I am talking to transform your heart

Question 1:

There is a fightless fight, an actionless action, an effortless effort. That's the very soul of religiousness. Logically it looks absurd to say "effortless effort," but existentially it is possible, and is one of the most beautiful experiences.

Whenever you are spontaneous it means you are not acting according to a preplanned idea. In fact you were not ready, prepared, to do anything; the action has come as a response, on its own accord.

You will have to understand these few words. First is the distinction between reaction and response.

Reaction is dominated by the other person. He insults you: you get angry, and then you act out of anger. This is reaction. You are not an independent person; anybody can pull you this way or that way. You are easily affected; you can be blackmailed emotionally.

Reaction is an emotional blackmail.

You were not angry. The man insulted you, and his insult created anger; now out of anger comes your action.

Response is out of freedom.

It is not dependent on the other person.

The other person may insult you, but you don't become angry; on the contrary you meditate on the fact - why is he insulting you? Perhaps he is right. Then you have to be grateful to him, not get angry. Perhaps he is wrong. If he is wrong, then for his wrong why should you burn your heart with anger?

And only two are the possibilities: either he is right or he is wrong. In either case anger is irrelevant.

If he is right... and that is possible to see only if there is no anger in you - anger clouds the eyes, the vision, the clarity. If you see he is right, you will bow down to him and be grateful to him, because he was favoring you by telling a truth about you which nobody has told you. Perhaps he was saying that you are a coward... you take his statement and enquire within yourself and you find the coward.

In this so-called polite society, people don't talk straightforwardly. They don't say things which they see, they only say things which will make good conversation.

The English people are very alert: they only talk about the weather, never about religion, politics - those are loaded with emotions. About the weather, who cares? It is nobody's belief, it is nobody's religion, and anyway it is reality, available to you both. It makes a good subject for conversation...

no question of argument.

But my people have to understand that we are not a polite society, that our devotion is towards sincerity, authenticity, that we want to say what is truthful.

So when somebody says anything to you ponder over it. Tell the person, "Please just wait for ten minutes. Let me think about it - perhaps you are right." If he is right, be grateful. If he is wrong, then feel sorry for him and tell him, "You have got some wrong idea. You are master of your own ideas - you can have this idea - but from my side, just a humble suggestion that the idea is not right. I would love it if you would give it a little more consideration."

Response is very silent, very peaceful. It is not dependent on the other person; it is your own understanding, acting spontaneously in the moment. Hence there is a possibility of fightless fight.

My whole life I have been doing that. I have been fighting on many fronts, alone - but with no anger, no violence, no personal involvement. It is not that I am fighting for something for myself. I don't need anything; whatever has to happen to my life has already happened.

I am free of any ambition, because you cannot be ambitious after enlightenment... because there is nowhere to go, you have reached the highest star.

But I have been fighting continuously, fighting to help the same people with whom I have been fighting. This fight is out of love and compassion. I am not angry at the society - I am not angry at anyone. I am not making somebody responsible for the whole misery of the world.

I am simply trying to make the causes clear to people: "You go on clinging to the causes, and you don't want the effects. You go on sowing seeds of a certain flower, but you don't like the flower so you destroy it - but you don't stop sowing the seeds. This becomes your confusion, your conflict, your misery."

The fight that you have to learn is not out of hate, it is out of love. It is not out of any revenge, it is out of understanding. It is not for your own gain, it is for the gain of those with whom you are fighting.

Then it becomes a fightless fight. Then whether you succeed or fail does not matter; what matters is that you did your best. That brings contentment to you - that whatever you could do you have done, and you have never been holding anything back. You have thrown yourself totally into the fire.

But you were not against anybody in particular. You were against a particular series of causes, which are impersonal. But millions of people are suffering because of those causes. They go on clinging, thinking they are their heritage.

Your work of spreading my words is not to take a sword in your hand, and at the point of the sword convince people what is right.

That is what Mohammedans have been doing. For fourteen centuries they have converted so many people just at the point of the sword. And obviously, anybody, if the choice is between death and the change of a formal religion... Nobody is really a Hindu and nobody is going to be really a Mohammedan - just the label is the question. Just for the label are you going to lose your life? Any man of understanding will say, "Change the label." Millions of people became Mohammedans, not because they were convinced but because they wanted to live. And they continued to live the same way as they were living before. Mohammedanism or Hinduism are just in the air; they don't become realities.

Just now pope the Polack was in India. The Indian Christians, who are all basically Hindus, have been converted by another strategy, because now carrying a sword does not seem right and will not be supported by the majority of the world; it will look crude, primitive, ugly. Christianity has changed.

It goes to hungry people, starving people, with bread in one hand and with the HOLY BIBLE in the other. You cannot have only the bread: it offers you both - physical food and spiritual nourishment.

If you want the bread you have to accept the HOLY BIBLE.

And a dying person is not concerned at all whether God created the world, six thousand years ago, in six days or not; whether God is a trinity or not. A man dying through starvation needs the bread, but the bread comes with the BIBLE - on the margin he accepts the BIBLE too. So these Indian Christians are all purchased, exploited because of their hunger and poverty.

They become Christian but they continue to live the same way, they continue to do the same things.

So when the pope was there, the Indian Christians said that they want to burn incense in the church, just as it is burned in Hindu temples. And they want to have a bell hanging in front of the church, just as it is hanging before every Hindu temple. First you have to make the god aware that you are coming in. He may be asleep, just having a nap, so you ring the bell to wake up the poor old man. A bell is absolutely necessary. And incense... without incense a place does not look holy to a Hindu.

The beautiful perfume of the incense makes the place different from ordinary houses. The church looks like an ordinary house.

And the pope has agreed that the bell can be hung: "There is no harm in it. And the incense can be burned inside; there is no harm in it."

Soon they will be saying that Jesus Christ on the cross does not look like the only begotten son of God. Krishna fits more, with a flute on his lips. Jesus symbolizes death. Krishna symbolizes rejoicing, dancing, life; the way he stands in a dancing pose, the way he is dressed, is exotic and beautiful. Jesus looks too sad, and naturally, if you smile or laugh on the cross, it will look contradictory: is the cross real or are you playing a drama? When a man is dying and his hands and feet are stuck with big, steel nails into the wood, you cannot expect him not to be sad.

But what I am trying to explain to you is that these Hindus are still Hindus; just the label is Christian.

They still sing the same devotional songs; only in place of "Krishna" they have changed the name to "Christ" - which is not much of a change, because the people who understand linguistics say that "Christ" is a form of the word "Krishna."

In Bengali, in India, there are many people who are named Christo. It is a form of "Krishna."

If even in India a language can make "Krishna" change into "Christo," then what is the problem? The word moving far away to Judea may have become "Christ."

So to change "Krishna" to "Christ" is no change at all, and the person's life remains the same. He still believes the cow is the mother - although he is Christian and Christianity has no such belief.

But the religion has been poured over him, it has not arisen from his spontaneity.

I would not like you in any way to force somebody to accept my message, because that will be destroying the message, the very message. The very message is that nobody should be forced to believe anything. All that you can do is explain lovingly; and before explaining lovingly, you have to live what I am saying so that the explanation is not only in words but in your life too.

So rather than you going to people to explain, people have to come to ask you, "What has happened to you? Why are your eyes so silent, why is your face so radiant? Why does being with you feel so good? - as if one has been by the side of a cool lake. Why does it feel like a soft cool breeze has passed?" Let people ask you.

You have to live it.

It is through your life, your actions, your spontaneity, your love and your blissfulness, that you can reach to people's hearts. And let the question come from them. Don't go on pouring your answer on them. When the question is nonexistent, all answers are useless.

If you can make your life so radiant, so musical, so harmonious, people are bound to ask, "What are you doing? What has happened to you? Why do your eyes have a certain magic?" Then you can explain what you have been doing, what has happened to you. And you can say, as an aside, "It can happen to you too, because you have the same potential as every other human being."

This will be a fightless fight.

Question 2:

Insomnia is not a disease. Insomnia is a certain way of life.

Man is made by nature to work hard for at least eight hours. Unless he works hard for eight hours he does not earn the right to have a deep sleep. And as a society grows richer, people are not working hard. There is no need; others can work for them. The whole day they are doing small things which they enjoy doing, but it is not hard work like that of a stonecutter or a woodcutter. The body is made so that after eight hours of hard work it naturally needs to fall into sleep to rejuvenate its energy. But it seems difficult... you have earned enough money and still you are chopping wood for eight hours?

Then for what have you earned all that money? It seems stupid. You could have chopped wood even without becoming a millionaire.

So if fifty million people in America are suffering from insomnia, that simply means these are the people who are not earning the right to sleep. They are not working to create the situation in which sleep happens. You cannot find fifty million people in a poor country... you cannot find five people.

It has been known for centuries that beggars sleep better than emperors. Laborers, manual laborers sleep better than intellectuals. The poor sleep better than the rich, because they have to work hard to earn their bread and butter, but side by side they are also earning the right to have a beautiful sleep.

Insomnia is not a disease, it is the richest way of life. In fact what is happening is: the whole day you are resting; then in the night you are tossing and turning in the bed. That is the only exercise left for you, and you don't want to do even that exercise. Toss and turn as much as you can. If the whole day is of resting then the night cannot be of sleep. You have already rested.

If the people who are suffering from insomnia really want to get rid of it they should not think of it as a disease. Visiting a doctor is meaningless. They should start working in their garden, doing some hard work, and forget all about sleep - it will come. It always comes, you don't have to bring it.

These are the difficulties. Nature never intended that a few people should have all the riches in the world and most of the people should be poor. Looking at the intentions of nature, it seems it wanted everybody to work. It never wanted these classes of the poor and the rich; it wanted a classless society where everybody is working.

It is possible the work may be different. If you have been painting the whole day, that will also bring sleep. Or you have to create artificial exercises - go to the gym, run for miles, jog. Many idiots are doing it. A futile exercise - why jog when you can chop wood? Why jog when your garden is being looked after by somebody else who sleeps perfectly? You pay him for the work, and he sleeps perfectly well.

You jog, and nobody pays you and you find it difficult to sleep. How much can you jog? How much can you run? And a man who has not slept the whole night does not feel like running in the morning, because the whole night he has been struggling to find a little bit of sleep. Tired of tossing and turning, in the morning he finds a little bit of sleep - and that is the time suggested that he should run and he should jog!

Insomnia should not be counted among diseases. People should be made aware that you are not following the natural course that the body needs. Then you can do small things... swimming, tennis - but it will not be a real substitute for hard labor for eight hours. Man basically was a hunter - and not with machine guns, just with arrows - running after deer. It was not every day that he would get his food. The whole day he would run and follow the animals and would not be able to catch one, and he would come home empty-handed but utterly tired.

Your body is still asking you to do that. You can choose in what way you want to do it; then insomnia will disappear of its own accord.

Those fifty million insomnia sufferers do not need any compassion from anybody. They have to be told directly and straightforwardly, "Your way of life is wrong. Change it; otherwise suffer." And it will bring a great revolution if fifty million people start working eight hours a day. They don't need it for their food, for their clothing, for their shelter, but they can work for those who need food, who need medicine, who need other necessities of life.

If fifty million people turn out to work hard eight hours per day in the service of the poor, it will change the whole climate of the society. The very idea of fighting, of struggle between classes, will disappear - because there will be no classes.

And this is going to become a bigger problem every day because machines are replacing man in every field. Machines are more efficient, more obedient, can work twenty-four hours without any rest, seven days a week... no holiday, no religious holiday, because they are neither Jews nor Christians nor Hindus.

In India there are so many holidays - I counted once - in the schools, colleges, universities that it comes to almost six months' working days and six months' holidays, because there are so many gods and so many religions, and their birthdays have to be celebrated. Every religion has its own holidays; they have to be celebrated. And then the hot summer comes and you have to give two to three months' holiday. And then there are seasonal holidays. The rain ends and it is a joy - then you celebrate it with the festival of lights. The rains come - then you celebrate because the whole country lives on rains; otherwise people will be hungry, there will be no food.

So there are so many excuses. Then there are political holidays - the day India became free, the day India became a republic. Then political leaders - Mahatma Gandhi, Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak, Gokhale, Subhash Chandra Bose, Jawaharlal Nehru, and new people are continually being added... Indira Gandhi... All are holidays. Working days are becoming less and less.

Machines don't ask for anything, not even for a coffee break. And one machine can work in place of a hundred people or a thousand people, so soon the whole world is going to be in a trouble:

insomnia is going to be one of the biggest troubles in the coming days because when the machine takes over, the man is free. He will be paid for his unemployment, and paid enough so that he does not ask for employment. He will have enough money.

So what can he do? He can play cards, chess, drink alcohol, have a fight - and suffer insomnia.

Insomnia is going to be a worldwide phenomena. What is happening to fifty million people in America will be happening to almost every person whose work is taken from him. When people retire they start suffering from insomnia, and they had never suffered before.

So I don't believe that it is a disease. Don't categorize it as the third most prevalent disease. It is not of the category of diseases; it is our wrong way of life.

There may be a few people, a very few people, for whom it may be a disease - for example, the intellectuals whose minds are continuously working and get into the habit of working. Then in the night when they want to sleep the mind goes on working, and that's enough for insomnia. And they have no control over the mind to stop it. They may shout; the mind doesn't care about it.

The mind, while you are resting in bed, goes on unwinding itself, because in the day there were many sidelines of thoughts which have been left incomplete; they have to be completed. Mind is a perfectionist. It wants to do everything perfectly, so whatever has remained incomplete it is trying to complete. And it has no need of sleep. It is the body that needs sleep. If the body has not worked and has not earned any sleep, and the mind has been functioning too much and going so fast that it has become habituated to it, this type of man may even work with the body and still suffer insomnia.

Then it will be a disease. Then he needs the medicine I call meditation, so that his mind can relax and allow the body to go into sleep.

Only very few people, who are enlightened, may not be helped by physical work. I have tried it. I was running four miles in the morning, four miles in the evening, and doing all kinds of hard work.

Even before sleep - and I used to go to sleep at twelve - from eleven to twelve I was again going for a walk, but whatever I would do would simply relax my body. My body would be completely at rest, but I would be fully awake. It did not disturb, but the awareness was so much that there was no way to reduce it; it cannot be reduced. Once it has happened, it goes on growing.

But the man who is enlightened, if he cannot sleep because of too much consciousness, can at least rest, and rest totally. And that rest will give his body something almost similar to deep sleep.

When I was in jail in America for twelve days, for twenty-four hours I was sleeping - sleeping means I was resting with closed eyes. I would get up to eat something or go to the bathroom; then I would come back to myself and again I would close my eyes and go to sleep.

The nurses and the doctor were puzzled. They said, "How can you manage sleeping twenty-four hours?"

I said, "I am not sleeping even twenty-four seconds!"

They said, "But you look so fast asleep."

I said, "That is from the outside! From the outside I am fast asleep, my body is at rest. But from the inside I am fast awake."

And there is no way... physical exercise won't help. With physical exercise or without physical exercise, I can relax my body but sleep will not be coming. But if you are enlightened, then who cares about insomnia. You can pay that small price for such a big treasure.

But all those who are suffering from insomnia are unfortunately not enlightened. They are in America, where enlightenment seems to be the most difficult thing. Up to now there has not been a single American who was an enlightened man. A few people came close but they were people from the world of art - Walt Whitman, Emerson, Henry Thoreau. They were just on the borderline and they never crossed that line.

But these people who cannot sleep are really suffering badly because in their life there is nothing - no meaning, all hypocrisy. "Socializing" they call it. And then in the night they cannot even sleep.

The day is useless, the night is useless. They have lost all touch with life. They should be helped.

There should be more meditation centers specially for people who are suffering from insomnia.

Meditation will help them to relax. And when they come to meditate then they should be told, "Alone meditation will not do; it is half of the work. Half you have to do - that is hard physical exercise."

And I think people are in such a suffering without sleep that they will be able to do anything that is suggested.

And hard work has a beauty of its own. Chopping wood and perspiring and a cool breeze comes...

and there is such a beautiful feeling in the body, which a person who is not working hard cannot even understand. The poor man also has his luxuries. Only he knows about them.

Question 3:

There is no need to remember what I say because I am not giving you a doctrine that you have to remember. What is important is that the feeling left in your heart that you were touched remains with you. That is significant - not what I say.

I say so many things just to give you that feeling that your heart is touched. That's why I always say my talking is totally different from anybody else's in the whole history of man. They were talking to say something; I am talking to do something. They were talking to impart knowledge; I am talking to transform your heart.

So there is no need to remember; otherwise you will go crazy. If you remember all these things that I am saying to you, you will certainly go crazy. Can't you see me? I have gone crazy!

And I don't remember anything of what I have said to you before. I have never read any of my books, and it is beautiful because then I am always spontaneous. And it is beautiful because I can easily say anything that comes in the moment, without bothering whether it is contradicting something else that I have said some years before. It cannot contradict because that was also as spontaneous as this is; the spontaneity of both links them together. Howsoever contradictory they may seem, they have come from the same spontaneous source.

Don't try to remember. It is easy to remember Jesus because there is not much - four gospels and all are the same report from four different journalists. There is not much difference. You just memorize one gospel and that's it; you know the whole of Jesus. It is so easy.

With me it is very difficult. Christian missionaries have told me that I should write at least a small book like the Christian catechism as an introduction "because you have so many books - what should one read, from where should one begin? So just a small book to introduce yourself..."

I said, "That is impossible. You can start from anywhere - any book is the introduction for the remaining three hundred and ninety-nine. But catechism... that is impossible. I cannot put in a few words a few principles so that you can remember them like a parrot."

But it is very difficult for outsiders to understand that my talking is being used in a totally different way:

It is less a communication and more a communion.

It is less knowledge and more love.

It is less words and more silence.

So if you can remain thrilled, don't be bothered with the words. They are not of any use. Their work is done. They have stirred your heart, they have made you aflame: they are no longer needed. If you try to remember my words... I have spoken so many millions of words that it is almost impossible for you to remember them all, and the purpose was never to give you a doctrine, a philosophy, but a vision... and a vision is a totally different thing. If it opens your heart, if it cleanses your intelligence, that is more than can be asked.

Unfortunate are those who remember the words and nothing else happens to them. They will become parrots, scholars, pundits - but they will never become sannyasins.

To be a sannyasin is something unique. The heart is aflame with a longing for the unknown, with a love for the whole, with a song that cannot be brought into words. A sannyasin is himself the holy scriptures - not because he remembers the words but because he is transformed through the words. He is reborn.

Question 4: