Encountering the Unconscious

Question 1:

THE UNCONSCIOUS is not really unconscious. Rather, it is only less conscious. So the difference between conscious and unconscious is not of polar opposites, but of degrees. Unconscious and conscious are related, joined; they are not two. But our ways of thinking are based on a particular false system of logic which divides everything into polar opposites.

Reality is never divided like that; only logic is divided. Our logic says either yes or no; our logic says either light or darkness - and there is nothing in between as far as logic goes. But life is neither white nor black. It is, rather, a great expanse of grey. One extreme becomes white, another extreme becomes black, and life is a great expanse of grey, degrees of grey. But for logic white and black are realities and there is nothing in between - but life is always in between these two. So, really, every problem should be understood not as a logical problem, but as a life problem - only then can you do something with it. If you are too fixed with this false logic, then you will never be able to solve any problem.

Aristotle has proved to be one of the greatest menaces, blocks to the human mind, because he created a system - which became dominant all over the world - that divides everything into two opposites. Really, this is a strange fact. We have nothing for the inbetween reality - not even words.

De Bono, a modern non-Aristotelian logician, has created a new word - "po". He says that we have only two words, "yes" or "no", and there is no neutral word. "Yes" is one opposite, "no" is another - there is no neutral word. So he has coined a new word - "po". "Po" means "I am neither for nor against." If you say something and I say "po" it means, "I have heard you I am neither for nor against.

I am not making any judgment." Or, to say "po" means: "Perhaps you are right, perhaps you are wrong. Both are possible." Or, the use of the word "po" means: "This is also one point of view. I need not be on the 'yes' side or the 'no'. It is not a compulsion." De Bono has derived this word from words like hyPOthesis or POtentiality. This "po" is a neutral word, not loaded with any judgment, condemnation or appreciation. Just use the word "po" and you will feel the difference. You are not taking any standpoint in the polar opposites.

So when I say "conscious" and "unconscious", I don't mean the Freudian opposition. For Freud, conscious is conscious and unconscious is unconscious. The difference is that of white and black, yes and no, life and death. When I say "unconscious" I mean "less conscious". When I say "conscious" I mean "less unconscious". They overlap each other.

So what to do to encounter the unconscious? As far as Freud is concerned the encounter is impossible. Because it is unconscious, how can you encounter it? The question means the same as if someone says, "How to see in darkness?" Mm? The question is irrelevant, meaningless. If you put it in this way, "How to see in darkness?" and if I say, "With light," then the question has not been answered at all because you ask, "How to see in darkness?" and if there is light then there is no darkness - you are seeing light.

So, really, in darkness no one can see. When we say "darkness" we mean that now seeing is not possible. What do you mean when you say "darkness"? You mean that now seeing is not possible.

What do you mean when you say "light"? You mean that now things can be seen. Really, you have never seen light: you have only seen light reflected in things which you can see. You have never seen light itself - no one can see it. We see only things, not light, and because things are seen, we assume, infer, that light is there.

You have not seen darkness; no one has seen it. Really, darkness is just an inference. Because nothing is seen, you say there is darkness. So when someone asks, "How to see in darkness?" the words look meaningful, but they are not. Language is very deceptive, and unless one becomes careful in using language one will never be able to solve any problem. Ninety-nine percent of problems are just linguistic problems, but if you don't know how to penetrate the garb of language you will never be able to tackle the real problem.

If you ask Freud how to encounter the unconscious, he will say, "It is nonsense; you cannot encounter it. If you encounter it, it will become conscious, because encountering is a conscious phenomenon." But if you ask me how to encounter the unconscious, I will say, "Yes, there are ways to encounter it" - because for me, the first thing to be noted is that "unconscious" means simply "less conscious".

So if you grow more conscious, you can encounter it - so it depends.

Secondly, unconscious and conscious are not fixed boundaries. They change every moment - just like the retina of the eye. It is changing constantly. If there is more light, it is narrowed down. If there is less light, then it widens. It is constantly making an equilibrium with the light outside. So your eye is not really a fixed thing; it is constantly changing. Just like that is your consciousness. Really, to understand the phenomenon of consciousness by the analogy of the eye is very relevant, because consciousness is the inner eye, the eye of the soul. So just like your eye, your consciousness is constantly expanding or shrinking. It depends.

For example, if you are angry, you become more unconscious. The unconscious is now more spread, and only a very minor part of you remains conscious. Sometimes even that part is not there either - you become completely unconscious. But in a sudden accident: you are on the road and suddenly you feel that an accident is going to be there and you are on the verge of death - you suddenly become conscious and there is no unconscious at all. The whole mind is conscious. And this change is continuously taking place.

So when I say conscious and unconscious, I don't mean any fixed boundaries. There are none, there are no fixed boundaries. It is a fluctuating phenomenon. It depends on you to be less conscious or more conscious. You can create consciousness; you can train and discipline yourself for more consciousness or for less consciousness. If you train yourself for less consciousness you will never be able to encounter the unconscious. Really, you will even become incapable of encountering the conscious.

When someone has taken some intoxicant, he is training his mind to be totally unconscious. When you go into sleep, or if you can be hypnotized, or if you can autohypnotize yourself, then you lose consciousness. There are many tricks, and many of those tricks which help you to be more unconscious are even known as religious practices. If you do any monotonous, repetitive thing - for example, if you go on continuously saying "Ram-Ram-Ram-ram", in a very monotonous tone, you will become less conscious. And this constant repetition of "Ram-Ram-Ram", in a monotonous tone, will be just auto-hypnotic. You will go to sleep: it is good for sleep.

If you can create monotony then you will be less conscious, because a bored mind cannot remain conscious. The boredom is too much, and the mind would like to go to sleep.

We know, every mother knows, how to put a child to sleep. A lullaby does nothing but create boredom. Every mother knows how to put a child to sleep. With a lullaby - a constant repetition of certain words - the child is bored, so he goes into sleep. This lullaby can be created by movement, by anything which is monotonous - by anything! Just move the child monotonously, rotate the child monotonously, and he will go to sleep because he feels bored. Even if you put the child's head near your heart he will go to sleep, because your heartbeat is a very boring thing. So put the child near your heart, and he will feel bored because of the constant repetition of the heartbeat. The child knows it very well because for nine months continuously he has heard it. Even old persons can use the "tick-tick" of a clock for going into sleep, and the reason is only the resemblance to the heartbeat.

So if you feel that sleep is not coming, just concentrate on your clock and feel the beat, and soon you will drop into sleep.

You can create unconsciousness by creating boredom. By taking any intoxicant, by taking any drug, any sedative, any tranquillizer, you can create unconsciousness. Consciousness also can be created, but then quite different methods have to be used.

Sufi mystics use whirling dances. With such vigorous whirling you cannot sleep. It is impossible.

How can you fall asleep when dancing? Someone seeing your dance may go to sleep; for him it may become a boring thing - but you cannot go. So Sufis use dance to create more activity inside, more vitality, so that consciousness spreads. And these dances are not really dances. They look like dances. The Sufi who is doing the dance is constantly remembering every movement of the body. No movement should be done unconsciously. Even if a hand is raised, then this hand must be raised with full consciousness that you are raising the hand - now the hand is raised; now you are dropping it again. No movement should be allowed unconsciously. You are whirling around, dancing vigorously; no movement is to be made unconsciously. Every movement must be done consciously, with full alertness.

Then suddenly the unconscious drops, and with three months of dancing continuously, for hours, you encounter the unconscious. You penetrate deep, deep, deep, and suddenly you become aware of everything that is inside. That is what I mean by encountering the unconscious. Nothing remains which is not in clear vision. Your totality, all your instincts, all your suppressions, your whole biological structure, everything - not only of this life, but of all lives - suddenly is revealed. You are thrown into a new world which was hidden or, rather, to which you were not alert. It was there, but you were asleep - or your consciousness was so narrowed down that it escaped.

Your consciousness is just like a torch - narrowed. You enter darkness with a torch; you have a light, but it is a narrow, focused light. You can see something, but all else remains in darkness.

When I say that nothing unconscious remains, I mean unfocused consciousness - unfocused. A focused consciousness will always choose something to see and choose many things not to see; it is a choice. So I use the similarity: just like a torch, narrowed down. One point will become very clear, but everything else will be in darkness. This is what we ordinarily do through concentration.

The more you concentrate, the less you will be able to encounter the unconscious. You will be able to know something very definitely at the cost of not knowing many things. That's why experts, by and by, become just ignorant - ignorant of the whole world: because they have narrowed down their minds to a particular thing in order to know more about it. So it has been said that an expert is a person who knows more and more about less and less. In the end, only a point remains focused which he knows at the cost of ignoring everything else.

This is how concentration works. So through concentration you can never encounter the unconscious. You can encounter the unconscious only with meditation - and this is the difference between concentration and meditation. Meditation means your mind working not as a torch but like a flame: everything is enlightened around it - everything. It is not narrowed down, the light is diffused. It is not moving in one direction - it is moving in all directions simultaneously so the whole is enlightened.

How to do it? I said Sufis use dance as an active meditation and then they can encounter the unconscious. Zen monks in Japan use absurd problems to encounter it. You face some problem which cannot be solved - which cannot be solved at all! Howsoever you try, the problem is such that it cannot be solved. They call such problems "koans" - absurd problems.

For example, they will say to some seeker, "Find out what your original face is." And by original face they mean the face you had before you were born, or the face you will have after you die - the original face. They will say, "Find out how your original face looks." How can you find it out? One has to meditate on it. The problem is such that you cannot solve it by intellect, by reason. You have to ponder over it, meditate over it, go on meditating and searching: "What is my original face?" And the teacher will be there with his staff, and he will look around to see if someone is going into sleep.

Then the teacher's staff will be on your head. You cannot sleep; sleep is not allowed at all. You have to be constantly awake.

So a Zen teacher is a hard taskmaster. You have to meditate before him, and he will not allow you to drop into sleep - because the moment when you are dropping into sleep is the moment to encounter the unconscious. If you can remain out of sleep, then the unconscious will be revealed - because that is the line. The very line from where you drop into sleep is the line where you can enter into the unconscious.

You can try this. You have been sleeping every day, but you have not encountered sleep yet. You have not seen it - what it is, how it comes, how you drop into it. You have not known anything about it. You have been dropping into it daily, coming out of it, but you have not felt the moment when sleep comes on the mind - what happens. So try this, and with three months' effort, suddenly, one day, you will enter sleep knowingly: drop on your bed, close your eyes, and then remember, remember that sleep is coming and "I am to remain awake when the sleep comes." It is very arduous, but it happens. One day it will not happen, one week it will not happen. Persist every day, constantly remembering that sleep is coming and, "I am not to allow it without knowing. I must be aware when sleep enters. I must go on feeling how sleep takes over, what it is." And one day, suddenly, sleep is there and you are still awake. That very moment you become aware of your unconscious also. And once you become aware of your unconscious you will never be asleep again in the old way. Sleep will be there, but you will be awake simultaneously. A center in you will go on knowing. All around will be sleep, and a center will go on knowing. When this center knows dreams become impossible. And when dreams become impossible, daydreams also become impossible. Then you are asleep in a different sense, and then you will be awake in the morning in a different sense. That different quality comes by the encounter.

But this may look difficult, so I suggest to you a more simple exercise to encounter the unconscious.

Close the doors of your room and put a big mirror just in front of you. The room must be dark. And then put a small flame by the side of the mirror in such a way that it is not directly reflected in it. Just your face is reflected in the mirror, not the flame. Then constantly stare into your own eyes in the mirror. Do not blink. This is a forty-minute experiment, and within two or three days you will be able to keep your eyes unblinking.

Even if tears come, let them come, but persist in not blinking and go on staring constantly into your eyes. Do not change the stare. Go on staring into the eyes, your own, and within two or three days you will become aware of a very strange phenomenon. Your face will begin to take new shapes. You may even be scared. The face in the mirror will begin to change. Sometimes a very different face will be there which you have never known as yours.

But, really, all these faces belong to you. Now the subconscious mind is beginning to explode.

These faces, these masks, are yours. Sometimes even a face that belongs to a past life may come in. After one week of constant staring for forty minutes, your face will become a flux, just a film-like flux. Many faces will be coming and going constantly. After three weeks, you will not be able to remember which is your face. You will not be able to remember your own face, because you have seen so many faces coming and going.

If you continue, then any day, after three weeks, the most strange thing happens: suddenly there is no face in the mirror. The mirror is vacant, you are staring into emptiness. There is no face at all.

This is the moment: close your eyes, and encounter the unconscious. When there is no face in the mirror, just close the eyes - this is the most significant moment - close the eyes, look inside, and you will face the unconscious. You will be naked - completely naked, as you are. All deceptions will fall.

This is the reality, but the society has created many, many layers in order that you will not be aware of it. Once you know yourself in your nakedness, your total nakedness, you begin to be a different person. Then you cannot deceive yourself. Then you know what you are. And unless you know what you are you can never become transformed, because any transformation becomes possible only in this naked reality: this naked reality is potential for any transformation. No deception can be transformed. Your original face is now here and you can transform it. And, really, just a will to transform it will effect the transformation.

But you cannot become transformed! You cannot transform your false faces. You can change them, but you cannot transform them: by "change" I mean you can replace them with another false face.

A thief can become a monk, a criminal can become a saint. It is very easy to change, to replace the masks, the faces. These are not transformations at all. Transformation means becoming that which you really are. So the moment you face the unconscious, encounter the unconscious, you are face to face with your reality, with your authentic being.

The false societal being is not there, your name is not there, your form is not there, your face is not there. The naked forces of nature are there, and with these naked forces any transformation is possible - and by just willing it! Nothing is to be done. You just will, and things begin to happen. If you face yourself in this nakedness, just will whatsoever you like and it will be.

In the Bible it is said: "God said, 'Let there be light,' and there was light." In the Koran it is said: "God said, 'Let there be the world,' and there was the world." Really, these are parables - parables of the willpower which is hidden in you. When you encounter your naked reality, the basic, elemental forces, you become a creator, a god. Just say, utter a word, and it happens. Say, "Let there be light," and there will be light. Before the encounter, if you are trying to transform darkness into light it is not possible. So this encounter is basic, foundational, for any religious happening.

Many, many methods have been invented. There are sudden methods, there are gradual methods.

I have told you about a gradual method. There are sudden methods, but with a sudden method it is always very difficult - because with a sudden method it can happen that you may simply die. With a sudden method it can happen that you may suddenly go mad - because the phenomenon is so sudden that you cannot conceive of it. You just drop, shattered.

This happened in the Gita. Arjuna is forcing Krishna to reveal his cosmic form. Krishna goes on talking about other things, but Arjuna is persistent and he says, "I must see. I cannot believe unless I see. If you are really a god, then reveal to me your cosmic from!" Krishna reveals it, but it is so sudden, and Arjuna is not prepared at all. He begins to cry and says to Krishna, "Close it! Close it!

I am scared to death!" So if you come to it through some sudden method, it is dangerous. Sudden methods are there, but they can be practised only in a group - in a group where others can help you. Really, ashrams were created for these sudden methods because they cannot be practised alone. A group is needed, adepts are needed, and a constant vigilance is needed, because sometimes you may drop unconscious for months continuously. Then if there is no one who knows what to do, you may be taken for dead. You may be buried or burnt. Many times Ramakrishna happened to go into deep Samadhi. For six days or for two weeks continuously he had to be forcefully spoon-fed because he was just as if unconscious. A group is needed for sudden methods, and a teacher becomes an absolute necessity.

Sudden methods dropped from Indian practices because of Buddha, Mahavir and Shankaracharya because they insisted that monks should travel continuously. They didn't allow monks to be in ashrams. They were not to remain anywhere for more than three days. There was a need for this because at the time of Mahavir and Buddha, ashrams became just exploitation centers; they became just big businesses. So Mahavir and Buddha both insisted that a sannyasin shouldn't remain anywhere more than three days. And three days is a very psychological limit, because in order to be attuned with some place or with some people you need more than three days.

In a new house, you cannot feel at ease unless three days have passed. This is a psychological attuning time. If you remain in a house for more than three days, then the house begins to look as if it is yours. So a sannyasin must not remain anywhere more than three days. Buddha and Mahavir insisted. But because of their insistence, ashrams were destroyed and school methods dropped out of practice - because a wandering monk cannot practise sudden methods. He may be in a village, but no one may know anything about it, and if he practises a sudden method and the happening happens, then he will be in danger: he will have to die.

So Mahavir, Buddha and, later on, Shankaracharya, all these three, insisted that monks go on wandering continuously. They must not remain in one place; they should be homeless wanderers.

So it was good in one way, and it proved bad in another. It proved good because establishments were destroyed, but it proved bad also because with establishments certain very, very significant practices, methods, just went into oblivion.

Sudden methods require the constant vigilance of a group. A teacher becomes a necessity. So Buddha could say, "You can know even without me," but a Patanjali cannot say that. Krishnamurti can say, "No teacher is needed," but a Gurdjieff cannot say that. And the real reason for these differences is their methods: Gurdjieff has school methods and Krishnamurti belongs to the tradition of wanderers, no school methods, so no teacher is needed.

With gradual methods you can proceed alone because there is no danger. You have to proceed inch by inch, and as far as a one-inch happening is concerned, you can control it yourself. But if you have to take a jump with no steps in between, then you will need someone who knows where you are going to fall, who knows what can happen. A teacher is not really needed to show you the methods; he is needed really, afterwards when the method has done something and you have moved into the unknown.

So there are sudden methods, but I will not talk about them. I have given you one gradual method, and there are many. I will not talk about the sudden methods because it is dangerous to talk about them. If someone is interested, then he can be led - but talking is impossible. That's why school teaching has always insisted that nothing should be written - because once you write something it becomes public and anyone can do it. Anyone can become just a victim of his own curiosity, and then no help will be coming. So even when something is written about sudden practices, a basic link is always missing.

So those who begin practices through scriptures are always in danger, and many times it happens that they just go mad - because a missing link is always bound to be there, and that missing link is always supplied by word of mouth from the teacher to the disciple. And it is a private and secret process, the missing link. because that is the key. No scripture is really complete and no scripture can ever be really complete, because those who know can never write a thing completely. Something must remain hidden, as a key, so no one can use it. You can read about it, you can comment on it, you can write a thesis upon it, but you cannot practise it because a certain key is not given in the scripture itself. Or, if it is given, it is given in such a way that you cannot decode it; the technique to decode it is not given in it.

So nothing about sudden practices - but you can do something gradually. And this mirror meditation is a very powerful method - very powerful - to know one's own abyss and to know one s own naked reality. And once you have known it, you become the master. Then just say something, and things begin to take shape. In that encounter, if you say, "I must die this moment," you will die that very moment. If you say, "I must become a Buddha this very moment," you will become a Buddha that very moment. Time is not required at all - just a will.

You may begin to think that then it is very easy, but it is a difficult problem. First, to reach it is difficult, though not so difficult, but to will in that moment is very difficult. Such a vital silence takes you over, you cannot even think. Your mind cannot even move. You are in such awe, everything stops - even breathing. A very still moment, totally silent, and will becomes impossible. So one has to train oneself how to will in that still moment - how to will without words, how to will without thoughts. That is possible, but then one has to practise for it.

You are looking at a flower: look at the flower, feel the beauty of it - but don't use the word "beautiful", not even in the mind. Look at it, let it be absorbed in you, reach to it, but don't use words. Feel the beauty of it, but don't say, "It is beautiful," not even in the mind. Don't verbalize, and gradually you will become capable of feeling a flower as beautiful without using the word.

Really, it is not difficult: it is natural. You feel first; then the word comes. But we are so habituated with words that there is no gap. The feeling is there, and suddenly, you have not even felt, and the word comes. So create a gap. Just feel the beauty of it, but don't use the word.

If you can dissociate words from feeling, then you can dissociate even feeling from Existence. Then let the flower be there and you be there as two presences, but don't allow the feeling to come in.

Don't even feel now that the flower is beautiful. Don't feel! Let the flower be there and you be there arrowed in a deep embrace without any ripple of feeling. Then you will feel beauty without feeling.

Really, then you will be the beauty of the flower. It will not be a feeling; you will be the flower. Then you have existentially felt something. When you can do this, you can will. When everything is lost - thought, words, feeling - then you can will existentially.

To help this will, many things have been used. One is that the seeker must constantly go on thinking, "When the thing comes, when that happening happens, what am I going to be?" The sutras of the Upanishads like "AHAM BRAHMASMI" - I am the Brahman - are not meant as literal statements.

These sutras are not meant as statements, they are not meant as philosophical theories, they are meant to engrave a deep will in the very cells of your being. So when that moment comes, you don't need your mind to tell you, "I am the Brahman." Your body begins to feel it, your cells begin to feel it, your every fibre begins to feel it: "AHAM BRAHMASMI." And this feeling does not need to be created by you. It will have gone deep into your existence. Then suddenly when you encounter the unconscious and the moment of will has come, and you can become a creator - your whole existence begins to vibrate "AHAM BRAHMASMI." And the moment your existence begins to vibrate "AHAM BRAHMASMI," you become a Brahma - you become! Whatsoever you can feel, you become.

This should not be known as metaphysics - it is not! It is an experience. So you can know it only through experiencing. Do not decide whether it is right or wrong; do not think in terms of yes and no. Just say, "Po - okay," and make some effort. Just say, "Okay! It may be." Don't decide - because we are very hasty deciders. Someone will say, "No, it is not possible." Really, he is saying. "I am not going to try"; he is not saying it is not possible. He is deceiving himself. He is saying, "I am not going to try," and because of this "I am not going to try", how can it be possible? He is rationalizing for himself.

Someone else says, "Yes, it is possible. It has happened to many. It has happened to my guru, to my teacher, it has happened to this one and that." He is also not going to try because he is making it a trivial fact: "It has happened to many, so it is not such a thing for which one has to try!" He feels, "It can happen to me also." No, don't say yes or no. Just take it as an experiment, a hypothesis, to be worked out. Religion is not a given thing; one has to create it in oneself. It is not something which is given to you or which can be given; it is something which you have to uncover in yourself.

So don't decide unless you experience, don t decide unless you know. Never decide beforehand.

Otherwise you can go on continuously listening to things, thinking about them, and doing nothing - because thinking is not doing; thinking is just an escape from doing.

Question 2:

It is gradual! It is gradual! Really, sudden techniques cannot be given publicly. They cannot be given!

And for sudden techniques one has to bracket the whole life out, because for sudden techniques your totality will be needed. For gradual techniques your totality is not needed. You can do them for one hour and then remain in the world for twenty-three hours. But for sudden techniques your totality will be needed; you cannot be allowed to do anything else. So the whole life has to be just bracketed out, and you have to be totally for the technique. The whole consciousness must be prepared for it because even a single part remaining unprepared will prove dangerous - and anything can prove dangerous because the moment is so potential. The moment is so potential, you must be purified of all that goes on around you. So you have to bracket - bracket everything out. With gradual methods religion can be one thing among others. For sudden methods religion has to be totalitarian; nothing else can be allowed.

When someone would go to Gurdjieff, he would ask, "Are you ready to die for it? Nothing less will do. Are you ready to die for it?" That means, "Are you ready to leave everything for it?" Total consciousness is needed. It is not necessary to die, but one has to be ready to die for it.

For gradual methods, such is not the requirement. You can go on living and doing something. By and by, the doing will gradually become greater, and without even becoming aware, some day you will become ready to die for it. But this growth is like the growth of a pregnancy: by and by. Even the mother is not aware of what is going on, of what is happening. The child goes on growing and growing and growing. After nine months the child has grown so much that now the mother is not needed at all. That's why he comes out. The mother feels so much pain! The reason is not only physical: deep down it is psychological. It is because her own child has grown so much that it is leaving her. This is the first betrayal. Now many betrayals will follow. This is the first birth pain; now many will follow. When the child becomes sexually mature, he will again leave his mother - for some other woman.

So birth is a constant process, and a mother has to go through many pains. And if she cannot understand it, then she unnecessarily creates troubles. She creates them! Even when the child is going to be born, the mother creates trouble: she contracts her whole body. That's why the pain is created; otherwise bodily pain is unnecessary. It is really a conflict. The mother is not ready to give up and the child is forcing to come out. That's why many children have to take their birth in the night - eighty percent, more than eighty percent - because when the mother is sleepy she resists less.

Now there are scientific methods and psychological ones also. If a mother can be persuaded to cooperate, there is no pain. In Paris, Dr. Lorenzo has worked with many, many methods - psychological, persuasive methods. He has delivered thousands of births, helped mothers, and there was no pain at all - not at all! The method is to cooperate with the child coming out - not to resist, but to cooperate; to help the child; to feel that you have to help the child to come out.

Lorenzo may persuade many mothers, but there is a still greater problem when the child goes to another woman. He will have to persuade the mother not to feel hurt. Rather, she should help the child to go to someone else. She should help, cooperate, because it is a second birth and she is unnecessarily troubled.

With gradual methods you grow like a pregnancy - by and by. Then suddenly one day you are reborn. With sudden methods it is different - totally different. One needs to give up everything for sudden methods. Sannyas, in the old days, began with sudden methods. That's why it was necessary to leave everything. Particularly in India, we emphatically pressed the point that no one should leave for sannyas unless he was very old. There is a psychological reason: when you are so old, you can leave life totally. Then total renunciation becomes easy - because in a subtle way life is renouncing you, so you can renounce life. You have become a dry leaf. Now you can leave the tree without hurting the tree or any hurt to yourself. The tree will not even know when the dry leaf has dropped. Pull out a young leaf that is fresh and green, and the tree is hurt and the leaf also.

The wound may remain forever. So for sudden methods, it was decided that a man should leave only when life itself was leaving him. Then he could leave totally. With gradual methods, it was not necessary.

Now in the world, sudden methods have become impossible because there are really no authentic schools, no communities, intimate communities, where you can practise sudden methods. So it is not necessary for someone to renounce the world and go to the hills or the forest. Now you can remain wherever you are and practise gradual methods. The achievement is the same; only more time is needed for gradual methods, less time for sudden methods.

Question 3:

It is a complex problem, multi-dimensional, but some basic points can be understood. One: a good society is possible only if children are not taught the antagonism, the dichotomy, between body and consciousness. The first thing is that they must not be taught this. It must not be said to children, "You are in the body"; it must not be said, "You possess the body." It must be said, "You are the body." And when I say that it must be said, "You are the body," I don't mean a materialist conception.

Really, only out of this can a spiritual being be born. The unity must not be disturbed.

The child is born as a unity, but we separate him in two. The first separation comes between body and consciousness. We sow the seeds of schizophrenia. Now he will never be able to regain the lost unity easily. The more he grows, the more the gap will grow, and a person with a gap between himself and his body is a person who is not normal. The greater the gap, the more insane he will be, because, again, body and mind is a linguistic fallacy. We are psychosomatic - body-mind both, simultaneously. It is not possible to bifurcate the two. They are not two - one wave.

So for a good society the first thing is not to create schizophrenic minds, not to create divided minds - because the first division comes between body and mind, then other divisions follow. Then you have taken a route for divisions. Then mind will again be divided and body will again be divided.

This is a strange fact. I wonder whether you feel that you are divided into consciousness and body.

Then the body is divided into upper and lower, and the lower is "bad" and the upper is "good". From where does the upper begin and from where does the lower begin? We are never at ease with our lower bodies - never! That's why there is so much nonsense about clothes - so much nonsense!

We cannot be naked. Why? Because the moment you are naked the body become one. We have two sorts of clothes - one for the lower part, another for the upper part. This division of clothes is basically connected with the division of the body. If you are standing naked, which is lower, which is higher? And how do you divide? You are one!

So those who divide man are not ready for man to be at ease with his nakedness. And this is only a beginning because there are more nakednesses inside. If you are not ready to be naked about your body, true, then you cannot ever be true for other, deeper layers. How can you be? If you cannot face even your body's nakedness, how can you face your naked consciousness.

This clothing is not just clothing. It has a philosophy and a very insane one. Then the body is divided, then the mind is divided. then the conscious, unconscious, subconscious - and divisions go on growing. In the beginning a child is born as a unity, and the same child dies as a crowd - as a crowd! totally a madhouse! Everywhere he has been divided, and between these divisions there is constant conflict, struggle, and the energy is dissipated. And you really never die; you kill yourself. We are all committing suicide, because this dissipation of energy is suicide. So it is rare that a person dies - rare! Everyone has killed himself, poisoned himself. Different are the methods, different are the tricks to kill oneself, but the beginning is the division.

So a good society, a moral society, a religious society, will not allow its children to be divided. But how do we create a division? How do we begin? When does the division come in?

Now psychologists are very well aware that the moment the child touches his genitalia, his sex organs, the division begins The moment the child touches his sex organs, the whole society becomes aware that something wrong is going to happen. The parents, mother and father, brothers, the whole family, everyone begins to be aware of it. In their eyes, in their gestures, by their hands, they all say, "No, do not touch!" The child cannot conceive of this. He is a unity or she is a unity. He cannot conceive why he cannot touch his body. What is wrong? He doesn't know that man is born in sin. He doesn't know the Bible, he doesn't know any religion, he doesn't know any teachers, moral teachers, he doesn't know any mahatmas. He cannot feel how a part of the body is just to be avoided.

The problem becomes greater because sex organs are the most sensitive part of the body and the most pleasant. To touch them is the first experience of pleasure for the child, the first experience of his own body - that the body can give pleasure, that the body is pleasant, that the body has a value.

Now psychologists say that even a three-month-old baby can create orgasm - the deepest. He can feel his sex organs to their climax, and his whole body begins to vibrate. This is the first experience of his body, but it becomes poisoned because parents will not allow it. Why can they not allow it?

Because they were not allowed. There is no reason - because they were not allowed.

With this the body is divided, and the mind and body are divided. The child becomes afraid, fearful, and guilt is born. He will touch, but now he has to hide it. So we have made a small child a criminal.

He will do it because it is natural, but now he will be afraid whether someone is looking or not, whether mother is present or not. If no one is there then he will touch, but now this touch will not give the same pleasure that it could have given - because guilt is there. He is afraid! He is fearful!

This fear continues for the whole life. No one is at ease with his sex experience. The fear continues.

Then he will go many many times into the sex act - but never will he feel the fulfillment and the deep ecstasy of it. He will never feel it; it has become impossible. You have poisoned the very root, and he will feel guilty.

We feel guilty because of sex; we are "sinners" because of sex. You have created the division, the basic division that in the body you have to choose: some parts are "good" and some parts are "bad". What nonsense! Either the whole body is good or the whole body is bad; because nothing is separate in the body. The same blood goes through the whole body; the same nervous system is there. Everything is one inside, but for the child now there is a division. And another thing: you have poisoned his first joy. Now he will never feel joyful.

People come daily to me, and I know that their basic problem is not meditation, their basic problem is not religion - their basic problem is sex. And I feel very helpless as to how to help them - because if I really want to help them, then they will not come to me again. They will become afraid of me because they are afraid of sex. So sex must not be talked about! Talk about God, talk about something else - never talk about sex. And their problem is not God at all! If the problem was of God then it could be easily helped, but God is not the problem. Their basic problem remains sex. And they cannot enjoy anything because they cannot enjoy the first gift that was given by nature, by Divine forces. They do not have the first gift of bliss, so they cannot enjoy.

I have felt so many times that a person who cannot enjoy sex cannot go deep in meditation - because wherever there is happiness he becomes afraid. The association goes deep. So you have created a barrier. Now he will divide the mind also because he cannot accept the sex part in the mind. Sex is both body and mind. Everything is both! In you, everything is both - remember it constantly. Sex is both body and mind, so the mind part of sex has to be suppressed. That suppressed part will become the unconscious. The forces, the thoughts, the moralistic preachings which will suppress it, will become the subconscious. A very small portion of the mind which is conscious will remain in your hands. It is useful only for the day-today routine, not for anything more. At least it is not useful to live deeply. You can exist, that's all. You can vegetate, you can earn, you can build a house, make a living. but you cannot know life because of the whole mind, nine parts out of ten are just denied.

You can never be total, and only a whole man is holy. Unless you are whole, you can never be holy.

So the first, elementary thing to be done to create a new society, a better society, a religious society, is not to create division. This is the greatest sin - to create division. Let the child grow as a unity.

Let him grow as a oneness, at ease with everything that is inside him, and the sooner he will able to transcend all: he will be able to transcend sex; he will be able to transcend the instinctive nature.

But he will be able to transcend them as a unity, never as a division. That is the point. He will be able to transcend them because he is so whole, so powerful, so undividedly one, that he can transcend anything.

Whatsoever becomes a disease, he can just throw it. Whatsoever becomes just an obsession, he can just throw it. He is forceful, one. A great energy is undividedly his - he can change anything!

But a divided child cannot do anything. Really, in a divided child the conscious mind is a minor part, and the unconscious is the major. For his whole life a divided child is fighting a major energy with a minor one. He is bound to be defeated continuously. And then he feels frustrated. And then he says, "Okay, this world is just a misery." This world is not a misery - remember well! You are divided, so you create misery out of this world.

You are fighting with yourself so you become miserable.

So the first thing: do not create divisions. Let the child grow as a unity. And the second thing: let the child be trained more for flexibility than for fixed attitudes - flexibility. What do I mean when I say flexibility? Don't train him in solid, watertight compartments. Never say that this is bad and that is good, because in life it is a flux. The thing which is good this moment may be bad the next moment, and the thing which is bad in this situation may be good in another.

So train the child to be more aware, to find out what is the case. Never fix labels! Don't say a Mohammedan is bad because he is a Mohammedan and a Hindu is good because he is a Hindu.

Don t say things like that, because bad and good are not fixed things. Don't give fixed attitudes.

Train him to be more aware, to find out who is good and who is bad. But it is difficult, and it is easy to give labels. You live with labels and categorized divisions. You put someone in a category:"Okay, he is a Hindu. He is bad or he is good. He is a Mohammedan, and he is good or he is bad." The matter is decided without looking at the individual. The label decides. Don t give fixed attitudes; give flexible awareness. Don't say this is bad, don't say this is good. Just say that one has to find out constantly what is good, what is bad. Train the mind to find out, to inquire.

This flexibility of attitude has many dimensions. Don't fix the child into "monogamous" attitudes.

Don't say to the child, "Love me because I am your mother." It may create an incapacity in the child, and he will not be able to love anyone else. Then it happens that grown-up children - I call them grown-up children - continue to be fixed. So you cannot love your wife because deep inside you can love only your mother. But your wife is not your mother and your mother cannot be your wife, so you continue to be fixed - a mother fixation. You continue to be fixed! You go on expecting things from your wife as if she is your mother - not consciously. If she does not behave like a mother, then you are not at ease. And the problem becomes more complex. If she begins to behave like a mother, then too you are not at ease because she must behave like your wife.

A mother should never say, "Love me because I am your mother." She must make her child love more persons. The more the child is "polygamous", the more abundant his life will be. He will never feel fixed. Wherever he moves he will be able to love. Whomsoever he comes in contact with he will be able to love. Don't tell him that a mother is to be loved or a sister is to be loved or a brother is to be loved. Don't tell him, "He is a stranger, so you need not love him. He doesn't belong to our family, he doesn't belong to our religion, he doesn't belong to our country, so don't love him." You are crippling the child. Tell him, "To love is a bliss! - so go on loving. The more you love, the more you will grow." A person who can love more is more enriched.

We are all poor. We are all poor because we cannot love. This is a fact - that if you love more persons, you become capable of loving anyone. If you love only one person, in the end you will not be capable of even loving that one, because your capacity to love will be so narrowed down that it will freeze. It is as if we are telling a tree to cut all the roots and let there be only one root. If you tell the tree, "Let there be only one root for your love. Let this be your only love - get everything from this root," the tree is going to die.

We have created a monogamous mind, not loving. That's why there are so many wars, so much cruelty, so much violence, in many, many names - religion, politics, ideology. Any nonsense will do as long as you find something to be violent about. And then see how people become sharp: their eyes look brilliant when there is war, when everyone is just freed from the taboo against killing. Then you can kill anybody. So you feel more joy when you kill some. body - you never feel joy when you love someone.

Go and see in Bangladesh how joyful they are. Go and see anywhere where there is much killing:

see the joy. And when there is no killing, see the limpedness, the sluggishness, the lustreless eyes.

No one is at ease; life is just meaningless. Create a situation for somebody to kill someone, and everyone is alive. Why? We have atrophied the capacity to love, and a child is capable of loving anyone. A child is born to love the whole world, a child is born to love everything, a child is born to love the whole universe - with such a big capacity that if you narrow it down then the child has begun to die from that very moment.

But why this monopoly? Why this possessive attitude? It is a vicious circle. The mother is not fulfilled herself. She has not loved, she has not been loved, so now she becomes possessive of her child.

At least she must turn the child's love totally to herself. It must not go anywhere. She must break all the roots possible. The child must belong totally to her. This is violence, this is not love. And psychologists say that the beginning seven years are the most basic. Once something has been done, it is next to impossible to undo it again - really impossible to undo it, because it has become the basic structure, the foundation of the child. Now he will do everything based on this structure:

this structure will have come to be the basis of his life. So allow everyone to be non-possessive, loving more - without any conditions, without any qualifications.

This should not mean that because someone is lovable then love him. Rather, the emphasis should be: you be loving. Love in itself is beautiful and very deeply fulfilling. So love - whatsoever you feel, wherever you feel, love. This fluidity of love will make you conscious of greater life, and that greater life leads to the Divine.

Love is the foundation of prayer. Unless you have loved and loved abundantly, how can you pray?

How can you feel grateful? For what can you feel grateful? What is there to feel grateful about? If you have not loved, what is there to feel grateful to God for? So life is the beginning, love is the peak.

And if you have loved, suddenly you become aware of a very love-filled universe. If you have not loved, then everywhere there is hate, jealousy. But up to now our emphasis has always been: you must get love. So everyone feels frustrated when he is not getting love, and no one feels frustrated when he is not giving love. The real emphasis must be: you must give love - not get love. Everyone is trying to snatch love from somewhere. It cannot be snatched. You can just give. You can just go on giving. And life is not indifferent. If you give, life returns thousandfold. But you must not be concerned with returning; you must go on giving.

So every child should be trained more for love, and less for mathematics and calculations and geography and history. He must be trained more for love, because geography is not going to be the peak, neither is mathematics going to be the peak, nor knowing history, nor technology. Nothing is comparable to love. Love is going to be the peak. And if you miss love but everything else is there, you will be just a vacant waste, just emptiness. Then anxiety is created.

So the second thing I say: love must be deeply engrained. No effort should be avoided which can lead a child to be more loving. But our structure will not allow it because we are afraid. If a person begins to love more, then what will happen to marriage? What will happen to this and that? We are concerned. Really, we never think of what is happening to marriage. What is marriage now, or what has it been ever? Just a painful suffering - a long suffering, with false smiling faces. It has simply proved a misery. At the most it can be just a convenience.

When I say this, I don't mean that if you can love more people you will not go into marriage. As far as I think, a person who can love more will not go into marriage only for love. He will go into marriage for deeper things. Please understand me: if a person loves many people, then there is no reason to marry someone only because of love - because he can love many people without marriage, so there is no reason. We have forced everyone to go into marriage because of love. Because you cannot love outside it, so we have unnecessarily forced love and marriage to be together - unnecessarily.

Marriage is for deeper things - even more deep: for intimacy, for a "coinherence", to work something which cannot be done alone, which can be done together, which needs a togetherness, a deep togetherness. Because of this love-starved society, we fall into marriage out of romantic love.

Love can never really be a great base for marriage because love is fun and play. If you marry someone for love, you will be frustrated - because soon the fun is gone, the newness is gone, and boredom sets in. Marriage is for deep friendship, deep intimacy. Love is implied in it, but it is not alone. So marriage is spiritual. It is spiritual! There are many things which you can never develop alone. Even your own growth needs someone to respond - someone so intimate that you can open yourself totally to him or her.

Marriage is not sexual at all. We have forced it to be sexual. Sex may be there, it may not be there.

Marriage is a deep spiritual communion. And if such a marriage happens, then we give birth to very different souls - very qualitatively different souls. When a child is born out of this intimacy, he can have a spiritual base. But our marriages are just sexual - just a sexual arrangement. And out of this arrangement, of course, what can be born? Either our marriages are a sexual arrangement or they are for momentary romantic love.

Really, romantic love is ill. Because you cannot love many you go on accumulating the capacity to love. Then you are overflooded with it. Then whenever you find someone and the opportunity, this overflooded love is projected. So an ordinary woman becomes like an angel, an ordinary man becomes divine, looks divine, like a god. But when the flood has gone and you have become normal, then you see that you have been deceived. He is just an ordinary man and she is just an ordinary woman.

This romantic madness is created by our monogamous training. If a person is allowed to love, he never accumulates tensions which can be projected. So romance is possible only in a very diseased society. In a really healthy society there will be no romance: there will be love, but no romance. And if there is no romance, then marriage will be on a deeper level and it will never be frustrating. And if marriage is not only for love but for more intimate togetherness - for an "I-thou" relationship so that you can both grow not as "I's" but as a "we" - then marriage is really a training for egolessness. But we don't know about that kind of marriage at all. Whatsoever we know is just ugliness, just painted faces and everything dead within.

And finally: a child must be trained positively, never negatively. A positive emphasis must be there in everything - only then can a child really grow and become an individual. What do I mean by "positive emphasis"? Our emphasis is always negative. I say, "I can love someone, but I cannot love all." This is a negative training. On the contrary, I should be able to say, "I can love all, only not this one." The loving capacity must go for many. Of course, there are individuals you cannot love, so don't force yourself to love them. But your emphasis now is that "I can love only one." Majnu says, "I only love Laila. I cannot love anyone else." This is negative. The whole world is denied. A positive attitude will be this: "Positively I cannot love this one, but I can love the whole world." Always think of greater positiveness in every realm. If I am negative in my attitudes, then I am surrounded by my own negativities, I see everywhere negations: "This man is not good because he lies" - but even if he lies, he is not just lies. He is more than that. Why not look to the greater part?

Why be emphatically concerned with lies? And we say, "That man is a thief" - but even if a man is a thief, he is more than that. Even a thief can have positive qualities, and, really, he has them - because without some positive qualities you cannot even be a thief. So why not be emphatically concerned with his positive qualities?

A thief is courageous, so why not be concerned with his courage? Why not appreciate courage?

Even a person who speaks lies is intelligent, because you cannot speak lies if you are not intelligent.

Lies require a deep intelligence which truth never requires. You can be just an idiot and you can speak the truth, but to speak lies you need intelligence, a cleverness and a wider range of consciousness, because if you speak one lie you will have to speak a hundred. and then you will have to remember them all. So why not be concerned with the positive qualities? Why emphasize negatives!

But our society has created negative minds. And you can find negativity in anyone. It is bound to be there because life cannot exist with only positives. Negatives are needed: they balance. So there are negatives, and if you train children for negatives they will live their entire lives in a negative universe. Everyone will be bad, and when everyone is bad you begin to feel egoistic - only you are good.

So we train our children to find faults with everything. Then they begin to be "good". We force them to be good, and then they feel that everyone is bad. But how can someone be good in a bad world?

It is not possible. You can be good only in a good world. A good society can come out only with a positive mind. So bring out the positivity of the mind. And even if there is something negative, always try to see something positive in it - there is bound to be. And if a child becomes capable of seeing the positive even in the negative, then you have given him something. He will be happy. If you have given him a negative mind and he becomes capable of finding the negative in everything positive, you have created hell for him. His whole life he is going to be in hell.

Heaven is to live in a positive world; hell is to live in a negative world. This whole earth has become a hell because of negative minds. The mother cannot say to her child, "That woman is beautiful." How can she say it? Only she is beautiful; no one else is. A husband cannot say to his wife, "Look!

That woman passing on the street - how beautiful!" He cannot say it! He says it, but inside. And if the wife is with him, he is even afraid to say it inside. A husband moving with his wife is really afraid to look here and there. He cannot look. That's why he is never ready to move with his wife. It is such a hell. But why? If someone is beautiful why not tell it?

A mother cannot listen to her child reporting that someone is beautiful. She will try to make him feel that only she is beautiful and the whole world is ugly. And ultimately the child will find that his mother is the ugliest, because how can you create beauty in an ugly world? So a father goes on training him, a teacher goes on saying, "Only I am the possessor of truth." Someone was here only two days before and she told me. "I want to listen to you, but my guru says, 'This is sin. You belong to me, so how can you go anywhere else? And when I can give you the Truth, what is the need?' " Sooner or later this guru cannot remain a guru, cannot remain a teacher, because he is teaching negativity. And this negativity is bound to rebound on him ultimately.

In Zen, teachers will send their disciples to their opponents. Someone will remain with a teacher for one year, and when he is ready the teacher will say, "Now you go to my opponent - because something I have said, the remaining he can say, the other part. So you go." This teacher will always be remembered as a teacher; you can never disrespect him. How can you disrespect him? He sends you to his opponent just so you can find the other part: "I have told something, but this is not the whole." And no one can tell the whole - mm? - the whole is so big.

So create a positive attitude, and a better world can come out of it. But this is very rudimentary. This is a very complex subject, so sometime we will discuss it more.