I have heard it! And you are simply just looking at me and don't even allow me to enter the room. You say, 'No, no, just go and meditate.

Don't waste time.' Now it is too much. For months I have been meditating. I have to say it."

The master said, "Okay, say what you have found."

He said, "Sitting in my bamboo grove, I heard the breeze passing through the bamboo grove making a beautiful sound. That is it." And he was not hoping....

The master slapped him so hard on the face that he forgot all about the bamboo grove, meditation, the sound of one hand clapping. And the master said, "Did you hear the sound of one hand clapping?"

He said, "This is the sound of one hand clapping? You slapped me. If this was the sound, then why you were unnecessarily harassing me for months?"

The master said, "This is not the sound. This is the reward for your insistence on wasting my time and your time. Now get lost and meditate. Find it out."

This was very insulting. Rinzai was very well educated, connected with the royal family. With great determination he went back and sat in his grove. And he said, "I am not going to move from here unless I hear it."

Days passed. The master enquired, "Where is Rinzai? I don't see him, and he does not come to report."

They all said, "He is just sitting in his bamboo grove."

The master went there, shook him. And he said with closed eyes, "Don't disturb me." And the way he said, "Don't disturb me," with a face of silence as if he was a Buddha statue!

And the master said, "Open your eyes and listen. I am your master."

He said, "Forget all about it."

The master said, "What happened about the koan I had given to you?"

He said, "What koan? I don't remember anything. But don't disturb me, please, whoever you are."

The master had to wake him, force him to open his eyes.

He looked at the master as if he was looking at a stranger, someone who has not been known before. And he asked the master, "Who are you?"

The master said, "Now you have heard it. Come along with me."

But he said, "Who are you, and where you are taking me? I was rejoicing so much. There was no hand, and there was no sound, there was simply silence."

The master said, "That silence is what we call the sound of one hand clapping. You heard it, and you heard it so deeply you have even forgotten me."

He brought Rinzai back to the monastery, introduced him to all the monks saying, "He has heard it."

And when someone hears, he does not come to report because what is there to report? There is no sound. One goes on insisting to listen to the sound of one hand clapping, and a moment comes - one gets tired and forgets all about the hand and the sound, and only silence prevails. Even the desire or the idea to report does not arise.

And the master said, "Rinzai is going to be my successor, because he is my first disciple who has even forgotten me. In his silence he has forgotten the koan, he has forgotten the master, he has forgotten his own name. He has simply become silence."

The sudden school makes stories, because its very methodology is such that it gives scope for sudden turns. But both methods are absolutely correct, equally valuable. It depends on the master to give one to someone according to his capacity, potentiality.

For example, in the modern world the gradual method seems to be more useful. The sudden method can be dangerous to the modern man. Few modern people may be able to realize through the sudden method. Most of them will go mad - they are already on the verge of madness, so it is better to gradually change them rather than a sudden change. They may not be able to absorb it.

But it does not matter whether you become enlightened gradually or you become enlightened suddenly. What matters is that you become awakened.

Most of the people in the world who have become awakened have followed the gradual method. Just very few people - and particularly in Japan - have used the sudden method; it suits the Japanese character. Japanese have a little different character from others, subtle differences.

The whole world - all the cultures, white and black - if they want to say yes, they will nod their head; only Japanese won't do that. If they want to say yes, they move their head from side to side.

When for the first time Japanese started coming to me, I was so puzzled. I will ask something, and they are saying yes, but their yes is not the way the whole world does it, nodding the head up and down. That is their no. Moving the head side to side is their yes.

So I was at first very much puzzled. The person who used to translate, she told me, "Don't get puzzled. When they nod this way they are saying yes, and when they do the other way they are saying no".

I said, "My God!" Because I asked them, "Don't you want to take sannyas?" And they nod the head.

And I say, "Then come" - and they are saying no! The Japanese character has developed through the centuries in a very different way.

And then Zen came, and it molded itself according to the Japanese character. The sudden method was very suitable. Although there is the gradual school, it never became famous; the sudden school became very famous. But to explain the sudden school to the modern mind is very difficult, because it is illogical.

Sometimes Gurdjieff used it, but it is illogical and dangerous. He was working with a small group in Tiflis in Russia, and there was, just by the side, a small canal. He was sitting inside the house, and the canal was empty - the water was not there. It used to be opened once in a while for irrigation purposes.

And the people were passing from this side to that side, and he was teaching them a certain exercise, "stop"; so whenever he would say "stop!", everyone had to stop the way he was. If one foot was up, then he had not to put it down, it had to remain that way - he had to stand on one foot. And whatever he was doing, whatever the position, the posture, he had not to change anything.

A few people had been told "stop!" while crossing the canal and suddenly the water came. It was time for the water to come. As the water came, one person looked around, and he thought, "Gurdjieff is inside the house, he knows nothing about the water." He waited till the water came up to his neck, then he jumped out; he said, "This is stupid. This is simply committing suicide." The other person waited a little longer, till the water started touching his nose - then he jumped out.

But the third person remained. The water went over his head, but he remained as he was. Gurdjieff rushed out of the house, pulled the man out - he was unconscious - got the water out; and as he became aware, he was totally transformed.

This was a sudden enlightenment.

But a tremendous quality, trust, was needed.

He also knew, "The master is inside the house, and he knows nothing..." but rather than saving his life, he chose to follow the exercise that he was supposed to do. The water went over his head, and Gurdjieff was aware of it - he knew the times when the water comes. It was well-managed.

Those two other persons simply missed - but they were more reasonable. This man was absolutely irrational. But he changed forever. The old mind was gone. The moment the water went over his head, it took everything with it; he was a new man.

Sudden methods have been used by other people also, but very rarely. Sufis have used them, but very rarely. The most they have been used is in Japan, and all those stories are of tremendous beauty. But if it is done to you, you will freak out; you will not be able to assimilate it.

Your mind has developed in a very different way for centuries - towards rationality, reasonableness.

So the way of gradual enlightenment is for most people, unless it does not fit someone; then only a sudden method has to be used. Otherwise sudden methods are dangerous.