The fire of awareness

Question 1:

If you are really vulnerable, nothing is negative for you - because the negative is your interpretation.

Nothing is harmful to you - because the harmful is your interpretation. If you are really open, then nothing can harm you, nothing can be felt as harmful. You feel something is negative and something is harmful because you resist, because you are against it, because there is no acceptance of it. This has to be deeply understood.

The enemy exists there because you are protecting yourself against him. The enemy is there because you are not open. If you are open, then the whole existence is friendly; it cannot be otherwise. Really, you will not even feel it as friendly - it is simply friendly. There is no feeling even that it is friendly, because that feeling can exist only with the contrary feeling of enmity.

Let me put it in this way: if you are vulnerable, it means you are ready to live in insecurity. Deep down it means you are ready even to die. You will not resist, you will not oppose, you will not stand in the way. If death comes, there will be no resistance. You will simply allow it to happen. You accept existence in its totality. Then how can you feel it as death?

If you deny, then you can feel it as the enemy. If you don't deny, how can you feel it as the enemy?

The enemy is created by your denial. The death cannot harm you, because the harm is your interpretation. Now no one can harm you; it has become impossible.

This is the secret of Taoist teaching. Lao Tzu's basic teaching is this: if you accept, the whole existence is with you. It cannot be otherwise. If you deny, you create the enemy. The more you deny, the more you defend, the more you protect, the more enemies are created. The enemies are your creation. They are not there outside; they exist in your interpretation.

Once you can understand this, then this question can never arise. You cannot say, 'I am meditative, I am vulnerable, open. So now how am I to defend myself against negative vibrations around me?'

Nothing can be negative now. What does the negative mean? The negative means that which you want to deny, that which you don't want to accept, that which you think is harmful. Then you are not open, then you are not in a meditative state.

This question arises only intellectually, this is not a felt question. You have not tasted meditation, you have not known it. You are simply thinking, and that thinking is just a supposition. You suppose, 'If I meditate and become open, then I will be in insecurity. The negative vibrations will enter in me and they will be harmful. Then how am I to defend myself? This is a supposed question. Don't bring supposed questions to me. They are futile, irrelevant.

Meditate, become open, and then you will never bring this question to me, because in the very opening, the negative will have disappeared. Then nothing is negative. And if you think that something is negative, you cannot become open. The very fear of the negative will create the closure. You will be closed; you cannot open. The very fear that something can harm you... how can you become vulnerable? That's why I emphasize the fact that unless the fear of death disappears from you, you cannot become vulnerable, you cannot be open. You will remain closed in your own mind, in your own imprisonment.

But you can go on supposing things, and whatsoever you suppose will be wrong, because the mind cannot know anything about meditation, it cannot penetrate that realm. When it ceases completely, meditation happens. So you cannot suppose anything, you cannot think about it. Either you know it, or you don't know it - you cannot think about it.

Be open - and in the very opening of yourself, all that is negative in existence disappears. Even death is not negative then. Nothing is negative. Your fear creates the negativity. Deep down you are afraid; because of that fear you create safety measures. Against those safety measures the enemy exists.

Look at this fact - that you create the enemy. Existence is not inimical to you. How can it be? You belong to it, you are just a part of it, an organic part. How can existence be inimical to you? You are existence. You are not separate; there is no gap between you and the existence.

Whenever you feel that the negative, the death, the enemy, the hate, is there, and if you are open, unguarded, existence will destroy you, you feel that you have to defend yourself. And not only defend - because the best way to defend is to be aggressive, to offend. You cannot be simply defensive.

When you feel that you have to defend yourself, you become offensive, because to offend, to be aggressive, is the best way to defend yourself.

The fear creates the enemy, and then the enemy creates defence, and then defence creates offence.

You become violent. You are constantly on guard. You are against everybody. This point has to be understood: that if you are in fear, you are against everybody. Degrees may differ, but then your enemy and your friend are both your enemy. The friend is a little less, that's all. Then your husband or your wife is also your enemy. You have made an arrangement, that's all. You have become adjusted. Or it may be that you both have a common and a greater enemy, and against that common and greater enemy you both have become joined, you both have become one party, but the enmity is there.

If you are closed, the whole existence is inimical to you. Not that it is so. It appears to you that it is inimical. When you are open, the whole existence has become your friend. Now, when you are closed, even the friend is the enemy. It cannot be otherwise. Deep down you are afraid of your friend also.

Somewhere, Henry Thoreau or someone else has written that he prayed to God, 'I will take care of my enemies, but you take care of me from my friends. I will fight with my enemies, but protect me from my friends.'

Just on the surface is friendship; deep down is enmity. Your friendship may be just a facade to hide the enemy. If you are closed you can create only the enemy, because when you are open only then is the friend revealed. When you are open totally to someone, the friendship has happened. It cannot happen in any other way.

How can you love when you are closed? You live in your prison, I live in my prison, and whenever we meet, only the prison walls touch each other and we are hiding behind. We move in our capsules:

the capsules touch each other, the bodies touch each other, but deep down we remain isolated.

Even while making love, when your bodies have entered into each other, you have not entered. Only bodies are meeting; you remain still in your capsule, in your cell. You are just deceiving yourselves that there is communion. Even in sex, which is the deepest relationship, communion is not. It cannot happen because you are closed. Love has become an impossibility. And this is the reason - you are afraid.

So don't ask such questions; don't bring false questions. If you have known openness, you cannot feel that something can be harmful to you. Now nothing is harmful. That's why I say even death is a blessing. Your approach has become different. Now wherever you look, you look with an open heart - that open heartedness changes the quality of everything. And you cannot feel that something is going to be harmful; you cannot ask how to defend - there is no need. The need arises because you are closed.

But you can go on supposing questions. People come to me and they say, 'Okay, if we have realized God, then what?' They start with the question - if? There are no 'ifs'. In existence you cannot raise such questions. They are absurd, stupid, because you don't know what you are saying. 'If I have realized God, then what?'

That 'then what?' never arises, because with the realization, you are no more, only the God is.

And with the realization, there is no future, only the present is. And with the realization, there is no worry, because you have become one with existence. So the question 'then what?' never arises.

This question arises because of the mind which is in constant worry, constant struggle, constantly thinking for the future.

Question 2:

This is again a supposed question. WHEN I BECOME MORE AND MORE AWARE, MY ATTENTION DEVELOPS AND THERE REMAINS A FEELING THAT I EXIST, I AM PRESENT, I AM AWARE. This never happens, because as awareness grows, I decreases. In full awareness, you are, but there is no sense that I AM. In words, at the most, this can be said - that you feel a subtle AMNESS, but there is no I.

You feel existence, and you feel it in abundance, a fulfilled moment, but the I is not there. You cannot feel I EXIST; you cannot feel I AM PRESENT; you cannot feel I AM AWARE. That I is part of unawareness, inattention; part of your sleeping state. It cannot exist. It cannot exist when you are really alert and aware and conscious.

This is how supposed questions can arise. You can go on thinking about them, and nothing will be solved. If this happens - that you feel I AM; I AM AWARE - then you only have to note one thing, and that is that you are not alert, you are not aware. Then these feelings - I AM AWARE, I AM CONSCIOUS, I EXIST - these are thoughts, you are thinking them. They are not realized moments.

You can think I AM AWARE; you can go on repeating I AM AWARE - that will not do. Awareness is not this repetition. And when you are aware, there is no need to repeat I AM AWARE. You are simply aware; the I is no more.

Try awareness. Right now be alert. Where is the I? You are - rather, you are more intensely - but where is the I, the ego? In the very intensity of consciousness, the ego is no more. Later on, when you lose awareness and thinking starts, you can feel I AM, but in the moment of awareness there is no I. Right now experience it. Silently you are here, you can feel your presence, but where is the I? The I never arises. It arises only when retrospectively you think. When you lose awareness the I arises immediately.

Even if for a single moment you can experience simple awareness, you are, and the I is not there.

When you lose awareness, when the moment has slipped, gone, and you are thinking, the I comes back immediately. It is part of the thought process. The very concept of I is a thought, it belongs to thinking. I AM is a thought.

When you are alert and there is no thought, how can you feel that I AM? The AMNESS is there - but that too is not a thought, it is not thinking. It is there existentially, it is a fact. But you can turn the fact into thinking immediately, and you can think about this gap that existed where there was no I.

And the moment you think, the I has come back. With thinking, the ego enters - thinking is the ego.

With no-thinking, the ego is not.

So whenever you want to ask a question, first make it existential. Before giving me the question, test whether whatsoever you are asking is relevant or not. Such questions look relevant, just verbally, but they are like this: I say that the light has been put on, and then I ask, 'The light has been put on and still the darkness remains, so what is to be done with darkness?' The only thing is that the light is still off, it has not been put on, otherwise how can the darkness remain? And if the darkness is there, then the light is not there. And if the light is there, then the darkness is not there. They cannot be both together.

Awareness and the ego cannot be together. If awareness has come on, if it is there, the ego has disappeared. This is simultaneous; there is not even a single second's gap. The light is on and the darkness has disappeared. It is not that it disappears by and by, in steps, gradually. You cannot see it going outside; you cannot say that now the darkness is going out.

The light is there, and the darkness is immediately not there. There is not a single moment's gap, because if there is a gap then you can see darkness moving out. And if there is a single moment's gap, then there is no reason why there can't be a gap of one hour. There is no gap. The act is simultaneous. Really, the coming of the light and the going out of the darkness are two aspects of one phenomenon.

The same happens with awareness: when you are aware, the ego is not. But the ego can go on playing tricks, and the ego can say, 'I am aware.' The ego can say, 'I am aware,' and can n you.

Then the question will arise. And the ego wants to accumulate everything, even awareness. The ego not only wants wealth, power, and prestige; it wants meditation also, it wants samadhi also, it wants enlightenment also.

The ego wants everything. That which is possible must be possessed. The ego wants to possess everything - even meditation, samadhi, nirvana. So the ego can say, 'Now I have achieved meditation,' and then the question will arise. The meditation has been achieved, the awareness has come, but the ego remains, the misery remains. The whole burden of the past remains. Nothing changes.

The ego is a very subtle braggart. Be aware of it. It can deceive you. And it can use words, it can verbalize things. It can verbalize anything, even nirvana.

I have heard that once it happened that two butterflies were winging their way through the canyons of New York. Just passing near the Empire State Building, the male butterfly said to the female, 'You know, if I wanted to, just with one blow I could cause this Empire State Building to collapse.'

One wise man happened to be there who heard this remark, so he called that male butterfly and asked, 'What were you saying? You know very well that you cannot cause that Empire State Building to collapse with a single blow. You know it well, there is no need to tell you, so why did you say such a thing?'

The male butterfly said, 'Excuse me, sir. I am very sorry. I was just trying to influence my girl friend.'

The wise man said, 'Don't do it,' and dismissed the butterfly.

The male butterfly went back to his girl friend. Of course, the girl friend asked, 'What was the wise guy saying to you?'

So the male braggart said, 'He begged me and said, "Don't do it!" He was so afraid, trembling, nervous. He had heard that I was going to cause this Empire State Building to collapse, so he said, "Don't do it "'

The same is happening continuously. Those words were uttered by the wise man with a very different meaning. He meant, 'Don't say such things,' but the ego exploited him. Your ego can exploit anything, it is deeply cunning. And it is so experienced in cunning - experiences of millennia - that you cannot even detect where the cunning enters.

People come to me and they say, 'The meditation has happened. Now what to do about my worries?'

This is how the ego goes on playing tricks - and they are not even aware of what they are saying.

'The meditation has happened, the kundalini has arisen - so what to do? The worries still continue.'

Your mind wants to believe things, so without doing anything you go on believing, deceiving - wish- fulfillments. But the reality doesn't change by your wish-fulfillments: the worries continue. You can deceive yourself, you cannot deceive the worries. They will not just disappear because you say, 'The meditation has happened and the kundalini has arisen, and now I have entered the fifth body.'

Those worries will not even hear what you are saying. But if meditation really happens, where are the worries? How can they exist in a meditative mind?

So remember this: that when you are aware, you are, but you are not the ego. Then you are unlimited, then you are infinite expanse, but with no center. There is no focused feeling of I; just unfocused existence, beginning nowhere, ending nowhere - just infinite sky. And when this I disappears, automatically the YOU disappears, because the YOU can exist only in reference to the I. I am here; that's why you are there. If this I disappears from me, you are no more there. You cannot be. How can you exist?

I don't mean that you will not be there bodily, that you will not be there physically. You will be there as you are, but for me, you cannot be you. The you is meaningful in reference to my I; my I creates YOU. One part disappears; the other disappears for me. Then simple existence is there; all the barriers have dissolved. With the ego disappearing, the whole existence becomes one. The ego is the divider - and the ego exists because you are inattentive. The fire of awareness will destroy it.

Try it more and more. Suddenly become alert. Walking on the street, immediately stop, take a deep breath, become alert for a moment. And when I say alert, I mean simply alert of whatsoever is happening - the traffic noise, people passing and talking, everything that is all around. Simply become alert. You are not there in that moment: existence is and the beauty of it.

Then the traffic noise doesn't appear to be noise, it doesn't look like a disturbance, because there is no one to resist it and fight it. It simply comes to you and passes; it is heard and heard no more. It comes and passes. There is no barrier against which it can strike. It cannot make a wound in you, because all wounds are made in the ego. It will pass. There will be no barrier to it on which it can strike; there will be no fight, no disturbance.

Remember this: the noise on the street is not the disturbance. When the noise of the street struggles against you, when you have a fixed notion that it is a disturbance, it becomes disturbance. When you accept it, it comes and passes. And you are simply bathed by it; you come out of it more fresh.

And nothing tires you then. The only tiring thing, that which goes on dissipating your energy, is this resistance which we call the ego.

But we never look at it in this way. The ego has become our life, the very gist of it. Really, there is no ego. If I say to someone.... Many times it happens. If I say to someone to dissolve this ego, immediately he stares at me as if with the question, the nude question, that 'If ego is dissolved, then where is life? Then I am no more'.

I have heard that one very great politician, a big leader of a country, was asked, 'You must be getting tired. The whole day, wherever you move, there is a crowd of autograph seekers.'

That politician, that leader said, 'It almost kills me - but this is only half of the truth.' He must have been a very rare, honest man. He said, 'It almost kills me - but almost. If there was no one seeking my autograph, it would kill me completely. This continuous crowd almost kills me, but the other thing would be more dangerous. It would kill me completely if there was no one to ask for my autograph.'

So howsoever tiring the ego, howsoever wearing, you still feel it is life, and if the ego is not there, you feel life will disappear from your mind. You cannot conceive how life can exist without you, without there always being a reference point of I. It is logical in a way, because we have never lived without it. We have lived through it, we have lived around it; we know only one type of life, which is based on ego. We don't know any other life.

And because we have lived through it, we have not been really able to live. We are simply struggling to live, and the life never happens to us, it just by-passes us. It is always just in the reach, in the hope - just tomorrow, the next moment, and we will be living. But it never comes, it is never achieved. It always remains a hope and a dream - but we go on moving. And because it is not coming, we move fast. That too is logical: if life is not happening to us, the mind can think only one thing - that we are not moving fast enough. So make hurry, be in a speed.

Once it happened that one of the great scientists, T.H. Huxley, was going to deliver a talk somewhere in London. He came to the station, to the suburban station, but the train was late, so he jumped into a cab and told the driver, 'Hurry! Go at top speed!'

They were racing fast, when suddenly he realized that he had not given the address. But then he also remembered that he had himself forgotten the address. So he asked the driver, 'Cabby, do you know where I am supposed to be going?'

He said, 'No, sir. But I am going as fast as possible.'

This is happening. You are going as fast as possible. Where are you moving? Why are you moving?

What is the destination? - the hope that someday life will happen to you. And why is it not happening right now? You are alive - why is it not happening right now? Why is the nirvana always in the future, always in the tomorrow? Why is it not today? And the tomorrow never comes - or whenever it comes it will always be the today and you will miss again. But we have lived only in this way. We know only one dimension of living - this so-called living we are already living - just dead, not alive at all, just pulling together anyhow, just waiting.

With the ego it will always remain a waiting - and a hopeless waiting. You can do it fast, you can make haste, but you will never reach anywhere: just by hurrying you will dissipate energy and you will die. And you have done that so many times. You have always been in a hurry, and in that hurry dissipating energy, and then only death comes and nothing else. You are hurrying for life, and only death comes and nothing else. But the mind, because it is accustomed to only one dimension, because it has known only one way - which is not even a way, but just appears to be a way - will say that if there is no ego, where is life?

But I say to you, if there is ego, there is no possibility of life, only promises. The ego is a perfect promise-maker. It goes on promising you. And you are so unaware - no promise is ever fulfilled, but again you believe. When the new promises are given, you again believe.

Look back! The ego promised many things, and nothing has been achieved through it. All the promises have fallen down. But you never look back, you never compare. When you were a child there were promises for youth: life will be there when you are young. Everyone was saying it, and you also were hoping that when you become young, all that was to happen would happen. Now those days have passed, the promise remains unfulfilled, but you have forgotten. You have forgotten the promise, you have forgotten that is has not been fulfilled. It is so painful to look at it that you never look at it.

Now you hope for the old age - that in old age the sannyas will flower, the meditation will happen to you. Then the worries will be over: your children will have gone to the college, and everything will have become established. Then there will be no responsibility on you. Then you will be able to seek the divine. Then, in the old age, the miracle is going to happen. And you will die unfulfilled.

It is not going to happen, because it never happens in the hope, it never happens with the hope. It never happens with the promise of the ego. It can happen right now. It can only happen right now.

But then a very intense awareness is needed, so that you can throw all the promises, and all the hopes, and all the future programs, and all the dreams, and look directly here and now at what you are.

In that returning to yourself - your consciousness not moving somewhere ahead but returning to yourself - you become a circle of consciousness. This moment becomes eternal. You are alert and aware. In that alertness, in that awareness, there is no I; simple existence, simple being. And simplicity comes out of that awareness.

Simplicity is not a loin-cloth, simplicity is not living in poverty, simplicity is not becoming a beggar.

Those are very complex and very cunning things, very calculated. Simplicity is born when you have achieved a simple existence where no I exists. Out of that, simplicity arises; you become humble. Not that you practise it, because a practised simplicity can never be simplicity. A practised humbleness is just a hidden ego.

It happens: if you can be aware, it starts flowing through you. You become humble; not against the ego, because a humbleness against the ego is again a different sort of ego - a more subtle ego and more dangerous, more poisonous. It is humbleness as the absence of ego; not as the opposite of the ego, just the absence. The ego has disappeared. You have come to yourself and known that there is no ego: simplicity arises, humbleness arises - they simply flow. You have not done anything for them; they are by-products - by-products of intense awareness.

So this type of question is foolish. If you feel that you are aware and still the I remains, know well that you are not aware. Make effort to be aware. And this is the criterion: when you are aware, the I is not; when you are aware, the I is not; when you are aware, the I is not found there. This is the only criterion.

Question 3:

This one-sided development has occurred as a natural fallacy, as a very natural fallacy. Try to understand the natural fallacy, because many things depend on it.

Whenever something is said, the opposite of it is denied. Whenever something is said, something is simultaneously denied. If I say 'God is within;, 'God is without' is denied. I have not mentioned it at all. But if I say 'God is without', then 'God is within' is denied. If I say, 'To be silent you have to move inwards,' it is implied that if you move outwards, you will never be silent. So whatsoever is said in language always negates something.

This means that language can never cover the whole of life. Or, if you try to cover the whole of life, language becomes illogical, irrational. If I say, 'God is within and God is without,' it becomes meaningless. If I say, 'Everything is God,' it becomes meaningless. If I say, 'Whether you go out or whether you go in, silence can be achieved,' no meaning is carried then because I am saying both - both the opposites simultaneously. I am putting them together; they negate each other - and then nothing is said.

It has been tried. It has been tried many times that the whole of life be covered by linguistic expression. It has never been successful, and it cannot be. You can do it, but then your assertions become mystic; they don't carry any meaning. Logic has some requirements to be fulfilled - and language is logic.

If you ask me, 'Are you here?' and I say, 'Yes, in a sense I am here, and in a sense I am not here,' or I say, 'Both yes and no,' then if you love me you will call me a mystic; if you don't love me, you will call me a madman - because how can both be? Either I am here - then I must say yes; or I am not here - then I must say no. But if I say yes and no both together, I am taking a jump out of the logical structure of the language.

Language is always a choice. Because of this, all the cultures, all the societies, all the civilizations become one-sided. And no culture can exist without language. Really, language creates the culture.

Man is the only language animal; no other animal creates any culture or society or civilization. Only man creates culture and civilization and society. And with language, choice enters; and with choice, imbalance. No animal is imbalanced, remember. Only man is imbalanced. All animals exist in deep balance: trees and rocks and everything. Everything is balanced; only man is imbalanced. What is the problem? - that man lives through language. Language creates choice.

If I say to someone that he is both beautiful and ugly, the sentence carries no meaning. Ugly and beautiful both? - what do you mean? If I say, 'You are beautiful,' it is meaningful. If I say, 'You are ugly,' it is meaningful. But if I say, 'You are both. You are wise and foolish both,' it cannot carry any meaning. But reality is so. Really, no one is simply ugly and no one is simply beautiful. Wherever beauty exists, ugliness exists; wherever ugliness exists, beauty exists. They are part of one whole.

And wherever wisdom exists, foolishness exists. You cannot find a wise man who is not also a fool, and you cannot find a fool who is not also a wise man.

It may be difficult for you to conceive, because whenever you say, 'This man is a fool,' you stop searching, you are closed, you have closed the door. You say, 'This man is a fool.' Now you are not going to search for his wisdom. And even if his wisdom is revealed to you, you will not listen to it.

You will say, 'This man is a fool. How can he be a wise man? It is impossible; something wrong has happened. He must have done it in a foolish way. This is something accidental. He cannot be wise.'

If you decide that this man is wise and then something foolish comes out of him, you cannot believe it, or you will have come explanations and you will rationalize it - that this must be wise.

Life is both together, but language divides. Language is a choice. Because of this, every culture creates its own choice-pattern. In the east they developed technology, they developed scientific research; they developed all that is now developed in the west. Five thousand years ago they developed everything, and then they felt the meaninglessness of it - as it is now felt in the west.

They felt that it was useless.

When they felt that it was useless, they turned to the opposite extreme. They said, 'Now turn within.

Whatsoever is without is illusory, it leads nowhere. Turn within.' Then science stopped growing, then technology stopped. Not only stopped: when they turned within, they started condemning all that was without. 'Just live the life which is in! Leave all that is without!' They became against the world, life-negative, denying all that is material... only the spiritual, the pure spiritual.

Life is both. Really, to say life is both is not right. Life is one. That which we call material is just one expression of the spiritual, and that which we call spiritual is nothing but one expression of the material. Life is one. The within and without are not two opposite things, just two poles of one existence.

But whenever a society reaches to the extreme of one choice - because one choice is bound to be extremist - immediately you will miss the other, and that which you miss, you feel more. That which you have, you can forget, but that which you miss, you feel more. So the east, at the peak of scientific and technological development, felt the absurdity of it: it is useless, you cannot attain silence through it, you cannot attain bliss through it, so throw it away, renounce it, move inward, move to the inner world. And then this inner movement automatically became a denial of the outer.

In the west that is happening now. Now the west has attained to a technological height; now the meaninglessness is felt. Now India has gone to the depths of poverty. It was bound to happen, because the eastern mind started moving inwards. When you move inwards at the cost of all that is without, you are going to be poor, and you are going to be in bondage, and you are going to be in disease and suffering. That is bound to be so.

Now India is not interested in meditation, India is not interested in the inner world, India is not interested in the nirvana. India is interested in the modern technology. The Indian student is interested in engineering, in medical science. The Indian genius is going to the west to learn the know-how, the atomic energy. And the western genius is interested in coming to the east to know what meditation is, to know how to move in the inner space.

And they have achieved. For the first time in the history of man they have known how to move in the outer space. They have reached the moon. Now that they have reached the moon the thing has become absurd. Now they are asking, 'What will come out of it? Even if we have gone to the moon, what has happened? - man remains in the same misery.' The moon is not going to help, because you can transfer man to the moon, but he remains the same man. So movement in the outer space seems to be of no use, a wastage of energy. How to move in the inner space?

Now they turn to the east, and the east is turning to the west - again the choice. If the west turns to the east completely, within two or three centuries the west will become poor. Look at the hippies - they are already doing that. And if the new western generation turns absolutely hippie, then who is going to work for the technology, and who is going to work for the industry, and who is going to work for the civilization that the west has achieved? It takes centuries and centuries to achieve something; you can lose it within a generation.

If the generation denies and says, 'We are not going to the universities,' what can you do? The old generation - how long can it prolong it? Twenty years and everything can disappear, just through the denial of the new generation - 'I am not going to the university ' And they are leaving, they are becoming dropouts. They say, 'What is the use of big cars, of big houses, of a big technology, when there is no love? When there is no peace of mind, what is the use of all this wealth? What is the use of this high standard of living when there is no life? So leave this!'

Within two centuries the west can go to the very depths of poverty. It has happened in the east. In the days of the Mahabharat, almost the same technology was developed in the east. Then it was found to be of no use. And if the Indian mind turns to technology, within two generations religion will disappear - it has already disappeared - and just the word 'meditation' will look out of date. If you talk about the inner, people will think you are not in your senses: 'What do you mean by the inner?

There is no inner.'

This happens because of the language - because language is a choice, and the mind moves to the extreme. And when it moves to one extreme, the other is lost. And with the other, many qualities disappear, and when they disappear you feel the hunger for them. Then you again move to the other extreme. Then something else is lost.

So no total culture has been born yet, and it cannot be born unless man learns to remain silent, unless silence becomes the very core of human mind. Not language but silence - because in silence you are whole, in language you are always part. Unless humanity starts living through silence - not through language, not through mind, but through the totality of the being - no total culture is possible. Only total human beings can constitute a total culture.

The human being is partial and fragmented. Every human being is just a fragment of that which he can be, that which he should be. He is just a fragment of his potentiality. These fragmentary human beings create fragmentary societies. Fragmentary societies have always been there. But now it seems possible that we may become aware of this whole nonsense of turning to extremes. And if this awareness becomes intense, and we don't move to the opposite, but rather we start to look at the whole....

For example, myself. I am not against the material, I am not against the spiritual. I am not for the spiritual, and I am not for the material. I am for both. There is no choice for me between the material and the spiritual, the inner and the outer. I am for both, because if you accept both, only then you become total and whole. But this is difficult to understand, to grasp, because of the heritage.

Whenever you see a spiritual man, you start looking to see whether he is poor or not. He must be poor, he must be living in a hut, he must be starving. Why? Why should he be poor and why should he be starving? - because the inner has to be chosen against the outer; that has become a part of the heritage. If you see a man living in luxury, you cannot believe that he is spiritual. How can he be spiritual?

What is wrong in luxury? And how is spirituality against luxury? Really, spiritually is the ultimate luxury. Really, only a spiritual man can be in luxury. He knows how to relax, and he knows how to enjoy, and he knows how to carry bliss wherever he moves. But the heritage has gone into the very cells of your brain. If you see a spiritual man walking in poverty, you feel that he must be authentic.

How is poverty related to spirituality? And why? We have been choosing extremes. This is difficult to understand because of a long tradition - and you are not even aware.

Someone was just here, and he told me that in Wardha where Vinoba lives, it is very hot now the whole day - and he will not use a fan, he will not use a cooler, he will not use an air-conditioner.

Impossible! How can a spiritual man use an air-conditioner? He cannot even use a fan. The man who had come from there was very much impressed. He said, 'See, what a great spiritual man! He is not even using a fan.'

Then I asked, 'What is he doing?'

He said, 'The whole day, from ten to five, for seven hours, he goes on putting cold cloths on his head and on his stomach.'

Seven of Vinoba's hours wasted every day! - and what is the cost of a fan or a cooler or an air- conditioner? And Vinoba's seven wasted hours every day...? But if there was a fan, this man would have felt that Vinoba is not spiritual. And somehow Vinoba is also agreeing with this type of attitude - that Vinoba's seven hours every day are not important.

Life is very short, and a genius like Vinoba is wasting seven hours unnecessarily. But he himself also feels that technology is somehow anti-spiritual. The outside and the inside - he has chosen the inside. But if you are choosing the inside, even putting on the wet cloth is outside. It is doing the same thing, only in a very primitive way. What are you doing? You are creating a sort of cooling.

And you are wasting seven hours for it! This is at a very great cost. But we will say, 'No, this is austerity, this is spirituality, and this man is great.' This has gone to the very cells of our brains.

I accept life in its totality. The outer and the inner both are there, and they both belong to me. And they must be balanced. You need not choose one at the cost of the other. And if you choose, you are falling a victim - victim of an extreme - and you will suffer for it.

Create a balance. The outer and the inner are not opposed. They are movements of the same energy, two banks of the same river, and the river cannot flow with only one bank. You can forget the other, but the other will be there. And the river can exist only if the other is there. You can forget it completely: then hypocrisy is born, because unnecessarily you have to go on hiding the other.

There is no need. The river cannot flow.

Life flows between the inner and the outer, and both are essential. Life cannot exist with one. And the two are not really two. The two banks of the river only appear two; if you go deep in the river they are joined - the same ground is appearing as two banks. The outer and the inner are the same ground, the same phenomenon.

If this insight goes deep, and human beings... and I am interested in human beings, not in cultures, not in societies, not in civilizations. If human beings become total and balanced, it is possible that some day humanity can become a balanced society. And only then will man be at ease. And only then will it be possible to grow without any unnecessary difficulty.

Now, rarely it happens that someone grows - rarely. Almost all the seeds are wasted. In millions, one seed grows and comes to flower. This seems sheer wastage. But if society is balanced - nothing is denied, nothing is chosen, but the whole is accepted in a deep harmony - then many will grow. Really, quite the reverse will be the case: it will happen rarely that someone will not grow.