Chapter 19

[NOTE: This is a typed tape transcript and has not been edited or published, as of August 1992. It is for reference use only. The interviewer's remarks have been omitted where not relevant to Osho's words]

QUESTION:* BHAGWAN, THE MAGAZINE IS A MEDICAL PSYCHOSOMATIC MAGAZINE, SO WE ARE SPEAKING TO PROFESSIONALS: DOCTORS, PHYSICIANS, AND PEOPLE DEALING WITH MEDICINE WHO LIKE TO KNOW ABOUT THE SCIENCE OF MEDITATION.

CAN YOU INTRODUCE THIS TO THESE PEOPLE?

ANSWER:* The first thing -- perhaps they may not be aware of it -- is that the words "medicine" and "meditation" come from the same root. Their meaning is the same: to heal.

Medicine heals the body, meditation heals the soul. Medicine is outwardly, meditation is inwardly. And man is whole only when medicine and meditation are together in deep harmony.

It is unfortunate that the day has not yet arrived when they are in harmony. The people who belong to the world of medicine think meditation is something crazy. And the people who belong to the world of meditation think medicine is just part of materialism which has to be renounced to attain to spiritual heights.

Both are wrong. Neither meditation is crazy nor is medicine something worthless.

A deep synthesis is needed. A real man who is authentically a healer will always think of an organic unity between the body and the soul, between matter and spirit, between the visible and the invisible.

Medicine will remain incomplete without meditation. And it is very apparent that it is incomplete.

You can give medicine to a person, but if the person has lost the will to live your medicine is not going to help. Medicine does not cure, it can only help. If the person deep down wants to live, then medicine can be of immense help; on its own it is impotent.

Meditation releases not only your will to live, it releases your experience of eternal life; it makes death nonexistent.

If medicine is also supported by meditation, if each hospital, clinic -- psychiatric, psychoanalytic -- takes the help of meditation, then so many things which you go round and round and are never able to accomplish, can be very easily accomplished.

But strange to know that even the greatest founders of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud; of analytical psychology, Carl Gustav Jung; of another school of psychoanalysis, Adler and even also the man who should be expected to understand more than Freud, Jung and Adler -- Assagioli, the founder of psychosynthesis -- are not aware of meditation.

They are all going in circles within the mind; but the real healing force is beyond the mind. The real life source is not in the mind. Mind, in fact, is the cause of all sickness.

That's why, in comparison to any other profession, twice as many psychoanalysts commit suicide. Now, in what way are these people going to help? Twice as many psychoanalysts are sexually perverted -- and these are the people who are going to help? Twice as many psychoanalysts go mad -- that is simply unbelievable!.

Something is basically wrong; otherwise, the psychoanalyst should be the last to go mad. Even politicians are left far behind; even criminals are left far behind.

Compared to any other profession, psychoanalysts are ahead in going mad, being perverted sexually, committing suicide.

It only shows that something very fundamental is missing. And I point towards meditation. Unless meditation is incorporated the situation is not going to change.

Meditation simply means a discipline that makes you capable of being aloof and detached from your mind. So even if the mind is sick, your consciousness is never sick. Even if your mind is going crazy, you are just witnessing it.

Mind is only a machine. You are not.

Meditation is the experience: "I am not my body, not my mind -- I am the witness of it all." This experience, this transcendental experience, immensely transforms the whole situation. Many things which were driving you crazy simply drop away.

They were capable of driving you crazy because you were identified with them.

Now you are no longer identified, you are just a watcher on the hills. They are something like a film on the screen. You need not be identified, although because of the continuous habit of identification you get identified.

Even in a movie I have seen people crying -- and they know perfectly well that there is only an empty screen and a film is projected; there is nothing to cry about. They have forgotten, they have become part of the movie.

I am reminded of a very famous scholar in India, Ishwarchandra* Vidyasagar*.

He was considered to be the topmost scholar of the ancient tradition of the Hindus. And it is a long tradition, thousands and thousands of scriptures.

Vidyasagar had a Sanskrit honorary degree, equivalent to D.Litt. Even the viceroy of India was impressed with Vidyasagar's wisdom and he wanted him to be honored by the British government. This man was world famous, his books were translated into all the important languages. His word was authority. And he was a very humble and simple man.

He was invited to see a drama. In the drama the villain is after a very simple and innocent woman -- but a very beautiful woman. And one day finally he gets the chance. The woman is coming from the forest where her father's farm is, to the house; it is evening and this man catches hold of her. In the thick forest, darkness is settling, and he is intent on raping her.

Vidyasagar was sitting just in front. He jumped on the stage, took off his shoe and started beating the villain. There was great silence. The villain took the shoe from his hand and said, "This is my life's greatest prize. I had never thought that a man of even the wisdom of Vidyasagar would be so identified, and forget that he is seeing simply a drama -- no rape is happening."

He refused to return the shoe. He kept the shoe in a beautiful glass case in his house as a memory, and he would show it with pride to everyone: "This shoe belongs to Ishwachandra Vidyasagar, the man completely forgot that this is a drama and became identified."

But this is our actual situation. What is happening in your mind is just a screen:

thoughts moving, dreams moving. You can sit aside and see it all just as a spectator, a witness. You need not even judge, because the moment you judge you become identified. You say, "This is good, this is bad." Then you want to keep the good and drop the bad.

When you are absolutely a witness, there is no judgment. You are simply a mirror reflecting whatsoever is happening.

Any man who can learn a little bit of meditation can get out of all mind sicknesses. There is no need for years and years of psychoanalysis, it is simply stupid. And there is not a single man on the whole earth whose psychoanalysis is complete; it can never be complete. There are people who have been in psychoanalysis for fifteen years, changing psychoanalysts, hoping perhaps if not with Freudians then with Jungians, if not with Jungians then Adlerians.... But the problem remains the same.

Great analysis is being done, it is one of the greatest profession today -- and absolutely based on nonsense.

There is no need to analyze anybody's dreams. What is needed is to wake up the man so dreams stop. But that will go against the whole profession.

If meditation spreads, psychoanalysis and other schools -- differing in small details but not basically -- are bound to disappear.

The health of the mind is not to be sought in the mind itself. The mind itself is sickness.

So there are degrees of sickness. Somebody is average sick so you don't think that he is a mental case -- just average sick like everybody else. Somebody is a little more; you think he is a little eccentric. Somebody is a little more and you start becoming afraid; he seems to be dangerous. He can do anything -- he becomes unpredictable. He becomes afraid of himself too; he does not know what he can do. He can kill himself, he can kill somebody -- he has no control over himself.

Now the only way is psychoanalysis, analytical psychology, psychosynthesis. All these can help him to become average sick at the most. If they succeed they can bring him back to the level of everybody else.

But if you watch people who are not psychologically sick, you will be surprised to know that they also have symptoms. For example, nobody thinks that smoking is part of a psychological sickness; because the whole world is smoking, nobody will think of it. The psychoanalyst himself, is smoking. But smoking a cigarette simply shows that the man has remained unsatisfied with his mother's breast. A cigarette is the substitute; it is just like the nipple of the mother. He holds it in his mouth and just as the warm milk from the mother's breast flows in his mouth, warm smoke from the cigarette flows into his mouth. It is harmful, he knows; there is no doubt about its harm. It is going to kill him two years earlier -- perhaps it will create tuberculosis for him, perhaps cancer of the lungs.

But it is strange... it helps him to relax. Knowing all this, whenever he feels nervous, tense, some strain, he immediately starts looking for a cigarette. The moment the cigarette is there in his mouth, he feels calm, quiet, collected, not nervous.

What has happened? This is just a repetition of an experience. Whenever the child was hungry, was tense, afraid of death, hunger -- where is the mother? If she never comes back, then what? A great strain is on the poor child. And then the mother comes and he finds the breast and the warm milk, and he is fast asleep on his mother's chest -- relaxed, no worry, no tension, no problem. This is the situation that the cigarette creates again and again.

Now, this is average sickness so nobody thinks that you are mad if you are smoking. It is accepted sickness. But if you look at the psychology of it, then it needs to be treated. It is dangerous and it shows that the man has missed something in his childhood. Perhaps the mother was not willing to give her breast as many times as the child wanted. Perhaps the breast was not given up to the age the child needed it; the mother was afraid about her breasts, her beauty.

She has created a sick mind.

You will be surprised that many people I have simply cured of smoking by telling them, "This is the situation, so don't be worried. Go into the bathroom, put one of your fingers in your mouth. Imagine it is your mother's breast, and enjoy it as much as you want."

The man will laugh, he will say, "What are you saying!"

I will say, "You just try. There is no need for anybody to know, there is no need even for me to be informed. But just give it a try. Lying down in your bed, just suck your own thumb. Children do. when they don't find the mother's breast, they suck their own thumb. They have already found a substitute. And you are stupid that you cannot find a simple substitute which the child finds."

Hesitantly, embarrassed, but they tried. And one day they had to accept that....

Of course they were very much embarrassed taking their own thumb in their mouth. They were afraid if somebody sees it, what will they think -- he is a professor of psychology and what is he doing? "If my wife sees me... so under my blanket, covered completely, I was enjoying my own thumb. And I really enjoyed it. I cannot explain to you how pleasant it was."

Q:* THEN HE KEEPS ON SUCKING HIS THUMB?

A:* Yes, people can suck their thumb. That is far better than cigarettes, because it will not harm anybody; the thumb has no nicotine, no poison, no smoke -- nothing. And it costs nothing -- it is free! Just don't start sucking other people's thumbs, suck your own thumb! If you start sucking other people's thumbs, then it may create another psychological problem. And the professors smoking habit dropped.

And there are thousand and one things that I can tell you that show that the average man is sick. But nobody takes note of them because they are common.

Just look at the paintings down the ages. Why are painters so much obsessed with the breasts of the woman? And these are great painters! All great sculpture is bound to depict beautiful breasts, breasts which do not in reality exist, cannot exist. But man has been imagining....

In Kajuraho in India, in Konarak in India -- and in India there are thousands of other places where you will find the most beautiful sculptures of naked women.

And you will not find such breasts anywhere else in the whole world.

Why not in the rest of the world, why only in India -- because the Indian woman hides the breast so much that the painter has to paint it, the sculptor has to sculpt it. Otherwise people will go mad -- in fact, he himself is going mad. And when he sculpts, then of course he makes the breast as beautiful as possible. He does not understand biology, he has only an aesthetic sense. so very round-shaped breasts.... But he does not know that if that round shaped breasts were really there, no child would ever survive, because on such a rounded breast the nipple will be in the middle and the poor child -- if he drinks the milk, his nose will be closed, he cannot breathe. He cannot do both things together. For the child, a longer breast is the best, his nose remains free.

But the artist is concerned with his own sickness. He is not worried about the child -- for whom the breast exists, it is not for the artist.

Strange, around the world all kinds of painters, sculptors, poets, are all so obsessed with breasts. And the breast is just a gland -- what is the point in it?

You don't get obsessed with the breasts of a cow. It is the same gland, just a different formation because it is for a different kind of kid. If bulls were painters, do you think they would be painting women's breasts? Never! It is just out of the question. They may be painting cows' breasts, and they will make them as impossible for the kids as you have made them. This whole literature, poetry, painting, is out of the average-sick mind, so nobody takes note of it.

Millions of people around the world go on worshipping God. Has anyone taken note of the fact that this is sickness, that this is simply a projection of a helpless child, a projection of a father figure?

There is no God, there has never been. Man has created God according to his own image because it is something that is needed by the sick mind. The healthy mind has no need for a God, the healthy mind has no need for a prayer. The healthy mind has no need for churches, temples, mosques, synagogues.

Someday in the future, when man may be more mature, he will be simply laughing at the whole history, thinking that people were simply idiots -- what were they doing? But this is common sickness.

Even if something looks absolutely mad if it is accepted by a group as a religious practice then nobody objects.

For example, Jaina monks in India once a year just pull out their hairs -- their beard, their mustache -- because they are against using any technology. That poor blade is technology! Don't use the rocket that goes to the moon, okay, but the poor blade.... It is not much technology.

And it is a symptom of a certain madness in madhouses that many mad people pull their hairs out. Everybody knows that when you are feeling crazy it feels like you would like to pull your hair out. Particularly women really feel like pulling them out, and sometimes they do it.

Now these Jaina monks are simply behaving in a sick way, but because it is a religious ritual and they have followers, nobody can call them sick. They are respected for that! Thousands of people gather to see when a Jaina monk pulls out his hairs, and those thousands of people are in tears, throwing flowers over the Jaina monk in deep respect, gratitude. And all that he is doing is something for which he needs some psychiatric care, not flowers. He needs medicine, he needs meditation -- both together.

The Jaina monk lives naked. Now, anybody else moving naked on the street is bound to be caught by the police, it is against the law. And psychoanalysts say that he is an exhibitionist, that he wants to show his genitalia to other people. He is committing a crime. But a Jaina monk lives naked -- nobody thinks that perhaps he is an exhibitionist who has taken shelter behind a religious doctrine and is simply enjoying showing his genitalia.

In particular areas where , during the British rule in India , British people lived, they had their own areas; Jaina monks were not allowed to move in those areas.

And if they were allowed to move, then special permission... and the followers had to surround them -- two, three hundred followers surrounding a naked man so nobody else could see it, then they could pass. I think it was perfectly right.

All the religions have done many pathological things, but because they are done by a religion they are accepted by the masses.

In Russia there was a Christian sect which used to cut off genitalia, and that was considered the greatest act of virtue. Women were not ready to be left behind, but they don't have any genitalia hanging out to cut; so they started cutting their breasts. They were also respected. Up to the revolution in Russia these people were worshipped as saints, great saints, and all that they had done was mutilate themselves. Do you think these people are mentally healthy? Is not something wrong?

All the religions preach fasting, which is against nature. You are starving yourself, torturing yourself. But you are respected for it, your ego is fulfilled because of it. So there is competition among saints: who fasts longer? They become just skeletons... but their worshippers go on growing.

This is something that cannot be called healthy. When you are thirsty you need water; when you are hungry you need food. To prevent your body from getting its needs means you have created a schizophrenia in yourself, you have split your personality in two. The body is the enemy and it has to be crushed, destroyed, tortured. The more it is tortured, the more is your gain in the spiritual world.

This is sheer nonsense. This is violence, and these people think they are non- violent people. I have been constantly in argument with these non-violent people, and I told them, "You are not non-violent. Whom are you trying to deceive? Yes, you are violent with yourself, that's why nobody takes objection."

I made it clear to these people -- and they have never been able to forgive me, "You are eating your own meat. You say you are vegetarians -- you are not, because if you are not eating your meat then where does your weight go on disappearing? Every day two pounds of meat is absorbed by your physical activities: moving, sitting, walking. You are eating your own meat -- you are cannibals. And you are known all over the world as the most non-violent people!

I cannot accept that."

If you look around, you will find the same kind of things everywhere -- different manifestations, but some degree of mental illness. So I don't see a division between the healthy, the so-called healthy masses, and the mad people in the madhouses. The difference is only of degrees.

And the function that the psychoanalysts are performing is making that difference less and less, making the madman average-mad. He had gone too far and become unique. He has attained to some individuality, he has made his madness special. That is not allowed; your madness should be just commonplace, then it is okay.But more than that your psychoanalysis has not been able to achieve. Without meditation it can never be able to achieve it.

So tell your psychologists, "If you really want to make an authentic science of psychology, then meditation has to become its very foundation. And if you can teach your patients to become detached from their mind, to be just a witness, you will be surprised that what ten years psychoanalysis cannot do, can be done within minutes."

The moment the person withdraws from the mind, the mind has no energy to go on into old routines. It is your identity with the mind that gives power to it. You have taken your identity back, you are no longer nursing the mind; it starts dying.

The farther you go away from it, the more and more your mind dies. And to attain a state of no-mind is what I call health. That is the goal of meditation. Then your spirit is healed, you have become whole.

And if your spirit is whole then your mind can never go crazy, because you don't have any mind. You have a brain, you have a memory system, but you are separate from it. You can use it but you cannot be used by it.

The ordinary man is being used by his mind. When it becomes too much, when the mind starts using you completely in a totalitarian way, we call it madness.

In front of my house in my village there lived a goldsmith -- a little eccentric. I used to sit in front of my house, reading, looking at him, and I could see what was his problem. He will be going to the market... he will lock his shop, check his lock two, three times, go a few feet, come back again, check the lock.

Sometimes I will meet him in the market and I say, "Have you checked the lock?"

And he will say, "My God! I am going back!" -- and he will rush back. First he must check his lock....

In the middle of his bath in the river, I will say, "What are you doing? Have you checked your lock?" His bath is incomplete and he takes his clothes and runs.

One day I saw him on the station, he was going out somewhere. He had purchased the ticket and was just going to sit in the train and I said, "What are you doing? Have you checked your lock?"

He said, "My God! You are something! Wherever I go, you are there. Now I cannot go even to this marriage. I was going, but now I cannot go.".He returned the ticket, went back to check his lock -- but by that time the train was gone.

He became very angry at me, because wherever I will see him I will ask him only one thing: "Have you checked your lock?"

By and by it became known to other people and to other children, that there is something strange. Just say to this man, "Have you checked your lock?" and he rushes back towards his home, he does not answer. Strange...!

His life became very troubled because the whole city was after him. Wherever he will go -- he will be purchasing vegetables and the man who is selling simply asks, "Have you checked your lock?" and he has dropped the idea of vegetables.

First he will run half a mile to look at the lock and check it!

One day he came to my father and he said, " This whole thing your son has done.

He started it."

But my father said, "Don't listen to these people. If they say, `Have you checked your lock?' tell them, `Yes, I have checked it"'

He said, "That is the problem -- because suspicion arises in me: perhaps... I may have checked, I may not have checked. Who knows? I want to say, `Yes, I have checked.' But how can I say it, with that doubt inside me...."

My father said, "Then what can I do? My boy is there; whatever you want to do, you can do with him."

And I said, "I have never done anything wrong to you. I have just reminded you in case you have forgotten. You should be grateful to me, thankful to me. And I had been taking such trouble. I go behind you to the river, to the railway station, to the market. I waste so much time just to remind you, `Have you checked your lock?' And you are complaining against me! And I do all this out of compassion."

He said, "Compassion! The whole town is doing it now -- out of compassion -- and my life has become a nightmare because these people cannot let me do anything. I am milking my cow and somebody is standing there: `Have you checked your lock?' Now I have to stop milking and run to check the lock."

There was nothing else in this man which was mad. If I had not exposed this idea, he would have known as perfectly normal. But now the whole village knew that he is a crackpot.

If you watch anybody you can find where his weak point is. It is not that something special has to be found.

One of my teachers was very friendly towards me and I was telling him about this goldsmith. He said, "That's okay." And where we were standing, just in front was a small shopkeeper, selling all kinds of things. He said, "Can you find something in this man?"

I said, "I don't know him, and he lives so far away from me that it will be difficult for me. But you just wait here; I will go and have a try."

I just went to that storekeeper and stood in front of him. He looked at me, waiting for me to purchase something, but I remained silent. He became a little nervous.

He said, "What is the matter?"

I said, "Nothing is the matter."

"What do you want?"

I said, "Nothing."

He said, "Then why are you standing here?"

I said, "This is strange: this is a street -- can't I stand here? Is it your property?"

The man started looking busy just to forget me, but I remained standing there. It was all useless what he was doing, I could see that: putting some box here, some box there, and in between looking at me. And finally he again asked, "What is the matter?"

I said, "I have told you, there is nothing the matter at all."

"But why are you standing there?"

I said, "You can provide me a chair, I can sit. But this is a street -- then others will start asking me, `On the street, why are you sitting in a chair?' So better I should stand. You be busy with your work."

He said, "Very strange. I have seen you many times passing by here" -- because he was just half way between my house and the school, so every day four times I was passing. "But you have never done such a thing."

I said, "But now I will do it every day."

He said, "What!"

"Yes. And I cannot guarantee -- others may start doing it too."

He became so afraid, he simply closed his shop and went inside. I came to my teacher, who was waiting. I said, "I have found it! You do only one thing:

tomorrow when he opens, you just stand outside. Don't move. He will ask you, `What is the matter?' You say, `Nothing' He will try to look busy; let him be busy.

He will ask again, `Why are you standing there?' You simply say, `This is a street, there is no question...."

The teacher said, "But he closed the shop!"

I said, "You can see -- this is not the time for closing the shop but he has closed it."

Next day the teacher was standing there, and I was waiting by the side so the shopkeeper could not see me. The same conversation followed, and the same result -- he closed the doors and went in. And then it became known to the whole school. One thousand students -- morning, afternoon, day, night, anytime: "You just stand there...."

My teacher said, "But this is strange. This man has always been absolutely sane -- you have driven him insane."

I said, "But I have not done anything except stand there. There must be something in that man which may have been dormant -- some fear, some paranoia; otherwise there was no need. I could have remained standing there. He should have waited; I would have gone -- how long can I stand there? And now he will be in constant trouble."

Just within ten days he was in the hospital, hospitalized for his insane behavior closing the shop in the day twenty, thirty times. The other shopkeepers reported, "This man has gone crazy. He opens the shop, closes it immediately, opens it, closes." Even his customers -- as they will approach close to him, he will close the shop. He forgot to make the distinction, "These are my customers."

I went to see him in the hospital. And I was just standing by the side of his bed.

He opened his eyes and he said, "My God! You will be coming here too?"

I said, "Wherever you go you will find me. You will have to tell me what is the fear? Have I done any harm to you?"

He said, "Harm? You destroyed my whole life. My business is finished, I am bankrupt. Nobody comes to my shop -- they think I am crazy. And all kinds of hooligans stand in front of my shop and just make me a laughingstock."

But I said, "In the first place, why did you get afraid? I really want to help you because I started this whole thing. Trust me -- I don't want to drive you more nuts, you are nuts already. What was the fear?"

And he said, "Perhaps I can say. I should say, it is time. If I don't say it, then I don't know what is going to happen to me."

He said, "My father was a very angry man, and he used to force me to stand where you were standing -- for hours, sometimes for the whole day -- without food, without water. Just a slight mistake on my part and the punishment was to stand there.

"The day you stood there, you reminded me of my childhood, and I became as afraid as I used to be afraid of my father. I knew perfectly well that you are not my father, and I am a grown-up man and there is no problem, but something inside me started trembling. I was feeling that I was breaking down. Out of fear I closed the shop.

"And then it became a daily routine. Every five, ten minutes I had to close my shop. How can I do business? -- closing, opening, closing, opening. Even my customers started laughing, my neighbors started laughing, my wife started laughing, my children started standing outside. Now I am in the hospital, and I don't know what is my future."

I said, "There is nothing in your future. Just my teacher, who lives behind your house -- we were arguing that every man has some trait, some possibility of becoming crazy. And he said, `You try it on this man because he is perfectly sane.' And I had no idea what to do, so I simply stood there. And then when I saw that you were becoming afraid, I thought, `I have got the exact point.' And when you became too much afraid and closed the doors I knew something in your psychology is connected with the situation, and unless that surfaces you can always be made afraid by this.

"So forgive me. But there is no need to be afraid. You come back, I will stand in the same place; you simply remain a witness, as if it does not matter. If I decide to stand there, that is my problem. If you can manage that, you will get over it; otherwise this whole town is going to finish you. I have started it, I want to end it."

He looked at me, he felt my sincerity. He came back home; stood on that spot -- and we both laughed. He neither asked me why I was standing there, nor did he ask me why I was laughing; nor did I ask him why he was laughing. But with that laughter something disappeared from that man.

And then people who had become accustomed to tease him by standing there, started looking stupid, looking silly, because he would simply smile and look at them and would not ask anything. They will stand there a few minutes and then they will be gone.

I told him one day, "You do one thing. When somebody is moving away, ask him, `Why are you going? Keep standing here a little more!' Because we have to finish it completely. If you start saying that, then that man will never stand there again."

He followed the advice, and soon, within fifteen days' time, we cleaned away the whole crowd; nobody was standing there.

And he was really grateful to me. Whenever I used to pass the railway station -- years later, when I started traveling around the country -- he used to always come with a packet of sweets or something to present to me.

I said, "Why do you unnecessarily take this trouble, coming two miles to the station?"

He said, "You have helped me so much. Since that day I am finished with fear, I am finished with my father. Now I can forgive him. Before that it was impossible, always wanted to kill him; now that idea never arises in me."

Every man is brought up in a society where it is impossible to keep him intact, sane. Hence psychology and other therapies have to do something for every individual. It is not only a question of treating the patients; the whole society is the patient.

My idea is, treat the patient, but also every university, every college, every school should run classes, courses, three-month courses, for anybody to join -- not particularly for sick people, for everybody -- to become more healthy, to become more whole. And meditation should be their base.

We can create a society which is basically healthy. Then these insane people will disappear. They are just extremes of the average human being.

But I don't see yet any psychology functioning in the direction of meditation.

Q:* YOU HAVE INVENTED SOME TECHNIQUES, MEDITATION TECHNIQUES, AND YOU SAY THAT IN INDIA THERE ARE A 112 TECHNIQUES OF MEDITATION. SO HOW TO CHOOSE WHAT IS USEFUL?

A:* They are all useful. One can just go through all 112 techniques -- which one can do within half an hour, because each technique consists only of two lines. So just go through them, and any technique that strikes you "This is what will be suitable to me" -- try it. Or if you find two, three techniques, then try them one by one. Give each a chance.

Out of 112 there must be a technique -- more than one; one is absolutely certain, but my experience is that more than one will be applicable to every human being. And the easiest way is just to go through, read them, and any technique that suddenly strikes you "This is it!" -- give it a try, at least for twenty-one days.

If it starts working, then forget everything, other techniques. Go on working on it. It does not matter how many techniques you try. What matters is that you try one technique to its very end, to its ultimate depth. And if you succeed in one technique, then every other technique becomes very easy.

If the first technique took six months, the other techniques may take just one week, because now you have reached to the exact point. You know the place, you know the space that meditation creates. This is a different path leading to the same space. And as you try a few other techniques, the time will become less.

I have tried all 112 techniques. After trying a dozen techniques, it becomes so easy -- the first time, you reach immediately to the space.

And then I have developed my own techniques other than these 112, because I saw that for the modern man there are a few problems which are not covered in those 112 techniques. They were written perhaps ten thousand years ago for a totally different kind of mankind, a different kind of culture, different kind of people. The modern man, the contemporary man, has some differences -- over ten thousand years it is absolutely evadable.

For example, the Dynamic Meditation is not amongst those 112. It is absolutely necessary for the modern man, although it may not have been at that time. If people are innocent there is no need for Dynamic Meditation. But if people are repressed, psychologically are carrying a lot of burden, then they need catharsis.

So Dynamic Meditation is just to help them clean the place. And then they can use any method from the 112. It will not be difficult. If they, right now, directly try, they will fail.

I have seen many people trying directly -- reaching nowhere, because they are so full of garbage that first it has to be emptied out.

Dynamic Meditation is of immense help. All the techniques that I have developed are for the contemporary man, and doing these techniques he will be clean, unburdened, simple, innocent. Perhaps there will be no need to try those techniques. But just for curiosity's sake you can try one of the techniques, and you will be surprised how quickly you enter into its very innermost core.

So first thing is something cathartic, which is absolutely necessary for the contemporary man. And then those silent methods can be used.

(Tape side C) Q:* WHILE YOU WERE SPEAKING, THIS IDEA CAME! YOU SAY PEOPLE HAVE TO BE HELPED TO BE AWAKENED, AND BASICALLY, I THINK, NONE OF THE PSYCHIATRIC OR MEDICAL TECHNIQUES ARE AWAKENING THE SELF. SO HOW IS IT POSSIBLE TO CREATE MEDITATION COURSES IF SOMEBODY IS NOT AWAKENED TO LEAD THOSE MEDITATION COURSES?

A:* It is not much of a problem. Even a man who has no cancer himself can be an expert in cancer surgery. You don't ask the surgeon, "Do you have any personal experience? Have you gone through cancer surgery?" No, he has just expertise, no experience, but his expertise can be used to give you an experience.

So it is not a question. If somebody has gone into meditation it is tremendously helpful to help others, because they will bring many problems, and if you have no experience it will be difficult for you to solve their problems. But you can make it clean and clear to them, "I have not experienced anything but I know the whole method. I can teach you the method, you can try it."

The method can be taught even through a tape recorder, a cassette. Not even a man is needed, just a cassette can be played and people can meditate accordingly. Of course, the cassette will not be able to answer your questions, but in fact there is no need to answer any questions. If you continue to meditate, those questions disappear by themselves.

So it is not an absolute necessity that only a man who knows meditation existentially can be a teacher.

Teachers and Masters are different things. The teacher is one who technically is an expert, who knows the method but has no experience. The Master is one who has the experience, who can even create methods, who can change old methods, who can make new methods, who can answer your questions. To have a Master is a benediction, but that is difficult: many will have to be satisfied with teachers.

But even through a teacher you can become a Master. This is the miracle. It has happened many times that the master was not enlightened but the disciple became enlightened. The master was simply an expert about every step in detail.

He taught the method and the disciple followed it -- and reached to that experience which the teacher himself was missing.

The teacher only gives information: the Master can give transformation. But if transformation is not available, then something is better than nothing. So even a teacher is good, rather than having no idea of what meditation is. Perhaps the teacher, seeing the disciples flowering, becoming blissful, silent, may start himself moving beyond knowledge into the world of existential experiencing.

There is no harm anyway.

Right now you cannot find so many Masters, but one Master can create thousands of teachers immediately. Masters cannot be created. It is something that is unpredictable. It may happen to someone..., and even then, if somebody becomes enlightened it is not necessary that he will be able to become a Master -- or even a teacher. He may know, but he may not be articulate enough to lead others to the same experience. That is a different art.

It was easy for me to speak because I started speaking before I became enlightened. Speaking became almost a natural thing to me before I became enlightened.

I have never learned any oratory, never been to any school where oratory is taught. I have never even read a book on the art of speaking. From my very childhood, because I was argumentative and everybody wanted me to keep silent.... In the family, in the school, in the college, in the university, everybody was saying to me, "Don't speak at all!"

I was expelled from many colleges for the simple reason that teachers were complaining that they could not complete the syllabus, the course for the year, because "this student leads us into such arguments that nothing can be completed."

But all that gave me great opportunity and made me more and more articulate. It became just a natural thing to me to argue with the neighbors, to argue with the teachers, to argue on the street -- anywhere. Just to find a man was enough and I will start some argument.

Q:* IT WAS NEEDED?

A:* I loved it -- there was no question of need -- just the way I love it now! So when I became enlightened it was not difficult for me. It was very easy.

So everybody is not necessarily going to be a Master or a teacher. That is a totally different art.

For example, enlightenment does not make you a poet. There have been a few enlightened people who have written immensely beautiful poetry, but they were poets. Even if they had not become enlightened they would have been great poets; poetry was something inborn in them. They became enlightened -- that was a different phenomenon. They used their poetic abilities to express their enlightenment.

There have been painters who became enlightened. Then certainly their painting has a quality which no other painter can compete with. It is luminous with something mysterious. They have poured into the canvas something which only they can. Some enlightened people become... became sculptors. Their sculpture is something to sit silently and meditate upon. They were not just creating art, they were using art to express the inexpressible. The way I am using words, they were using marble, stones, paints.

But thousands of enlightened people have lived on the earth and died silently because they did not have any talent to make their enlightenment available to other people in some way.

And there have been teachers who were not enlightened but many of their disciples became enlightened. These teachers had the articulateness of expressing something which they don't know, they have just heard about.

You will be surprised to know that every Buddhist scripture starts with the words, "I have heard." It is written by a teacher, not by a Master -- every scripture. Buddha has not written anything. He was a Master. Ananda, his disciple, who goes on writing, is very sincere. He simply goes on writing every scripture with the words, "I have heard Gautam the Buddha saying this." He does not say, "This is my experience" -- he cannot say it. But he was very articulate. He managed to collect tremendous treasure for centuries to come.

Many have become enlightened through Ananda and his scriptures, but he himself became enlightened only after Buddha's death.

And then comes a second surprise. When he became enlightened, he never spoke. Asked why, he said, "That will be ungrateful towards the Master. I cannot say things the way he could. I cannot put the same fragrance in my words, the way he was capable of. It is better for me to remain silent now. All that is worth saying he has said, and I have collected it."

But when he collected it, he was not enlightened. And when he became enlightened he declined to write anything, to say anything, for the simple reason, "It will be sheer ungratefulness to the Master and it will be cheap compared to him. He has showered such a treasure and I am a poor man: whatever I say will not stand any comparison. I know now what he knew, but he was he and I am I.

I am still just a disciple."