Discipline And Control

The first question:

Question 1:

There is not only a difference, there is a vast difference: discipline and control are polar opposites.

Control is from the ego, discipline is from the non-ego; control is manipulating yourself, discipline is to understand yourself; discipline is a natural phenomenon, control is unnatural; discipline is spontaneous, control is a sort of suppression. Discipline needs only understanding - you understand and you act according to your understanding. Discipline has no ideal to follow, discipline has no dogma to follow, discipline is not perfectionistic - discipline leads you by and by towards a wholeness.

Control is perfectionistic, it has an ideal to be achieved; you have an idea in the mind about how you should be. Control has many shoulds and many should-nots, discipline has none. Discipline is a natural understanding, a flowering.

The very word 'discipline' comes from a root which means 'to learn'; it comes from the same root as the word 'disciple'. A disciple is one who is ready to learn - and discipline is that capacity of openness which helps you to learn.

Discipline has nothing to do with control. In fact, a disciplined mind is never a mind which thinks in terms of control, there is no need for it. A disciplined mind needs no control, a disciplined mind is absolutely free.

An undisciplined mind needs control because an undisciplined mind feels that without control there is danger. An undisciplined mind cannot trust itself, hence the control. For example: If you don't control yourself you may kill somebody - in anger, in rage you can be a murderer. You need control, because you are afraid of yourselves.

A man of understanding, a man who understands himself and others, always feels compassion.

Even if somebody is an enemy, a man of understanding has compassion towards him because a man of understanding can understand the viewpoint of the other also. He knows why the other feels as he feels, he knows why the other is angry, because he knows his own self, and in knowing that, he has known all others. He has compassion, he understands, and he follows understanding. When I say this don't misunderstand me - understanding in fact need not be followed. The very word 'following' gives the idea of having to do something: you understand, then you have to do something - follow. No - understand, and everything settles by itself. You need not follow. It starts happening.

So the first thing to understand is the difference between control and discipline. Control is a false coin, invented by society as a substitute for discipline. It looks exactly like discipline: every false coin looks that way, otherwise you could not make it current, it could not circulate in the market.

There are many false coins about inner life. For example, control is a false coin for the real coin of discipline, and for the real coin of understanding, knowledge is a false coin.

For religion, sect is a false coin. To fulfil your need of being religious many false sects are offered to you - Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism. All '-isms' are false. Religion has no '-ism' about it, it is not a dogma. It is something that flowers within you, not something which is enforced from without.

Always be aware of the false coins because they are in circulation, and they have been in circulation for so long that people have almost forgotten about the real coins. Religion is neither Christian, nor Hindu, nor Mohammedan; religion is simply religion. It is an attitude which one has to grow into, one cannot be born into it.

Nobody can be religious by birth; it comes through creative effort, it comes through suffering and experience, it comes through wandering and coming home, it comes through going astray and coming back to the right path. Through much suffering and experience, by and by a certain quality of being starts crystallizing within you: that crystalized being is religious and the fragrance that surrounds that crystalized being is religion. It is indefinable.

The same is true about control and discipline. Beware of control. Never try to control yourself. Who will control really? If you understand, there is no need to control; if you don't understand, then who will control? This is the crux of the whole problem.

If you understand, what is the need to control? You understand, so you do whatsoever is right. Not that you have to do it, you simply do it because how can you do the wrong? If you are hungry, you don't start eating stones - you understand that stones cannot be eaten, finished! There is no need to give you a commandment: 'Never eat stones when you are hungry.' It will be foolish, simply foolish to say it. When you are thirsty you drink water. What is the need to make any should or should-not about it?

Life is simple when you understand. There are no regulations or rules around it, there is no need, because your very understanding is the rule of all rules. There is only one golden rule and that is understanding; all other rules are useless, they can be thrown away. If you understand, you can drop all controls, you can be free because whatsoever you do, you will do through understanding.

If you ask me the definition of what is right, I will say: That which is done through understanding.

Right and wrong have no objective values; there is nothing like a right action and a wrong action, there are only actions done through understanding and actions done through non-understanding.

So sometimes it is possible that one action may be wrong this moment and right the next moment because the situation has changed and now the understanding says something else. Understanding is to live moment to moment, with a sensitive response to life.

You don't have a fixed dogma of how to act; you look around, you feel, you see, and then you act out of that feeling, seeing, knowing - the action comes.

A man of control has no vision of life, he has no sensitivity to life. When the road is right in front of him, open, he consults a map; when the door is just in front of him he asks others: Where is the door? He is blind. Then he has to control himself because the door is changing every moment. Life is not a dead, static thing - it is not. It is dynamic.

So the same rule that was good for yesterday will not be good for today and cannot be good for tomorrow. But a man who lives through control has a fixed ideology, he follows his map. Roads go on being changed every day, life goes on moving into new dimensions, but he goes on carrying his old rubbishy ideology. He looks at his idea, then he follows it, and then he is always in the wrong situation.

That's why you feel that you have missed many joys in life. You have to miss, because the only joy that life can give is a response of understanding. Then you feel many joys, but then you don't have any rules, any ideas, any ideals, then you are not here to follow certain codes - you are here to live and discover your own code of life.

When you become aware of your own code of life, you will see that it is not a fixed thing. It is as dynamic as life itself.

If you try to control, it is the ego; it is the ego manipulating you in many ways. Through the ego, society manipulates you, and through society, the dead, all those who are dead now, manipulate you. Every living being, if he follows a dead ideology, is following dead people.

Zarathustra is beautiful, Buddha is beautiful, Lao Tzu is beautiful, Jesus is beautiful - but they are no longer applicable. They lived their lives, they flowered beautifully: learn through them - but don't be a stupid follower. Be a disciple, but don't be a student.

A student learns the word, the dead word; a disciple just learns the secrets of understanding, and when he has his own understanding, he goes on his own way. He pays his respect to Lao Tzu and says: Now I'm ready, I'm grateful, I go my own way. He will always be grateful to Lao Tzu - and this is the paradox: people who have been deadly following Jesus, Buddha or Mohammed can never forgive them. If you miss your joys of life because of them how can you forgive them? How can you really be in gratitude? In fact you are deeply in anger. If you come across them you will kill them, you will murder them because these are the people who have forced you into a controlled life; these are the people who didn't allow you to live as you would have liked to live; these are the people, Moses and Mohammed, who have given you commandments about how to live. You cannot forgive them.

Your gratitude is false. You are so miserable, how can you be grateful? For what? For your misery can you be grateful? No, you can be grateful only when you are blissful.

Gratitude follows like a shadow when you have an inner blessing, a feeling of constant benediction.

Be a man of discipline but never be a man of control. Then how can you be disciplined? You know only one meaning of discipline and that is being controlled - by yourself or by others. Drop all rules and regulations and live life with a deeper alertness, that's all. Understanding should be the only law. If you understand you will love, if you love you will not commit any harm to anybody; if you understand you will be happy, if you are happy you will share; if you understand you will become so blissful that from your whole being, continuously as a continuum, like a river, will arise a thankfulness towards existence. That is the prayer.

Try to understand life, don't force, and remain always free from the past; because if the past is there and you are controlling, you cannot understand life. And life is so fleeting, it doesn't wait.

But why do people try to make rules? Why do they fall into the trap at all? They fall into the trap because a life of understanding is a life of danger. You have to rely upon yourself. The life of control is comfortable and secure, you need not rely on yourself: Moses will do, the Bible will do, the Koran will do, the Gita will do - you need not bother about the problems, you can escape from them. You take shelter in old words, disciplines, thoughts, you cling to them. This is how you make a comfortable life, a life of convenience - but a life of convenience is not a life of bliss. Then you miss joys because joys are possible only when you live dangerously. There is no other way to live.

Live dangerously, and when I say 'live dangerously' I mean live according to your own self, whatsoever the cost. Whatsoever is at stake, live according to your own consciousness, according to your own heart and feeling.

If all security is lost, all comfort and convenience is lost then too you will be happy. You may be a beggar, you may not be a king, you may be on the streets in rags, but no emperor can compete with you. Even emperors will feel jealous of you because you will have a richness, a richness not of things, a richness of consciousness. You will have a subtle light around you and you will have a feeling of blissfulness. Even others can touch that feeling: it is so visible, so substantial, others will be affected by it, it will become a magnet.

You may outwardly be a beggar but inwardly you have become a king.

But if you live a life of convenience and security and comfort you will avoid danger, you will avoid many difficulties and sufferings; but by avoiding those difficulties and sufferings you will avoid all the bliss that is possible in life. When you avoid suffering you avoid bliss, remember that. When you try to escape a problem you are escaping the solution also. When you don't want to face a situation you are crippling your own life. Never live a controlled life - that is the life of an escapist - but be disciplined. Disciplined not according to me, not according to anybody, but according to your own light. 'Be a light unto yourself.' That was Buddha's last saying before he died; the last thing that he uttered was, 'Be a light unto yourself.' That is discipline.

The second question:

Question 2:

There is no need, you have come to the cemetery. This English word 'cemetery', is very beautiful, it comes from the Sanskrit word, SAMADHI. In India SAMADHI means both: the cemetery, the tomb, where a man is buried and also the final realization, the ultimate realization - both, because both are a sort of death.

When you die, it is an ordinary death of the body, but the cluster of the mind survives, goes on taking new births, reincarnates, moves into the wheel of life and death. Ordinary death is not a total death, it is a partial death, a part of you dies; but the remaining part is so powerful that it recreates the dead part, a new body is built again. A new body crystalizes again.

Then there is the final death. The final death is only that of a Buddha, of one who has known, who has come to know the secret of life, has realized all that life can give - now there is nothing more for him to come back to, he has passed the examination, he returns no more. He dies not only as body, he dies as mind, as ego. He dies completely. There remains only the inner space which becomes one with the outer space; the walls between the inner and the outer disappear.

We call that SAMADHI and the English word 'cemetery' originated from SAMADHI. No, I am not going to send you anywhere. I am your SAMADHI, your cemetery, here. You can die in me....

An ordinary cemetery won't do, you can get accustomed to it. There are people who work in the cemetery, who live there, but they have not become enlightened. They have become accustomed, habitual, the whole scene has become routine. Every day people come, dead bodies are carried, they help to bury them or burn them, and that is that. Then they take their food and they go to sleep - they live an ordinary life.

If I send you to a cemetery you may be shocked, just in the beginning, you may become afraid because the experience is new. But by and by you will settle into it, it is not going to change you much. So I have called you to me. If you look into me you will find your final cemetery. So now there is no need to send you anywhere else.

The third question:

Question 3:

There are two ways to come out of the situation: to lose control completely or to have control completely. There are two paths. One is of deep involvement, so deep that nothing is left behind.

For example, Sufis in their Dervish dances involve themselves completely; they are lost, merged.

Then there is another dimension which is of awareness. Zen people remain alert and aware:

carrying water from the well, cutting wood in the forest, eating, sitting, walking, going to sleep, preparing their beds - whatsoever they are doing, they remain completely alert.

These are the two ways. Either become completely aware so that whatsoever is happening just becomes objective, you are totally cut off from it, you become a witness. Or, get involved completely so that there is no witness at all, you have become whatsoever is happening - if you are dancing you have become the dance, there is no witness to it. Both lead to the same, because deep down the real thing is not whether you get lost or you remain alert. The real thing is to be total - totally lost or totally aware. In both the cases you fulfil the condition of being total.

So don't think that they are opposites.

And there are two types of people: those who can easily get lost - people of the feeling type, and the other type of people - people of the intellectual type. So one has to remember his own type and find it. If it is difficult for you to lose yourself totally then forget about losing, don't fight with it. Drop the idea. Maybe you are the intellectual type, then there is a path for you: become aware. Forget the whole idea of losing, dissolving, that is not for you, you be aware. And don't feel that you are missing something, you will reach the same point from a different route. The same peak will be reached but your path will be different.

There are only two types of people, so there are only two types of paths.

One is the path of devotion, what in India is called BHAKTI yoga, the path of love and devotion - a Meera, a Chaitanya, dancing and singing, losing themselves completely in the act. When Meera is dancing there is only dance, there is no Meera; the dancer is completely merged into the dance.

When Chaitanya is singing and dancing there is no Chaitanya; he has become one with the act.

Then there is Buddha, Mahavir: they are aware, alert in whatsoever they are doing. They are so alert that the doing is just something outside, it never touches them. They remain untouched. They pass through the water but the water never touches them; they remain uninvolved, uncommitted, unidentified.

To me, both are true because I am not a sectarian. If you go to Buddhists they will say: Don't follow that path of devotion, you will be lost. If you go to the followers of Chaitanya they will say: Don't listen to this Buddha, because unless you lose yourself how can you attain? You will become egoistic.

But I tell you that both the paths lead. The real question is not what path to choose, the real question is what type you are. Just feel your type. And if in years of catharsis in therapy and meditation you have never been able to lose control, then now at least lose the idea of losing control. Try being alert.

The fourth question:

Question 4:

You must have come across some very highly evolved animals who are going to be born as human beings in their next incarnation. They are almost human.

Dogs are being corrupted by man. Animals which live with man are almost corrupted, they have become human: dogs, cats, and other animals. If you have come across so many situations where you feel that the violence was done for sport, then they are already human beings. Soon you will meet them somewhere in their human form.

But I tell you that only man is violent. You may not understand other animals: they may have killed more than they could eat - that only shows they are not doing right arithmetic, that's all. They might have killed more than they could eat; that simply shows they don't know how to calculate beforehand.

But it is not a sport. They are not doing it just for their enjoyment, no.

And the ants walking on your body when you are meditating are not vicious, they don't know at all that you are meditating, they don't know at all that you are. They may be on their own business - ants are very business-like - they may be on their own trip, you are just in their way, that's all. In fact, you are disturbing them, not they you. You are just sitting there like a rock - you think you are meditating - and you are disturbing their whole route. Ants are great followers of their leaders - the leader has gone one way, so all the ants are going that way. They are always very controlled, they are like the army. So they have to pass you.

You think that they are in the way, you think that they are disturbing you; they think that you are just in their way, disturbing them. No, they are not vicious. Nobody is vicious except man, nobody can be, because to be vicious much thinking capacity is needed. To be vicious, one has to think about the future, one has to calculate about the future. To be vicious, one has to think very, very much about the past - past experiences, possibilities, impossibilities - and the future. One has to be cunning, clever. To be vicious, one has to be a disciple of Machiavelli or Chankya. Machiavelli says in his 'Prince' that before somebody attacks you, you should attack him, because that is the only defense.

Even if the other has not attacked you yet, you have to suspect, and before he attacks, you attack first, because that is the only great defense. If you attack first there is more possibility of winning; if he attacks first there is less possibility of winning.

Machiavelli says: Don't trust anybody, not even a friend, because who knows, the friend may become an enemy the next day. So don't say things to a friend which you would not like to say to the enemy; and don't say things about the enemy, bad things about the enemy, because who knows, the next day he may become a friend and then there will be always a barrier. This is cleverness, cunningness.

This man, Machiavelli, was really very, very clever, cunning. Nobody has achieved that peak of cunningness ever. Every monarch in the West read his book and every monarch was impressed - he was right. Every monarch tried to follow him, but no monarch employed him in his service because such a dangerous man could be dangerous. He lived a poor man and he died a poor man.

He tried many courts, but all doors were closed. His book was accepted everywhere, but he was not - such a clever man could be dangerous. They were applying his own ideology against him: if a man can be so clever he will create trouble. Once he comes close he can create trouble.

Man is vicious because only man can be machiavellian. Other animals are simple, very simple, and when you think that they are doing something viciously, you are wrong. You think that mosquitoes are disturbing your meditation - they don't know. They don't know you at all, you are just food for them, and they are seeking their food, a simple thing....

When you go to a tree, to an apple tree or to any other fruit tree and you take the fruit from the tree have you ever thought that you are vicious to the tree? No, the idea never comes. The same is being done by the mosquito to you and mosquitoes are very impartial - even to a Buddha they will do the same.

They did. I was staying in Sarnath once, the place where Buddha gave his first sermon. Buddha moved around only a small part of India, the Bihar, so in forty years of wandering he passed through every village many times, but to Sarnath he never came again. He visited it only once, the first time, and he never came again.

So I asked the Buddhist BHIKKHU who was the head of the Sarnath temple, what the matter was.

Why did Buddha never come again?. He brooded and he said: Maybe mosquitoes.... Sarnath has the biggest mosquitoes in India.

Mosquitoes are impartial. They don't bother whether you are a Buddha or not; whether you are meditating or murdering someone they are in search of their food. And as you are in search of your food and you never feel that you are vicious, why should they be thought as vicious? Nobody is vicious. Even the germs that can kill you, they too are not vicious, they are in search of their food.

Even the germs that create a cancer in your body that will certainly kill you, that no medicine can help - even they are not vicious, they are not machiavellian, they are not politicians. They are simple people, just in search of food and they are very happy that they have found a home within you. They are not doing any harm to you knowingly because they cannot do anything knowingly. They are enjoying life as you are enjoying life.

Once you understand this.... I don't mean that you just sit naked and become food for them, that is not my meaning. You protect yourself, but don't think them vicious. You protect yourself. If the tree could have protected herself she would have protected herself against you. You protect yourself.

Even the mosquito protects itself, even the mosquitoes become immune to DDT. Everybody has to protect himself. I'm not saying that you should become a victim and, thinking that mosquitoes are not vicious, you should sit naked and allow them on you because they are in search of food. Then you are moving to the other extreme, to another foolishness.

You protect yourself, everybody protects. Even the mosquito will protect himself - but don't think that they are vicious, because the idea that life around you is vicious is very dangerous. That idea will harm you more than all the animals and all the mosquitoes and all the ants combined, because that idea will give you a feeling of separateness from life, that idea will give you an enmity towards life, that idea will never allow you to surrender to the whole.

The fifth question:

Question 5:

It is a touchy question, because money is not what it appears. Money is more deep-rooted. Money is not just there outside in the currency notes, it is something to do with your inner mind and attitudes.

Money is your love of things, money is your escape from persons, money is your security against death, money is your effort to control life, money is a thousand and one things. Money is not just in the currency notes otherwise things would have been very easy.

Money is your love - love of things, not of persons. The most comfortable love is of things because things are dead, you can possess them easily. You can possess a big house, a palace - the greatest palace you can possess easily - but you cannot possess even the smallest baby; even that baby rejects, even that baby fights for his freedom. A small baby, howsoever small, is dangerous for the man who wants to possess. It will rebel, it will become rebellious, but it will not allow anybody to possess it.

People who cannot love persons start loving money because money is a means to possess things.

The more money you have, the more things you can possess; and the more things you can possess, the more you can forget about persons. You will have many things but you will not have any contentment because deep contentment comes only when you love a person. The money will not revolt but it cannot respond also, that is the trouble. That's why miserly people become very ugly. Nobody has responded to their love ever. How can you be beautiful without love falling on you, without love showering on you like flowers - how can you be beautiful? You become ugly. You become closed. A man who possesses money or tries to possess money, is miserly and he will always be afraid of persons and people because if they are allowed to come closer they may start sharing. If you allow somebody closeness you have to allow some sharing also. People who love things become like things - dead, closed. Nothing vibrates in them, nothing dances and sings in them, their hearts have lost the beat, they live a mechanical life. They drag, burdened, burdened with many things, but they don't have any freedom because only love can give you freedom; and love can give you freedom only if you give freedom to love.

People who are afraid of love become possessive about money. People who love become non- possessive, money doesn't matter much. If it is, it is okay, it can be used; If it is not, that too is okay, because love is such a kingdom that no money can purchase it. Love is such a deep fulfillment that you can be a beggar on the street and you can sing if you have love in your heart. If you have loved and you have been loved, love crowns you, makes a king of you. Money simply makes you ugly.

I am not against money. I am not saying: 'Go and throw it away,' because that is another extreme.

That is also the last step of the miserly mind. A man who has suffered too much because of money, who has clung to money and could not love anybody or become open, becomes so frustrated in the end that he throws away the money, renounces and goes to the Himalayas, enters a Tibetan monastery and becomes a lama. This man has not understood. If you understand, money can be used, but people who don't understand are either misers, they can't use the money, or they renounce the money, because in renouncing they are also saving the same mind. Now there will be no difficulty in using it: you renounce all and escape. But they cannot use the money, they are afraid of using it.

They can renounce, remember this. I have seen misers renouncing completely, totally. A man founded a university in Sagar in India, I was a student there. This man was a rare specimen, his name was Dr. Hari Singh Gaur. I have never come across a greater miser than him and I have not come across a greater renouncer either. He was perfect in both the ways. For his whole life he never gave a single paise to anybody, no beggar ever received anything from his bungalow.

If it was known in his town, Sagar, that some beggar was going to Hari Singh's house to ask, others would laugh and they would say: Seems to be new to the town. Nobody ever received anything.

He never donated a single rupee for any cause, humanitarian or anything. For the Indian National Freedom Movement he never donated a single paise - no, that was not his way. He was a perfect miser and he was one of the greatest lawyers in the world. He had three offices, one in India, one in China, one in England, and he worked four months in England, four months in India, four months in China. He was one of the best lawyers in the world. He accumulated so much money and then in the end he donated his whole life's savings. The whole university of Sagar is created by a single person's donation. It is one of the most beautiful universities.

But when he donated, he donated all. You will be surprised to know that he donated so absolutely that he did not leave a single paise for his children. Now they are fighting in the courts, they have nothing, they are beggars on the street. The miser remains a miser to the very end, even when he renounces. He couldn't give to his children even a single paise but he could renounce the whole.

First you can accumulate money like a madman, then one day you understand that you wasted your whole life. When you understand this you become afraid, but the old habit persists. You can give the whole and forget about it and escape, but you cannot share it.

If a man of understanding has money he shares it because money is not for itself, it is for life. If he feels that life needs it, love needs it, he can throw it away completely, but it is not a renunciation, it is again using it. Love is the goal for him; money is never the goal, money is the means. For people who are after money, money is the goal, love becomes just a means. Even their prayer is for money; even prayer becomes a means to money.

Money is a very complex phenomenon. Why do people get so much into it, and so many people at that? It has a certain appeal, a magnetic appeal. Money has a hypnotic appeal in it and the appeal is that you can possess it completely. Money is very docile, it becomes a slave. The ego feels very fulfilled.

Love is not docile, love is rebellious. You cannot possess love. You can possess a woman, you can possess a man, but you can never possess love. If you possess a woman, the woman has become money, a thing; if you possess a man, the man has become money, a thing, an instrument.

A man is a man and a woman is a woman only when they are an end unto themselves, not a means to anything else. Money is the means, and to become obsessed with the means is the greatest foolishness that can occur to a man and the greatest curse.

Money should not become the goal, but I am not saying at the same time that you should renounce it and become beggars - use it, it is a good means. I'm not against money, I have nothing to say against it. I am saying something about you and your possessiveness, not about money. Money can be beautiful - if it is not possessed, if you don't become obsessed with it. It can be beautiful.

Money is like blood circulating in the body: in the body of society money circulates, it is blood. It helps society to be enriched, to be alive - but it is like blood.

You must have heard about diseases in which the blood stops and cannot circulate, clots of blood come into existence and they become blocks and the blood cannot circulate in the body. Then you are paralyzed, and if the clots happen in the heart you are dead.

If money circulates, moves from one hand to another, goes on moving, the more movement the better, then the blood circulates well, then life is healthy. But when a miser comes in, a clot has happened; somewhere somebody is accumulating, not sharing, and that is a clot in the blood circulation. The man disturbs, he does not live himself and because of his blocking he does not allow others to live. The money has stopped circulating. Blood circulating is life, blood stopped, blocked, is death. Money circulating is life, money stopped, blocked, is death.

I'm for a society where money moves fast, nobody clings to it, everybody uses it, and you remember that the simple law of money is: the more you use it, the more valuable it is. For example, we are sitting here. If ten persons have a hundred rupees in their pockets, and they keep it to themselves, then ten persons have only one thousand rupees, dead. But when those rupees circulate, if they make two rounds, ten thousand have become twenty thousand; if they make three rounds they have become thirty thousand; and if they make four rounds.... The more they circulate, the more money there is, because when one hundred rupees are kept by one man those hundred rupees are dead. If he uses them they go to somebody else, then they come to him again because others are also using them; now he has two hundred rupees, and again three hundred, four hundred, five hundred.... The more you use it, the more money floats and circulates, and the richer society is.

America is richest because America is the least miserly country in the world. Money circulates fast; everybody is using that money which he has, and even that money which he is going to have in the future, he is using it too. The country is bound to become rich. A country like India is bound to remain poor because people cling. If you cling to money the country will remain poor. When nobody uses it, money becomes like clots in blood.

India has two types of people: misers and renouncers. Both these types are wrong, ill, abnormal, neurotic. One should have money, earn money, produce money - and use it. One should hold it only to use and one should use it only to hold; it becomes a circle. Then a person is both, a miser and a renouncer together. When you are miser and renouncer together you are neither miser nor renouncer, you simply enjoy whatsoever money can give. Money can give many things and money cannot give many things; when you use it then you know what money can give. Money can give all that is outward - things of this world, nothing is wrong in them. Nothing is wrong in having a beautiful house. Nothing is wrong in having a beautiful garden - money can give it to you. But money cannot give you love, that is expecting too much from poor money.

One should expect only that which can be expected, one should not move in the impossibilities..Just asking poor money to give you love - poor money cannot do it. But nothing is wrong, don't get angry with the money! Don't burn it and throw it in the river and go to the Himalayas. In the first place you asked something which a man of understanding would never have asked - you are foolish, that's all.

Nothing is wrong with the money.

A wandering monk came to see me two or three years ago and he was very much against money.

He would not even touch it - this is a neurosis. There are people who only count money the whole day, and in the night also, in their minds, they go on counting. They touch only money with a loving hand, they never touch anybody else with a loving hand. When they look at their currency notes, watch their eyes - they sparkle. They are hypnotized. These are neurotic people. Then there are other neurotics... This wandering monk came to me, he would not touch money. So I said: Then it must be very difficult for you. How did you come to Bombay to see me? He said: There is nothing difficult. He showed two other men, his disciples: they could touch, they were not such evolved beings. What foolishness! They could purchase the ticket and they could keep the money, but for him, he said: I don't touch, I have gone far beyond it.

I said: But what is the point? Now you are not only using money, you are using two other persons as your pockets. You have reduced two persons, alive persons, to pockets; you have murdered. What was wrong in keeping it in your own pocket?

And the man said: So it seems you are in favour of money? What can money give? Can money give love? Can money give God? I said: You are foolish if you ask love and God from poor money, your expectations are false. Money never promised them to you, but whatsoever money promises it can give. It never promises that it can give you love. If you expect it you are idiotic.

These people who have been expecting too much from money one day become enemies of money.

Then they escape, then they don't touch money. Even Vinoba closes his eyes if you bring money to him, he will not see it. What nonsense! What is wrong in money? Something still seems to be miserly inside, something still seems to be like a wound, otherwise why close your eyes? What is wrong in a currency note? It is just paper, and these spiritual people go on saying that it is just paper. If you put ordinary paper in their hands, they touch it, but when you put a currency note there they throw it away as if it is a scorpion or very deadly disease.

Neurosis can move from one extreme to another. Use money. Money is beautiful as far as it goes, and it goes far enough! As far as the world is concerned it goes far enough, but don't expect love, because it is of the interior, of the inner being, and don't ask for God, because it is transcendental.

Use everything for its own capacities, not for your dreams. Then you are a healthy man, and to be healthy is to be holy. Don't be abnormal in any way. Be normal, ordinary, and just create more understanding so that you can see. Money can be used, should be used, it can give you a beautiful world.

Otherwise, sooner or later, if you are against money you will create a dirty country like India:

everything is dirty - but they think they are great spiritualists. Everything has gone ugly but they think they are great spiritualists because they have renounced. That's why things have got so bad.

They think one has to close one's eyes and not look outside.

It is good to look outside because outside is God's creation; it is good to look inside because inside is sitting the Creator. Both are good. Eyes are meant to blink; they are not meant to remain open forever and they are not meant to be closed forever. They are meant to blink - open and close, open and close. That is the rhythm - out and in, out and in.

Look outside - the beautiful creation; look inside - the beautiful God. And by and by you will see that the in and out meet and mingle and are one.

The sixth question:

Question 6:

There is vast difference between laziness and passivity. Passivity is alert, laziness is dull; passivity is energy, laziness is nothing but no energy, a state of no energy. Never get confused between passivity and laziness: laziness is an ill state of affairs, passivity is just a wonderful health.

Passivity is so healthy that it has no need for activity, because the need to be active may be again an obsession. You cannot remain still, you feel afraid of being still, you cannot remain with yourself, you feel afraid of being yourself - so you move into activity. Activity is an escape. A constant need for occupation is not a good state of affairs; one should be able to just be passive and enjoy. Enjoy what? Enjoy the breeze passing, enjoy the clouds moving, enjoy the trees so happy and so green, enjoy the birds singing. Or just enjoy breathing in and out, it too is very beautiful: just to be capable of breathing silently, of being alive, is a tremendous phenomenon. It is a miracle to feel oneself: I am here and now. This moment I am alive! I can look, I can listen, I can touch, I can taste - life is happening to me this very moment, the river of life is flowing through me. Just to feel it....

Passivity is alert energy. When I say 'alert energy' I mean: passivity can any moment become activity. Energy is there, you can transform it into activity any moment, not even a single moment's notice has to be given. Out of passivity you can just get up and run for miles - in fact more than a man who has been active. He may not be able to run for miles because activity dissipates energy. A man who is passive is full of energy, a reservoir, and he is alert. If you watch a passive man... forget man because it will be difficult to find a man and to watch him: watch a cat, sitting silently, but how alert! Even if her eyes are closed and even if you see that she is dreaming and nodding the head - a beautiful dream eating a mouse, you can see the lips moving and the enjoyment that comes to a cat when she eats the mouse - if there is just a slight noise everything is alert, the cat is as aware as a buddha. Suddenly, with not a single moment's loss, if somebody enters the room the cat is alert.

Look at a cat watching near a mouse hole, waiting for the mouse to come out. How silently, how still she waits. You cannot find such a perfect yogi because no yogi is so confident about God coming out of his hole. The cat is perfectly confident, certain, absolutely certain. She trusts the mouse, he will be coming. And he comes... then look at the jump, the energy, the radiant energy, the alertness!

In a single jump the mouse is caught.

And a cat never misses.

Watch passivity, you will always find it glistening with a reservoir of life, energy, radiance, any moment ready to jump into activity. The energy is ready. It is not lethargy, it is not inertia, it is not low energy.

It is energy waiting, it can be transformed any moment. Lethargy, laziness, is a state of no energy, you are as if you are almost dead. Then you have to pull yourself out of bed, then you have to pull yourself out of everything, the whole day: somehow you pull yourself out of bed, somehow you pull yourself up to prepare tea, somehow you drink the tea. Somehow you stop breakfast, otherwise you will go on eating because a lazy man has even no energy to stop anything. He can sleep or he can eat but then he goes on because who will stop? For stopping, will will be needed.

So you drag on, from the morning to the evening and then you have to drag yourself to bed again because a lazy man cannot just go to bed. One who has not just come out of bed will never be capable of just going to bed. No, even that will mean dragging himself. He drags from the club and the hotel; he somehow drags himself from the TV - otherwise he is glued to the chair, he cannot get up - somehow puts the TV or radio off, goes to bed, and somehow drags himself to make love.

It is a dragging, it is a no-energy state, it is not passivity. Don't think that this is passivity; this is a disease.

What to do? First go to the doctor and let your body be checked because whenever you have some problem always start from the body: you may be lacking some vitamins in your food, you may be lacking some hormones in your blood. The first thing is the body, so first take care of the body. Out of a hundred cases, ninety cases will be immediately helped by the doctor. For them there is no need to come to me.

For the other ten cases, if the doctors can't help you, then come to me because you must then be concerned with the mind. You are afraid to live. For these ten per cent I say that it is not really low energy - you are afraid to get out of bed, you are afraid because life is there. Again you will have to move in life, meet people, love people, be friendly, be intimate - anything is possible, anything can happen. You are afraid of the unknown, you want to remain in the coziness of your bed. It seems to be protected.

There are many people who remain ill just because they are afraid of life; they are not actually ill, they are pretending. If the doctors cannot help you then come to me. You may be afraid of life.

It happens almost always. For example, a man is losing business, and suddenly he has a heart attack. People think it is because he was losing business. It does have some concern with the losing of the business but that is not the cause. Now there seems to be no way to be again in the market, so to save face he is creating his illness. The heart attack is not created by the business situation, the heart attack is a psychological defense. Now he can lie in the bed and at least rationalize that what can he do? He is so ill with the heart attack, life is in danger, so the business is going. He is going bankrupt because he is ill.

Now Lying in bed he can rationalize that it is not his fault, what can he do? What can he do against fate? Now his wife also cannot say: Go to the market, go to the shop. Nobody can. Now he has a perfect alibi to remain in bed.

He's afraid to go to the market; you are afraid to go into life. You cannot encounter life situations, so it is better to live in bed. This is suicidal. If mind is the case then something can be done; if the body is the case then don't be worried, it can be done by a doctor - you need not do many great SADHANAS for it.

First let the body be checked. Then, if mind is the case, we can solve it. Then we can bring up all the unconscious fears, we can help them to surface. Once they surface, once they come up into consciousness, they disappear, and you gather courage. Then there is no need to use will to get up out of bed. Will is not a good thing. One should get up out of energy, not because of the will's effort.

One should get up because one slept so beautifully the whole night that now one is full of energy.

The very energy brings you out of bed, not any effort of will. Then the whole day you work and live and experience a thousand and one things, and then you are tired, the day is finished. That very state brings you to bed again, to relax; you need not drag. Life should not be a dragging, it should be a spontaneous flowing..

But first try to solve the bodily problems. If nothing can be done through the body, then something can always be done through the mind.

The last question:

Question 7:

No, I don't give you any dogma, I don't give you any formula to live up to, because all formulas are false, all formulas are dead, all formulas create a structure around you and that structure becomes by and by your imprisonment. I don't give you any formula, not even the Jesus formula.

I want you to be understanding, alert, aware. Let that be your only source of action.

Sometimes maybe it is good to offer the other cheek, but only sometimes. It is relative. Sometimes it is better to hit hard, but that too sometimes, and one can never predict. You have to watch the whole situation of a certain moment and live with total response.

If you carry a formula you will not be free.

I have heard an anecdote. A Christian saint who used to follow Jesus' sayings word for word, literally, was hit hard by an enemy on one cheek. Of course he showed him the other cheek because that's how Jesus said it had to be done. The man hit him again hard on the other cheek.

The so-called saint was waiting for this to bring about a conversion in the man. All Christians think that when you offer the other cheek, the other man will be so enlightened by your compassion, love, brotherly feeling, he will be so encompassed by your beautiful gesture of offering the other cheek that he will simply fall at your feet and become a disciple. But that doesn't happen in life, life is not so easy.

The man, seeing that this saint was offering the other cheek, hit him hard, harder than at first. Now the saint was a little in doubt about what to do because Jesus doesn't say: Then again offer the other cheek. Now the formula comes to an end, so he was a little in doubt. He tried to decide what to do, then jumped on the enemy. The enemy was surprised. He said: What are you doing? A Christian saint? First you followed the rule which I was waiting for and you proved that you are a Christian saint, but what are you doing now? The Christian saint said: But the formula ends there.

Up to now there was Jesus, now I'm here.

Even in the time when Jesus was alive somebody asked him about this. When he said that when somebody hits on your right cheek, you should give him the left, somebody asked: How many times should it be done? Will seven times do? Jesus said: Seven times? No, not even seventy-seven times. I would say to you: Seven hundred and seventy-seven times.

But then too the end will come. Seven hundred and seventy-seven times? Then what about the seven hundred and seventy-eighth time? All formulas come to an end - howsoever long a rope you give to them, they come to an end. Seven or seventy-seven doesn't make much difference.

Formulas are dead, they have limitations. Life is infinite, it has no limitations.

Just watch the situation and don't have any formula in your head; otherwise you will not be able to watch the situation as it is, the formula will overcolour the whole thing. You simply put all Jesuses, all Buddhas, all Rajneeshes aside and just look at the situation. Don't be Rajneesh for even two times, from the very beginning be yourself. The Christian saint had to be himself the third time, when the situation was again the same. Why wait for that? You be yourself from the very beginning.

Then you will never repent. Act out of the total situation, then there is no repentance. Whatsoever you could do you did. Then you can move with no scars.

Let your life be a life of total understanding, that's all I would like to say to you. Don't ask for specific formulas, I have none. I have only a general attitude - the light of understanding, the fragrance of understanding. And whatsoever happens in it is good, is virtuous.