Chapter 4

[A sannyasin says:

(laughing) But you can know me only as one. (a pause) I am both.

That is the problem of the human mind: if I am too accessible as man, many things that I can do for you will not be possible. This is how the human mind functions: it takes things for granted, and then the outer becomes the whole and the inner is lost.

It is very considerately that I have become inaccessible. I was very accessible, but then by and by I began to feel that I couldn't help; it became almost impossible to help. For example, if I give you one hour, you talk rubbish. If I give you one minute you say exactly the thing that is needed - that's how mind functions.

If I am available to you the whole day, I am not available at all. If you have to wait eight days or ten days, that waiting is needed for a certain tuning in yourself; for certain significant problems to arise.

Sometimes I see that if you have a problem and you can come immediately, you will bring me trivia.

During the day there are a thousand and one problems arising - they are not significant, but in the moment they appear significant. If you have to wait just one hour, the problem changes - then you bring another problem. If you are allowed to bring all your problems you will be in a mess, because you yourself will not be able to know what is needed, what is significant. So this is part of the whole process.

Whenever I feel that you need me I will call you. Don't be worried; leave it to me, mm?

[The sannyasin says he became paranoid during the flashing light, second stage, of the Gourishankar meditation the previous evening.]

Mm, it can create fear... but allow it, and whatsoever happens remain with it. Don't try to change it in any way. The moment you try to change anything you destroy it, and you destroy the beauty of it.

Fear has a beauty of its own... a delicacy and a sensitivity of its own. In fact it is a very subtle aliveness. The word is negative, but the feeling itself is very positive. Only alive processes can be afraid; a dead thing has no fear. Fear is part of being alive, part of being delicate, part of being fragile.

So allow the fear. Tremble with it, let it shake your foundations - and enjoy it as a deep experience of stirring. Don't take any attitude about fear... in fact, don't call it fear. The moment you have called it fear you have taken an attitude. You have already condemned it; you have already said that it is wrong, that it should not be there. You are already on guard, already escaping, running away. In a very subtle way you have broken yourself away from it. So don't call it fear.

This is one of the most essential things - to stop calling things names. Just watch the feeling of it, the way it is. Allow it, and don't give it a label - remain ignorant. Ignorance is a tremendously meditative state. Insist on being ignorant, and don't allow the mind to manipulate. Don't allow the mind to use language and words, labels and categories, because it has a whole process. One thing is associated with another, and it goes on and on and on.

Just simply look - don't call it fear. Become afraid and tremble - that is beautiful. Hide in a corner, go under a blanket and tremble. Do what an animal will do if he is afraid. What will a small child do if he is afraid? He will cry. Or a primitive man - what will he do? He will kneel down and pray to a god - out of fear.

The primitive man's god is more alive than a philosopher's god, because it arises out of a deep biological need, a fear - the fear of the unknown, of the emptiness surrounding you; the fear of the vastness of it all; the fear that you are a stranger, and the fear that one day you will not be... the fear of non-being. Only primitive people know that when they are possessed by fear, their hairs will stand on end. Civilised people have completely forgotten the language; it has become simply a metaphor.

We think it is just a saying, and not really true. But it actually happens.

If you allow fear to take possession of you, your hair will stand on end. Then for the first time you will know what a beautiful phenomenon fear is. In that turmoil, in that cyclone, you will come to know that there is still a point somewhere within you which is absolutely untouched. And if fear cannot touch it, then death cannot touch it. There is darkness and fear all around, with just a small centre absolutely transcendental to it. Not that you try to be transcendental - you simply allow the fear to totally take possession - but suddenly you become aware of the contrast.

So if fear or anger or sadness, or anything whatsoever happens, allow it. Close the doors and be in it, relax in it. Just behave like a small child who has not been trained to label things, who simply lives feelings and has no thoughts about them.

Fear is one of the doors from where one enters into one's being.

It is one of the most repressed things. The whole of humanity, all the world over, can be divided into two types: one is sex-repressive, the other is death-repressive. Either a society suppresses

death or it suppresses sex. Whenever a society expresses sex, becomes unafraid of it, untabooed, uninhibited about it, it immediately starts to suppress death - immediately, because death is the polar opposite. So if you allow sex, death has to be repressed. If you repress sex then there is no fear of death, you can allow it.

In the West, since Freud, sex has been untabooed; now death has become the taboo. And whenever death becomes the taboo, fear becomes the suppressed thing. When sex is taboo, love becomes the suppressed thing. Just like sex and death, love and fear are deeply joined.

If you move deeply in meditation, either fear or love will become the door. If death has been suppressed, then fear will be the door. If sex has been suppressed, then love will be the door.

For example, in the eastern civilization where sex has been suppressed, is still suppressed, the first thing the mind faces in meditation is love, a deep upsurge of sex energy, because whatsoever is suppressed, uncoils.

You don't have any suppressions about sex, so fear will uncoil. The suppressed and tabooed thing is death, so you have to be deeply relaxed in allowing it. Once fear is allowed, it will soon become death; you will have to pass through a moment of death. Once sex and death are untabooed, man is free.

These are the two tricks to create bondage for humanity. Once neither of these are there, you are freedom; not that you are free - you are freedom.

It has been good... allow it more....

Mm, if you allow, there is none. Whatsoever is allowed disappears, because everything exists because of repression. If you repress something, it exists, you give it existence. If you allow it, by and by it disappears.

[A sannyasin said that she hadn't felt like meditating regularly as she didn't feel like putting herself in a structure and making herself do anything.]

It is good not to be in any structure, but you can only enjoy that freedom if you put yourself into a structure, otherwise not. You follow me? To be free of a structure is good, but you can only be free if you are in a structure.

So first be in a structure, and then be free of them. First discipline yourself, and then be out of it - otherwise you will never know what freedom is. To know freedom, one should live in a prison for a few days - just as part of a growth process. Then you will really know the taste of it, because it is only through the contrast that it can be known.

So if you listen to me, for one month you will put yourself in a structure. Just follow the whole routine and don't listen to the mind that says to do whatsoever you like. After one month I will make you free... then you will know the taste of freedom, otherwise not.

Licence is not freedom; licence is nothing. But freedom is a great achievement which is attained only through discipline. It is not only discipline, but it is achieved through discipline.

First one has to come to one's self - then freedom is beautiful. Then you can be spontaneous and never allow any structure to settle around you. But first be yourself. Your mind is not you, and the spontaneity of your mind is not your spontaneity - it is a bondage of the mind. And mind itself is a great prison.

So for one month you do all the meditations, and do the next camp completely. And every morning, whether the talk is hindi or english, you have to be there. If it is a hindi talk, simply listen to my sound - and sometimes it goes deeper than any understanding. Because you cannot understand the language, you have just to listen to the sound... it becomes a meditation. So every morning you have to be there - no talk is to be missed. And morning and evening, no meditation is to be missed, mm?

Start tomorrow. Tomorrow will be the twentieth, so next twentieth I will make you free! One month be really a prisoner, right? - and happily, because it is going to give you much!