A Psychological Approach

Date Unknown

Question:

There are as many paths as there are minds. Each mind requires a particular path and each method is true for a particular person. No method is true as such or false as such. It depends on the person to whom it is to be applied. So yoga is basically individual.

Whenever a society changes, mind changes. I have been developing new methods for the new mind. The old methods were developed for a particular type of mind that no longer exists in the world.

For example, Buddhist methods were developed for the particular type of mind that Buddha was encountering. Now that mind no longer exists and those methods have become useless. A new mind has come into being. The type of mind that Buddha was facing and working with was basically based on faith. The whole training of the Indian mind was based on faith, doubt was never allowed.

Now, all over the world, the modern mind is based on doubt. The scientific approach uses doubt, a mind cannot be scientific unless it can take doubt to the very extreme. We have trained our minds for doubt, so those methods that were based on faith have become useless. For the modern mind, they cannot be used.

We have to devise new methods for the modern mind - based on doubt; on experimenting, without faith as a basic condition. In each age, new devises are needed. All devices can be used only for a certain time.

My method is more scientific and less religious. It gives you a religious experience, but the method itself is more scientific than religious, more psychological than spiritual. The modern mind only accepts the body and the mind; the spiritual realm is taken as a romantic fallacy. So you cannot begin anything from the spiritual. At the most, you can start from the psychological. So my method is more psychological than spiritual. It leads ultimately to the spiritual dimension but it starts from psychology.

We have been doing much with the human mind, particularly in the West. The religious traditions - Jewish, Christian Islam and now even Hindu - have all been suppressive. We have layers and layers of suppressions, and unless they are released, thrown out, exhaled, nothing can be done as far as the inner journey is concerned. So my method works with catharsis. The first basic thing is to go through a catharsis. Unless the repressions in your mind are released, you cannot proceed further. They are the blocks They were never there before. Particularly in the East they have never before existed. The mind was not so repressed; we accepted things as they are. But now, the whole world lives under a Christian shadow. Everything natural has become condemned. The body, sex - all these things are condemned. We are in an inner conflict.

Reason has become supreme and it suppressed everything that is not rational. Reason is just a tiny part of the whole being of man, just a small fragment, but this small fragment has become supreme, dictatorial. It has suppressed everything else in the personality. These suppressed layers have to be released first. Unless they are released and one comes to a deep harmony within - with one's own instincts, nature, body - nothing further can be done.

All the old methods start with you as you are. For example, Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation. It starts with you as you are. It gives you a particular technique, a mantra to work with. The mantra will help you to calm down, but it cannot transform you. It can only make you more adjusted to a society that is, itself, ill. It can make you more still, a certain well being will come to you, but no transformation will happen because the repressed layers will remain where they are.

They are not even touched by it You by-pass your suppressions and do something with your mind that only gives it a superficial tranquility.

All the old methods - if used directly, without catharsis - will not be of much help. So my method starts with catharsis. Only when your tensions, are released can you jump deep within yourself.

The jump is possible. And I think that for us today, it has become urgent that we move within. But the preparation is bound to be different than it has been in the past, so my method works first as a catharsis. Then, it tries to create a harmony with your body.

We are separated from our bodies. All the old traditions have emphasized that body and mind are two things. That is absolutely wrong. Body and mind are just two poles of one existence. The old traditions have emphasized that you are not the body, but my emphasis is quite the contrary. You are the body. You are more than the body, you go beyond the body, but you are also the body. There is no division as such, no conflict.

We have created the conflict, and that conflict has created a gap. The gap has to be bridged. My method is a means to bridge the gap. Only when it is bridged do you become whole. And then, the jump becomes possible.

You cannot jump if you are fragmented. One part of you cannot jump ahead of another part. You have to take the jump as a whole being. To me, 'holy' means whole. This wholeness has to be created. That is what I am trying to do.

lf you take it for granted that you are not the body then your body becomes closed: a dead thing hanging over you. Then you are not living in it, just carrying it. So to bring you back to your body is the first thing that must be done. Then you have to be brought back to your mind, you have to become one with the whole mind. Only then can you become one with the spirit. Man must first be rooted in the body and then rooted in his natural mind. Only then can he fall down deep, into his natural depths.

So I am a yea sayer; I am against all conflict. I accept nature iD its totality, with no condemnation.

Only when there is acceptance can there be transformation. That is why 1 am not very concerned with old traditions of yoga - not concerned at all.

Question:

It takes time, but it is not difficult. How have we become so suppressed? The technique to release the suppression is just the opposite.

The method of repression is to not express. If you feel angry, you don't express it. You suppress it, you don't allow it to come out. My method is quite the contrary. If you are angry, express it. Not to someone, but in a vacuum. If you are angry at me, don't express it to me. Go into a room and express it to the vacuum. If you express it toward someone it creates a chain reaction and you will never be out of it. But if you suppress it within, it becomes poisonous. It will remain in your system and will go on doing many many foolish things lo you. Ultimately, you will have to express it somewhere somehow.

My method is to express everything that is inside. If there are special problems, moral problems, don't express it to someone else. Express it in a vacuum. So my method starts with expressing everything that has been suppressed.

In the first step, I insist on chaotic breathing, for ten minutes. Not systematic breathing, but chaotic breathing. Systematic breathing cannot disturb your suppressed being. Chaotic breathing is very meaningful because breath is the link between your body and mind. If you are angry you have a different rhythm of breathing. If you are in love a different rhythm of breathing. If you are sad, again there is a different rhythm of breathing. If you are relaxed, a different rhythm of breathing. When your state of mind changes, your breathing changes immediately. So if you change your breathing, your state of mind is affected immediately. You cannot breathe rhythmically and be angry simultaneously.

It is impossible. You cannot go into the sex act with very silent breathing. Impossible!

So first I insist on chaotic breathing. Just taking the breath in and throwing it out. No yogic method is to be used Inhale as much as possible and then exhale as much as possible, forgetting everything but the breathing. Just remember to exhale and inhale so forcibly that your whole system is disturbed: every cell of the body is disturbed, every cell of the mind is disturbed You are trying to disturb the whole set pattern that has been developed in you!

In the second step, when your breathing has disturbed your body/mind completely, I tell you to express whatever is inside you. Whatsoever comes to your mind, for ten minutes you are to express it. If you want to scream, scream madly. If you want to weep, weep madly. If you want to laugh, laugh. If you want to jump, be angry, throw your violence lo the sky, then do it. Whatsoever you want to express, express. But not to someone; just in a vacuum.

The second step is expression. You will be surprised to see how many things start coming to you once you start expressing them. It is not only that your mind expressed them. Your body expresses them. For the first time, you become aware that your body has many repressions to express. If you are a violent man, your hands will be moving as if you are killing someone or beating someone.

Many screams will come out. And through the screams, much will be released.

For this second step to happen totally, takes time. But within three weeks you will be able to express what is within you spontaneously. Then you will feel that something is leaving you and you are being unburdened.

Only then can the third step happen. The third step is a particular sound: hoo. Not the word 'who', just the sound hoo - meaningless. For ten minutes you have to repeat it: hoo, hoo, hoo. This sound hits the sex center inside. There are different sounds, and every sound reaches a different layer within. If you say om, the sound that has been traditionally used, it goes to the heart. If you say om, the sound never goes below the heart; but if you say hoo, the sound reaches below the navel and hits the sex center.

Modern man - the modern mind and the modern body - is so involved with sex that unless that center is hit, nothing can be done with man. The sex center can be hit in two ways: from without or from within. Sex is the only energy in you; it is the source of all energies. If it moves out, it becomes biological reproduction. If it moves in, it becomes spiritual transformation - a rebirth of yourself.

In the third step, you are to just go on crying, screaming, "HOO!" and hitting the sex center. Soon, within a few weeks, you will begin to feel an uprush of energy starting from the sex center and moving up through your spine. You will feel a warmth, you will feel that a new path has been opened inside you. And once this energy begins to move from your spine toward the head, you will have a different view about yourself, a different outlook, a different dimension. Once this energy reaches the head, it can be released from the head. Normally sex energy is released from the sex center.

That is one pole of our being. The opposite pole is the head. If the sex energy can be released from the head, you are transformed; you are a different being.

So these are the three steps to do. The fourth step is simple relaxation - just falling dead. Not doing anything: no effort, no technique. Just remaining silently with whatsoever is. After doing the first three steps, you are so exhausted that relaxation comes easily. You want to relax, your whole body wants to relax. You fall down and lie there like a dead man. In this deadness, you become a witness.

You are simply a witness, not doing anything.

This fourth step is what has been known for ages as meditation. But now these first three steps have to be added to it. Unless these three are done, just telling people to be silent, sit silently, is meaningless. They can sit, they can force themselves to sit, but they cannot be silent because the madness will go around and around inside them. Rather when they are sitting silently, they will become more mad inside.

Question:

If you just watch the mind, it will take a very long time - years. And nothing is certain because you are not simply watching: every day, you are creating more mind. And there is a past accumulation in the mind, so it can go on and on; you can go on and on.

I have seen people practicing watching as a method. It is one of the oldest methods: witnessing whatsoever is inside. If you have very little madness inside you then this method will do, but otherwise you can go on watching and it will seem infinite.

Question:

No, it is not outside you. It is inside. If you say that it is outside then there is no inside and no outside.

Then you are part of the universe. But then again, it is inside.

Whatsoever is happening in you is happening in you. You have to throw it out. If you just go on watching, it is possible that meditation may result, but it is a very long process. I have seen people watching for thirty years. They become a little bit silent, but basically the mind continues. The mind seems infinite - you go on creating more of it again and again.

So to me, one must first throw out the accumulation and then watch. That throwing out, that catharsis, is miraculous. Then you can relax very easily, then you can witness very easily. First identifying with your madness, in throwing it, gives you the capacity for nonidentifying. If you cannot identify, you cannot nonidentify.

If you are laughing and you can be totally one with this laugh, you gain the Capacity to be totally removed from it. The laugh continues and you can be a witness. If you have not totally identified yourself with your laugh, or your anger, or anything, you are not capable of disidentifying. So this catharsis helps in watching.

The fourth step of Dynamic Meditation is simply to be silent and be a witness. Then these three steps drop by and by. They are not to be followed forever. When you feel that nothing is coming up, the second step drops. But you are not to drop it; you have to continue it. When you feel that nothing is coming up - no anger, no violence, no laughing, no crying - that you have disturbed your bioenergy through fast breathing and still nothing comes up, then okay. Then the second step has dropped.

When you do the third step, sooner or later it drops. When the energy begins to move by itself, there is no need of hammering. If the energy is moving upward and you go on using hoo, it disturbs the upward movement. Then you have to drop it. And than you have to drop the first step also, because there is no need. Now, only the fourth step remains.

Now you can move into the fourth step at any moment, at any time. This fourth step is the meditation; the first three steps are just preparations. The fourth step is lust like Zen. You are not doing anything.

No effort. Just waiting silently.

But it takes time. At least three weeks are needed to get the feel of the technique, and three months are needed before you can begin to move in a different world. But the time it will take is not fixed.

It differs from individual to individual. If your intensity is very great, then even in three days it can happen.

Question:

No religious belief is required. Just practice it as a psychotherapy. As I see it, belief has become impossible. You can only force belief, but you cannot believe. It is not possible now. If you believe it is okay; but for ninety-nine percent of the people, it has become impossible to believe. We can only force belief but that becomes a repression again, so I am against it.

Don't believe. Just take it as an experiment. If something happens, that will become your belief. But no belief is required as a precondition to do it. You can conclude with .a belief but you cannot start with a belief. And there is no need. If a thing is scientific, belief is never a requirement.

You are not the body; you are not the mind. You are one. But the old traditions of the past have divided you. They have created a false gap by constantly insisting that the body and you are separate. They have created a gap, a psychological gap. The gap is not real, they cannot create a gap in reality, but they have created the idea in the mind and now the gap exists. So when I say that a bridge has to be created between you and your body, I simply mean that this illusion of separation has to be dissolved. You are already one, but psychologically we think of the body as something separate. A totality has to be attained.

So I don't divide body and mind, matter and mind, the world and moksha. I say that the existence is one. Unless you can feel this oneness, you can never be free from anxiety, anguish. All anxiety is basically rooted in this division.

Because of this division, you cannot live in this moment, here and now. The division goes on creating the future. How to achieve moksha, liberation, salvation in the future? How to be beyond this body in the future? How to be free from the body, from the material world? Always, in the future.

Right now, because of this division, we cannot be, So first the division has to be dissolved. It is a false division, but it exists. Once the division is dissolved, you are liberated here and now. Then, there is no future.

A person who is future-oriented will be sick. He cannot be healthy. The future will go on creating tensions, anxieties.

There is no future. This moment is enough. If we can be one in this moment, and live this moment in its totality it is liberation. And we cannot live this moment in its totality unless we are total. That's why there are techniques. To help you to be total.

Look at it in this way. Man's whole suffering is because of certain wrong attitudes. Reality does not have to be changed; only these wrong attitudes have to be changed. And this is a wrong attitude:

to look at the whole in a divided way. It is one, whole. But the intellect divides; it cannot function without division. Reason divides; it cannot function without division. All meditations are basically to give you a glimpse of an existence where you are not dividing things, where you are taking them in their totality, as they are. I am against any sort of division.

Question:

Because it is psychotherapeutic. Because of that. Your mind influences your dress, your mind influences your body, your mind influences your food. Everything you do affects the mi nd.

If the method was simply spiritual, there would be no need to change the clothes. What is the need? But psychotherapy has to deal with every trivial thing, because nothing is trivial for the mind.

The moment you change your clothes, your mind becomes different because something basic has changed .

Dress is not just an ordinary phenomenon. For the mind, it is very significant. The Queen of England in her royal dress. Give her the dress of a poor woman to wear and it will not simply be a change of dress. The whole mind is affected by it. When a policeman is standing on the road in his uniform, he is a different man from when he is in civil dress.

The mind is concerned with very ordinary things: food, dress, everything. It changes as these external things change, so I give you a different dress, I give you a different name, just to give you a different identity - so you can start afresh. They help.

But they are not spiritual. For spirituality, there is no need to change anything. The moment you become spiritual, there is no need to change anything outwardly. But you are not yet spiritual, and everything can help.

If you are wearing very tight clothes, you feel more violent. That is why we do not give soldiers loose clothing. If loose robes, like monks wear, are given to soldiers, they will not be able to fight. Inside, their minds will become loose and free like their robes. If you are wearing very tight clothes you will be more violent, more sexual. Your very way of walking will be different, because the mind is made up of very small things. An ordinary change can be very meaningful for the mind. You cannot stand in the street naked. Why? It is very meaningful. It is not simply a question of dress. You can stand naked only if your mind is different.

Your mind is made up of very small things. If you change These things, you change your mind, your past. You start something new, there is a new nucleus around which something new can be organized.

You eat ordinary food. If you suddenly change your food, your body will have to become readjusted to it. You have a particular rhythm between day and night. You sleep for a few hours, you are up for a few hours. If you do not get your normal night's sleep, the rhythm of your body is changed and your whole being is disturbed by it.

Try this: a very ordinary thing. Put on a clown's costume and go to the market and feel how different you will feel to yourself. Everyone will be looking at you in a different way and because what you think about yourself is nothing but a reflection of others' opinions; if their opinion of you changes, you yourself will change. So changing the clothes is just psychotherapeutic technique. It helps in the beginning.

Question:

No. Once you attain it, it cannot be lost. If it is lost, then your technique was nothing but a drug.

There are meditation techniques that are like drugs. The criterion is this: if you achieve something and then it is lost, know well that the technique was a trick, a drug.

Question:

Even if you don't practice it. Once you have come to a point in your being, it can never be lost unless it was simply a dream. Only a dream can be lost.

Drugs cannot give you reality. They can only give you very beautiful dreams. Or even horrible dreams - it depends on you, the dreamer. You can hypnotize yourself into a particular dream; there are hypnotic techniques. If you use them you will be in a state of autohypnosis, you will start feeling things, many things, but once you stop the technique, the whole thing will disappear. It was just a mental trick you were playing: you were dreaming, it was your imagination.

If you really grow into awareness, it cannot be lost. That is the distinction between real methods and false methods. A real method is a growth method; it is not simply a vision. You grow in it; the vision comes because you have grown to a new state of mind.

With drugs, or with a false technique, you never grow. A certain vision comes to you, but you remain the same. When you are not using the drug, or the technique, the vision will disappear. It was produced chemically; it was not coming through your own growth. Remember always, only growth matters. Visions are of no use. Even if you see God, it is meaningless. If you remain the same, then your God is nothing but a by-product of your own imagination. Visions are not meaningful.

Christianity has placed too much emphasis on them.

That's why drugs have become so prevalent in the West - because they can easily create visions. If you are looking for visions, then I will say that meditation is a waste of time; drugs are better. They give you visions easily. But you remain the same. Or, rather, you may even fall down from your ordinary state of mind; you may deteriorate.

With meditation, whatsoever is attained remains with you. If you stop the technique you will not proceed further, but whatever you have attained will remain with you. It cannot be lost; a real growth can never be lost. It is not something added to you that you can lose. It is you who has grown.

For example, if you have become a young man you cannot fall back to your childhood again. It is a growth. But if a child is simply dreaming that he has become a young man, he will fall down. When he awakens from his dream he will be a child again. That is the criterion to judge whether something has been a growth or it is just a dream. If it is a dream, it will be lost. If it has been growth, it will remain with you.