Meditation and the paths to inner awakening

Question 1:

Meditation is an adventure, an adventure into the unknown -- the greatest adventure that the human mind can take. And by adventure I mean that you cannot be cultivated in it.

First, you cannot know anything beforehand. Unless you know it, you cannot know it.

Everything said ultimately means nothing: truth remains unsaid. Much has been said, much has been said about nothing; however, not a single word of truth has been uttered.

Unless you know it, you cannot know it. But something about it can be indicated. It will never be to the point, it cannot be. The nature of the thing is such that this is impossible.

You cannot say that this is meditation. All that is possible is to say that this is not meditation, this is not meditation, that is not meditation. The remaining is. And the remaining is left unindicated.

Many reasons for it are there. Meditation is something greater than the mind. It is not something which happens in the mind. It is something which happens to the mind, not in the mind; otherwise the mind will be capable of defining it, the mind will be capable of knowing it, understanding it. It is not something happening in the mind, but to the mind.

The happening is just like death happens to life. Death never happens in life, it happens to life.

Meditation is just like death to the mind, as death is to life. We can say that meditation is a deeper death -- not physical, but psychic. The deeper the death, the deeper is the possibility to be reborn. When there is physical death, you will be reborn physically. As far as you are concerned, nothing will have happened at all, nothing. You will remain the same -- the same continuity, the same old one.

The deeper the death, the deeper is the resurrection. If you die psychologically, if the mind dies, then you are reborn. And this rebirth is not just like physical rebirth, because then the body is replaced; a new one replaces it. But when there is mental, psychic death, the mind is not replaced. Consciousness remains without the mind.

So meditation is consciousness without the mind -- an open sky without any walls around it. We can destroy the walls of this house, but not the room, because `room' means nothing but space. So now the room will be the roomness. The room will be there under the open sky. Of course you will no longer see it as the room, because now you cannot define it, it has become one with the sky. But the room is there more than before, only the walls are not. So if you define the room as the roomness, the emptiness between the walls, then without the walls the room will still be there. It will have become greater, infinite.

So as the mind dies -- when I say the mind dies, I only mean the walls of the mind -- the emptiness within this space remains, becomes greater. That is consciousness. Make a distinction. I call the emptiness within, consciousness, and the walls around it the mind.

Or you can say it like this: mind with a small `m' dies, mind with a capital `M' goes on living. Then it is not your mind, it cannot be yours. If these walls are removed, this room will not be mind. The room will be there, but it will not be mind, because mind can only be the walls, mind can only be the limitations. This pure emptiness cannot be mind. So then the mind with a small `m' dies, and the mind with a capital `M' is there; you are not there. And you are not replaced by any other mind, you are not replaced at all.

So meditation is a subtle death -- a deep death of you, your mind, your ego, of all that makes you defined. But that which is within is there. That is pure consciousness.

So firstly, the walls of the mind, the mental processes, are not meditation, they are obstacles. What are walls of the mind? How has the mind defined itself? How has it become a limited thing? Where are the boundaries, the walls, due to which the mind has become separated from the Mind?

There are three things: the first is memory. The greater part of the mind is memory. And this memory is a long one, it goes back to all the infinite lives that you have lived. The mind accumulates everything, not only that which you have collected consciously. When you are asleep the mind is collecting. When you are even in a coma, completely unconscious, the mind is collecting. The mind goes on collecting. Nothing escapes it. The unconscious mind is a great Chinese wall of memories -- a very long one.

This memory is not only a part of your brain, but in fact a part of each and every cell of your being, of each and every cell of your body. That is why twenty-four cells from the male and twenty-four cells from the female begin to create you. They have a built-in program, they have a built-in memory. One day we will be capable of knowing what type of a nose you will have even when you are in the womb the first day. The new egg will indicate what type of eyes you will have, how great will be your age, how much intelligence, how much ego.

That so simple looking cell is as complex as you are. It is all the memories of the whole race. It carries on the collective mind. And then your soul, your ego, your mind, penetrates in it. So the body has its own memories, and your mind has its own. You are a crossroads -- a mind with so many memories, and a body with so many memories of the whole collective race, the whole collective mind. Bodily memories are stronger than the mind. So you always are a victim to them. Howsoever you may think against them, when the moment comes the body wins. Your mind is nothing before it, because it is a racial mind. That is why all the religions fell in a trap when they began to fight the body. You cannot fight it. If you begin to fight it, you will only be wasting your life.

You cannot fight with the body because, in fact, it is the race -- not only the race, it is the whole history of the being itself. Things go on living in you. Everything that has existed goes on living in you body. Your own self carries everything within it. That is why a child in the womb has to pass through all those stages through which the human being passes in evolution.

Those nine months in the womb are total evolution compressed. One begins just as an amoeba, the first primitive cell. One begins just in the same situation as the amoeba had to begin in sea water. The womb contains the same chemical conditions as the sea water.

The womb water in which the cell swims has the same components as the sea water, exactly the same.

In the womb the evolution begins again. Of course, it is a miniature evolution. But the whole thing has to begin again, because the cell has a memory, it cannot work otherwise.

It will go again through the same process. The time will be short. The amoeba had to pass millions of years, then it was able to come on the earth from the sea. This cell, this egg cell within the womb, will pass within a week. But in those seven days there will be the same evolution, compressed from millions of years, and the same stages. These nine months are compressed evolution, and the cell has a built-in program.

So in a way your body is the whole evolution. In a very compressed atomic state the body has a memory of its own. One who desires or longs to be in meditation will first have to understand his body memory, the physiological memory. Do not fight with it. If you begin fighting you are taking the wrong step. You will be more and more disturbed. Be cooperative, there is no other way. Let the body be completely at ease. Do not create any tension between you and the body. Your real fight is not with the body, not with the body memory but with ego memory -- your psyche, your mind. And that is another thing, completely different. So do not fight with the body.

When we fight with the body, we never have time to fight with the mind. And if we begin to fight with the body, it will go on and on. It will be suicidal, it will be destructive, it will just sow seeds of its own defeat. One is bound to be defeated -- a single cell fighting the whole humanity, fighting the whole being as such; that is impossible.

So do not take bodily memories as your memories. For example, hunger is a body memory. You can fight with it, but to win will be very difficult, very arduous, nearly impossible. If you win, your victory will be your total defeat, because if you can win over your hunger you have taken a suicidal step. Within ninety days you will be dead. Even the body will not indicate to you that now is the time to feed it. So it is good that you never win over it, otherwise it will be suicidal. Then between you and your body memories there will be no bridge. That is the only way to win -- but you are not winning really, you are going to murder yourself.

So there are methods which can break the bridge between you and your body. There are methods, so many hatha yoga methods to break the bridge. The body goes on crying hunger, hunger, hunger... but you never know, the bridge is broken. The body goes on, but you never know about it, you become insensitive to it. Never practice anything which makes your body or you insensitive, because meditation is total sensitivity.

When you become meditative, your body will become so sensitive -- you cannot conceive now how sensitive the body organs can be. We never hear exactly, we never see exactly - - just so-so. You pass through a garden, you seem to be looking but you just look, you do not see. The eyes have become insensitive, you have been fighting with the eyes. The body has become insensitive, you have been fighting the body.

The whole culture is against the body -- this whole culture, wherever it is, East or West, it makes no difference. The culture that has developed on this planet is, in a way, diseased.

It is against the body, and the body is a great mystery. If you go against the body, then in a way you have gone against the universe; it is a miniature universe. Your relationship to the universe, your bridge to the universe, your instruments to the universe, are all through the body. Your body is just a midway station.

So do not fight with the body. Always make a clear distinction of what is the body memory and what is the mind memory. Hunger is the body memory, and you can know it. But the mind has its own memories also. They are not existential; they have no survival value, in fact. Body memories have a survival value, and that is the basic distinction. If you deny the body memories, if you fight against them, you will not survive. But psychological memories have no survival value really. They are simply waste accumulation -- something which is to be thrown if you have accumulated it, something which needs to be thrown. You have only burdened yourself with it. And these mind memories are long.

Whenever you are in anger, there are two possibilities: it may be a body memory, it may be a mind memory. A certain distinction is to be made between them. If your anger has a survival value, if you cannot survive without it, then it has a bodily medium, But if your anger has no survival value, then it is just a habit of the mind, just a mechanical repetition of the mind. Then it is a mind memory. You have been angry so many times, it has become a conditioning with you. Whenever someone just pushes you, just pushes the button, you are angry again. So be aware.

One who is never mentally angry, not habitually angry... his bodily anger will have a beauty of its own. It will never be ugly. Then it will only mean that someone is living, not dead. But the more you are habitually angry, the less will be your capacity to be bodily angry, and your anger will be just ugly. It will not add anything to you, it will just be disturbing to yourself and to others.

We can understand it from another route also, for example, sex. It can be a bodily memory, then it has a survival value. But it can be just cerebral, mental, just out of habit.

Then it has no survival value. And one who has become trapped in the habitual pattern, his sex will become an ugly thing. Neither will it have any love, nor will it have any beauty. Neither will it have any music, nor will it have any deeper response. The more cerebral the sex, the less your body will be capable. You will think about it more, and you will not be able to know what it is exactly, what is its deepest mystery. The mind will go on thinking about sex, and the body will have to follow the mind. And whenever the body follows the mind, there is no life in it; it is just dragged along as a dead weight.

It may be anything -- sex or anger or greed. Always make a distinction as to whether it has a survival value, then you do not have to fight with it. If it is just a mental habit, then be aware of it. This mental memory of all our past actions has become a conditioned thing. You go on repeating them, you act just like a machine. Be conscious of this. You will be surprised to know, if there is no mind in your anger and if it is just a total response to a situation with the whole body in it and no mental preconditioning, then there will be no repentance. You have acted totally in the situation, as the situation required. Then there need be no repentance at all.

Another thing: when there is no repentance, there will be no psychological accumulation.

Nothing will be a habit with you. You need not accumulate anything. Why does the mind need to accumulate memories? Because it is not confident whether it can act totally in a situation. It prepares, it has to go through so many rehearsals. If there is such and such a situation, it is not confident of what it will do. It must know all of what happened, it must sort things out, it must make programs of what is to be done in a particular situation. That is why the mind accumulates memories, and the more it accumulates, the less is your capacity to act totally. And the less your capacity to act totally, the more the mind will be needed.

So act with the body, do not act with the mind. This will look strange, like something never expected from a religious man -- act from the body. Then the act is immeasurable, the response is total. Do not let your mind come in. Then there will be no memory, there will be no mental accumulation, there will be no repentance. The act is just over. Things were such, the situation was such, you acted totally with no part remaining behind. So no one can repent. You were total to it. Otherwise, the part that is withheld repents later on.

The body can act totally; the mind can never act totally. Mind is always divided, mind works in dichotomies. So one part of the mind is angry, another part is simultaneously repenting or preparing to repent. This should also be noted -- whenever there is a part constantly against another part, know that you are acting through the mind not through the body. The body is always total; it cannot act dividedly. The body is just a flow, there are no divisions. When you fall in love, it is the whole body which has fallen in love. You cannot make any distinction such as that the head has fallen or that the hands begin to love. The whole body is in it, but the mind can never be totally in anything. A part of it will always be criticizing, judging, commanding, appreciating; a part of it will always be sitting in the chair to judge, to condemn. So whenever you see that some part of your mind is working against the act, you know that you are doing it cerebrally, mentally.

Begin to do things bodily. When you are eating, eat bodily. The body knows well when to stop, but the mind never knows. One part will go on eating and another part will go on condemning. One part will go on saying stop, and another part will go on eating. The body is total, so ask the body. Do not ask the mind whether to eat or not to eat, to stop or not to stop. Your body knows what is needed. It has accumulated the wisdom of centuries and centuries. It knows when to stop.

Do not ask the mind, ask the body. Rely on the body's wisdom. The body is more wise than you. That is why animals live more wisely than us. They live more wisely, but, of course, they do not think. The moment they think they will be just like us: This is a miracle: that animals can live more wisely than human beings. It seems absurd. They know nothing, but they go on living more wisely. The only ability in which the human being has become efficient is to interfere with everything. You go on interfering with you body. Do not interfere, let the body work. Do not come in its way, and then you will have a clear distinction of what is mental memory and what is body memory.

Memory in the body is a help to survive; mental memory is obstructive. This mental memory is to be destroyed. When I say destroyed, I do not mean that you will not remember anything. In fact, when I say to destroy the memory, I mean that you should not be identified with the memory, you should not become one with it. The memory must not be an autonomous affair, it must not perpetuate itself.

It goes on perpetuating. You are sitting, and the memory is working. You are sleeping, and the memory is working. You are working, and the memory is working. The memory goes on continuously working. What is it doing? What can memory do? It can only desire the same for the future. It can do nothing else. It can perpetuate and project itself into the future: "All that has been should be again, or something that has been should not be."

The memory is always weaving a pattern for the future around you. And once you allow it to weave a pattern for you, you will never be free. You will always be in a pattern. That pattern constitutes the walls around the emptiness of consciousness. Before you take one step into the future, memory has taken many. The path is not an open path, it has become an imprisonment. The memory is always narrowing it down. But we are deceived by it because we think that the memory is helping us to live the future better. It is not helping.

It is just helping you to make your future the same as the past.

The memory cannot project anything which it has not known. It can only project the known: it will project it. Do not fall into the trap. Do not allow the mind to project for the future even for a moment. Of course, it will take time to be without this dead habit. To begin to be aware of it is meditation. And once you are aware, completely aware, intensely aware, alert, the memory will not weave the future for you; it can only weave when you are dreaming.

To be dreaming is a basic condition for the memory to work. That is why, in sleep, it creates real looking dreams -- more real looking than the reality. When you are just sitting in your easy chair, then there are day dreams, there are reveries. Just be a little sleepy, and the memory begins to weave, begins to project. Be alert, conscious, and the memory stops working for the future. Alertness, more alertness within and without, is the beginning of meditation.

This alertness can be created in so many ways. By telling you to be alert I know that you are not going to become alert. You will hear this in a dreaming state, and the memory will project: "Yes, I will be alert tomorrow." And the memory will work upon this and make it a project. If you hear this, "Be alert," you will make it a project. You will say, "Yes, I will be alert sometime." And if I say that happiness follows alertness, if I say that bliss is bound to come to you through alertness, you will be more dreamy. And the memory will project events.

Only telling you to be alert will not make you meditative; it will not make any difference.

So I create devices, I create situations, in which you cannot help but be alert, situations in which dreaminess is impossible.

I will tell you something.... Dreaminess becomes more possible if there is more carbon dioxide around you; you will be more dreamy. That is why in the day you cannot be so dreamy as in the night. The chemical components change. At night there is more carbon dioxide in the air and the oxygen is less. So if the reverse is possible, if the oxygen in you and around you is more and carbon dioxide is thrown out, you cannot be dreamy. That is why I insist on vigorous breathing. It is nothing but a chemical device to change the chemical atmosphere in you. Oxygen must be there more and more. The more the oxygen, the less you fall victim to the dream. And your memories cannot work without the medium of dreaminess.

In the morning we feel freshness. What happens in the morning with the rising sun? The carbon dioxide decreases and the oxygen increases. So the same chemical change is needed within you. The technique which we are using in our meditation camps nowadays is the most powerful method to create excess oxygen in the body. And after the first three stages, in the fourth, the student becomes charged with tremendous life energy that makes him very alert.

Another device to make you alert is kundalini practice. It is a system to transform sex energy for meditation and awareness. It is useful to a person whose sex energy can be easily and naturally channeled for meditation purposes. In the days of the Vedas and Upanishads, in ancient India, the people were simple and natural and they could easily convert their sex energy. For them sex was not a mental problem at all, it was not at all a problem. Once it is a problem, it becomes mental.

Today, the modern world is so sexually perverse and sexually exploited that kundalini -- the movement of psychic energy in a particular psychic channel -- has become difficult.

But through this method, sometimes the kundalini is felt to be rising. That is another thing. If someone feels his kundalini rising, then I begin to work on his kundalini, then I begin to give him techniques for working on it. But unless there is a spontaneous feeling of kundalini, I will not even touch the point. I will not talk about it. You can by-pass it, and this age is such that you will have to by-pass it. Only with natural, physical sex, with no mind in it, can kundalini work -- with innocent minds it can work.

Somewhere on the way, when you have gone deeper in meditation, your mind loses its grip. As I have said to you, when you go deeper in meditation, then you make a distinction and separation of these two memories, then you become less and less mental about the body and let the body function by itself through its own wisdom.

Then sometimes kundalini will become active. So if it works automatically, then it is good. I won't allow its practice directly. Indirectly, it comes to work itself. And it comes so many times. At least thirty to forty percent of people working on this method feel kundalini. When they feel it, then I am ready. Then they can proceed. Then through this method they proceed through the door of kundalini. But this method is only indirectly connected to kundalini, not directly.

As far as I am concerned there is no future for direct kundalini methods, unless the whole world takes sex as a natural phenomenon. And there are no kundalini techniques that are used before sex maturity. Unless the track for kundalini is created within you before sex maturity, there is every possibility -- even if sex is taken naturally -- that you may not turn out to be a pervert, but you will turn out to be just an animal.

I will tell you a story from the Upanishads....

A rishi is sitting with his wife and son. A man passes by there and he falls in love with the wife. He asks her to accompany him to his residence. The wife goes away with the man. There is no criticism or objection from the rishi, but the son becomes angry and he says to his father, "This is just animalistic. This is just like animals do. This cannot be allowed. When I will make a moral code, I will not allow this. This is just like animals do." The father says, "This is not just like animals do. But on the contrary, your rage, your anger, is just like animals do. It is a projection of moral violence, just like an animal.

In fact no animal will allow what just happened, he will fight. No animal will hold on to a possession forever."

This attitude, the father's attitude, is really a higher one. It cannot be understood. He says your attitude is just like an animal's. Animals fight for their mates. They have a territorial possessive sense. And if you trespass it, they will fight. But the father says, "I am human.

If someone sees your mother and falls in love, no one is at fault. And if your mother is ready, who am I? I have also fallen in love with her the same way. It makes no difference. Just like this I have fallen in love with her. She agreed to be married, she agreed to be my wife, but not my possession. Someone else has fallen. I know human weakness because I know myself, I have also fallen myself. So nothing wrong is happening. And I am not an animal, so I cannot fight for this. I know he is a human being just like me. And your mother is beautiful. I have also fallen in love with her."

But this is a very high morality, and this can only be cultivated before sex maturity, if you have trained -- otherwise not. After sex maturity you will not be able to channel the energy; it is very difficult. But if channels are ready before, then the energy just flows in them as naturally as it flows in sex. And this man, this father, this rishi, must have known kundalini otherwise he could not have been as he was. It is impossible. This rishi had kundalini development -- energy going upward -- otherwise this attitude would never come.

Downward energy is always toward violence. Upward energy is always toward love, understanding, compassion.

So this method is an indirect method. It works through so many doors. If your kundalini can be used, the method will use it. It will take its route, it is flexible. The method is absolutely flexible. If your kundalini is ready and cannot use it, if it is dangerous, it will not use it. Then there are other channels, other routes. It can use other routes.

Those other routes are not named, because no ancient teaching used them. But there are other routes. Mahavira never talked about kundalini, never. Buddha never talked about kundalini, never. Christ never knew about it, Lao Tse never heard about it. They had been through other routes.

The way Buddha went could not have been through kundalini. His sex had become absolutely a boredom to him, he was not in the least interested in sex. And that was bound to happen, because his father arranged for him so many beautiful girls of his kingdom. Every girl who was beautiful was in his palace. He just became disgusted. It was bound to happen; everyone would become disgusted like that. He became so disgusted with sex that he could not conceive that the same energy could be converted.

He never tried for it. And even if someone had said to him that sex energy can become divine energy, he would not have listened to him, because he had known sex so much, and there was nothing divine about it to him. It was just carnal. Buddha used another route. He did not talk about kundalini at all, but he talked about centers, chakras. He worked for chakras.

If you work for kundalini, then there is a gradual process. Kundalini is a continuity, it has a continuity just like a thermometer. It rises just like a thermometer, slowly, slowly. The passage is a continuous one. Buddha never used that passage, but he talked about chakras working in sudden jumps. From one chakra one jumps to another. There is no continuity, one just jumps. Because of this jumping process, Buddha conceived of the whole world in a very new way. He said that there is no continuity in the world, only jumps.

Nothing is continuous. The flower is not continuous with the bud; the flower is a jump.

Youth is not a continuity of childhood; it is a jump. And so Buddhist philosophers nowadays are very happy, because today science also says that there is no continuity.

Everything jumps, there is just a jump. We see continuity only because we cannot see the gaps between.

You see this light continuously; it is not continuous. Electrons are jumping, but the gaps are so small that your eyes cannot know them. It is not continuous; it is jumping. But the jumps are so speedily taken that when one electric particle is dead and the other has come, the gap in between is not noticed. There is just a sudden jump. You light the flame in the evening, and in the morning when you put it out, you will think that you are putting out the same flame. The flame has jumped thousands and thousands of times. It has gone, evaporated, and the new one has come. But it looks so continuous.

Heraclitus said that you can never step twice in the same river. Because the river is flowing, you can never step in it twice. Buddha will say you cannot step even once because the river is flowing. As soon as you have touched the surface, it is gone. Before you have gone deeper, it is gone again. Even one step, and so many rivers have gone.

And it is always a jumping process.

This jumping concept came to Buddha because he never passed through kundalini. He passed through a jump, one chakra to another. So he talks about seven chakras, that also is possible. I can come to your house jumping, so I touch only some points. The gaps are there, there is no continuity.

Mahavira never talks about chakras or jumps, he talks of explosions. You are this, and then you are that. There are not even many stations to jump. This is another route -- explosion, you just explode. One moment before you are this, and one moment after you are that. There is neither a continuity nor a jump, there is an explosion. There is no midpoint to be crossed.

In Zen, there are two sects: one sect is known as the sudden school of Zen; the other is the gradual school of Zen. But even gradual Zen does not talk about kundalini. It has used another route. So there is no talk about kundalini in Zen, not even in the gradual school; another route was used.

The body has so many routes. It is a great world in itself. You can work through breathing, and through breathing you can take the jump. You can work through sex, and through sex you can take the jump. You can work through awareness -- that is, directly through consciousness -- and you can take the jump. This working directly on consciousness has been one of the deepest routes, but even one single route can be used in so many ways. You must understand the complexity of this.

For example, one road can be used in so many ways. One can use it with a car, another with a cart, and another by just walking. The route is the same, but the method is absolutely different. What is common between walking and sitting in a car? Nothing is common. In the car you are just sitting and not doing at all. You are not doing anything.

So someone can say, "I passed this route just sitting," and he is not saying anything false.

But one who has only walked and who has never known how one can pass the route only sitting will deny this route. He too is right.

Even a single route can be used in different ways, for example, awareness. Gurdjieff uses it, but he will call it remembering, and the method is different. The route is the same.

Consciousness is to be used, but as remembering, not as awareness. And what is the difference? Remembering means you are on this street, just remember you are. Stand for a moment, remember you are. Look around completely remembering that you are. Never forget for a single moment that you are.

But we forget, we never remember. If I see you, I forget myself and I see you. The awareness becomes one arrowed, the other arrow is not there. Gurdjieff says to make it double arrowed. You are listening to a discourse. To listen to what the speaker says is the first arrow, and if you are aware of yourself -- of the listener -- then that is the second arrow. Do not forget yourself when you are listening, remember that you are listening.

Someone is speaking, and you are listening; be beyond both and remember. Make yourself double arrowed. The route is the same, but the method is different.

Krishnamurti will say, "Do not remember this way, it will become a tense effort. Just be aware of the totality. Do not choose that you are here and he is there. Do not choose. Just let there be an all-inclusive awareness. Do not focus it -- unfocused awareness." I am speaking; you are sitting; the horn is there; the car is passing... Things are -- and awareness is unfocused. Do not make it arrowed, make it unfocused. The route is the same, but the method is quite different.

Tantra used the same method, the same route, in a different way. It was unimaginable.

They used intoxicants -- bhang, charas, ganja, wine. And the method was this: take the intoxicant, and be aware. Do not lose awareness. Go on taking the intoxicant, and be aware that you are aware. Do not lose consciousness. There are methods in which no intoxicant will be of any effect, so snake poison was used. The snake is made to bite on the tongue. And when the snake bites on the tongue and you are still aware, only then have you taken the jump -- otherwise not. The route is the same, but the method is quite different.

In this Tantra practice, if no intoxicants work and you go on remaining conscious, you behave consciously, then something has crystallized within you. Something has gone beyond body chemistry. Otherwise the chemistry will affect you. Now you are beyond chemistry. The chemistry is somewhere working in the body, but you are aloof, it cannot touch you.

So there are so many routes, and each route can be used with so many methods. My method is not directly concerned with any route. It is just like a vehicle which can fly, swim and go on the road. Whatever is the need of your personality, the need will change the method, the route. You may call it a multi-method. It is indirect, it cannot be direct. I give you the method; your body, your being, will give the route. And the awakened energy can use any route: Tantric, Buddhist, Jain, Gurdjieff's, Sufi... it can use any route.

And when I say this, it is not just a hypothesis. When I say this I have worked so.

People have come to me who have worked on different routes. When they use this method, it begins to help them in their route. If someone is working on kundalini and comes to me, then works with this method, it helps him on his own route. He says, "This method is wonderful; the previous kundalini method was not working so intensely and so intently." And this is not a kundalini method at all. But this is flexible. The method will find out the route. You are to do it, and all else will be done by the method itself.

And for the coming world, and also for today's world, only such flexible methods can be used because there are so many types of people now. In the old world, that was not the case. In a particular region, a particular type existed. If there were Hindus, there were only Hindus, there were no Moslems. In fact, they never heard about one another. They never knew about each other's practices, so they were never confused. They were of a single type. If they were Tibetan Buddhists, they were Tibetan Buddhists; they never heard about anything else. Everyone's conditioning was the same, everyone was brought up in the same milieu. So one method was needed that worked.

Now that is all difficult. Minds are confused; in fact, there is no single type. Everyone is a multi-type. There are so many influences, contradictory influences. All religions say, "Do not study others. Do not go to other teachers." That is not simply dogmatism. It looks like it is dogmatic, it was basically just to protect their type. This led to unnecessary confusion. Otherwise, no method would be used fully -- neither that nor this. This was done so that one should not be confused, but now that is impossible.

But now everyone is confused, and there is no help. Now there can be no single type, and a type cannot be protected. So we need new methods which belong to no type and can be used by every type. So this method is flexible. I am not particularly concerned with kundalini, not particularly concerned with anything, but deeply concerned with all.

You use this method, and the method will find the route -- the route which can be worked out in you. I leave this to the method. The method finds it, and it finds it more exactly than you can find it. But this finding is unconscious. It just puts you in a situation, just like there is fire in the house. You are in a situation. If you can run, run. If you can jump, jump. The situation is there, and the situation will push you toward whatever is possible for you.

And the unconscious mind always chooses the route of least resistance. That is necessarily the mathematics, the inner economy of mind. You never unconsciously choose any long route, you always choose the shortest. Only with the conscious mind do you begin to choose routes which lead nowhere or are so much longer that you are dead before you reach. But the unconscious always chooses the shortest route. So this method will create the situation, and your unconscious will take the route which is potentially its type.