Chapter 02

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

INTERVIEW WITH SWAMI DEVA NITAM, SCIENCE 85 MONTHLY, ITALIAN EDITION OF THE AMERICAN MAGAZINE

Answer: Every university, every science institute, should make it absolutely necessary that anybody who graduates as a scientist has also to graduate as a meditator. And meditation will be the priority. If you cannot pass as a meditator, you cannot be allowed a science degrees from the university. That's the only way - to make every scientist a meditator so that he becomes aware in himself of deeper things - life, love, consciousness - and ultimately the eternity of one's being.

The problem with meditation is that everyone has to go into it individually. You cannot teach it like any other subject. Any other subject can be taught to a class, there is no need that it be taught only to the individual. And every other subject can be examined collectively; people can answer the same questions.

Neither meditation can be taught as any other subject because it is not objective, nor can it be examined through examinations. It's learning will be different, it's examination will be different, because the whole dimension is different. The method can be told collectively, but each individual has to practice the method individually. And he is not only the practitioner, but also the examiner. As he goes deeper, only he knows that his thoughts are becoming less, that his mind is left far behind, that his feelings are evaporating, that he has come to a space which he has never known before where his mind has become non-existent. His ego has simply disappeared like a shadow.

@A090 He is, but he cannot say "I am" He can only feel the isness of his being, but he cannot assert it as "I" because he can see that he is connected with the whole existence; and only the whole existence can use the word "I." But the whole existence is absolutely silent. There is no need for it to use the word, because there is no other existence to talk with. And each individual is only an individual superficially, just as each wave on the ocean is individual but deep down it is just ocean.

But there can be certain criteria for which the person can be examined from outside, too. For example, this person will lose all possibility of anger. So you have to put him in situations where ordinarily anger would be the reaction, but he will not be angry. On the contrary, he be feel very compassionate and understanding. He will become very sensitive about everything; his listening, his seeing, his touch, his taste, his capacity to smell - all his senses will start functioning at their highest peak.

You can easily understand whether his sensitivity has deepened or not. His love will become unconditional. It will not be any longer a love-hate relationship, it will be just love. And conditions can be arranged where his beloved falls in love with somebody else. You have to watch his reaction. If he is a meditator, he will feel immensely happy that the person he loves is happy. It doesn't matter with whom, with him or with somebody else; what matters is, the person he loves is happy.

His total perspective about things will be different than the ordinary man is, so you cannot have examinations like you have in other subjects. You will have to create situations and watch: if he still reacts in the old ways, then meditation has not happened. @A160 If he behaves from some new dimensions, something which seems almost impossible.... Your beloved being happy and having pleasure with somebody else and you are rejoicing because she will be so happy - it is against man's animal nature. It is possible only when man has touched something of the superman.

And the same about many things. You will find the man in sickness, in health, the same. In sickness he will not be miserable. The body may be sick, the body may be in pain, but you can see the man is not affected by it. In pain or in pleasure he remains the same. In poverty or in richness he remains the same. His inner tranquility is not disturbed by anything. He may become famous, he may become notorious - it doesn't matter. What others say about him no longer matters at all; what matters is his own experience of himself.

For the ordinary man what others say matters too much, because he has nothing of his own. Whatever he thinks he is, is just a collection of opinions of other people. Somebody has said, "You are beautiful," somebody has said, "You are intelligent," and he has been collecting all these. And hence he's always afraid: he should not behave in such a way that he loses his reputation, respectability. He is always afraid of public opinion, what people will say, because all that he knows about himself is what people have said about him. If they take it back, they leave him naked. Then he does not know who he is: ugly, beautiful, intelligent, unintelligent. He has no idea, even vaguely, of his own being; he depends on others.

But the man of meditation has no need of others' opinions. He knows himself, so it does not matter what others say. Even if the whole world says something which goes against his own experience, he will simply laugh. At the most, that can be the only response. But he is not going to take any step to change people's opinion. Who are they? They don't know themselves and they are trying to label him. He will reject labeling. He will simply say, "Whatever I am, I am, and this is the way I am going to be."

So in different situations... it will take a little longer time than an ordinary examination takes, but it is worth it. He should be put into every possible situation, and watched. A few qualities will start evolving very clearly out of him. His mental age will suddenly become equal to his bodily age - which is measurable.

Ordinarily, the mental age remains near thirteen, although the person may be seventy. That's why... just scratch a person a little bit and he starts behaving like a child, throws a tantrum. You cannot believe that an educated man, a professor in the university, would behave like that. A woman so educated, who has a doctorate in philosophy, starts throwing things in the kitchen. The mental age is not equal to the physical age.

The meditator immediately takes the jump. If he is thirty, his mental age also is thirty, and that always remains balanced. Till the last breath, his mind goes on growing up.

Things which can be very visible will be that he is no longer ambitious. He is creative, he wants to create: but he is no longer a competitor, he does not want to compete. @A294 The very idea of competition goes against meditation. His creating is for its own joy - it has an intrinsic value. He may paint, he may compose music, he may write poetry, but it is not to compete with somebody else's. It is not to get a Nobel prize; Every moment he is creating, he is getting his Nobel prize. In the very act of creation he is rewarded, nothing more is needed.

He will not be ambitious. He will lose all interest in politics. He will lose all interest in anything that is in the service of death, destructive. You cannot force a meditator to make atom bombs, nuclear weapons - impossible.

It is possible today, because inside there is nobody to say no. It is possible today because the ambition is there, the great job is there, publicity is there, the Nobel prize is there - respectability is there and these are your considerations.

If you want to change so that science is not destructive to ecology, so that it is not destructive to humanity... on the contrary, it can enrich ecology. It can make humanity take tremendous quantum leaps of growth but for that the scientist has to be transformed first.

And the only way is that no university should allow any scientist to go out of the university without proving that he has attained the state of meditation. It may take one year, two years, it doesn't matter. He can have his scientific degrees, but they will have to wait. Unless he proves himself a meditator, those degrees will not be given to him.

That's the only way that the future generation of scientists can be a totally different kind, a different category, a discontinuity with the past scientists.

These scientists are in a strange position they are blind as far as their own consciousness is concerned. And they are intelligent enough to create, but they are blind: they don't know what they are creating, whether it is going to serve humanity or to destroy it. For their small rewards and salaries and awards... they don't think that what they are doing is going to create Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Q: IS THERE ANYTHING WE CAN DO TO HELP THIS PROCESS? IS THERE SOMETHING SANNYASINS CAN DO TO HELP THIS PROCESS OF TRANSMISSION OF MEDITATION TO THE UNIVERSITY?

A: Sannyasins can be made available to every university. Sannyasins - just one sannyasin is enough for one university to teach meditation, because the method can be given collectively, for all the classes of scientists, from students to the professors. And one sannyasin is enough to create situations. Whenever any meditator in the university says that he has experienced it and he is now ready to go through any fire test, then situations can be created. This much we can do, so they need not be worried about who will introduce meditations: our people are in every country, almost of every language, and we can make them available.

Q: ONE OF THE BASIC PROBLEMS OF SCIENCE IS LANGUAGE. SCIENCE IS GROWING BECAUSE WE HAVE A CLEAR DEFINITION OF WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT. ONE OF THE BASIC PROBLEMS FOR A SCIENTIST, WHEN THEY ARE TRYING TO UNDERSTAND WHAT THE INNER JOURNEY MEANS, IS TO DEFINE CLEARLY, FOR EXAMPLE, WHAT CONSCIOUSNESS MEANS. MOST OF THE SCIENTISTS DON'T MAKE ANY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONSCIOUSNESS, AWARENESS AND THE CONSCIOUS MIND.

THEY ARE USING THIS TERM IN THE SAME WAY. SO I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU IF IT'S POSSIBLE TO HAVE AN UNDERSTANDING ABOUT THOSE TERMS.

A: Yes, there is no difficulty. Words can be defined clearly. The difficulty is not because of the words, the basic difficulty is coming from somewhere else.

That is, the scientist, deep down, does not believe that there is anything inner. He may say so, he may not say so, but his whole training, his whole education, makes him trust only objects which he can dissect, which he can observe, which he can analyze, which he can compose, create, uncreate, find out their basic constituents. His whole mind is object-oriented, and subjectivity is not an object.

So if he wants subjectivity to be put before him on the table, that is not possible; that is not the nature of subjectivity. So the scientist goes on finding everything in the world except himself.

A great barrier exists, and the barrier is that there is nothing inner. When you cut a stone into pieces, what do you find? - more stone. You go on cutting smaller pieces, smaller pieces; you get to molecules, you get to atoms, you get to electrons, but still you have not come to anything inner. They are all objects.

He would also like life to be found in the same way, and because he cannot find life in the same way, he starts denying it. And consciousness is even more difficult a problem; because he cannot touch it, dissect it, find out its constituents, he simply rejects it. It does not exist.

So this is his prejudice. Because of this prejudice, he gets confused. And this prejudice can disappear very simply, if he hypothetically accepts - I'm not saying he has to believe it, just hypothetically he accepts that if there are things outside, then it is something very scientific to accept that there must be things which are inner, because in existence, everything is polarized by its opposite. The outer can exist only if there is an inner. The unconscious can exist only if there is consciousness. This is the simple dialectics of life - and he knows it, in existence everywhere he will find the same dialectics. Everything is opposed by its opposite. And they both are in some strange way complementary to each other - opposing, and still complementary to each other.

Denying the inner is a very unscientific attitude. So first one has hypothetically to accept that the inner exists. Secondly, one has to understand that the methodology that works for the outer cannot work for the inner. Simply because the inner is the opposite dimension, the same methods will not be applicable.

You will have to find new methodology for the inner. And that's what I call meditation: this is the new methodology for the inner.

Q: THIS IS WHAT YOU MEAN BY RELIGION BECOMING SCIENTIFIC?

A: Yes. If a new methodology is used, there is no problem. We are not telling him to accept anything. He can deny other religions without any difficulty, because they all want you first to accept belief, to have faith. He cannot dispose me.

Nobody can, for the simple fact that I am not asking you to believe in me. I am simply saying, hypothetically give a chance to a new method.

And logically I can explain to you that a new method is needed, because you are going into a new dimension; your old methods won't work. And if you find yourself that there is a vast universe inside you, far more valuable than all the stars together... because just the feeling of love has more value than the whole universe. What value has the universe?

Just a little bit of absolute silence and you attain to new heights of consciousness; even Everest is left far behind. Just a little experience of your own being, and you have touched the very heart of existence. And you know now life is eternal; death is only a change of form.

But this life is not available to your crude instruments. It is too subtle, your instruments are too crude. It needs subtle instruments, and that's what meditations are. And once the experience is there, the clarity comes: what is mind, what is no-mind, what is consciousness and what is super-consciousness.

As you go deeper, finally you come to the cosmic consciousness, in which you are no longer in the old way. The dewdrop has lost its boundaries, it has become one with the ocean: it is an oceanic feeling, that you are one with the whole.

So these words can be made very clear only through experience, not through dictionaries - the people who are writing dictionaries have never meditated.

(Tape side B) It is time that science moves inwards. It will do two things: it will make science complete; otherwise it is half, and half-truths are more dangerous than lies. And science is still a half-truth. That's its destructiveness, that's why it has disturbed the whole ecology. It is going to destroy the whole planet. And whatever it is doing, with all good intentions, turns out to be wrong. It does not help, it injures.

So one thing - if it moves inwards, it becomes complete. Then the truth has both an inner heartbeat and an outer body.

This is one side. On the other side, if science becomes whole, religions have to die. They don't have any function, because science can do far better than these old religions have been doing.

So to me it is a double-edged sword; on the one hand it will destroy the materialistic scientist, on the other hand it will destroy the so-called organized religions. And they both need to be in their graves as soon as possible. Then science is enough.

And then science need not be Christian - it is not. If physics can be just physics, not Christian, not Hindu, not Jewish, then what is the point? When science discovers consciousness and becomes the inner science of man, it will be simply the science of the inner. No question of Christianity, no question of Hinduism.

All those dodos can jump in any lake. And they will not die until science accepts the responsibility of going in. Because that field is left uncovered. Then it can be exploited by all kinds of conmen. That's what your so-called religious saints are:

conmen, exploiting people for centuries. But once science enters... It has happened in other places. There was astrology - the moment science entered, it started disappearing; a new science, astronomy, came into being. Astrology faded by itself, lost its ground. As chemistry developed, alchemists disappeared, there was no need for them.

This is a very critical moment for both, science and the old organized religions. If science wants to save humanity and this earth, it has to make the scientist also a saint. Now the division cannot be tolerated. That split is driving the whole humanity schizophrenic.

Q: I WOULD LIKE TO ASK YOU ONE QUESTION, A VERY DELICATE QUESTION. IN THE PAST THERE HAVE BEEN SCHOOLS AND MASTERS WHO HAVE USED A VERY SCIENTIFIC APPROACH TO RELIGION OR MEDITATION - LIKE PATANJALI, PYTHAGORAS, GURDJIEFF. IS THERE ANYTHING IN THEIR TEACHING WE CAN USE OR DO WE HAVE TO CREATE A TOTALLY NEW KIND OF SCIENTIFIC WAY?

A: We have to create a totally new scientific way. Whoever has been teaching a scientific attitude must be creating a fiction, because science as it is now is so addicted to the object that its whole approach and attitude is objective.

You cannot use that objective attitude for the inner journey of man.

Yes, you can use it about Patanjali, because ninety-nine percent of Patanjali is just physical exercise. Only one percent is concerned with the inner, and nobody takes note of it. People get lost in the jungle of the ninety-nine percent, so Patanjali has become reduced to yogasanas, the yoga postures. They can be studied very scientifically - they are objects, they are physical exercise - there is no problem about it.

But meditation cannot be studied in an objective way. We can explain what steps one has to take and then leave it to the person. We can help the person, if he gets stuck at some stage, to remove the hindrance, but we cannot in any way describe to him the final experience. We can only talk about the way, not about the goal.

The goal can only be experienced, not explained, even though those who have experienced it can also indicate the way. The goal is so vast, the experience is so infinite, that words just cannot contain it, cannot convey it. All methods have been used to convey it - painting, sculpture, dance, drama, poetry - but nothing succeeds. The moment you say something about it, you know you have distorted it; it is not the same thing.

It is exactly like when you love someone. Now the feeling of that love is one thing, and when you say to the person, "I love you," you know these words "I love you" do not express what you feel. The feeling is so big, so alive, and the words are so dead and so small, that in fact people start saying to each other "I love you" when they stop loving. Only husbands and wives say to each other, "I love you."

Lovers hesitate. They may rather hold each other's hand and sit silently; perhaps something transpires hand to hand. You may give a roseflower rather than saying "I love you". That roseflower can say more, much more.

But the experience of one's being is millions of times bigger than love. No roseflower can help.

So all that can be done is to point the way. And it is not difficult. And I have enough sannyasins now. More universities can send their people here to learn methods, and they can go back to the university and just teach - at least the people who are going to be the scientists. If everybody learns, it will be tremendously beautiful, because the man who is going to be a poet, if he knows meditation too, his poetry will have a different flavor.

But the scientist has to learn it, it cannot be optional, because in his hands are now life and death. And if he is not aware of his own life, how can he be in the service of the life that is all around? If he is aware of his own life, then he is aware of the life of plants, of the life of the mountains, of the life of animals, of other human beings. Then he cannot do anything against life.

Now in such an advanced technological age we can produce artificial meat; there is no need to kill animals. Or we can give the taste of meat to any vegetable, the flavor. If people are so idiot that they cannot live without eating meat, then artificial meat can be available, vegetarian meat can be available. Meat can be grown in the fields.

We can grow so much food if science turns towards enriching the earth... which has been exploited for millions of years and has become very poor. They can enrich it now, there is no need for poverty. But they are all interested in nuclear weapons. The same nuclear energy can be diverted into creating a more comfortable, more luxurious life for everybody on the earth.

But that will happen only when the person understands his own life, its value; his own consciousness, its enormous infinity. And it is the earth, in the whole solar system, which has come to such a point of evolution where life has turned into consciousness. A few people have gone beyond consciousness into superconsciousness, and a small number has gone even to the cosmic consciousness. That's what I call enlightenment.

Destroying this earth is not only destroying this planet, it is destroying millions of years of effort of the whole solar system. And nobody knows, it is just assumed, that perhaps there are fifty thousand planets in other solar systems which may have some kind of life. But no scientist has said that anywhere in this vast universe.... The vastness is simply inconceivable.

There are a few stars whose rays have not reached the earth. The earth is four billion years old - in four billion years their rays have not reached the earth. It is possible that the earth may die and those stars will never come to know about it.

By the time their rays reach it, it will have happened; it lived, it evolved, it destroyed itself.

In such a vast universe, no scientist even suspects that there is, anywhere, consciousness. Now, to destroy this consciousness is simply the uttermost stupidity that man can do. Anything - communism, democracy, capitalism - all that garbage means nothing when the question of saving human consciousness arises. All those questions have no meaning. But the scientist has to be made aware of it; particularly the new generation can be made aware. And slowly approaches can be made to the old generation too, because the old generation also is feeling uneasy.

Just a few days ago, twenty nuclear physicists of America - who are the founders of nuclear plants in America, who are the only twenty experts in America - wrote a petition to the Supreme Court: "Now it is time that this piling up of nuclear energy and nuclear weapons should be stopped. We founded these plants and now we are shaking, because what we have done can destroy all life on the whole earth, any moment." The question is arising in their mind too. But rather than writing a petition to the Supreme Court, it would be more dignified for those twenty nuclear physicists to stop working. It is better to be beggars on the street and declare clearly to the American government: "We can only create nuclear energy in the service of life - we refuse to serve death."

Just writing a petition won't help. Nothing else happened - the petition has been filed, and they go on creating more nuclear weapons. Because they have good salaries, good houses, everything the best, it is difficult for them. But they can be made conscious. They can be approached, because they are becoming aware.

The same is the situation in the Soviet Union. Sakharov, who was the best physicist in the whole world... he was the president of the Soviet Academy of Science. Because he showed a few signs of independence, because he refused the Soviet Government - the Soviet government wanted him to refuse the Nobel prize and he did not - the best mind in the whole world is now just rotting in Siberia. And nobody is caring, the whole world is silent. And he is rotting for you. He was removed from the directorship, his car was taken away, his salary was dropped, his house was taken away and then finally he was thrown into Siberia - just to live there and wait for death. And in Siberia he is not the only scientist; three other Nobel prize-winners are in the same situation. When the Nobel prize was given to them the government was unwilling and wanted them to refuse, and they did not refuse; they are also there.

So there is a possibility that the new generation can certainly be changed. The old generation can also be made aware that at least they should refuse to work in the service of death. And they should say to their government, "We are ready to work, we will change your nuclear energy towards creativity, rather than destruction."

The intelligentsia has to create the atmosphere. Universities have to wake up.

Every university has to fight, and every intelligent person who is around the world doing any kind of creative work has to join hands and create such an atmosphere around the earth that the politicians start feeling ashamed of what they are doing, that they start feeling guilty. And it is not difficult. When it is a question of life and death, it can be done. Then everything is easy. And I have enough sannyasins around the world, whom I can make available to every university, to every college. And we can train people, more people; they can send their people and we can train them. And there is no need to teach all kinds of meditations, just one method I can choose which can be the simplest, easiest, and applicable to all. And just that one method can be spread all over the world.

Q: WHICH ONE COULD BE?

A: It is what I call witnessing the breath. It is a very simple method. Just in your silent moments when you are sitting, or traveling in a train or in a plane, close your eyes and watch your breath. Going in, you go with it; coming out, you come outward.

As you go in, come out, you will become aware of two points. As you go in, there is a small, fragment of a moment when the breath stops before it starts moving outward. And the same happens outside: before it has moved outward, for a split second the breathing stops, before it again moves in. These two points are very significant, because as you become more and more aware, these points will become more and more clear, longer. One breath goes in and then there is a pause, breathing stops. And in that pause there is so much beauty, so much bliss.

And the same happens outside; again the breathing stops. And these gaps go on becoming bigger and bigger, bigger and bigger.

There comes a time, which has been calculated for almost ten thousand years, and has been found to be exactly the same by all meditators who have used the method... the pause is of forty-eight minutes. You have arrived home. Then all that meditation can give to you will be available to you.

Now this is the simplest method that I have found. I have tried all the methods that have been tried down the ages by all the traditions and I have made my own methods. But this seems to be the simplest - and done without anybody knowing about it. Somebody can be sitting by your side and he will not know what you are doing. It need not be done at a particular time, you can do it any time. You can do it as many times in the day as is possible - sometimes just for two minutes; sometimes for longer periods, sometimes just for one or two minutes. Sometimes you are not feeling sleepy and you are just lying on the bed; don't bother about sleep, just do the method. It will do both jobs; it will give you a deep meditative silence, and just by doing it... you will only know in the morning when you wake up that somewhere sleep came in.

But the strange thing is, if you meditate and fall into sleep, you will wake up meditating. That means in a subtle way, in your deep unconscious, the method continued; your whole night became a meditation. Now that is the longest period you can get. And your sleep will be of a different quality - more silent, more relaxed, more rejuvenating.

And for six and eight hours, subliminally the witnessing continues. In the morning when you become aware that you are awake, you will be surprised:

you are witnessing your breath.

This is the simplest method which can be spread to all kinds of people, to all ages of people. The smallest child who can understand this much language can do it.

And the oldest man, who is just on his deathbed, can do it, because it does not need any physical exercise, does not need any physical posture. And if the man who is on the deathbed can go on doing it and die doing it, he will have his best experience of life, in death. And he will wake up in the new womb witnessing his breath. That continuity even goes on when your consciousness leaves one body and moves into another womb. Its riches are innumerable.

(Tape side C) But every scientist compulsorily must be meditative, and then it is only a question of twenty years. till the new generation takes over and we can create the science of the inner. Then science has two dimensions: the science of the outer and the science of the inner. And all these hocus-pocus religions will disappear of their own accord; there is no need even to do anything about them.

Q: BHAGWAN, ONE OF THE BASIC PROBLEM OF THE PSYCHOLOGIST IS THAT THEY ARE USING A MODEL OF MIND WITH YOURSELF AS A SUBJECTIVITY IN THE CENTER. AND THEN BELOW THAT THERE IS AN UNCONSCIOUS MIND, AND A COLLECTIVE UNCONSCIOUS MIND. THE MODEL YOU ARE USING SEEMS TO HAVE TWO POLARITIES. ONE IS THE SELF, THE CONSCIOUS MIND, OUR IDENTIFICATION WITH OUR PERSONALITY. AND THEN THERE IS A LAYER OF MIND, A KIND OF CONSCIOUSNESS WHICH IS THE STATE BELOW THAT, WHERE THERE IS NO-MIND. AND IT SEEMS THAT IN ORDINARY HUMAN PEOPLE THESE TWO POINTS ARE TOGETHER, THERE IS AN IDENTIFICATION. AND IN THE ENLIGHTENED ONE THERE IS A CLEAR OBSERVATION OF THIS SEPARATION BETWEEN SELF OR PERSONALITY, AND CONSCIOUSNESS.

IS THIS SO?

A: It was Sigmund Freud in the West who for the first time used the words "unconscious mind". He had no idea that in the East we have five thousand-year- old scriptures using the idea of the unconscious mind. So he thought he had discovered something. Then Jung found that if you go deeper than the unconscious, you find a collective unconscious mind. That too in the East we have been aware of for centuries.

One thing more we have been aware of which the West has still to find out: if you go below the collective unconscious mind, you will find the cosmic unconscious mind. And that is very logical.

Conscious mind is personal, unconscious mind is impersonal. The collective unconscious mind is all that has preceded you: the whole history of mind is contained in it. But this cannot be the foundation. Below it there is a cosmic unconscious mind, which is the mind of the whole existence.

These are the steps if you go below, downwards. So - collective unconscious mind, unconscious mind, cosmic unconscious mind - these three are the steps below the conscious mind. Exactly three are above the conscious mind, which nobody has in the West yet even thought about.

Above the conscious mind is the state I call no-mind. It is just like the impersonal, unconscious mind which is below. This is above. It is also impersonal, but you are fully conscious of it; it is not unconscious mind. It is above the conscious mind. You can call it "conscious no-mind" - no-mind because there are no thoughts, just absolute silence. Many meditators stop here, thinking that they have arrived. So there are a few religions in the East which have stopped at the no-mind, just as Sigmund Freud stopped at the unconscious mind and never bothered to go deeper into it. But there have been seekers who tried to reach higher.

As you go higher than the conscious no-mind, you find superconsciousness, or the superconscious mind. This superconsciousness is exactly the equivalent of the lower collective unconscious mind.

In this state of superconscious mind you experience that you are not separate; you are part of a consciousness sphere which is above the bio-sphere that surrounds the earth, you partake with the whole sphere. This makes you aware of the oneness of consciousness.

A few religions have stopped at the superconsciousness, just as Jung stopped at the collective unconsciousness. Above it is the cosmic conscious mind that makes you feel one, not only with consciousness but with the whole existence as such.

This is the point where one can feel what Patanjali calls samadhi.

The word samadhi means all problems are solved, all questions are dissolved.

You have come to a space which knows no questions, no problems, which is eternally blissful. This is the place which can be called godliness, because you are one with the whole existence.

Western psychotherapy has gone only on the lower steps of the ladder. And the reason why they have gone on the lower steps of the ladder is because Western psychology started studying sick, mentally deranged people. They were on the lower steps, so naturally they started finding out more and more about those lower steps. Eastern psychology has simply mentioned that these steps are there to be avoided, but they have not been studied. No thesis is available in the East which goes into details about these steps, they have simply been mentioned.

But in the East the higher steps have been very deeply studied, because they were studying the meditators, not the sick people. Because the objective study was different, the whole approach became different. They were studying the meditators so they became aware of the no-mind, of superconsciousness, of cosmic consciousness.

They were moving towards healthier states of consciousness, and they were finding ways how to move.

Western psychology unfortunately started with sick people. It has arrived at least up the collective unconscious; someday somebody will find the cosmic unconscious too. Their whole work is how to pull the sick person back to the normal consciousness, which they think is of great importance. In the East that is the place which has to be left, and in the West that is the place which has to be arrived at.

Q: IT SEEMS TO ME THAT YOU ARE TRYING TO HAVE US GO IN BOTH THE DIRECTIONS: SOMEHOW TO CLEAN OUR UNCONSCIOUS, DEEP DOWN...

A: Certainly, I have to do both. And my work is more complex than anybody else's has ever been - cleaning, through therapies, the unconscious layers, and raising the consciousness through meditation.

I want my sannyasins to become aware of all these seven states. One they are in, three are below, three are above. Of these seven states, three have to be avoided and three have to be nourished. And one has to go on moving towards the seventh.

So I'm working both ways. Therapies are trying to clean the lower storeys of our being and meditations are trying to open up the closed storeys of our upper being. And this can be done together.

If a man remains only normally conscious, it is not something great to brag about. If he falls down, which is very easy, because there are not very clear-cut divisions. In the night you move into the unconscious., you dream. Sometimes you move into the collective unconscious; you become a lion. That is a memory of some past life where you have been in that form. You can even become a rock, which is very rare. If you can become a rock in your dream - I have not come across a man - that means he has touched the cosmic unconscious. The rock is in the cosmic unconscious state.

So the divisions are not very clear-cut; consciousness is fluid. Even in the daytime if you are sitting and you start doodling, that is not conscious; that is something the unconscious has taken over. Or you start day-dreaming; something unconscious has taken over the conscious.

Once in a while something from the above also opens its door, even in normal people. You may be just sitting on the sea beach looking at the sunset and suddenly you feel that you have become more sensitive. Suddenly you feel the beauty of the sunset as you have never felt it before. You feel yourself more conscious. Every sound, the waves crashing on the shore... everything is crystal clear as it has never been before. Something of the no-mind has descended into your normal consciousness, has slipped down.

Q: THIS IS WHAT MASLOW CALLED THE "PEAK EXPERIENCE," A MOMENT OF...

A: Yes, Yes, exactly what he calls "peak experiences." It can happen while you are making love and you feel an orgasmic experience. It is just the no-mind slipping down, taking possession of your normal mind. But it is not in your hands, so any moment it comes and goes. Sometimes for no reason-you are sitting silently and suddenly you feel transported. A strange beauty surrounds you, a great joy, for no reason. But this is only the second stage above the normal. It is nothing compared to superconsciousness, and the superconsciousness is nothing to be compared with cosmic consciousness. And the psychology will be full and complete when it covers all the seven storeys of man.

I have called my new man, Zorba the Buddha. Zorba consists only of the four:

the normal mind and the three lower minds. Buddha consists of the three higher minds. All old religions have tried to create a rift, saying that the lower minds have to be denied and only higher minds have to be accepted; that they are truly spiritual and the lower are animal. But to me the whole has to be understood, witnessed, merged into one unity. Then only is man whole. I call that whole man, Zorba the Buddha. And that is my vision for the future man.

Okay?