A Technique for the intellectual and a technique for the feeling type

For tantra, man himself is the disease. It is not that your mind is disturbed - rather, your mind is the disturbance. It is not that you are tense within, but rather, you are the tension. Understand the distinction clearly. If the mind is ill then the illness can be treated, but if the mind itself is the illness, then this illness cannot be treated. It can be transcended, but it cannot be treated. That makes the basic difference between Western psychology, and Eastern tantric and yogic psychology; that is the difference between Eastern tantra and yoga, and Western psychology.

Western psychology thinks that the mind can be healthy, the mind as it is can be treated and helped - because for Western thinking there is no transcendence, as there is nothing beyond mind.

Transcendence is possible only if there is something beyond, so that you can live in your present state and move further. But if there is no beyond and the mind is the end, then transcendence is impossible.

If you think you are just a body, then you cannot transcend your body - because who will transcend and to where will you transcend? If you are simply the body, then you cannot go beyond the body.

If you can go beyond the body, that means you are not simply the body, but something plus. That "plus" becomes the dimension to move into.

Similarly, if you are just the mind and nothing else, then no transcendence is possible. Then we can treat individual diseases... Someone is mentally ill - we can treat the illness. We will not touch the mind, but we will treat the illness and make the mind normal. And no one will think about whether the normal mind itself is healthy or not.

The normal mind is just a sceptical mind. Freud says that as everyone is, we can only bring a diseased mind to normality. But whether everyone is healthy or not, that question cannot be raised.

We take it for granted that the collective mind, the average mind, is okay. So whenever someone goes beyond that average mind, moves somewhere else, he has to be brought back and readjusted.

Thus, the whole of Western psychology has been an effort toward readjustment - readjustment to the ordinary mind, the average mind.

In this sense, there are thinkers, particularly one very intelligent thinker, Geoffrey, who says that genius is a disease because genius is abnormal. If normality is health, then genius is disease. A genius is not normal; he is in a certain way mad. His madness may be useful, so we allow him to live.

An Einstein or a Van Gogh or an Ezra Pound - poets, painters, scientists, mystics - they are mad, but their madness is allowed for two reasons: either their madness is harmless or their madness is utilitarian. Through their madness they contribute something which normal minds cannot contribute.

Because they are mad they have moved to one extreme, and they can see certain things that the normal mind cannot see. So we can allow these madmen - and we even make them Nobel laureates.

But they are ill.

If normality is the criterion and the standard of health, then everyone who is not normal is ill. Geoffrey says that a day will come when we will treat scientists and poets in the same way we treat madmen:

we will make them readjust to the average mind. This attitude is because of a particular hypothesis that mind is the end and there is no beyond.

Just opposite to this attitude is the Eastern approach. We say here that mind itself is the disease. So whether normal or abnormal, we will make only the distinction of "normally ill" and "abnormally ill." A normal men is normally ill. He is not so much ill that you can detect it, he is just average. Because everyone else is like him, his illness cannot be detected. Even the person, the psychoanalyst who treats him, is himself a normally ill person. Mind itself is the disease for us.

Why? Why call mind itself the disease? We will have to approach it from a different dimension, then it will be easy. For us, the body is death; for the Eastern approach, the body is death. So you cannot create a perfectly healthy body; otherwise it will not die. You can create a certain balance, but the body as such, because it is going to die, is prone to be ill. So health can only be a relative thing.

The body cannot be perfectly healthy - it cannot be.

That is why medical science has no standard and no definition of what health is. They can define diseases, they can define a particular disease, but they cannot define what health is. Or at the most they can only define negatively that when a person is not ill, not particularly ill, he is healthy. But to define health in a negative way looks absurd, because then disease becomes the primary thing by which you define health. But health cannot be defined, because really, the body can never be really healthy. Every moment the body is only in a relative balance, because death is progressing with life; you are dying also. You are not simply alive, you are dying simultaneously.

Death and life are not two ends far away from each other. They are like two legs simultaneously walking - and they both belong to you. This very moment you are alive and dying both. Something is dying within you every moment. Within a span of seventy years, death will reach the goal. Every moment you will go on dying and dying and dying, and then you will die.

The day you were born you started dying. The birthday is also the death-day. If you are dying continuously - and death is not something which will come from without, but something which will grow within - then the body can never be really healthy. How can it be? When it is dying every moment, how can it be really healthy? It can only be relatively healthy. So if you are normally healthy, it is enough.

It is the same with the mind. The mind cannot be really healthy, whole, because the very existence of the mind is such that it is bound to remain diseased, ill at ease, tense, anxious in anxiety. The very nature of the mind is such, so we will have to understand what is this nature.

Three things... One, mind is a link between the body and the no-body which is within you. It is a link between the material and the non-material within you. It is one of the most mysterious bridges. It bridges two quite contradictory things - matter and spirit.

If you can, conceive the paradox. Usually you make a bridge over a river where both the banks are material. In this case, mind is the bridge between one bank which is material and the other which is non-material... between the visible and the invisible, between the dying and the non-dying, between life and death, between body and spirit - or whatsoever you name these two banks. Because mind bridges such contradictory things, it is bound to remain tense; it cannot be at ease.

It is always moving from the visible to the invisible, from the invisible to the visible. Every moment the mind is in deep tension. It has to bridge two things which cannot be bridged. That is the tension, that is the anxiety. You are every moment in anxiety.

I am not talking about your financial anxiety or other such anxieties - they are boundary anxieties, frame anxieties. The real anxiety is not that, the real anxiety is that of the buddha. You are also in that anxiety, but you are so much burdened by your day-to-day anxieties, you cannot discover your basic anxiety. Once you find your basic anxiety, you will become religious.

Religion is a concern for the basic anxiety. Buddha became anxious in a different way. He was not worried about finance, he was not worried about a beautiful wife, he was not worried about anything.

There was no worry; ordinary worries were not there. He was secure, safe, the son of a great king, the husband of a very beautiful wife, and everything was available. The moment he desired anything he would get it. All that was possible was possible for him.

But suddenly he became anxiety-ridden - and that anxiety was a basic anxiety, a primary anxiety.

He saw a dead man being carried away, and he asked his chariot driver what had happened to this man. The driver said, "This man is dead now. He has died." This was Buddha's first encounter with death, so he asked immediately, "Is everyone prone to death? Am I also going to die?"

Look at the question. You may not have asked it. You may have asked who has died, why he has died, or you might have said that he looks too young and this is not the age to die. Those anxieties are not basic; they are not concerned with you. You may have felt sympathetic, you may have felt sad, but still that is just on the circumference - and you will have forgotten within a few moments.

Buddha turned the whole question toward himself and he asked, "Am I going to die?" The chariot driver said, "I cannot lie to you. Everyone is prone to death, everyone is going to die." Buddha said, "Then turn back the chariot. If I am going to die, then what is the use of life? You have created a deep anxiety in me. Unless this anxiety is resolved, I cannot be at ease."

What is this anxiety? It is a basic anxiety. So if you become aware of the very basic situation of life - of body, of mind - a subtle anxiety will creep in, and then that anxiety will continue to tremble within you. Whatsoever you are doing or not doing, the anxiety will be there - a deep anguish. The mind is bridging an abyss, an impossible abyss. The body is going to die, and you have something - X - within you which is deathless.

These are two contradictions. It is as if you are standing in two boats which are moving in opposite directions. Then you will be in a deep conflict. That conflict is the conflict of the mind. The mind is between two opposites: - that is one thing.

Secondly, mind is a process, not a thing. Mind is not a thing:,it is a process. The word mind is a false notion. When we say "mind," it appears as if there is something like a mind within you. There is nothing! Mind is not a thing, mind is a process. So it is better to call it "minding," not mind. We have a word in Sanskrit, CHITTA, which means minding. Not mind, but minding - a process.

A process can never be silent. A process will always be tense; a process means a turmoil. And mind is always moving from the past to the future. The past goes on being a burden on it, so it has to move into the future. This constant movement creates another tension within you. If you become too much conscious about it, you may go mad.

So that is why we are always engaged in something or other; we do not want to be unoccupied. If you are unoccupied, then you will become conscious of the inner process, of the minding, and that will give you very strange and peculiar tensions. So everyone wants to be occupied in some way or other. If there is nothing else to do, one goes on reading the same newspaper again and again.

Why? Can you not sit silently? It is difficult, because if you sit silently you become aware of the totally tense process within.

So everyone is in search of escapes. Alcohol can give that - you become unconscious. Sex can give that - for a moment you forget yourself completely. Television can give that, music can give that... anything where you can forget yourself and become occupied so much that for the time being you are as if you are not. This constant escaping from oneself is really because of this process of minding. If you are unoccupied - and unoccupied-ness means meditation - if you are totally unoccupied, you will become aware of your inner processes. And mind is the basic process within.

That is why so many people come to me and say they have come to meditate, but when they start meditating they become more tense. They say, "We were not so tense before and we were not so worried before. Ordinarily the whole day we are not so much worried, but when we sit down quietly and start meditating, thoughts rush upon us; they crowd in." That is something new so they think it is because of meditation that thoughts are crowding them.

It is not because of meditation. Thoughts are crowding you every moment of your existence, but you are so occupied outwardly, you cannot be conscious of it. Whenever you sit down you become conscious, you become conscious of something you have been escaping constantly. Mind, minding, is a process, and a process is an effort. Energy is wasted in it, dissipated in it. It is necessary; it is needed for life, it is part of the struggle for survival. It is a weapon - and one of the most violent weapons.

That is why man could survive over other animals. The animals are more strong physically, but they lack a subtle weapon - minding. They have dangerous teeth, dangerous nails; they are more powerful than man; they can instantly kill a man completely. But they lack one weapon - minding.

Because of that weapon, man could kill, survive.

So the mind is a survival measure. It is needed; it is necessary, and it is violent. The mind is violent, it is part of the long violence man has had to pass through. It has been built through violence. So whenever you sit down, you will feel inner violence - thoughts rushing, violent thoughts, a turmoil, as if you are going to explode. That is why no one wants to sit silently.

Everyone comes and says, "Give me some support, some inner support. I cannot just sit silently.

Give me a name that I can repeat like 'Ram,Ram,Ram...' Give me a name that I can repeat; then I can be silent." Really, what are you doing? You are creating a new occupation. Then you can be silent because the mind is still occupied. Now you are focused on "Ram,Ram,Ram..." on chanting; the mind is still not unoccupied. The mind as a process is bound to be always ill; it cannot be so balanced as silence needs.

Thirdly, mind is created from without. When you are born you have just the capacity for mind, but no mind - just a possibility, a potentiality. So if a child is brought up without society, without a society, the child will grow, he will have a body, but not a mind. He will not be able to speak any language; he will not be able to think in concepts. He will be like any animal.

Society trains your capacity into an actuality, it gives you a mind. That is why a Hindu has a certain mind and a Mohammedan has a different mind. Both are men, but their minds are different. A Christian has a different mind... These minds are different because different societies have cultivated them with different purposes, different goals.

A child, a boy, is born, or a girl is born - they do not have minds, they have only the possibility that the mind can sprout. It can be there, but it is not there; it is just a seed. Then you train them. Then a boy becomes one mind and a girl becomes a different mind, because you teach them differently.

Then a Hindu becomes different and a Mohammedan becomes different. Then a theist is different and an atheist is different. These minds are brought up in you. They are conditioned, forced upon you.

Because of this, mind as such is always old and orthodox. There can be no progressive mind. This statement may look strange: There can be no progressive mind. Mind is orthodox because it is a conditioning. So these so-called progressives are as much orthodox about their progressiveness as any orthodox person. Look at a communist. He thinks he is very progressive, but Marx's Das Capital is just as authoritative upon him as the Koran on any Mohammedan, or the Gita on any Hindu. And if you start criticizing Marx, the communist feels as much hurt as any Jain will feel if you start criticizing Mahavir. Mind is orthodox because it is conditioned by the past, by the society, by others, for certain purposes.

Why am I making you aware of this fact? Because life changes every moment and mind belongs to the past. Mind is always old and life is always new. There is bound to be tension and conflict.

A new situation arises... You fall in love with a woman, and you have a Hindu mind and the woman is Mohammedan. Now there will be conflict. Now there is going to be much anguish unnecessarily.

The woman is Mohammedan, and life has brought you to a situation where you fell in love with her.

Now life gives you a new phenomenon, and mind does not know how to deal with it. There is no know-how, so there will be conflict.

That is why, in a very changing world, people become uprooted; their lives become anxious. This was not so in past ages. Man was more silent - not so really, but he appeared more silent because the state of affairs around him was so static and the mind was not in much conflict. Now everything is changing so fast, and the mind cannot change so fast. Mind clings to the past, and everything changes every moment.

That is why there is so much anxiety in the West. In the East there is less anxiety. This is strange because the East has to face more basic problems. Food is not there, clothes are not there, houses are not there; everyone is just starved. But they are in less anxiety, and the West is in more anxiety.

The West is affluent, scientifically and technologically developed, with a higher state of living so why so much anxiety? Because technology gives life such a rapid change that the mind cannot cope with it. Before you are adjusted to a new thing, the new has become old and has changed.

Again the gap! Life is bringing about new situations, and the mind always tries to react with the old conditioning. That gap goes on growing. The more the gap will be there, the more will be the anxiety. Mind is orthodox and life is not orthodox.

These are reasons why mind itself is the disease. So what to do? If you are going to treat the mind, there are easy ways. Psychoanalysis is easy. It may take a long time, it may not succeed, but still it is not difficult. But this transcendence of the mind is difficult, arduous, because you have to leave the mind completely. You have to take wing and go beyond, and leave the mind as it is - do not touch it.

For example, I am here and the room is hot. I can do two things. I can air-condition the room, but I continue to live in the room. I can go on making arrangements so that the room is not hot, but then every arrangement has to be looked after and then every arrangement creates its own anxieties and problems. There is another possibility: I can leave the room and go out.

This is the difference. The West goes on living in the same room of the mind, trying to adjust, to make arrangements, so that living in the mind becomes at least normal. It may not be very blissful, but it becomes less and less unhappy. It may not reach a point, a peak of happiness, but one is saved from much suffering; there is less and less suffering.

Freud has said that there is no possibility for man to be happy. At the most, if you can arrange your mind in such a way that you are normal, you will be less unhappy than others, that is all. This is very hopeless. But Freud is a very genuine, authentic thinker, and his insight is right in a way because he cannot see beyond the mind.

That is why the East has not really developed any psychology comparable to Freud, Jung or Adler.

And that is strange because the East has been talking about the mind for at least five thousand years.

With five thousand years of talking about mind, meditation, going beyond, why couldn't the East create psychology? Psychology is a very recent development in the West. Why couldn't the East create a psychology? Buddha was here who talked about the deepest layers of the mind. He talked about the conscious, he talked about the subconscious, he talked about the unconscious. He must have known. But why couldn't he develop psychologies about the conscious, subconscious and unconscious?

The reason is this: the East has not been interested in the room. It talks about the room a little in order to go beyond, to go out. We have been interested in the room just to find the door; that is all.

We are not interested in details about the room; we are not going to live in it. So the only interest has been in knowing where the door is and how to go out. We have talked about the room only so that the door can be located - so that we can know how to open it and go out.

This has been our whole interest. That is why psychology could not be developed in India. If you are not interested in this room, you will not make maps of the room; you will not measure every wall and every inch of space. You are not bothered about these things. You are only interested in where the door is, where the window is, so that you can jump out. And the moment you are out you will forget the room completely, because then you are under the great infinite sky. You will not even remember that there was a room and you lived in a cave, while all the time the infinite sky was beyond - and you could have moved out at any moment. You will forget the room completely. If you can go beyond the mind, what happens? The mind remains the same, you do not make any change in the mind, but you go beyond it and everything changes.

Then you can come back to the room again if you need to, but you will be a different person. This going out and coming in will have made you qualitatively different. A man who has been living in a room, and who has not known what it is like on the outside, is not really a man: he lives like a beetle, he lives like an insect. When he moves out to the sky - the open sky - and to the sun and the clouds and the infinite expanse, he becomes different immediately. This impact of the infinite makes him for the first time a man, a consciousness.

Now he can move into the room again, but he will be a different man. Now the room can only be something which is used. It is not now a prison; he can move out any moment. Then the room becomes just something to be used, something utilitarian. Previously he was imprisoned in it; now he is not imprisoned. He is now a master, and he knows the sky is outside and the infinite is awaiting him. And even this room is part of that infinite now, even this small, limited sky and space within the room is the space, the same space which is outside. The man comes in again and lives in the room, uses the room, but now he is not imprisoned in it. This is a qualitative change.

The East is concerned with how to go beyond the mind and then use it. Do not be identified with the mind - that is the message. And all the techniques of meditation are concerned only about how to find the door, how to use the key, how to unlock the door and go out.

We will discuss two methods today. The first is concerned with stopping in the middle of an activity.

We discussed three stop methods before; now this one remains.

The fourth method:

SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF KNOWLEDGE. AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND.

You can do it in an actual situation or you can imagine a situation. For example: lie down, relax, and feel as if your body is going to die. Close your eyes; start feeling that you are dying. Soon you will feel that your body is becoming heavy. Imagine: "I am dying, I am dying, I am dying." If the feeling is authentic, the body will start becoming heavy; you will feel as if your body has become like lead.

You want to move your hand, but you cannot move; it has become so heavy and dead. Go on feeling that you are dying, dying, dying, dying, dying, and when you feel that now the moment has come - just a jump and you will be dead - then suddenly forget your body and transcend.

SUPPOSE YOU ARE GRADUALLY BEING DEPRIVED OF STRENGTH OR OF KNOWLEDGE.

AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND. When you feel that the body is dead, what is meant now by transcending? Look at the body. Up to now you were feeling that you are dying; now the body has become a dead weight. Look at the body. Forget that you are dying and now be the observer. The body is lying dead and you are looking at it. There will be a transcendence. You will be out of your mind, because a dead body needs no mind. A dead body relaxes so much that the very process of the mind stops. You are there and the body is there, but the mind is absent.

Remember, mind is needed for life, not for death.

If suddenly you come to know that within an hour you will die, what will you do in that hour? One hour left, and it is certain that you are going to die after one hour - exactly after one hour. What will you do? Your thinking will drop completely because the whole of thinking is concerned with either the past or the future.

You were planning to purchase a house or to purchase a car, or you were planning to marry someone or divorce someone. You were thinking many things, and they were constantly on your mind. Now, with only one hour more, there is no meaning in marriage and no meaning in divorce. Now you can leave all the planning to others, who are going to live. With death planning ceases, with death worrying ceases, because every worry is life-oriented.

You have to live tomorrow; that is why there is worry. So all those who have been teaching meditation to the world have always been saying: do not think of tomorrow. Jesus says to his disciples, "Do not think of the tomorrow," because if you think of the tomorrow you cannot go into meditation. Then you move into worries. But we are so fond of worries that not only do we think of the tomorrow, we think of the other life. So we plan not only for this life, we plan for the other life, beyond death, also.

One day I was passing through a street and someone gave me a pamphlet. A very beautiful house was painted on the cover and a very beautiful garden. It was lovely - divinely lovely. And in very big capital letters was the question: "Do you want such a beautiful house and such a beautiful garden?

And without any price, without any cost - for free?" I turned it over. The house was not of this earth.

It was a Christian pamphlet, and it read, "If you want such a beautiful house and such a beautiful garden, believe in Jesus. Those who believe in him will get such houses free of cost in the kingdom of God."

The mind goes on not only thinking of tomorrow, but thinking of beyond death, arranging and making reservations for the afterlife. Such a mind cannot be a religious mind. A religious mind cannot think of tomorrow. So those who think of the afterlife are constantly worried about whether God will behave rightly with them or not.

Churchill was dying and someone asked him, "Are you ready to meet the Father there in heaven?"

Churchill said, "That is not my worry. I am constantly worried whether the divine Father is ready to meet me."

But either way one goes on worrying about the future. Buddha said, "There is no heaven and no afterlife." And he said, "There is no soul, and your death will be total and complete; nothing will survive." People thought he was an atheist. He was not, he was just trying to create a situation in which you can forget the tomorrow and can remain in this very moment, here and now. Then meditation follows very easily.

So if you are thinking of death - not the death which will come, or is to come later - fall down on the ground and lie dead. Relax and feel, "I am dying, I am dying, I am dying." And not only think it, feel it in every limb of the body, in every fib of the body. Let death creep in. It is one of the most beautiful meditations. When you feel that the body is a dead weight and you cannot move your hand, you cannot move your head and everything has become dead, suddenly look at your own body.

Mind will not be there. You can look! You will be there; consciousness will be there. Look at your body - it will not look like yours, it will be just a body. The gap between you and the body will be clear - crystal clear. There will be no bridge. The body is lying dead and you are there standing as a witness, not in it - NOT in it!

Remember, the feeling that you are in the body is because of the mind. This feeling that you are in the body is because of the MIND! If the mind is not there, if it is absent, you will not say you are in the body or out of the body. You will simply be there, no in or out. "In" and "out" are both relative terms associated with the mind. Simply, you will be there witnessing. This is transcendence. You can do it in many ways.

Sometimes it is possible in actual situations... You are ill and you are feeling that there is no hope, you are going to die. This is a very useful situation. Use it for meditation. You can try it in other ways also. Suppose you are gradually being deprived of strength. Lie down and feel as if the whole existence is sucking your strength out. You are being sucked from everywhere - your strength is being sucked. Soon you will be impotent, completely devoid of strength. Your energy is flowing out, being taken out. Soon nothing will be left inside. That is how life is: you are being sucked out, everything that is around you is sucking you out. One day you will be just a dead cell; everything will have been sucked out. The life will have flown out of you, and only the dead body will remain there.

Even this very moment you can do it. Imagine this: lie down and feel that the energy is being sucked out. Within a few days you will have the knack of how energy goes out. And when you feel that everything has moved out, nothing is now left within you, TRANSCEND: AT THE INSTANT OF DEPRIVATION, TRANSCEND. When the last quantum of energy is leaving you, transcend. Be an onlooker; just become a witness. Then this universe and this body, both, are not you. You are looking at the phenomenon.

This transcendence will bring you out of the mind. This is the key. And you can do it in many ways, whatsoever is your liking. For example, we were talking about a run around. Exhaust yourself; go on running and running and running. Do not stop by yourself, let the body fall. When every fib is exhausted, you will fall down. When you are falling down, become aware. Just look and see that the body is falling down. Sometimes a very miraculous happening happens. You remain standing and the body has fallen down, and you can look at it. You can look, as only the body has fallen down and you are still standing. Do not fall with the body. Roam around, run, dance, exhaust the body - but remember, you are not to lie down. Then the inner consciousness also moves with the body and lies down.

You are not to lie down, you just go on doing it until the body falls by itself. Then it falls like a dead weight. Immediately, you feel the body is falling and you cannot do anything. Open your eyes, be alert, do not miss the point. Be alert and see what is happening. You may be still standing, and the body has fallen down. And once you know it, you can never forget that you are different from the body.

This "standing out" is the real meaning of the English word ecstasy. Ecstasy means to stand out.

And once you can feel you are out of the body, there is no mind in that moment, because mind is the bridge that gives you the feeling that you are in the body. If you are out of the body for a single moment, there will be no mind in that moment. This is transcendence. Then you can move in the body, then you can move in the mind, but now you cannot forget the experience . That experience has become part and parcel of your being; it will be there always. Go on doing it every day, and many things happen through such a simple process.

The West is always worried about how to tackle mind, and it tries to find many ways. But still, nothing works or seems to work. Everything becomes a fashion and then dies. Now psychoanalysis is a dead movement. New movements are there - encounter groups, group psychology, action psychology and many other things - but just like a fashion they come and go. Why? Because within mind, at the most you can only make arrangements. They will be disturbed again and again. Making arrangements with the mind is making a house on sand, or making a house of playing cards. It is always wavering, and the fear is always there that now it is going. At any moment it may not be there.

Going beyond the mind is the only way to be inwardly happy and healthy, to be whole. Then you can move in the mind and use the mind, but the mind becomes the instrument and you are not identified with it. So two things. Either you are identified with the mind - this is illness for tantra - or you are not identified with the mind. Then you use it as an instrument, and then you are healthy and whole.

The fifth technique is very simple in one sense and the most difficult in another, and it is only of two words. The fifth technique says, DEVOTION FREES.

Just two words: DEVOTION FREES. It is simply one word really, because FREES is the consequence of devotion. What is meant by devotion? In VIGYANA BHAIRAVA TANTRA, there are two types of techniques. One is for those who are intellectually oriented, scientifically oriented, and another is for those who are heart oriented, emotion oriented, poetically oriented. And there are only two types of minds: the scientific mind and the poetic mind - and these are poles apart. They meet nowhere, and they cannot meet. Sometimes they run parallel, but still, there is no meeting.

Sometimes it happens in a single individual that he is a poet and a scientist. Rarely, but sometimes it happens that he is both a poet and a scientist. Then he has a split personality. He is really two persons, not one. When he is a poet, he forgets the scientist completely; otherwise the scientist will be disturbing. And when he is a scientist, he has to forget the poet completely and move into another world with another arrangement of concepts - ideas, logic, reason, mathematics.

When he moves to the world of poetry, the mathematics is no more there - music is there. Concepts are no more there: words are there - but liquid, not solid. One word flows into another, and one word can mean many things or it may not mean anything. The grammar is lost; only the rhythm remains.

It is a different world.

Thinking and feeling - these are the two types, basic types. The first technique I taught was for a scientific mind. The second technique, DEVOTION FREES, is for a feeling type. Remember to find out your type. And no type is higher or lower. Do not think that the intellectual type is higher or the feeling type is higher - no! They are simply types. No one is higher or lower. So just think factually what is your type.

This second technique is for the feeling type. Why? Because devotion is toward something else and devotion is a blind thing. In devotion the other becomes more important than you. It is a trust.

The intellectual cannot trust anybody; he can only criticize. He cannot trust. He can doubt, but he cannot trust And if sometimes some intellectual comes to trust, it is never authentic. First he tries to convince himself about his trust; it is never authentic. He finds proofs, arguments, and when he is satisfied that the arguments help, the proofs help, then he trusts. But he has missed the point, because trust is not argumentative and trust is not based on proofs. If proofs are there, then there is no need of trust.

You do not believe in the sun, you do not believe in the sky - you know. How can you believe in the sun rising? If someone asks what is your belief about the sun rising, you do not have to say, "I believe in it. I am a great believer." You say, "The sun is rising and I know it." No question of belief or disbelief. Is there someone who disbelieves in the sun? There is no one. Trust means a jump into the unknown without any proofs.

It is difficult - difficult for the intellectual type, because the whole thing becomes absurd, foolish.

First proofs must be there. If you say, "There is a God. Surrender yourself to God," first God has to be proven. But then God becomes a theorem - of course proven, but useless. God must remain unproven; otherwise he is of no use, because then trust is meaningless. If you believe in a proven God, then your God is just a theorem of geometry. No one believes in the theorems of Euclid - there is no need, they can be proven. That which can be proven cannot be made a basis of trust.

One of the most mysterious Christian saints, Tertullian, said, "I believe in God because he is absurd."

That is right. That is the attitude of the feeling type. He says, "Because he cannot be proven, that is why I believe in him." This statement is illogical, irrational, because a logical statement must be like this: "These are the proofs of God; therefore I believe in him." And he says, "Because there are no proofs, and no argument can prove that God is, therefore I believe in him." And he is right in a way, because trust means a jump into the unknown without any reasons. Only a feeling type can do that.

Forget devotion, first understand love; then you will be able to understand devotion. You fall in love.

Why do we say "falling in love"? Nothing falls - just your head. What falls in love but your head? You fall down from the head. That is why we say "falling in love" - because the language is created by intellectual types. For them love is a lunacy, love is madness. ; one has fallen in love. It means, now you can expect anything from him... now he is mad, now no reasoning will help, you cannot reason with him. Can you reason with someone who is in love? People try. People try, but nothing can be proven.

You have fallen in love with someone. Everyone says, "That person is not worthwhile," or "You are entering a dangerous terrain," or "You are proving yourself foolish; you can find a better partner." But nothing will help, no reasoning will help. You are in love - now reason is useless. Love has its own reasoning. We say "falling in love." It means now your behavior will be irrational.

Look at two lovers, at their behavior, their communication. It becomes irrational. They start using baby talk. Why? Even a great scientist, when he falls in love, will use baby language. Why not use a highly developed, technological language? Why use this baby talk? Because highly technological language is of no use.

One of my friends married a girl. The girl was Czechoslovakian. She did know a little English, however, and this man knew a little Czechoslovakian; they got married. He was a highly educated man, a professor in a university, and the girl was also a professor. But the man said to me - I was staying with him - "It is very difficult because I know only technological Czech, technological terminology, and she also only knows technological English, so we cannot have baby talk. So it is strange. Our love is just that somewhere on the surface we feel; it cannot move deep. The language becomes the barrier. I can talk as a professor - as far as my subject is concerned I can talk about it - , and she can talk about her subject. But love has been neither of our's subject."

So why do you fall into baby talk? Because that was your first love experience, with your mother.

Those words that you uttered first were love words. They were not head-oriented, they came from the heart; they belonged to feeling. They had a different quality.

So even when you have a very developed language, when you love you again fall back - you fall back into baby talk. Those words are different. They do not belong to this category of the mind; they belong to the heart. They may not be so expressive, so meaningful. Still, they are more expressive and more meaningful - but their meaning is of a different dimension altogether. Only if you are very deeply in love will you fall silent. Then you cannot talk with your beloved, or you can talk just by the way, but really, there is no talk.

If the love goes deep, words become useless; you remain silent. If you cannot remain silent with your beloved, know well there is no love - because it is very difficult to live in silence with someone you are not in love with. With a stranger you immediately start talking. When you are riding in a train or in a bus you immediately start talking, because to sit by the side of a stranger silently is very difficult, awkward. There is no other bridge, so unless you create a language bridge there is no bridge.

No inner bridge is possible with that stranger. You are closed in yourself and he is closed in himself, and two enclosures are just side by side. There is every fear of colliding and of danger, so you create a bridge. You start talking about the weather or about anything, any nonsense that gives a feeling that you are bridged and you are communicating. Two lovers will fall silent, and when two lovers start talking again you can know well that the love has disappeared; they have become strangers.

So go and look... Wives and husbands, whenever they are alone, they will talk about anything. And they both know, they both are aware that there is no need to talk, but it is so difficult to remain silent.

So anything, any trivia will do, but talk so that you can have the feeling that communication is there.

But two lovers will fall silent. Language will disappear because language belongs to reason. First it will become a baby talk, and then this will disappear. Then they will be silently in communication.

What is their communication? It is irrational. They feel attuned to a different dimension of existence, and they feel happy in that attunement. And if you ask them to prove what is their happiness, they cannot prove it.

No lover has been able to prove up to now why he is happy in love. Why? Because love implies much suffering. Still, lovers are happy. Love has a deep suffering, because when you become one with someone it is always difficult. Two minds become one... it is not only two bodies becoming one.

That is the difference between sex and love. If only two bodies become one, it is not very difficult and there is no suffering. It is one of the easiest things; any animal can do it. It is easy. But when two people are in love it is very difficult, because two minds have to dissolve, two minds have to be absent. Only then is the space created, and love can flower.

No one reasons about love; no one can prove that love gives happiness. No one can even prove that love exists. And there are scientists, behaviorists, followers of Watson and Skinner, who say love is just an illusion. There is no love; you are just in an illusion. You feel that you are in love, but there is no love, you are just dreaming. And no one can prove they are wrong. They say that love is just a hallucination, a psychedelic experience. Nothing real, just body chemistry influencing you, just hormones, chemicals, influencing your behavior and giving a false well-being to you. No one can prove them wrong.

But the miracle is this, that even a Watson will fall in love. Even a Watson will fall in love, knowing well that this is just a chemical affair. And even a Watson will be happy. But love cannot be proven, it is so inner and subjective. What happens in love? The other becomes important - more important than you. You become the periphery and he becomes the center.

Logic always remains self-centered, mind always remains ego-centered: I am the center and everything just encircles around me - for me, but I am the center. This is how reason works. If you move with reason too much, you will come to the conclusion to which Berkeley came. He said, "Only I exist, everything else is just an idea in the mind. How can I prove that you are there, sitting there just before me? How can I prove reasonably, rationally, that you are really there? You may be just a dream. I may be just dreaming and talking; you may not be there at all. How can I prove to myself that really you are there? I can, of course, touch you, but I can touch you even in a dream.

And even in a dream I feel it when I touch someone. I can hit you and you will scream, but even in a dream, if I hit someone the dream figure screams. So how can I make a distinction that my audience here, just now, is not a dream but a reality? It may be just a fiction."

Go to a madhouse, and you will find people sitting alone talking. To whom are they talking? I may be talking to no one. How can I prove rationally that you are really here? So if reason goes to the extreme, to the very logical extreme, then only I remain and everything else becomes a dream. This is how reason works.

Quite the contrary is the path of the heart. I become the mystery and you - thou, the other, the beloved - become the real. If you move to the very extreme, then it becomes devotion. If your love comes to such an extreme point that you forget completely that you are, you have no notion of yourself and only the other remains, that is devotion.

Love can become devotion. Love is the first step; only then can devotion flower. But for us even love is a faraway reality, sex is the only real thing. Love has two possibilities: either it falls into sex and becomes a bodily thing, or it rises into devotion and becomes a thing of the spirit. Love is just in between. Just below it is the abyss of sex, and beyond it is the open sky - the infinite sky of devotion.

If your love grows deeper, the other becomes more and more significant - so significant that you begin to call the other your god. That is why Meera goes on calling Krishna, God. No one can see Krishna, and Meera cannot prove that Krishna is there, but she is not interested in proving it at all.

She has made that point, Krishna, her love object. And remember, whether you make a real person your love object or whether it is just your imagination, it makes no difference, because the whole transformation comes through devotion, not through the beloved - remember this. Krishna may not be there at all; it is irrelevant. For the lover, it is irrelevant.

For Radha, Krishna was there in reality. For Meera, Krishna was not there in reality. That is why Meera is a greater devotee than Radha. And even Radha would become jealous of Meera, because for Radha the real person was there. It is not so difficult to feel Krishna's reality when he is present.

But when Krishna is no more there, Meera alone is living in a room and talking to Krishna, and living for him who is nowhere. For her, he is everything and all. She cannot prove it; it is irrational. But she took a jump and she became transformed. Devotion freed her.

I want to emphasize the fact that it is not a question of whether Krishna is there or not. It is not!

This feeling that Krishna is there, this total feeling of love, this total surrender, this losing oneself into one who may be or may not be, this LOSING itself is the transformation. Suddenly one is purified - totally purified - because when the ego is not there you cannot be impure in any way. Because ego is the seed of all impurity.

The feeling of ego is the root of all madness. For the feeling world, for the world of the devotee, ego is the disease. Ego dissolves, and it dissolves in only one way; there is no other way. There is only one way: the other becomes so important, so significant, that by and by you fade out and disappear.

One day you are no more; just a consciousness of the other remains.

And when you are no more, the other is also not the other, because he is the other only when you are there. When the "I" disappears, the "thou" also disappears. In love you take the first step - the other becomes important. You remain, but for certain moments there may be a peak when you are not. Those are rare peaks of love, but ordinarily you remain and the lover is there. When the lover becomes more important than you, you can die for him or her. If you can die for someone, there is love. The other has become the meaning of your life.

Only if you can die for someone can you live for someone. If you cannot die for someone, you cannot live for someone. Life acquires a meaning only through death. In love, the other has become important, but you are still there. In some higher peaks of communication you may disappear, but you will come back; this will be only for moments. So lovers have glimpses of devotion. That is why in India the beloved used to call her lover her god. Only in peaks does the other become divine, and the other becomes divine only when you are not. This can grow. And if you make it a SADHANA - a spiritual practice - if you make it an inner search, if you are not just enjoying love but transforming yourself through love, then it becomes devotion.

In devotion you surrender yourself completely. And this surrender can be to a god who may not be in the sky or who may be, or to a master who may not be awakened or who may be, or to a beloved who may not be worthwhile or who may be - that is irrelevant. If you can allow yourself to dissolve for the other, you will be transformed.

Devotion frees. That is why we have glimpses of freedom only in love. When you are in love, you have a subtle freedom. This is paradoxical because everyone else will see that you have become a slave. If you are in love with someone, those around you will think that you both have become slaves to each other. But you will have glimpses of freedom.

Love is freedom. Why? Because ego is the bondage; there is no other bondage. You may be in a prison and you cannot escape. If your beloved comes into the prison, the prison disappears that very moment. The walls are there still, but they do not imprison you. Now you can forget them completely. You can dissolve into each other and you can become for each other a sky in which to fly. The prison has disappeared; it is no more there. And you may be under the open sky without love, totally free, untethered, but you are in a prison because you have nowhere to fly. This sky will not do.

Birds fly in that sky, but you cannot. You need a different sky - the sky of consciousness. Only the other can give you that sky, the first taste of it. When the other opens for you and you move into the other, you can fly.

Love is freedom, but not total. If love becomes devotion, then it becomes total freedom. It means surrendering yourself completely. So those who are of the feeling type, this sutrais for them:

DEVOTION FREES.

Take Ramakrishna... If you look at Ramakrishna you will think that he is just a slave to the goddess Kali, to Mother Kali. He cannot do anything without her permission; he is just like a slave. But no one was more free than him. When he was appointed for the first time as priest in Dakshineshwar, at the temple, he started behaving strangely. The committee, the trustees gathered, and they said, "Throw this man out. He is behaving undevotionally." This happened because first he would smell a flower and then the flower would be put at the feet of the goddess. That is against the ritual. A smelled flower cannot be offered to the divine - it has become impure.

First he would taste the food which was made for the offering, and then he would offer it. And he was the priest so the trustees asked him, "What are you doing? This cannot be allowed." He said, "Then I will leave this post. I will move out of the temple, but I cannot offer food to my Mother without tasting it. My mother used to taste... whenever she would prepare something, she would taste it first and then only would she give it to me. And I cannot offer a flower without smelling it first. So I can go out, and you cannot stop me, you cannot prevent me. I will go on offering it anywhere, because my Mother is everywhere; she is not confined in your temple. So wherever I will be, I will be doing the same thing."

It happened that someone, some Mohammedan, told him, "If your Mother is everywhere, then why not come to the mosque?" He said, "Okay, I am coming." He remained there for six months. He forgot Dakshineshwar completely; he was in a mosque. Then his friend said, "Now you can go back." He said, "She is everywhere." So one may think that Ramakrishna is a slave, but his devotion is such that now the beloved is everywhere.

If you are nowhere, the beloved will be everywhere. If you are somewhere, then the beloved will be nowhere.