Chapter 15

[NOTE: This discourse will be in the book "India Coming Back Home", which has not been published, as of August 1992.

INTERVIEW BY THE SIMLA TIMES

I have no ideology. That is one of the problems for people. If I had an ideology, a fixed catechism like the Christians' ten commandments, then it would have been easier for people to understand or argue or oppose or support. I don't have an ideology. I have only a way of life.

Ideologies are strategies to make people slaves. Ideologies want organizations - Hindu ideology, Mohammedan ideology, communist ideology. They all want more and more people to become members of their ideology. They all stop people from thinking, because they say, "We give you a ready-made ideology.

You need not think." They impose. They say, "God exists because Mohammed says so."

I was surprised to know that even professors and chancellors in America also have the same third-class mind. When I asked them, "How do you know about God?" they said, "Because the Bible says it." Now this is poverty of intelligence, it is dogma. And what guarantee is there that the Bible is right? And if the Bible is right then why not Vedas? Because Vedas also say they are words of God.

Then why not the Koran? Why especially the Bible?

Ideologies create organizations, churches, and exploit people's intelligence.

I don't have any ideology. On the contrary, I have a certain way of living in which you can live without becoming a member of any cult, creed or religion.

You can live on your own. When you live on your own your intelligence grows.

Because it is independent it has to face problems and challenges, and all those challenges and problems sharpen your intelligence. It gives you integrity; it gives you strength. And whatever you say, you say out of your own experience - you don't quote from the Bible, or Gita, or Vedas. That is nonsense. A man should be able to say something out of his own experience; only that is true. Unless experienced, it is not truth; it is hearsay.

So my whole effort is to prepare individuals, not groups; and each individual has to be a seeker, not a believer. Each individual has to come to his own understanding about life, existence and the ultimate values. Those values may be different to you, they may be different to him, they may be different to somebody else - it doesn't matter, but they will have a beauty; just like roses are different from marigolds, marigolds are different from the lotus, but they all have their beauty. If the whole world was full of roses it would be boring.

I want all colors and all fragrances in the world, and each individual brings a fragrance with him which these organizations and ideologies stop - they make you Christian.

Just this morning somebody was asking me, "Are you a Hindu?"

I said, "No."

He said, "Born a Hindu?"

I said, "No."

He was at a loss because he could not think what more to ask.

In fact, nobody is a born Hindu and nobody is born Mohammedan. Everybody is born a human being.

These are the ideologies imposed on the poor child by the parents, teachers, society. My effort is to deprogram you. I call it sannyas - not renouncing the world, but renouncing all that has been imposed upon you so that you can discover your innocent self as you had come from nature - just born. It has a beauty, and a tremendous strength. And when any word comes out of it, it has an authority which no quotation can have.

So I don't have any ideology. I am against all ideologies so how can I have an ideology?

Just talking to people heart to heart the way I am talking to you.

My way of meditation is very simple. There are one hundred and twelve methods of meditation. Out of all of those I have chosen the most simple - the most easily done. I call it witnessing.

The moment you witness something you become separate from it, you are the witness, the thing becomes an object - the witnessed.

If you are walking on the road, and you are also witnessing that you are walking - not going along just like a robot, mechanical, everyday habit, the road is known, the legs know it, you can even walk with closed eyes. But walking with absolute alertness every step, every fall of a leaf, every ray of the sun, every bird flying in front of you, fully alert... slowly, slowly, you become aware that you are not the body that is walking, you are something inside which is witnessing.

Once you have witnessed your body, you have got the knack of the method.

Then you start witnessing your thoughts - sitting silently, just watching the rush of thoughts, not interfering, not saying, "This is good. This is bad." Not justifying, not appreciating, no judgment... non-judgmental witnessing, just like the mirror. Anybody passes by, the mirror reflects it; that's all, it makes no comment.

Strangely enough, when you stop making comments on the thoughts, they begin to stop; your comments keep them alive. Once you are simply a mirrorlike witness, thoughts disappear, and you become aware of a deeper layer, of emotions, moods, which are very subtle. You are not even aware many times that you are sad. You are often not aware of what your emotional state is - it is very deep, there is a thick layer of thoughts. When thoughts have stopped, then you become aware of a very subtle breeze - and there is a great joy to see it pass. The method remains the same - you remain a witness without judgment.

First body, second mind, third heart. And the fourth happens on its own.

I call my way the fourth way because after the third you cannot do anything.

Once your emotions and moods disappear, suddenly there is a quantum leap - the witness has nothing to witness anymore. It comes home. It witnesses itself. It becomes both the seer and the seen, the object and the subject, and for the first time you have unity. This experience of absolute organic unity of your consciousness has been called by different names - moksha, nirvana, liberation, enlightenment, illumination. Whatever word you choose makes no difference.

But this is the ultimate peak, this is the ultimate goal of human life.

So my method is very simple. You need not even sit to do it. You can do it anywhere - walking on the street, sitting in the bus, sitting in the plane, eating, even sleeping. When you are going to sleep you don't fall asleep suddenly, it takes a few minutes; just watch how the sleep comes in. Slowly, slowly, you will see sleep coming in, and as your witnessing becomes deeper there comes a moment when you can see that the whole night you are asleep yet still alert.

I have tried almost all one hundred and twelve methods. That list is exhaustive, there is no possibility of adding a single method more. You can make a method of combinations, but those one hundred and twelve are exhaustive.

Out of them all I have chosen witnessing, because most of them are based on this in different ways.

For example, if while making love you also witness, it becomes tantra. Tantra has taken one method, used it for love, and changed the whole sexual energy into a spiritual phenomenon. That's what I have been talking about, and I have been misunderstood by almost everybody. They think I am teaching free sex. I am teaching meditative sex, and they think I am teaching free sex. I was simply teaching that if you can make sex an object of meditation you can become free of it - because with meditation the energy starts moving higher and higher.

My sannyasins who have been with me are puzzled that they have lost all interest in sex. And the people who have been condemning me - that is their own imagination, their own creation, the whole idea of free sex. But it is sensational, particularly in a country which is very repressive about sex.

To me, sex is as natural as everything else. If we can make sleeping a meditation, if we can make eating a meditation, why leave sex out? And sex is so powerful that it should not be left out; otherwise, that will create disturbance. It should be absorbed into your total meditative process. It should become an organic unity.

They did; they had something substantial. The Tantrikas were not part of a religion but of a very rebellious group of religious people, who created Khajuraho and thousands of other temples around. All other religions are talking almost rubbish about God, about heaven and hell.

Tantrikas were the first scientific religious people who took possession of their energy - which was already available. They managed to transform it in the same way that later somebody transformed the electricity from the clouds to become a light in your house. Nobody would have conceived before that the electricity flashing in the clouds could run your fans and your air-conditioners and your railways.

Tantrikas had the first insight that man's sexual energy can be transformed easily. The only barrier is repression. If you repress it, then you cannot transform it. Don't repress sexual energy, don't condemn it, but create a friendship with it, that's what I have been saying. Don't think of it as a sin; it is not - you are born of it. The whole life is sex. If you call sex sin, then the whole life becomes sin, then the whole existence becomes sin - and this is not a religious approach to the world. We should make the whole world divine - not sin.

But nobody reports what I have been saying; they just go on misinforming people. This is a misfortune - that journalism still is not literature.

To me, there is no God; but there is something which is greater than God and that is godliness.

When you reach to your ultimate consciousness, you feel something which can be explained only by the word "godliness", and it is not only within you; the moment you feel it within you it is all over the world, the whole world is full of divineness.

I insist continuously, "Don't call it God," because God makes it personal. Let it remain a quality, a fragrance. Don't confine it, limit it. Otherwise, first you will ask what God is, then you will start asking how many noses your God has, what is the height of your God, what is the color of your God, how many wives does your God have? There are so many questions that are really stupid.

Accepting a personal God creates unnecessary problems which are insolvable.

Any hypothesis which creates problems rather than solving them is useless.

I call it godliness. Then you cannot ask whether God has a beard or a mustache, whether God is a woman or a man.

That's true. Unknown fears of man have created God, but knowing oneself you experience godliness.

And it is not out of fear, it is out of knowing. So I don't have any God to preach, to worship, to make an idol from, to make a temple for. But I have something better, which cannot be condemned, which even an atheist cannot condemn - because it is no longer a question of belief, it is a question of experiencing.

Atheists have been coming to me, and they ask me about God. I say, "Forget about God. You don't believe? That's perfectly good. You just meditate." And meditation does not need any prerequisite belief in God or anything - it is a scientific method. But if in the end of meditation you realize something which you had never dreamt of, then don't blame me. You will come to know something greater than God. You will not see God so that you can photograph him. You will not meet God and shake hands with him. But you will feel an oceanic energy all around you, all over the world, in which you disappear like a dewdrop; and that experience is so tremendously blissful that there is nothing that can surpass it.

No. How can I claim to be a God? There is no God. But I certainly claim to have experienced godliness. I am not a prophet, because a prophet is a poor fellow - he needs a God. I am nobody's servant.

No. I never think of the future, and I never think of the past. I live in the moment.

And why should I worry about the future? Whatever I can do now I will do. If it has some truth in it, it will survive. If it has no truth in it, it will die. But why should I be worried about it? The moment I die to the world, the world dies to me. We are both finished.

Only my idea about sex can help family planning. There is no God so you cannot say like the pope or Mother Teresa that God is giving birth to children so you cannot prevent it, otherwise you are preventing God's work. This is simple politics. They want more and more poor people, orphans dying on the street, so that they can be converted into Catholics.

And the strangest thing is that even the intelligentsia of this country does not recognize it; otherwise, Mother Teresa would be kicked out of this country.

They are preparing for the pope's arrival. They should simply cancel his tour, not allow him to be here, because he is against us. He will be preaching here against birth control, against abortion, because it is in their favor. Only the poor, the downtrodden, can become Catholics. It is their hope - twenty centuries old - that one day they will convert the whole world to Christianity. The only way is if the whole world becomes poor, then it is bound to become Christian - there is no other way.

I have no God so I cannot say that children come from God.

You are creating them, and if you are intelligent you should look around and see what kind of world you are going to give to the child that you love.

There's no problem. We have groups - therapy groups, encounter groups - where people sit together, put forward their arguments, and many people join in the argument. The whole effort is to find the truth. It is not a question of who is right, the question is what is right; and soon the differences disappear and they come to a conclusion which is unanimous.

About everything we can come to a unanimous answer. It just needs a little patience.

In these five years I have not found any single problem that cannot be unanimously dissolved.