Your music is your madness

Question 1:

EVERY TIME I AM ON MY OWN, I FEEL SEPARATE, LONELY, AND MISERABLE. I LOVE MYSELF ONLY WHEN I AM WITH OTHERS. IF I AM ALONE, I FEEL ASHAMED AND DISLIKE MYSELF. IT SEEMS AS IF I JUDGE MYSELF THROUGH THE EYES OF OTHERS.

CAN YOU SAY SOMETHING?

It is one of the basic problems. Every human being has to face it.

It is not only you. The way children are brought up is the cause of this whole misery. No child is accepted as he is. He is rewarded if he follows the directions of the parents, the teachers, the elders.

Those directions may go against his nature, because those directives were not made by him or for him. Somebody five thousand years before made those principles, and they are still being used in raising the children.

Naturally, every child is displaced. He is not in his own self. He is not himself; he is somebody else.

That somebody else is given to you by the society, by others.

So when you are lonely, and there is nobody to dictate to you, you simply relax in your nature. There is no need to perform anything, because there is nobody who is seeing. And that relaxing into your own nature makes you feel guilty. You are going against your parents, against the priest, against the society; and they have told you that you, in yourself, are not right. And you have accepted it. It has become a conditioned thing in you.

Whatever you do on your own is always condemned, and whatever you do following others is always praised.

In your aloneness there is nobody else there. Naturally, you need not act; you need not be a hypocrite. You simply relax into what you are; but your mind is full of the garbage given by others.

So when you are with others, the others are dictating to you; and when you are alone, the mind that has been created by the others, is making you feel ugly, guilty, unworthy.

That's why people don't want to be alone. They want always to be with someone else, because with someone else they cannot relax into their nature. The presence of the other keeps them tense. The other is there, judging every moment, every action and gesture that you are going to make.

So you simply perform a certain act that you have been told is right. And then your mind feels good:

it is according to the conditioning. Your mind feels happy that you did well; you are great.

People need crowds. This is the psychological reason why they always want to belong to Hinduism, to Christianity, to Mohammedanism, to this country, to that country, to this race, to that race. And even if that does not suffice, they create rotary clubs, lion clubs.

They cannot be alone. They have to be surrounded by people continuously. Only then, they can keep the tension alive, the act alive. In the crowd, they cannot be themselves.

Alone, why do you feel afraid? To be alone is one of the most beautiful experiences. You are no more bothered by others; you are no more forcing yourself to do something which is expected.

Alone, you can do what you want to do. You can feel what you want to feel. All that you need is to become detached from your mind.

Your mind is not your mind. Your mind is only an agent of the crowd you belong to. It is not in your service; it is in the service of the crowd. The crowd has put a detective in your mind who goes on forcing you, even if you are alone, to perform according to the rules.

The whole secret is to witness the mind; allow your nature and say clearly to the mind, "You are not mine. I came into the world without you. You have been given to me later on by education, by example. You are something alien; you are not part of my nature. So at least when I am alone, leave me alone."

You have to learn to say, "Shut up!" to the mind, and allow your nature full freedom.

You will be immensely surprised what beauties you have, what innocence, what perceptiveness.

And once you have learned that the mind can be put aside, and you can be really alone - because with the mind you are not really alone; all those voices of your parents and teachers and priests and the politicians are recorded in the mind; the mind simply goes on repeating them.

It is a very great strategy played by society against the individual.

One psychologist, Delgado, has been working his whole life on a project - and he has succeeded in the project - which will give you some insight into yourself.

In your brain there are seven hundred centers. All that you do is done through one of the seven hundred centers He has figured out - working for his whole life - which center controls what kind of activity in you; with anger, hate, murder for example - which center is active when somebody gets angry. And he has made very small electrodes. Of course, he is not allowed yet to experiment on human beings, but he has a great gift. The whole humanity can be changed by it, and he has worked on animals.

For example, in Spain he showed this. He put the electrode in the brain of a bull, and was standing his ground as the bull was rushing towards him to kill him. Just one foot away from him, the bull suddenly stopped, frozen. What has happened? The people could not believe it. They have never seen such a scene.

They were not aware that it was an experiment. He had a remote controller. He could stop any activity of the bull just by pressing a button in his hand. He allowed the bull to run so close - up to one foot; it could have killed him. But as the button was pressed, the activity completely stopped.

Delgado's experiment is of immense importance. If it gets into the hands of the politicians, it is going to be very dangerous to humanity, because as the child is born...

For example, in Russia, no child can be born in your own house; every child has to be born in the hospital. Now that is the right moment to put any kind of electrode into the child's brain - for example, any electrode that stops him from revolutionary activity against the government, any electrode that prevents him feeling miserable, full of suffering, tortured. And the central board of the communist party would have all the remote controls.

They can have a system that if somebody is thinking in terms of anti-communism, on a board a light will show suddenly. And then they just have to push a button, and all his revolution, anti-communism will disappear.

What Delgado has done and proved, has been done to you by society in a more primitive way. But it has been successful up to now. They don't put an electrode in your mind - they had no idea of it - but what they do functions in the same way.

They go on telling you what is right. And continuous repetition of what is right and what is wrong goes on making a spot in your mind without putting in an electrode. And by and by, you start thinking that it is your mind which is deciding what is right and what is wrong.

It is not so. The society has conditioned you.

And that you can see in different societies, because different societies have different conditionings.

For example, the American flag has meaning for the American, because from his very childhood he has been told, "Even to sacrifice your life for the flag is something great."

And what is the flag? Just a piece of cloth. It has no intrinsic value. For an Indian, it means nothing; for an American, it means everything. The Indian flag means everything to the Indian; to the American it means nothing.

So it is not your mind that is deciding. It is the mind of the society that has imposed upon you certain ideas.

For example, in Mahatma Gandhi's ashram in India, to drink tea was a sin. Nobody was committing it, but once in a while, just because it was a sin, there was a great attraction to commit it too. But if somebody was caught drinking tea, red-handed, he was condemned by the whole ashram.

And Mahatma Gandhi's way of condemnation was very cruel. He will not say anything to the person.

He will start a fast. He will say, "Something must be still wrong in my spirituality. That's why my disciples go on doing such things. So I am purifying myself."

Now that man becomes doubly guilty. First, he drank tea, and now the old man is fasting - unto death! Now he is more condemned, not only by the ashram but by the whole country. Letters start coming, telegrams start coming. And he falls at Mahatma Gandhi's feet to be forgiven, he will never do such a thing again, but, "Plase come out of your fast."

Gandhi is not being cruel to him just on the surface. You would have said that he was cruel if he had slapped him. But I say that was nothing. But going on a fast to purify himself so that his disciples don't commit sin...

Now what sin is there in poor tea? And if there is any sin in tea, then all the Buddhists are committing sin every day, many times, because in Buddhism tea has been used for keeping yourself alert.

In meditation one tends to fall asleep. It is good before you meditate to take a good hot cup of tea.

That will help you not to fall asleep.

So round the world for all the Buddhists, tea is a virtue, because it helps meditation. And anything that helps meditation cannot be sin.

Once it happened, a Christian Quaker leader was my guest. I had no idea about the small things that Quakers do or are against doing. So in the morning I asked him, "Would you like tea, coffee, or just milk?"

He looked in a way I could not believe; he was so shocked. He said, "Milk? Do you drink milk?"

I said, "Is there something wrong?"

He said, "There is. The Quakers don't drink milk and don't eat any milk product, because milk comes from animals' bodies. It is just like blood. And moreover, the animal's body has not created the milk for you to drink; it is for their own kids.

"So you are committing crime on two accounts. One, you are depriving the kids of their birthright; second, you are drinking something which comes from an animal's body. It does not matter whether it is blood or meat or milk, it is a non-vegetarian thing. No Quaker will be ready even to touch milk."

And in India, the Hindus think that milk is the only holy thing. If a man lives only on milk...

I knew a saint who lived his whole life just on milk. That was his only contribution to the world; otherwise, he was just an idiot. But he was respected by millions of people, for the simple reason that he lived only on milk.

Hindus cannot conceive that milk is sin; otherwise, what would have happened to that saint? He would have been the greatest sinner in the whole world. This whole life he has not eaten anything.

He has not drunk anything - not even water, because milk has enough water, eighty to ninety percent water. The whole day he was taking milk.

The point is that in whatever crowd you happen to be, the crowd gives its mind to you. And slowly slowly, you completely forget that this is not your real self.

My sannyasins have to make a clear-cut distinction. The mind is part of society, not part of you.

What is part of you is your awareness, your consciousness, your witnessing. Then you can be alone and immensely happy. In fact, you can be happy only when you are alone.

One who knows how to be ecstatic being alone can be alone in the crowd. Who is going to find out that inside you are completely centered in your witnessing, and you are not at all bothered by the mind?

It takes just a little time but as you go on disidentifying with the mind, the mind loses control over you, and finally it starts disappearing.

That is the beginning of freedom, the birth of a new man, the birth of an authentic man. Now you will act out of your awareness not out of your mind. You will act moment-to-moment, seeing the situation clearly. There is no problem to worry about what is wrong and what is right.

Your clarity will decide what is right, your clarity will take you towards the right. It may not coincide with the right of your society. That's why society is afraid and wants to put a mind in you.

The old method is a long process. Delgado's method is simple, can be done within seconds, but it is more dangerous too. You can disidentify yourself with the mind that the society has given, but the electrode is a different matter.

Even if you disidentify, the electrode will control your body. You may not like to do something, but the electrode will force you to do it. You are absolutely incapable.

In a way, the discovery can be a blessing, because we can stop all that is ugly in man, all that is inhuman in man with such a simple methodology - just a small operation in your skull, and placing a small electrode.

If you are too much of a man of anger, you can just go to the scientist and tell him that this is your basic trouble: small things make you angry. He can put an electrode at the exact point from where anger arises. And he can give you a remote controller to keep in your pocket. Whenever you don't want to be angry, just push the button and anger will simply disappear.

It is good in a way, but spiritually it is not something that I will support. For society it is good, but if you can manage just by a remote control all your emotions, feelings, actions, you will never think of being aware. You will never think of becoming meditative.

And strangely enough, in those seven hundred points in your mind, there is not a single point which can create meditation in you. So it is something beyond the mind, above the mind.

If a man is clear about the whole situation, he can use electrodes, but he should not forget meditation, because he is not only the body and the brain; he is also a luminous being. And that experience is possible only through meditation.

So my suggestion to the questioner is: when you are alone, tell the mind, "Shut up! You are not part of me. Leave me alone!"

There is a Sufi story.

A young seeker came to a great Sufi master. As he entered his room and saluted the master with great respect, the master said, "Good. That's perfectly good. What do you want?"

He said, "I want to be initiated."

The master said, "I can initiate you, but what about the crowd that is following you?"

He looked back; there was nobody. He said, "What crowd? I am alone."

The master said, "You are not. Just close your eyes and see the crowd."

The young man closed his eyes and he was surprised. There was the whole crowd that he had left behind: his mother weeping, his father telling him not to go, his wife in tears, his friends preventing him - every face, the whole crowd.

And the master said, "Now open your eyes. Can you say that people are not following you?"

He said, "I am sorry. You are right. The whole crowd I am carrying within myself."

So the master said, "Your first work is to get rid of the crowd. This is your problem. And once you are finished with the crowd, things are very simple. The day you are finished with the crowd I will initiate you, because I can only initiate you; I cannot initiate this crowd."

The story is meaningful. Even when you are alone you are not alone. And a man of meditation, even though in the crowd of thousands of people, is alone.

When you are alone, nobody can see the crowd, because it is within you. And when a meditative man is in the crowd and yet alone, nobody can see his aloneness, because that too is within him.

To know your aloneness is to be acquainted with existence, nature, your reality. And it gives such blissfulness that there is no comparison with any joy that you have felt in the past.

You are saying that, when you are with people you are perfectly happy.

It is not happiness, it is an hallucination of happiness, because your mind is in tune with the people.

Alone they are also in the same trouble as you are. So together there is a certain harmony in the mind, and that harmony gives you the sense of happiness. But the sense is very superficial; it has no roots.

Unless you can be blissful in your total aloneness, remember, anything that you think is happiness is only a deception.

And once the thing is clear, it is not difficult to do it. Find time - even for a few minutes, once in a while - just to be alone.

In the beginning you will be miserable, because nobody is there to say how beautiful you are.

Nobody is there to say, "What a great artist you are!" There is nobody, just silence around you.

But a little patience, and a little alertness not to get identified with the mind, will bring the great revolution which will make you really a sannyasin.

Question 2:

The difference is simple, just the difference between madness and sanity. Your music is not music; it is simply your madness.

But to express it directly you will be in trouble. So to express it through music, the trouble is avoided and you will find fools to say, "What a great musician you are!"

So on both accounts, your madness is released That helps you. And the appreciation of other mad people, gives you an egoistic satisfaction. But the reality is you are deceiving yourself.

Real music is born out of a silent mind.

Real music is meditation manifested.

Your music is madness manifested.

You must have a certain talent for music, but it is being used by madness. You can change; it can be used by your meditation.

In the East, the music has a totally different quality. It can even cure people from diseases. It can cure even a madman. It is so silent, so subtle, so delicate. In the East, nobody will recognize your jazz and other kinds of music, as music.

A musician works hard, because he has to bring something which is beyond words, but is not beyond music, which cannot be said but it can be played on a sitar. And it is tremendously relaxing, not only for the person who is playing - he completely forgets his ego; only then his music reaches to its ultimate height - but for those who hear it, they also forget their ego. They become simply a listening. There is no listener.

I am reminded of a story that actually happened.

In Lucknow, there was a crazy king, Wajid Ali Shah. He was crazy in many ways: the whole day he slept, and the whole night he enjoyed food, dance, music. He was a night man.

He had gathered all the greatest musicians into his court, all the great dancers. His court was really rich, but he was always feeling a little sad that one musician who was perhaps the greatest in the country, had not come to his court. Again and again messengers were sent, but the musician said that it would create unnecessary trouble.

Finally, Wajid Ali Shah said, "Whatever trouble it creates, I will take care of it, but you have to come."

The musician came. He said, "The trouble is the condition I make. When I play on my sitar, nobody in the audience must move his head with my music. That is a great disturbance and I don't want it.

So you will have to promise me that anybody who moves his head and sways with my music, should have his head cut off immediately."

Wazid Ali Shah was a crazy man. He said, "There is no difficulty."

In Lucknow it was announced that you have to come knowing perfectly well that the king has accepted this condition. So only those should come who are capable of sitting silently, frozen.

If your head is found moving or you sway - Wazid Ali Shah has put one thousand soldiers with naked swords around the audience - immediately your head will be gone.

Thousands of people wanted to come, because the man was so well-known all over the country, and his music was something like a miracle. But only a few came, because the condition was such that even though you were not swaying because of his music, just a fly sitting on your head and you...

And that was enough. That Wajid Ali Shah is such an idiot, the head is gone. It is too dangerous.

But still, a few hundred people came.

Lucknow was, in those days, a capital of artists, musicians, poets, painters. Even Wajid Ali Shah was surprised. He was thinking that perhaps nobody would turn up.

The musician started playing. Everybody was holding himself tight, so that not even accidentally would be allow the head to move. They were sitting like statues. And then a moment came, a few people started swaying.

Wajid Ali Shah was immediately going to order those people's heads to be cut . The musician said, "Wait, until after the music is finished; but keep note who the people are."

After the music was finished, Wajid Ali Shah had gathered almost one hundred people. And he asked the musician, "Now, what do you say?"

He said, "Now these are the people who can understand me. I will play for them now. The others have no guts. These people - even though they tried hard to remain unmoving - when the real moment came, when the music reached its height, they forgot themselves, they forgot the condition, they forgot their life, they forgot everything. And the way they swayed was in tune with my music.

These are the people.

"Just to sort them out I have made the condition. So now let the others go, and for these hundred people I will play my best. There is still half the night. And there is no condition.

"I can feel a kind of at-one-ment with these people. I can feel a certain synchronicity with these people. They know what the heights of music are, where ego disappears, mind stops, there is no thinking." Music in the East has been used as a meditation. "And these people are capable of reaching to meditation through music." And he played for them.

In the morning, Wajid Ali could not believe what was happening. It was as if people had completely forgotten who they were - just trees in the wind, swaying, dancing. Their faces had a luminosity. The place was full of a new kind of liveliness that Wajid Ali had never experienced. There was dance, there was joy, and there was something which can only be called spiritual.

You say, "You play drums madly." That is not music. That is simply throwing up your madness. And of course the world is full of mad people. They will get identified with you; they will enjoy it.

Who were the people who were enjoying the Beatles and other music groups that emerged among the younger generation? Who were the people?

The Beatles were mad and their fans - thousands of young people - were mostly hippy. Nobody knew anything about music, but they became great heroes. To become a hero in a mad world, you need to be a great madman.

If you listen to Eastern music, perhaps it will simply go above your head. First, the Eastern musician just prepares for half an hour or more. He is not yet going into depth; he is just preparing his instrument and himself. And you will be tired by that alone. He is just getting ready to take the quantum leap. Infinite patience is needed.

I have heard about Mulla Nasruddin. He went to listen to a great musician, who was just beginning.

In the beginning in Indian music, you do aalap. Aalap means he tries to refine all the basic sounds.

So he goes on, "Ah-h-h, ah-h-h." That is, he is refining the sound "ah." Hence, it is called aalap. He will refine all the sounds; it takes time. And when he is satisfied that now he is ready, then the music begins. But it takes thirty or forty minutes for him.

And as he started his aalap, "Ah-h-h, ah-h-h, ah-h," Mulla Nasruddin started cryng. Tears were in his eyes.

His friend who had brought him said, "Nasruddin, I never thought that you were such a lover of music. It is just aalap and you are full of tears."

He said, "You don't understand. This man is going to die. It is not aalap; this is what happened to my goat! 'Ah-h-h, ah-h-h, ah-h-h.' And she died in the middle of the night! You do something to prevent this man.

"If music brings death, it is better to prevent him. This is not music. I know perfectly well. It has happened in my own house. I have lost one of my best goats." But when the musician comes and takes the jump into the world of sound and soundlessness... Music consists of both sound and soundlessness; the better the music, the more it will be full of soundlessness; the better the music, the more the sound simply leads you into silence. That is the criterion of authentic music, that it leads you into silence.

Your music... Stop it, and start Dynamic Meditation. That is your music. Why unnecessarily beat the drum? The poor drum has done no harm, no harm to anybody.

And do the Dynamic Meditation as madly as you can. In fact, the more madly you do it the better, because you will be throwing out all rubbish and you will come out of it clean, just as if you have come from a shower.

And you feel that now there is nothing to throw out and your Dynamic Meditation has become silent - even if you want, nothing comes out - then take the drum again. That will be an existential experience. Then you can play the drum, and it will not be madness; it will be music.

But first, be ready for music.

Music does not come from the drum; music comes from you. The drum only reflects it. Music is just a mirror. If you are mad, the madman is reflected. If you are enlightened, then the enlightened man is reflected.

It is good that you have an interest in music, but first please be sane. And don't feel guilty that you are not sane. This whole world that we have created is insane, and they all are throwing their insanity in worse ways than you are doing.

You are at least beating the drum, which is dead anyway. They are beating living people. They are raping living women. They are murdering, they are doing all kinds of crimes around the world. And in spite of all the police, all the courts, all the magistrates, all the laws, the crime goes on growing. It has become almost a way of life for millions of people.

So don't feel bad. In fact, beating a drum is far better than killing a man. But when music can come out of the drum... Just a little preparation is needed. And this is the place of meditation. Meditate a little more, and wait for the right moment when you feel that there is music inside you and you would like to share it with your friends.

Question 3:

No need to be afraid.

The city of the dead, however big it is, is incapable even of making a dent in a living person. Let it be full of negativity. It does not matter.

Your fear is as if a candle is afraid to go into a house which is full of darkness. The darkness is so much and so thick and so old, and the candle is so fragile and so new. Naturally, the fear will be there.

But the fear is baseless. A fragile candle with a small flame is enough to destroy all the darkness in the house. The darkness has no power.

It will be a good experience for you. You have been here. You have rejoiced here, danced here, loved here. You have been in the city of the living. Now it will be a good experience just to visit the graveyard in New York. These are big graveyards, but they cannot in any way harm you.

Perhaps you may be able to help a few dead to breathe again, a few dead to stand up in their graves to greet you. Don't be afraid of that. Even if the dead shake hands with you, don't be afraid. Life is always ready to share itself with anybody.

In these big cities of dead people, there are still people who are half-alive, sometimes three-fourths alive. And there is a possibility to touch their aliveness.

So go with joy. A great adventure!

They should be afraid of you; you need not be afraid of anybody. Life is always fearless.

And if somebody is completely dead, it does not create a problem for you. Only the people who are not completely dead and who have been resisting, somehow to remain alive, may see a light in you.

My sannyasins can turn on anybody - into life, into love, into dance, into celebration.

You will come back after ten days immensely enriched. Whatever happens there will enrich you and, when you come back, you will be surprised that you have been living in this small paradise, but you had started taking it for granted.

That gap of ten days will give you more perceptivity to see the commune, to see this oasis.

Otherwise, you love, you laugh, you dance, but slowly slowly, you become accustomed to it. You think this is what life is. Once in a while, to go out into the world and to see that life is not the same...

Outside it is simply crime, ugliness.

In these four years, we have lived as one single organic unity.

Anybody who comes from the outside is immediately impressed by one thing: the cleanliness of the commune, the healthiness of the people, the continuous laughter, joy - and that too after twelve hours of hard work, which is enough to kill anybody!

And these sannyasins, after twelve hours of hard work, still have energy to dance in the disco, still have energy to hug each other, to share their love.

Outside they cannot believe it, because they do not know the secret that that hard work for twelve hours is being done with great love. Nobody is doing it for anybody else; he is doing it for himself.

It is his commune.

It is his world.

And when you work totally, intensely, it is not tiring; it is nourishing; it makes you stronger.

What makes people weak is not the work, it is the boredom that sucks their blood. But if you are working with joy and song and dance, and if your work has become worship, it is not going to tire you. It is going to make you stronger. It is going to give you more energy to share and more love to share.

So these ten days will be good. You will find a few people there half-dead, three-fourths dead, ninety percent dead. And they will be immensely happy.

And those who are a hundred percent dead, there is no question of being bothered about them.

They are gone forever; they cannot do any harm to you.

And when you come back, you will come more enriched; and you will have a better perspective of your own commune - a bird's eye view.

Living in the commune for many years, you start taking it for granted. And perhaps you start thinking the whole earth is living in this way.

We would like the whole earth to live in this way.

So our sannyasins, once in a while, have to go into the world, just to shock them, that there are people who are more alive, more juicy, and living a life on a totally different basis.