Chapter 8

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only.]

BHAGWAN:* Good. Start.

QUESTION:* FIRST OF ALL I WANT TO THANK YOU THAT I'M HERE, AND I'M GRATEFUL THAT I CAN ASK YOU SOME QUESTIONS ABOUT RAJNEESH THERAPY BECAUSE I DON'T KNOW WHAT IT IS AND I'M GOING TO WRITE THIS BOOK ABOUT IT.

I'D LIKE TO KNOW HOW RAJNEESH THERAPY DIFFERS FROM ALL THE FORMER THERAPIES LIKE THE FREUDIAN PSYCHOANALYTIC APPROACH, THE HUMANISTIC AND THE GROWTH GROUPS.

ANSWER:* It is basically and totally different from any other therapy that has existed. The most fundamental difference is that all those therapies are for sick people, those who are mentally not well. Those therapies make an effort to put them back to their normal life. All those therapies serve the old rotten society.

The society drives people mad, crazy, schizophrenic. They put them back into their normal average mind so they can function again into the old pattern where they had become incapable of functioning.

So all the therapies -- Freudian or Jungian or Adlerian -- their function is the same as in the past was the function of the priest. These are the priests of a sophisticated twentieth century. But their function is the same. It is against revolution, against change.

Rather than seeing the fact that.... Why this society goes on creating sick people?

No animal is sick that way. Why human society goes on making schizophrenic people? Why there are so many rapes? Why there are so many people burdened with guilt? Why there are so many murders, suicides?

And even though a person somehow manages to live normally, deep down nobody is normal. They all have nightmares, they all have fear, they all have greed, they all feel insecure.

These therapies are in the service of the society that drives people nuts.

My basic difference is that I am trying to help these people understand that they are not responsible for their mind sickness; they are victims. My function is not to make then normal so that they can go back to the church and back to the office and back to the same wife and back to the same world. No, my function is to give them a fresh individuality, a rebellious intelligence, a perception in which they can see that the society has manipulated them, exploited them, almost killed them.

This is the first part of my therapy: that the person should be made aware that it is the society that is sick, and he is only a victim.

Secondly, we have to make aware the person that he is victim because he is more intelligent than other people. Idiots don't go crazy. They have nothing to go crazy. To have a sick mind, first you need to have a mind. The normal and average people who are thought to be mentally healthy are really intellectually retarded. Even if they want to go mad they cannot. Madness needs some intelligence.

It is not a coincidence that all the great painters, poets, scientists, musicians -- people who have touched in some dimension the highest peak of intelligence -- most of them go mad. Most of them commit suicide. Strange!

We have created really a strange world where idiots are normal and geniuses are abnormal, where idiots don't go mad, where geniuses go mad, suffer all kinds of mental torture. And the old therapies tries to put them back, to force them back to the ordinary retarded humanity.

Of course they are a minority, so naturally they think something is wrong with them. In millions of people who are retarded, to be intelligent is really unsafe. It is insecure. It is dangerous.

Where people are living below the mental age thirteen -- that is the mental age of the masses -- to have more intelligence than them is going to create trouble for you. They are the society, you are just an individual, helpless.

My effort is to make these people aware that their sickness is significant. They need not feel embarrassed. They should really rejoice, because they have intelligence -- enough intelligence, more intelligence than the ordinary normal people. That's why they are having trouble. They cannot adjust with the society.

They feel everywhere unfit. That's what gives people idea that something is wrong with them.

The reality is just the vice-versa. They are the right people, but they are in very small minority. And the majority is stupid but it is majority.

And your so-called therapists are simply serving the vested interests.

So my effort is to give you a confidence that your sickness is symbolic, that you don't have a retarded mind, that you should not feel bad about it. In fact, you should feel grateful to existence because you have raised questions which ordinary people don't raise. You have created problems in your life which ordinary people don't create. And because you were not fitting with the majority, the masses, the crowd, they denounced you as mad.

And the Freudians and the Jungians and the Adlerians -- they all accept that idea, that you are mad and you need treatment. And their whole treatment is bringing you down to the lowest denominator in society.

My effort is just the opposite: first to make you feel relaxed about your situation, make you recognize that the society is sick, not you, that the society needs a change, a revolution, not you.

If you are not fitting with the society, the reason is not that you are mad. The reason is that you have enough intelligence so you cannot fit with all these retarded people.

Secondly, which is even more important, my therapy helps you first to regain your confidence, your self-respect, the understanding that nothing is wrong with you. But this is only the groundwork. Then the real work starts.

Once you are free from all the ideas that the masses have given to you, the psychologists have given to you -- everybody around you has forced you to believe that something is wrong with you -- first we have to clean all that nonsense and make you self-respectful. Then begins the real work: meditation.

Therapy is only preparing the ground. It is not enough. It is just to undo what the society has done to you. Once it is undone, once you are unburdened, then begins the real work: the exploration into your own interiority.

So therapy according to me is only a groundwork for creating space and the urge to explore your reality.

All those therapists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists -- they have nothing to do with meditation. They are not there to help you to grow. In fact, they are there to cut as many branches from you -- your height, your growth -- so you become similar to other pygmies.

And because you accept the idea of the common mass, you allow them to cut your intelligence, to destroy your questioning, to hinder any possibility of going deeper than the ordinary people.

My work is first to unburden you and then to give you the vision, the perception, that this is not the end. Just not to be sick cannot be the end. Just not to be sick is not enough.

You have to be psychologically healthy, whole. And unless you come to self- realization, the work is unfinished.

Therapy stops at the point where you have become again normal, you have been dragged back. My work respects your sickness, because that reflects the whole society. You became victim of it because you were more vulnerable, more open, more available. So you have been wounded from every side. You were more innocent. And you were intelligent enough not to participate in superstitions, in idiotic ideologies. All this has been become your condemnation.

Religions used to send you to hell. Now they have become outdated. Nobody bothers much about hell. In fact, nobody believes in it. Now you are being sent to the couch of the psychoanalyst, which is a constant torture for years and years. In fact, there is not a single human being who has been totally psychoanalyzed. A strange kind of science you have!

It takes seven years, nine years, ten years -- still you are not fully analyzed. Still the problems are there. Perhaps you have become more accepting of them, perhaps you have become aware not to express them amongst the society, not to behave in such a way that people think you are strange. Just they have taught you adjustment. And that takes years and thousands of dollars, just to be adjusted to idiots.

My effort is to give you back your individuality. And it is your individuality which has rebelled against the social norms. It is your individuality -- a part of it -- which refused to be destroyed.

My function is to discover your whole revolutionary individuality, your uniqueness. I am not here to make you a cog in the wheel of this big civilization and culture that millions of years we have been creating. And we have ended in making the whole earth a madhouse.

There is a story by Khalil Gibran. One of his friend goes mad. He could not believe because that man was so intelligent, and he has been put into a madhouse. Gibran goes to meet him. He is feeling very sad and sorry for him.

He was sitting on a bench under a tree in the garden of that madhouse. Gibran approached him, wanted to show his sympathy. The man started laughing.

Gibran said, "So it seems you have really gone mad. I am showing sympathy, compassion, my friendship and you are laughing."

He said, "I have to laugh, because those people who are mad just because they are in the majority cannot convince me that I am mad. In fact, since I have been in the madhouse I am immensely happy, because I left the madhouse out and here I can live as sanely as I want. Nobody is to interfere.

"You should not feel sorry for me because I feel sorry for you. What the hell you are doing there outside in that great madhouse? Why don't you come here and live with me?"

Khalil Gibran was shocked, but a great question arose in his mind. Perhaps that man is right.

To me there is no perhaps. That man is right.

So my therapy is a search for finding your individuality, its uniqueness. And then, once you are freed from the idea that you are sick, there opens a new dimension that you can grow into being more conscious, and ultimately enlightened.

So I use your sickness for your ultimate health, wholeness. About that your therapists are completely unaware. They are unaware even what they are doing.

They are simply serving the politicians, the religions, the vested interests. They are not helping you. They are part of the status quo.

My therapists are not part of status quo. My therapists are basically people who are helping you to get rid of all those ideas that people have forced into your mind, that something is wrong with you.

Once you are completely free of that garbage, meditation becomes simple, very spontaneous. Here you drop out of the rotten society and you are available to the whole existence. And once you start getting roots and centered, meditations are very easy. And they can lead you to the ultimate experience of life.

Those normal people never achieve to that experience. They don't have even intelligence to become sick. It is just like a dead man cannot fall sick. Or do you think a dead man can fall sick?

A dead man is always healthy. There is no way to make him sick. Even if you inject and you put poison in him, there is no way. He will remain perfectly healthy.

It is life which is fragile and can be easily made sick, destroyed. Intelligence is even more fragile. If life is the tree, then intelligence is the flower -- even more fragile. More colorful, more alive, more expressive, more poetic -- but more fragile.

And enlightenment is the ultimate in fragileness. It is just like the fragrance: you cannot even catch hold of it. You can feel its presence, you can smell its existence, but there is no way to have it in your fist.

So my therapy is fundamentally different. Its purpose is different. Its approach is different.

The other therapies respect the society and condemn the poor individual. I respect the individual and I condemn the mob, because the mass of people has no soul in it. It is just a big crowd of almost dead people who don't know what life is and who will never know what life is.

One has to look into people like Vincent Van Gogh. The man who could produce such immensely significant paintings, why he went mad?

In my opinion he never went mad. But according to everybody who knew him, he was mad. He was mad because he never worked, he never got well educated.

He was mad because his family was persistent that, "You get educated." they wanted to make him a priest and he refused. And that job is respectable, that job is financially the best. It is powerful. And he refused, and he said, "I want to become a painter."

The family simply said that, "If you want to become a painter, you must be mad, because what you are going to gain out of your paintings? If you want to become a painter, then we have nothing to do with you. You just leave us alone, don't bother us any more."

Hungry, without money... sometimes few friends helped, but who is going to help him for long? And once a friend who has helped him saw his paintings, stopped helping him because his paintings were un-understandable. They were as mysterious as existence itself.

But who was there to appreciate them?

His younger brother was very sad for him because he had a certain understanding about paintings. He used to work as a salesman of a big firm which was selling all kinds of art pieces, paintings included. He could understand a little bit. He had known the best paintings in the shop of his owner.

He had seen the best sculptures. He had some sense and sensitivity.

So he used to send him just enough that he can eat two meals every day, and what Van Gogh was doing, that out of seven days, four days he will eat and three days he will save the money to purchase canvases, colors. So only alternate days he was eating.

Naturally, anybody will think this man is mad. He is starving but he continues to paint. And he is certainly insane because he could not sell a single painting in his whole life. Nobody was ready to give a single cent.

His brother, that younger brother who was supporting him, was very much sad that he cannot have even the consolation that somebody purchased a painting.

At least somebody came and appreciated. So he asked a friend, gave him money and told him that, "You go to Van Gogh and purchase a painting from him. I want to give my brother a little bit of consolation that at least there is one man who understands and is ready to pay."

The man came. He had no sense about art. He said to Van Gogh that, "I would like to purchase a painting." Van Gogh could not believe. Tears came to his eyes.

He said, "You are welcome. Come inside and look. I have many paintings.

Whichever you want you can take, and whatever you want to pay for it is more than enough. Just that you have come to purchase a painting is enough reward for me."

The man said, "I am not interested in paintings. You can give any, and here is the money."

You can understand the shock of the man. His tears dried. He could not believe.

And it was a simple, logical corollary that he said, "You must have been sent by my brother. Take this money back. And even if you bring millions of dollars I am not going to sell any of the paintings to you. I will throw those paintings and give to beggars, but not to you. You just get out of the house."

The man could not believe. He said, "I am giving you money."

He said, "You are giving me money, but I can see that you don't have any perception, any idea, any sensitivity for art. And this must be my younger brother's work."

The man said, "This is strange that you figured it out so quickly. Yes, your brother has sent me and he has given the money. And he wanted to give you some consolation, but you are a strange man."

Now that man must think Van Gogh insane. He was not a very beautiful man, not even homely. He was a coal miner's son. He has been brought up in poverty, in sickness, and he was living almost starving. But his devotion to painting was religious.

I call this quality religiousness.

He never went to any church, he never bothered about any God, he never read any holy book, but he was a religious man. The way he painted, the way he sacrificed his life in colors, in canvases -- it is something that can only be called religious. There is no other word to explain it.

No woman ever loved him. Again, his brother tried a prostitute, gave her money and said, "Just once in a life he should have the satisfaction that some woman wanted him."

The prostitute was willing. There was no question; it was a simple business. She said, "You can send. You give me money in advance and you can send your brother."

He tried to explain to the prostitute that, "My brother has never known any woman because no woman will love him. He is not beautiful. Please try to help him, that he forgets that he is ugly, that he forgets that nobody loves him."

The woman said, "You don't worry. This is our profession. It is not a question of telling to us. I know my profession perfectly well; you just send your brother."

Vincent Van Gogh was told by his brother that, "One woman has approached me. She is very shy. She loves you but she cannot say it to you. She sees you painting on the beach, in the forest. She loves your paintings, she loves you even more."

Van Gogh could not believe. He said, "Is it another trick? Why you are after me?

Because it hurts. You had sent that man to purchase. I understand your love for me, but you don't see how wounded I felt. That man said, `Give me anything.

Anything will do. Just take this money. Don't waste my time."'

His brother said, "No, I have nothing to do with it. The woman approached me."

So Vincent Van Gogh went to the prostitute and of course as a professional she welcomed him. He could not believe -- all that welcome and warmth and love.

He asked the woman, "Do you really love me? Because as far as I know everybody says I am ugly. And I know it too because I can see in the mirror: I am ugly. So what is impressive to you?"

The woman just laughingly, playing with his earlobes, said that, "I love your ears. They are unique. I have seen many men -- " And it was true. He has very long ears. If he was born in India, just because of long ears Jainas would have accepted him as their teerthankara, because that is one of the qualification of a teerthankara, the Jaina prophet. His earlobes should touch the shoulder.

He would have been accepted by Buddhists as another Buddha -- the same condition: earlobes.

But he was born in a place where nobody will bother about his ears.

The woman could not find anything else to appreciate so she said, "You have unique ears." And that was true.

He said, "You like them?"

She said, "I like them very much."

He said, "Then wait. I will be coming just within half an hour." And he cut his both ears, packed them in a box, rushed with blood flowing all over him, and gave the ears to the woman.

He said, "Nobody has ever appreciated anything in me. You are the only one.

Now these ears I present to you."

The woman was shocked. Certainly the man is insane. And immediately the neighborhood became aware that he is bleeding and he has cut his ears. They reported the police and he was forced into a mental asylum.

He lived there one year. And that one year he has painted his best paintings. And he was mad for the whole world: mad for the psychiatrist, the psychoanalyst, the therapist who were treating him.

If they had succeeded in treating him, he would be just a coal miner -- back to the society he belonged. But they could not succeed. Fortunately, they could not succeed with Van Gogh. He went on painting the way he wanted. All his paintings were thought to be insane. And now each of his painting is millions of dollars.

If this man had come to my therapies, we would have made a Gautam Buddha out of him -- not only because of his ears but he had the intelligence, the sensitivity. Just he needed support, appreciation. Just he needed recognition, and immediately he would have become rooted, centered. And he had the capacity to grow as far as anybody can grow.

But his whole life is tragic. When he was thrown out of the mental asylum because they could not do anything, he remained the same.... He was becoming unnecessarily a burden on them. They had to purchase canvases, colors, paints, brushes, and that man was not changing a single bit. All their therapeutic work was useless.

Out of the madhouse, he committed suicide. He wrote in his last letter to his brother that, "I don't see that there is any more that I can do. I have painted whatever I wanted to paint. Particularly this one year in the madhouse has been of great significance. I always wanted to paint the sun as nobody has ever painted it, and I have succeeded.

"Now there is nothing else, so why unnecessarily suffer, starve, be condemned by everybody? It is better. I am an unfit. It is better to rest in death."

Now, this man was not mad. He was in a mad world. He did not belong to this world.

And I talked about Van Gogh because that is the case with all the artists, all the poets, all people of intelligence, creativity, art, dance, music, sculpture. That is the case all over the world.

My therapies will help them immensely. Freud cannot do anything for them. At the most he can reduce them so Vincent Van Gogh becomes a coal miner, Picasso becomes a clerk in a station. That is sanity.

These people who are thought to be insane.... I have been to many insane asylums. The people who are thought to be mad are just different from the masses, that's all. And they have more energy which needs expression. They cannot fit anywhere because they have a certain solid individuality and they persist to remain to be themselves.

They have a certain rebelliousness in them. Even if they are condemned by the whole world they want to remain to be themselves.

My therapies are to help the unfit people in the society to recognize that they are welcome in my commune. Here nobody can manage to be an unfit, because everybody is unfit. This is the society of unfit people, so to be unfit is just normal.

And everybody respects each other's individuality. If it does not suit to me that is my problem, but I am not going to dump it on the other person. It is not his problem, it is my problem. If I cannot understand his painting, that does not make him insane, it simply makes me that I don't have a sensitivity for paintings.

If I cannot understand his music, that means I don't have musical ears.

Just the opposite is happening in the society. If you cannot understand his music, he is mad. And because you are the majority, the poor fellow starts feeling perhaps he is mad, because everybody else is agreeing on his madness. And once a man accepts the idea that he is mad, insane, below the normal, he has almost committed suicide.

So I have to drag these people back to life -- and not only back to life but to a higher life, to a better life, to a more intense life. They are capable of it; that's what has driven them mad in the first place.

So therapies are the groundwork, and then works meditation. Once a deep acceptance has come to you, then you can grow. You are nourished.

And that's why I wanted to create communes around the world, because even if a person goes through the therapies and then back to the society, they will disturb him. In fact, he needs a totally new society. He needs people around him who love him just for the sake of love, there is no other reason. They may not understand his paintings but they respect his creativity. They are not going to condemn him.

On the contrary, if they are interested they will learn how to appreciate painting, music, poetry. If I cannot understand your language, that does not mean you are mad. That simply means I don't know that language. And if I am interested, I should learn the language. But just the opposite is happening all over the world.

If people cannot understand your language, you are mad. You have to be forced to forget your language. You have to be forced to learn their language. And this is very destructive.

I don't accept your therapists. Even Freud or Jung, Adler -- they are not completely psychoanalyzed, they themselves.

Freud was afraid his whole life. Many times his disciples whom he had analyzed wanted to analyze him. He refused. He knew perfectly well that being analyzed will expose him. All his eccentric stupid dreams he will have to tell. Then who is going to accept him as the greatest psychoanalyst? He is just an ordinary man, as anybody else.

He will have to accept that he is afraid of death, so much so that even the mention of the word death used to give him a fit. He will become unconscious.

He was very much afraid of ghosts. And he is the founder of psychoanalysis.

He needs to come here, wherever he is. He needs to go through the therapies available here. And he will not have anything to fear about, because we do not condemn anything.

If you have a nightmare, it is perfectly good. Human beings have nightmares.

If you have a sexual dream, it is just natural. You are only a victim of thousands of years of religious condemnation of sex.

I have been to aboriginal societies in India. Strange. Rarely a person says that he has dreams. In an aboriginal society they don't have dreams. Sigmund Freud will have completely freaked out, that there are people who don't have dreams.

Because they don't repress anything, so there is nothing left to dream about.

They do whatsoever is natural.

For dreams to exist, you need repression as an absolute necessity. For example, if you want to have a dream about food, fast -- and you will have dreams about great delicious plates, Chinese restaurant. Your whole night will be just feast upon feast. But fast is absolutely necessary. If you don't fast, then you cannot dream of feast.

The same is true about everything.

If people have sexual freedom, nobody is going to dream about sex. For what?

He knows the experience, he is free to have it as much as he wants. There is nothing hanging over in his head. But all the religions have repressed sex and filled people's dreams with sexuality.

Then comes a man like Freud who starts analyzing the dreams. It is such a vicious circle. You create the whole thing, then there are victims, then you need doctors, therapists, psychoanalysts, to interpret those dreams. And a dream is such a thing, you can interpret it in as many ways you want.

Every dream to Freud ultimately becomes a sexual dream. Whatever you dream does not matter; he will find out that it is sexual.

If you go with the same dream to Adler, he is bound to find out that it is will to power; it is ego, not sex.

If you go to Jung, it is neither ego nor sex. He will find some esoteric explanation.

Perhaps in your past lifes, in some mythologies....

And it is such a stupid situation that nobody bothers about these psychoanalysts.

A single dream in the hands of different psychologists, psychotherapists, starts having different color.

My reading is that Freud is sexually repressed, that's why he finds in every dream sex. That man is a poor victim of analysis.

Adler is a very egoistic person and wants to become as much powerful as possible. He projects his mind upon a poor person.

Jung himself is esoteric, mythological, believes in fictions. He projects his fictions upon you.

These three persons have destroyed many people's life. And their disciples are still doing the same all over the world.

My therapists are in a totally different trip. They have to clean your mind from all unnecessary ideas that have been imposed by the society, its psychoanalysts, its doctors, its so-called wise men. They want you to become again a simple, innocent child as you were born -- a rebirth.

That is the work of my therapy.

Once I have got the innocent child, then the work of therapy is finished. Then starts the work of meditation.

Then you are healthy, whole and ready to take any quantum leap. You are ready to go into the unknown.

In the East, meditation has existed but without any therapy. It was half.

You don't clean the ground and you start sowing the seeds. Your roses will be lost in the grass that will be growing there. First you have to remove all grass and all possibilities for grass to grow.

Therapy is missing in the Eastern approach. That's why enlightenment has happened only rarely, very rarely. Millions of people -- perhaps one becomes enlightened.

Just the opposite should be the case. In millions of people, perhaps one should miss, because enlightenment is just a natural phenomenon.

Without therapy, the East has missed much. Without meditation, the West has missed much.

I am bringing East and West together, because both separate are not going to create the whole man. Both together in an organic unity -- therapy plus meditation -- is equal to relation*. That is my formula.

Any other question?

Q:* YES, WE ALL SEEM TO BE A BIT STUCK ABOUT WHEN TO EXPRESS AND WHEN TO WITNESS.

A:* There should be no problem about expressing and witnessing. You can do both together and you should do both together.

Q:* THAT'S DIFFICULT FOR (INAUDIBLE).

A:* Just a little bit difficult in the beginning but immensely paying. And it is only a question of a little effort.

Otherwise, if you try to be a witness only, you will be repressing. What will happen to your expression? And that repression has been the problem for the whole humanity. So now you will be using witnessing as a method to repress.

The result will be the same as it has been out of all repression.

If you express and forget the witness, there is not going to be any growth of your consciousness.

Everybody is doing that.

No, you have to do both together. And they can be done both together.

For example, I am speaking to you. This is expression, but deep within me there is my witness watching me saying something to you, watching you, watching every expression on your face, in your eyes. And I don't see there is any contradiction.

The idea of contradiction has been created by cunning people. So it needs just a little effort. Try with very small things. For example, you are cleaning the floor.

Now, it is not much of a great creative activity. Why not you can witness too?

You are walking, a morning walk in the hills. Why can't you watch yourself walking? What is the problem? Walking is such a simple exercise that the body is doing it, you can remain centered inside and you can watch each step.

If you ever go to India, go to the place where Buddha became enlightened. Now there stands a temple in his memory, the bo tree under which he became enlightened -- although it is not the same but belongs to the same bo tree.

The bo trees have one thing very special: their roots grow from their branches. So there are bo trees which are thousands of year old. Perhaps the original has died, but his generations....

The original bo tree was burned by Hindus in India, but before it was burned, long before that, one of the emperors of India, Ashoka, has sent branches of the bo tree to all Buddhist countries. So when the bo tree was burned, a branch from Selum*, where the original bo tree's branch has become a big huge tree, a branch was brought from there. So in a way it is the same tree, the same juice.

And just by the side of the tree is a small path. That was Buddha's way of meditating: walking one hour -- small stones are there indicating where his feet must have touched -- walking continuously for one hour with full awareness, then one hour sitting under the tree doing nothing, simply watching whatever is happening inside.

A thought moves on the screen of the mind, a feeling comes. Or a bird suddenly starts singing and the sound comes to you. Or the wind blows and in the tree creates its music, its whisper. Anything that is happening around you, outside or inside, you have just to be a witness.

He had chosen both. Witness when you are not doing anything is simple. But once you know the taste of witness, then you can start doing small things like walking. There is no need to get lost into that activity. Then you can go to more complex activities: painting or playing on a guitar or dancing.

Then any activity can be made, and you will be immensely surprised that all the activities are same. Whether you are washing the floor, walking or playing music, the basic methodology is the same, that you remain a witness at the same time.

The witness need not be lost into activity. And once you know that the witness is totally a watcher upon the hills and every activity is there in the valley, far far away from you, then no activity touches you.

Then your activities start changing their nature, their quality, because a witness brings a radical change in you.

You cannot kill. Your witness will not allow you to do that. You cannot be jealous. Before the fire of your witnessing, all jealousies, greed, anger, hatred will be simply burned.

According to me, whatsoever witnessing allows you to do is good. That is my criterion of good. And whatsoever your witness destroys and does not allow you is bad.

So basically, reduced to the simple formula, there is no need to create a great theology of what is right and what is wrong and what is moral and what is immoral. I give you a simple key, a master key: just witness your activity. If it is not good, it will fall on its own accord. The witness will not allow it to happen.

Not that it will interfere, not that it will stop it. No, just its presence is enough.

Anything wrong is impossible. And whatever is possible is right.

So I don't give you detailed disciplines that, "Do this, don't do this," because something may be moral in one situation and immoral in another situation.

Something may be good today, may not be good tomorrow.

Life is continuously; it is a flux. Who knows what turn the river of life will take tomorrow?

So I don't give you any detailed discipline because every detailed discipline has made man a slave. He has to follow a certain doctrine knowing perfectly well that it is against his consciousness, against his intelligence, against the situation -- but what to do? It is the doctrine that he has taken a vow to follow.

My sannyasins don't have any discipline, no law to follow anything. Just they have to be witnesses and then they are free. Their witnessing will decide what is right and what is wrong.

And once you are a witness you cannot do the wrong. It is just not in the nature of witnessing. So a simple formula of witnessing changes your whole life, your whole perspective. Your way of seeing at things, doings, actions -- everything will be changed without any effort to change them. And that is where beauty lies.

If somebody tries like.... Mahatma Gandhi was continuously trying to be nonviolent. I wrote him a letter -- I was too young -- that, "Your very effort of continuously trying to be nonviolent shows one thing: that you are a violent man. Otherwise why you are making that effort?"

If somebody is continuously making an effort not to steal, what will be the conclusion? That man is a thief. He is trying hard not to do it, but the desire to do it is there. And the more he is trying not to do it means the desire is not weak; it is very strong. That's why stronger effort is needed to repress it.

All your saints have been doing that: forcing themselves to be celibate, making all efforts, strenuously doing everything that other idiots have told them.

For example, in India all the saints will tell you that if you remain... want to remain a celibate, then take a cold bath before the sunrise. Food... if you can live only on milk, then you will be more successful in your celibacy. Sleep as little as possible.

Now, all these three things are dangerous.

I was talking to one of the so-called saints -- he had become world famous -- Swami Shivananda of Rishikesh, India. He has followers around the world, and these were his teachings.

And I asked him -- because he had been a medical doctor before he became a Hindu monk and renounced the world -- I asked him, "Do you realize what you are teaching? Because a cold bath makes a man more sexual. Have a good ice- cold bath and after that you would like to make love.

"Just living on milk, you will be more sexual than ever because it is only the man in the whole kingdom of animals who drinks milk his whole life. Other animals drink milk only in their childhood for few months, maybe few years. But you will not find a bull milking a cow. There is no need.

"So for the first thing," I told him that, "you are teaching something unnatural. A child needs food: liquid, easily digestible. Because he is not doing anything, so he has to live on milk. And milk is almost fulfilling all his needs. It is wholesome food.

"But the moment he starts getting a little bigger and is capable of eating solid things and able to digest them, then slowly milk should disappear out of his food. It is dangerous because it is unnatural, one thing. It is dangerous because a human child needs the milk of a human mother, because that is what he needs.

"Drinking the milk from a cow will give you the sexuality of a bull, because that cow was never made for you."

And I said to him, "You are a medical man, you can understand that it was not made for man, it was made for the bull -- and it will make you a bull. And celibacy will become more difficult.

"Then you suggest sleep as less as possible. What is the fear of sleep? The fear is because you are repressing sex, in sleep the dreams will be there. They will be sexual. So reduce the sleep. But reducing the sleep means the man will find the whole day dozing. That's what the saints... you will find everywhere in India.

The whole day. This is a strange kind of spirituality."

But once you get caught into any idea which is unnatural, and if it has been traditionally there for thousands of years you never inquire.

Why so many people are sexually repressed? And what their sexual repression is doing to them? It is making them perverts, making them homosexuals, making them make love to the animals.

All kinds of perversities have ended into the disease AIDS. I call AIDS a religious disease; religions are responsible for it. And every government should make a law against celibacy, that anybody trying to be celibate should be immediately imprisoned -- and imprisoned with women. Otherwise the jail is also a monastery. Women are separate, men are separate. So what monastery does the jail does, the army does. Hostels, universities....

When I became a teacher in the university, the first thing I did -- because as I entered into the class I saw the girls sitting on this corner, four, five rows just empty in front of me, and boys are sitting on the other corner -- I said, "Whom I am going to teach -- these tables and chairs? And what kind of nonsense is this?

Who told you to sit like this? Just get mixed and be in front of me."

They hesitated. They have never heard a teacher to tell them to get mixed. I said, "You get mixed immediately. Otherwise I am going to report to the vice chancellor that something absolutely unnatural, unpsychological, is happening.

Slowly, hesita -- ... I said, "Don't hesitate! Just move and get mixed. And every day in my class you cannot sit separately. And I don't mind if you try to touch the girl or the girl tries to pull your shirt. Whatever is natural is accepted by me.

"So I don't want you to sit there frozen, shrunken. That is not going to happen in my class. Enjoy being together. I know you have been throwing slips, stones, letters. There is no need. Just sit by your side, give the letter to the girl -- or whatever you want to do -- because, in fact, you are all sexually mature. You should do something. And you are just studying philosophy. You are absolutely insane. This is the time to study philosophy? This is the time to go out and make love. Philosophy in the old age when you cannot do anything else -- you can study philosophy then."

They all were so much afraid. Slowly, slowly they got relaxed, but other classes started feeling jealous of them. Other professors started reporting to the vice chancellor that, "This man is dangerous. He is allowing boys and girls doing things which we all have been prohibiting. Rather than stopping them getting into each other's contact, he is helping them. He says, `If you don't know how to write a love letter, come to me. I will teach you. Philosophy is secondary. It is not much. We will finish it in six months the two years' course. The remaining one year and six months, enjoy, dance, sing. Don't be worried."'

The vice chancellor finally had to call me, and he said, "I have heard all these things. What do you say?"

I said, "You must have been a student in the university."

He said, "Yes. I have been. Otherwise how I can be the vice chancellor?"

I said, "Then just go a little back and remember those days when girls were sitting far away and you were sitting far away. What was going in your mind?"

He said, "You seem to be a strange fellow. I have asked you to come because I want to inquire about something."

I said, "That we'll take later on. First answer my question and be sincere.

Otherwise I give you an open challenge tomorrow before the whole university, all the professors, all the students. We can discuss about the thing and let them vote."

He said, "Don't get excited. Perhaps you are right. I remember... I am now an old man -- and I hope that you will not say this to anybody -- I was thinking of the girls. I was not listening to the professor. Nobody was listening to the professor.

The girls were throwing chits, we were throwing chits, letters being exchanged."

Then I said, "Can I go?"

He said, "Of course. You simply go and do whatsoever you want. I won't want a public encounter with you. I know you will win in it. You are right, but I am a poor fellow. I have to look about my post. If I start doing such a thing the government will throw me out of this vice chancellorship."

I said, "I am not interested in your vice chancellorship. You remain vice chancellor, but remember: never again call me. Because there will come many complaints, but I make it clear to you right now that every time I will be right."

He said, "I have understood."

Then students -- boys and girls who were not students of my subject -- started asking me, "Can we also come?"

I said, "Philosophy has never been so juicy. Come! Anybody is welcome. I never take attendance. Just every month when the attendance register has to go back, I just go by the way -- absent, present, absent, present -- just I remember that everybody gets more than seventy-five percent present so they go to examination. I don't bother. So you can come."

My classes were overpopulated. People were sitting in the windows. But they were really expected to be in some other class.

Then complaints again, and the vice chancellor said, "Don't bring any complaint about that man. It is your problem if people are not coming to your class. What can I do? What he can do if they prefer? And they are not students of philosophy, but they don't want to come to your history, your economics, your politics. What can I do? And that man has challenged me that, "Never again call me, otherwise you have to face a public encounter."

But so many complaints from every department that finally he had to come. He knew that it is better not to call me. He had to come to my class. He could not believe.

In philosophy very few students, because philosophy is not a paying subject. The class was overcrowded. There was not even space for him to enter in. I saw him standing in the door behind the students. I told the students, "Let the vice chancellor come in. Let him also enjoy the whole scene that is happening here."

He came in. He could not believe his eyes, that girls and boys all sitting together and so joyously listening to me. Not a single disturbance, because I have prevented all disturbances from the very root. Now the boy is sitting by his girlfriend; there is no need to throw a stone, throw a letter. There is no need.

He said, "I cannot believe that such a crowded class and there is pindrop silence."

I said, "There is bound to be because there is no repression. I have told the students when they want to go they need not ask my permission, they should simply go. When they want to come in, they should simply come. They need not ask my permission. It is none of my business whether they are here or not. I enjoy teaching. I will go on teaching. If you want to sit here, sit. Otherwise get lost. But nobody goes away."

The vice chancellor said, "This should happen to every class, but I am not a strong man like you. I cannot say to the government that this is the way it should be."

The whole society is trying to repress sexuality. And then perversion comes in, then perversion brings psychological problems.

My therapies are just to clean. Whatever perversions have entered in you have to be brought to their natural sources. They have to be changed into expressions, not repressions.

And it is a miracle to see. When all your repressed energy becomes expressive, you cannot believe that you had so much energy and you could do so much, that you can also be a creator. Right now the society has played a very ugly game upon human beings. It has turned them against themselves, as if there has been a teaching that, "I have to put my right hand against the left hand and I have to go on trying to win."

Who is going to win? It is my left hand, it is my right hand. They both belong to me. But one thing is certain. If I get involved into such a conflict, I will be split.

That is what schizophrenia is. People's energies have been split against, so half of the person is against the other half. And they are fighting. Their whole life is wasted in fighting.

The same energy could have made this existence more beautiful, more creative, more relaxed, more enjoyable. There would have been more love, more laughter.

My therapeutic work is to undo everything that society has done to you. The moment you are completely freed from the society, that's what I mean by sannyas: that you have dropped that prison that you have been carrying all around yourself, that you are no more a caged bird -- although the cage was made of gold and there was much investment in it, and it was so beautiful, a piece of art. But it destroyed your freedom. It destroyed you.

My work consists to bring you out of your cages -- Hindu, Christian, Jew, communist, theist, atheist. There are so many cages of all sizes and shapes. You can choose any cage; there is no problem.

Every shopkeeper who is selling cages is against me -- every, without exception - - for the simple reason because I am teaching my people that cages are not the places to live. The whole sky is yours. Just open your wings and try to reach to the stars.

The other therapies are doing just the opposite. You somehow are trying to get out of the cage. Perhaps a part of you is already out of the cage. That's what the society calls crazy, insane, and the work of the psychoanalyst is to force you back, to convince you with all his jargon that this is not right, you should not try to get out of the cage. The cage is your safety, security, your sanity. In the cage you are normal; outside of the cage you will become abnormal.

I want everybody to come out of the cage and live a life of absolute freedom. This life of freedom will make him capable to know one day his ultimate reality.

I am using for the first time therapies as groundwork for meditation. Also I am using for the first time meditations on the base of therapies, because to me a person who starts meditating without going through therapies will have tremendously hard time and perhaps will never reach to enlightenment. That is almost impossible. First he has to drop so many things. With all those things you cannot go on uphill to the Everest.

When Edmund Hillary* reached on the Everest, he has to throw everything.

They had carried all kinds of facilities, but by the time he reached, even to carry a flask was too much because the air is so thin and the oxygen is so small, breathing becomes difficult, carrying even a small load -- just a flask of coffee or tea -- even that he has to drop. When he reached on the top he was standing there alone. Even his overcoat he had to drop on the way. That was becoming too heavy.

The same is the situation about enlightenment. It is an Everest of consciousness and you will have to drop everything. You will have to unburden yourself.

Therapies help you to unburden and meditation teaches you how to go uphill.

Both together make the whole relation.

Okay.