The secrets of life are very simple

Question 1:

The secrets of life are very simple, but the mind tries to make them complex.

Mind loves complexity, for the simple reason that mind is needed only if there is something complex.

If there is nothing complex, the very necessity for mind's existence disappears.

Mind does not want to let go of his mastery over you. He is only a servant but he has managed to become the master, and things have become upside down in your life.

The joke simply indicates a very obvious fact. The man was tearing up bits of paper and throwing them all over; naturally everybody thought something has gone wrong: he needs psychoanalysis, he needs some great person who understands the ways of the mind so that he can be fixed up.

Nobody even bothered to tell him, "Don't do this."

It was obvious that the man was getting insane, so they went to the Freudians, the Adlerians, the Jungians, to great psychoanalysts. And all those psychoanalysts must have worked hard, for hours, for years, analyzing the dreams of the man to find out why he tears up bits of paper and throws them all over the place. But nobody succeeded. As a last resort they took him to a magician, and he cured the man.

But NEWSWEEK is a snobbish magazine, so the joke is not complete. That's why you don't see what is so great about the joke.

The magician walked up and down the staircase and then whispered in the ear of the man, "You stop tearing papers; otherwise I will kick you down from the top." And he was a strong man.

"So take heed, because I don't believe in psychoanalysis or anything, I simply believe in kicking.

And I kick people from this place. Then they go rolling down hundreds of steps to the road. Now you can go home; just remember that I have only one trick. When any kind of mentally sick person is brought to me, I cure him. That's why I have been walking with you up and down these steps, to show you what it means when I kick you. So now just go home and remember it. Next time I will not say anything, I will simply do it." And the man understood it; anybody would have understood it.

They have left that part out of the joke and destroyed the beauty of it. That man must have been enjoying just a childish thing, tearing papers into bits, into pieces, and throwing them all over the place. And it became an enjoyment because everybody was puzzled. It was simply a childish phenomenon. The man was retarded; he did not need any psychoanalysis. He needed a good kick - that was the language that he understood immediately.

In many ways we go on thinking about simple things in complex ways. Our problems are mostly very simple, but the mind confuses you. And there are people to exploit you. They make your problem even more complex.

Once a boy was brought to me. He must have been sixteen or seventeen years old, and his family was puzzled, harassed, although there was no need for anybody to be harassed. The boy went on saying that two flies have entered into his belly, and they go on moving around inside his body - now they are in the head, now they have come in the hand.

He was taken to doctors, physicians, and they said, "It is not a disease." He was X-rayed, and there were no flies or anything. They tried saying, "You don't have any flies."

But he said, "How can I believe you? They are moving all around inside my body. Should I believe my experience or your explanation?"

Just by chance somebody suggested me to the parents, so they brought the boy. I heard the whole story. The boy was looking very reluctant, stubborn, because he was getting tired of this doctor, that doctor, and they all were saying, "There are no flies."

I said, "You have brought him to the right man. I can see the flies. The poor boy is suffering, and you have been telling him that he is stupid." The boy relaxed. I was favorable - for the first time, a man who has accepted his idea of the flies.

I said, "I know how they have entered. He must be sleeping with an open mouth."

The boy said, "Yes."

I said, "It is such a simple thing. When you sleep with an open mouth, anything can enter. You are fortunate that only flies have entered. I have seen people... rats have entered..."

He said, "My God, rats?"

I said, "Not only rats, but behind rats, cats also..."

He said, "Those people must be in great trouble."

I said, "They are. You are nothing, your case is very simple - just two flies. You just lie down here, and I will take them out."

He said, "You are the first man who has shown understanding to a poor boy. Nobody listens to me.

I am insistently saying that they are there. I show them the place... they are here, now they have moved here... and they all laugh, and they make me look foolish."

I said, "They are all fools. They have not come across such cases, but this is my special expertise.

I deal only with people who sleep with an open mouth."

He said, "I know you understand, because immediately you recognized that they are there - exactly where they were."

I told his parents to stay out of the house and leave him for fifteen minutes with me. I told him to lie down. I blindfolded his eyes and told him to keep his mouth open.

But he said, "If more flies go in...?"

I said, "You don't be worried; this is air-conditioned, and there are no flies. You just lie down with your mouth open and I will try and persuade the flies to come out."

I left him there and ran around the house to catch two flies somehow - for the first time, because I had never done that. But somehow I managed, and I brought two flies in a small bottle. And while I was keeping the bottle on his mouth I removed his blindfold and said, "Look!"

He said, "These two small flies... but what a turmoil they were creating! My whole life was ruined.

Now can you give me these flies?"

I said, "I can, yes." I closed the bottle and gave it to him.

I asked him, "What are you going to do?"

He said, "I am going to go to all those doctors and physicians who have been taking fees and doing nothing and just telling me, ?There are no flies.' Anybody who has told me that... I am going to show them that these are the flies."

He was cured. His mind just got stuck with an idea. But if you go to the psychoanalyst, he will make a mountain out of a molehill - so many theories, explanations... and it takes years and still the problem will remain, because the problem has not been touched. He has been philosophizing about it and he is trying his philosophy on this poor patient.

But most of the diseases of the mind - and seventy percent of diseases are of the mind - can be easily cured. The most basic thing is to accept; don't deny, because your denial is against the pride of the man. The more you deny, the more he is going to insist: it is a simple logic. You are denying his understanding, you are denying his feeling, you are denying his humanity, his dignity. You are saying, "You don't know anything" - about his own body!

The first step is to accept: "You are right. Those who have denied you were wrong." And immediately half of the ground is covered. Now there is a sympathetic relationship with the person. Those who suffer with any mental sickness need sympathy; they need approval, not denial. They don't want you to reduce them into a mad, insane person. Just give them sympathy, give them understanding, be loving.

Let them come close to you and then find a simple way. Don't go roundabout with Freudian scriptures - they are almost holy scriptures, and the literature of psychoanalysis goes on increasing, goes on becoming bigger and bigger. And you start trying all those ideas on the poor man, and he has nothing much.

My own understanding is that every man needs love, and every man also needs to love. Every man needs friendship, friendliness, sympathy - and every man wants to give it, too.

I am reminded... it happened when George Bernard Shaw was almost eighty years old. His doctor was ninety years old - his personal physician - and both were great friends.

Once in the middle of the night Bernard Shaw felt a sudden pain in the heart, and he became afraid:

perhaps it is a heart attack. He phoned the doctor and said, "Come immediately because I may not see the sunrise again."

The doctor said, "Hold on. I am coming, don't be worried." The doctor came. He had to come up three flights of stairs - a ninety-year-old man carrying his own bag, perspiring.

He came and put his bag on the floor and sat in the chair and closed his eyes. Bernard Shaw asked, "What is the matter?" The doctor put his hand on his heart, and Bernard Shaw said, "My God, you have got a heart attack!" And he could see... a ninety-year-old man, three flights of stairs, in the middle of the night, and he is perspiring.

And Bernard Shaw got up, started waving a fan, washing his face with cold water, gave him some brandy to drink because the night was cold, and tried in every way... covered him with blankets and completely forgot about his own heart attack, for which the doctor was called.

After half an hour the doctor was feeling better and he said, "Now I am okay. This was a great heart attack. This has happened for the third time and I was thinking this is the last, but you helped me immensely. Now give me my fees."

Bernard Shaw said, "Your fees? - and I have been running and bringing things and serving you.

You should give me fees."

The doctor said, "Nonsense. This was all acting. I do it with every heart patient - and it always works. They forget their heart attack and they start looking after me - a ninety-year-old man. You just give me my fees. Half the night has passed and I have to go home" - and he took his fee.

And Bernard Shaw said, "This is something. I used to think that I am a joker, but this doctor is a practical joker. He really treated me." He tried his heart, it was perfectly okay. He had completely forgotten it. It was just a small pain that his mind had multiplied... his fear of heart attack, the idea of heart attack, the idea of death became magnified.

But the doctor was really good. He got Bernard Shaw up, got all the services, had a good drink, and finally took his fees and walked down the stairs. And Bernard Shaw simply looked completely mystified. "This man says that he has been doing this with every heart case, and he has always been successful. Just because of his age he manages beautifully. Anybody will forget...

"Any other doctor would start making it a complex phenomenon, with injections and medicines and rest, or a change of climate, or a twenty-four-hour nurse. But that man did it quick, fast, without any complexity."

I have seen all kinds of cases concerned with the mind. All that they need is a very sympathetic, friendly, loving approach, and in every case a unique treatment - because whatever has been done to the man is ordinary, common, and slowly slowly the patient starts feeling that he has been successful in defeating all kinds of doctors - allopathic, homeopathic, naturopathic, ayurvedic, acupuncturists, acupressurists - all kinds of people, and yet nobody can cure him. He starts having a certain ego about it, that his sickness is something very special. He wants it to be accepted as special. It is a substitute.

This has to be understood: everybody wants to be special, extraordinary - a great musician, a great dancer, a great poet - but everybody cannot manage. It needs a long, arduous discipline to become a great musician.

I know a great Indian musician, Vilayat Ali Khan, one of the best sitarists in the world. He used to practice from early morning, nearabout four o'clock, up to nine or ten o'clock - five to six hours every day. He was staying with me, and just sitting in the garden, I asked him, "Now you are world famous; what is the need to practice?"

He said, "You don't know. If I don't practice one day, I can see the difference. If I don't practice two days, then those who understand music can see the difference. If I don't practice three days, even those who don't understand music can see the difference. It is such a subtle phenomenon that you have to continue to revive it, to live it, to go deeper and deeper into it. You cannot stop."

So music is an arduous discipline; sculpture is the same... any creative activity. But to have a special disease needs no discipline. Anybody can have it, and by having it can become special. And you can see this phenomenon happening in many ways. We have seen hippies coming into fashion and then disappearing. Why was the youth attracted? They looked special - they were really defeatist, sick; they were escapists.

That is exactly the meaning of "hippie" - one who has shown his hips and escaped from the problems of life. By their long hair, their strange ways of living - in fact dirty ways of living, unhygienic...

because they had all come from Christian homes in the beginning, where it was taught "Cleanliness is next to God" - they wanted to deny God, but where to find God? You can be unclean, and you can prove that uncleanliness is your way of life; if cleanliness is the way of the old generation, then uncleanliness is the way of the new generation. And by being unclean, they are denying God. And certainly if there was any God, he would not stand next to a hippie - the hippie stinks.

Now there are punks... I have been seeing their pictures. They cut their hair... half of their hair they cut and the other half they paint green, red. Half of the mustache will be cut, and the other half will be colored. They are simply trying, in a childish way, to compete with Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Byron, van Gogh, or Picasso.

You have to see in these people nothing but a desire to be recognized - "I am here," and nobody is taking note. Something has to be done; people have to be compelled to take note. Now if somebody with half of his hair cut off and the other half of his hair colored green passes by you, it is difficult not to look again. That is the meaning of the word respect: respect, looking back, looking again, and that's what the poor man wanted - respect. Wherever he goes, he will stand out.

In India there is an old story of a woman, a poor woman - but it doesn't matter whether one is poor or rich, black or white, East or West, the mind is the same. Somehow she had managed to purchase a silver bangle. That was the only ornament, in her whole life, that she had been able to manage.

She was cleaning people's houses; it was not enough even for food and clothes.

Now she wanted somebody to say something about her bangle. The whole day, she moved around the town, keeping her hand up, making every gesture so that people should see it. But an ordinary silver bangle... Nobody thought that there was a great need, a human need of recognition, that the poor woman would be immensely happy if they had said two words. Nobody said anything.

By the evening, desperate - the whole day she had not eaten anything; it was a great failure to her, as if Alexander the Great had lost the whole world - she put fire to her small hut, and the whole village gathered around. She was beating her chest, but the emphasis was that in the light of the burning house the silver bangle was shining. And one woman said, "My God, what a beautiful bangle! From where did you get it?"

And the woman said, "If you had said that before, you could have saved my poor hut. Now I am without a house. The whole town is so miserly that none of you could say a single word about my beautiful bangle, and now it is too late. But still it makes me feel happy that although the house is burned down, and I don't have a roof, somebody has recognized that, ?You have a beautiful bangle.'"

Really, one wants somebody to say to you, "You are beautiful." When this is not possible, then as a substitute, "Your ornaments are beautiful, your clothes are beautiful" - anything.

Vincent van Gogh, one of the great painters of a new school of painters, the founder... He was ugly, but that was not his fault. No woman ever loved him. He wanted some woman just to say that she loves him, that he is beautiful.

He proposed hesitantly to one of his cousin-sisters. The parents were very much upset that he should dare such a thing! The woman was also very angry. What does he think about himself?

Such an ugly fellow - who is going to love him? Just by their side a big candle was burning, and she told Vincent van Gogh, "If you can keep your hand on the flame of the candle till I say yes..." He put his hand on the candle - the woman had not thought that he would do that. The hand was burning but he would not move his hand. The father of the girl had to remove the candle: "He is mad - not only ugly, but mad. He has burned his whole hand!"

But nobody sees the simple fact of the heart and its need... that somebody should say, "You are good as you are. You are accepted." He was ready to burn his hand... his hand remained burned for his whole life.

His younger brother, seeing the situation, thought that it would be good to make some arrangement with a prostitute and tell her the whole thing. "Please be kind to him. Money I will pay, but let at least one woman... and he will not have any way of knowing whether you are a prostitute or not. You just meet him occasionally, casually in the garden, and chitchatting, you just say that you love him. Take him home. At least I want one person to have said that - so he feels not empty, not rejected by the whole world, not insulted and humiliated by everyone."

The prostitute was a beautiful woman. She did it, and she really felt the man was a great genius - just he was ugly. But when she said, "I love you," he could not believe it.

He said, "Really? But what do you love in me? - because my face is ugly, everybody says so. And I know it myself, because I look in the mirror. It is ugly."

The woman was at a loss, but she had to find something to say, so she said, "I love your ears; they are beautiful."

That night he went home and cut off one of his ears and packed it, blood flowing all over his face and clothes. Then he went back to the prostitute and gave it to her. He said, "For the first time in my life somebody has liked something in me. It is a milestone. I will not forget this night. I don't have anything else to present to you, but you liked my ears, so I have brought one of my ears to you."

The woman could not believe it. This man is really mad! She had never thought that by liking his ears, he would cut one off. But you see, he is not mad; he is really a human being with all the human frailties. Just there seems to be no understanding around.

Everybody seems to be closed. Nobody's heart is with open windows. And nobody's doors are open to welcome a guest. This whole situation creates strange things. The real needs of the human mind are not fulfilled; it starts behaving strangely.

Perhaps that was the only cause of that man tearing up papers and throwing bits here and there - just to make it known that, "I am here, and I am different from everybody else. I am doing something that nobody else does." Perhaps he was not accepted, not received, not loved.

And the cure that he got is worse than the disease. That was really the disease - that nobody loved him - and now the magician gives him the cure: "If you do it again I will give you such a kick that you will roll down all these hundred stairs, and at the end you may just burst into pieces on the road."

But he stopped doing it - that shows that rather than getting love, he got more fear.

Fear can also change your behavior, but it is not a change for the better, it is a change for the worse.

And while love is available - and it costs nothing - why not use it?

I don't see that there is any other psychotherapy than love. If the psychotherapist can shower his love, the disease will disappear without any analysis.

All analysis is just bunk.

The psychotherapist is avoiding love himself. He is avoiding seeing the patient face to face. He is afraid to recognize the reality. All psychoanalysts of the Freudian camp, which is the biggest camp and the most important, don't sit in front of the patient. The patient lies down on a couch, and behind the couch sits the psychoanalyst. The patient talks, lying down on the couch, to no one, and the psychoanalyst is just sitting there. No human touch - he cannot even hold the hand of the patient, he cannot look in the eyes of the patient.

In the East nothing like psychoanalysis has ever happened for the simple reason that there were thousands of masters, deep in meditation, and anybody who came to them... just their love, their sympathy, the way they looked into the eyes of the patient was enough. People were cured. It was not that without psychoanalysis... In the East what happened to neurotics, to psychotics, was that they were instantly changed. All that they needed was an immense love which asks nothing - a man of peace and silence, whose very presence is medicine.

You will be surprised to know that the words medicine and meditation come from the same root.

Medicine cures the body, meditation cures the mind. The root is the same and the meaning is the same - just they function in different fields.

And a man who has meditated for a long time becomes an immense source. He radiates something that is not visible to the eyes, but the heart catches it. Something reaches to your innermost being and changes you.

Problems are simple. Solutions are simple. Just one has to get out of the mind to see the simplicity.

And then whatsoever is done by a man in silence, in peace, in joy, will be medicinal, will be distributing health. It will be a healing force.

Question 2:

Yes. Relaxation is the key to your own innermost being. And relaxation consists of stillness, consists of peace; and certainly this stillness, this peace, passeth understanding. You can know it, you can be it, but you cannot explain it. You cannot theorize about it. It remains the most mysterious experience.

The BIBLE is right. If you are still, you will for the first time know who you are - your being - and your being is divine. You are part of a godliness that surrounds everything.

Just these small moments of relaxation, slowly, slowly will make you aware that they need not be moments; they can become your whole lifestyle. All twenty-four hours you can be silent and peaceful, doing everything in life that is necessary. Still doing these things will not be disturbing your peace or your silence; it will not distract you from your being.

That is one of the most significant points that I want to emphasize, because in the past what has happened is that people who became silent and still became afraid of the world. It was a natural reaction. They thought that now how can they be just a shopkeeper, a clerk, a stationmaster, a father, a teacher? - with all these responsibilities their silence will be lost, their peace will be disturbed. So all the old religions of the world became antilife: "Renounce the world. Escape to the mountains, to the caves, where you can protect your treasure of peace and silence." But it was a fallacy.

The real peace, the real silence, needs to be tested here in the world, in the marketplace. If it is disturbed that simply shows it was very superficial - you have to go deeper into it. And the marketplace is helpful to show you.

Deep in the mountains there is no way to know whether your silence is deep or just superficial. You can remain silent for your whole life and die and the silence will be just skin-deep because there is nothing to disturb it, so you cannot see how deep it is.

I want the religious person to be in the world, not of the world - in the world, because the marketplace is the place where you are tested every moment. You should be grateful to the marketplace because it continuously makes you aware of where you are. The day nothing disturbs you, nothing makes any difference to your silence... This can be realized only in the marketplace, not in the Himalayas.

In the Himalayas there is every possibility of falling into a fallacy - because the silence of the Himalayas will not disturb your silence. The silence of the Himalayas will give you a false notion - that it is your silence. And you have only a thin layer, a poor layer.

I am against renouncing the world.

I am absolutely for the world.

The world is a great school.

Experiment, meditate, and be constantly in touch with things which disturb you. One day nothing will be disturbing, and that will be the day of great rejoicing.