Dropping the artificial mind

Man is almost mad - mad because he is seeking something which he has already got; mad because he's not aware of who he is; mad because he hopes, desires, and then ultimately, feels frustrated. Frustration is bound to be there because you cannot find yourself by seeking; you are already there. The seeking has to stop, the search has to drop: that is the greatest problem to be faced, encountered.

The problem is that you have something and you are seeking it. Now how can you find it? You are too occupied with seeking, and you cannot see the thing that you already have. Unless all seeking stops, you will not be able to see it. Seeking makes your mind focus somewhere in the future, and the thing that you are seeking is already here, now, this very moment. That which you are seeking is hidden in the seeker himself: the seeker is the sought. Hence, so much neurosis, so much madness.

Once your mind is focused somewhere, you have some intention. Immediately, your attention is no longer free. Intention cripples attention. If you are intently looking for something, your consciousness has narrowed down. It will exclude everything else. It will include only your desire, your hope, your dream. And to realize that which you are you need not have any intention; you need attention, just pure attention: not intending to go anywhere, unfocused consciousness, consciousness here-now, not anywhere else. This is the basic problem: the dog is chasing its own tail. It gets frustrated; it becomes almost mad because each step, and nothing comes into its hands - only failure, failure, failure.

Just the other day a sannyasin told me that he was now feeling frustrated. I became tremendously happy. Because when you feel frustrated, something opens within you. When you feel frustrated, if really frustrated, then future disappears. Future can exist only with the support of expectation, desire, intention. Future is nothing but intentionality. I became tremendously happy that one man was frustrated.

Fritz Perls, one of the very perceptive men of this century, has said that the whole work of the therapist is nothing but skillful frustration, creating frustration.

What does he mean? He means that unless you are really frustrated with your desires, hopes, expectations, you will not be thrown back to your own being. A real frustration is a great blessing.

Suddenly you are, and there is nothing else. The sannyasin said, "I am feeling frustrated. It seems that nothing is happening. I have been doing all sorts of meditations, all sorts of group therapies, and nothing is happening." That's the whole point of all meditations and all group therapies: to make you aware that nothing can happen. All has happened already. In deep frustration, your energy moves back to the source. You fall upon yourself.

You will try to create new hope. That's why people go on changing their therapists, their therapies, their Masters, gurus, religions. They go on changing because they say, "Now I am feeling frustrated here; somewhere else, I will again sow new seeds of hope." Then you will be continuously missing. If you understand, the problem is: how to throw you upon yourself, how to frustrate you in your desires.

Of course, it has to be very skillful.

That's what I am doing here. If you don't have any desires, first I create them. I give you hope. I say, "Yes, soon something is going to happen" - because I know that desire is there, but not full-fledged.

It is there hiding in a seed form; it has to sprout, it has to flower. And when the desire flowers, those flowers are of frustration.

Then suddenly you drop the whole nonsense, the whole trip. And once you are authentically frustrated - and when I say authentically, really frustrated, I mean that now you don't start any other hope again; you simply accept it and you return back home - you will start laughing. This is what you were always seeking. And it has always been inside you, but you were too much occupied with seeking.

There is a very beautiful movie called THE KING OF HEARTS. The context is the First World War, and the Germans and the English are fighting over a French town. The Germans plant a time-bomb and leave the town, and the French learn about the bomb and they also leave the town.

All the people in the insane asylum come out, take over the empty town, and have a wonderful time - because nobody is left there, only the insane people of the insane asylum. Even their guards have escaped, so they are free. They come into the town and everything is empty: shops are empty, offices are empty. So they take over the town; they take over the empty town. and have a wonderful time. They all put on different clothes and enjoy themselves thoroughly. Their madness simply disappears; they are no more mad. Whatsoever they always wanted to become and could not become, now they simply became, without any effort. Somebody became the general, and somebody became the duke, and somebody the madame, and somebody else the doctor, the bishop, or whosoever he wants to become. Everything is free. They put on different clothes and enjoy themselves thoroughly. Everyone takes on some role in the town: general, duke, lady, madame, bishop, etc. One guy becomes a barber, and he pays customers because he enjoys being a barber; and he gets more customers that way.

They are all living these roles, living in the moment and enjoying it completely, utterly.

A British soldier is sent to the town to disable the bomb. He gets frustrated because he cannot find where the bomb has been put. He starts ranting and raving and shouting, "We are all going to die!" So everyone, everyone: the general, the duke, the bishop - the mad people - everyone brings lounge chairs to watch him perform. They clap and they cheer. Of course, he gets even more mad.

The next day both the Germans and the British march back into the town and all the crazy people treat it as a parade. Then the soldiers see each other, shoot and kill each other. The duke, up in a balcony, looks down disdainfully at all the bodies and says, "Now they are overacting." A young woman looks down sadly and says with puzzlement, "Funny people." The Bishop says, "These people have certainly gone mad."

You think mad people are mad... just look at yourself, at what you are doing. You think when a madman pretends that he is the prime minister or the president that he is mad? Then what are your presidents and prime ministers doing? In fact, they may be more mad. The madman simply enjoys the fantasy, he does not bother to make it an actuality; but the premiers, the presidents and the generals have not remained satisfied with their fantasy; they have tried to actualize it. Of course, if any madman is an Alexander or a Genghis Khan, he never kills anybody; he simply is. He does not go to prove that he really is. He's not dangerous, he's innocent. But when these so-called sane people have the idea of being an Alexander, a Genghis Khan, a Tamurlaine, then they don't remain contented with the idea. They try to actualize it. Your Adolf Hitlers are more mad, your Mao Tse Tungs are more mad than any mad people in any mad asylum.

The problem is that the whole humanity exists as if under a certain hypnosis.

It is as if you have all been hypnotized and you don't know how to get out of it. All our life-styles are insane, neurotic. They create more misery than they create happiness. They create more frustration than they create fulfillment. The whole way you live brings you more and more, closer and closer, nearer and nearer to hell. Heaven is just a desire; hell is almost a reality. You live in hell and you dream about heaven. In fact, heaven is a sort of tranquilizer: it gives you hope - but all hopes are going to be frustrated. The hope of heaven simply creates a hell of frustration. Remember this; only then will you be able to understand Patanjali's last chapter, KAIVALYA PADA.

What is the art of liberation? The art of liberation is nothing but the art of de-hypnosis: how to drop this hypnotic state of mind; how to become unconditioned; how to look at reality without any idea creating a barrier between you and the real; how to simply see without any desires in the eyes; how simply to be without any motivation. That's all yoga is about. Then suddenly that which is inside you, and has always been inside you from the very beginning, is revealed.

The first sutra:

This is a very pregnant sutra, and I have not yet come across a right commentary about this sutra.

It is so pregnant that unless you penetrate it to the very core, you will not be able to understand it.

Whatsoever you are is revealed at birth without any effort. Every child, while he is being born, knows the truth, because he has not yet been hypnotized. He has no desires; he is still innocent, virgin, not corrupted by any intention. His attention is pure, unfocused. The child is naturally meditative.

He is in a sort of samadhi; he's coming out of the womb of God. His life river is yet absolutely fresh, just from the source. He knows the truth, but he does not know that he knows. He knows it, not knowing that he knows it. The knowledge is absolutely simple. How can he know that he knows?

- because there has never been a moment of not knowing. To feel as if you know something, you have to have some experience of non-knowledge. Without ignorance you cannot feel knowledge.

Without darkness you cannot see stars. In the day you can't see the is all dark; contrast is needed.

A child is born in perfect light: he cannot feel that this is light. To feel it, he will have to pas-s through the experience of darkness. Then he will be able to compare and see, and know that he knows.

His knowledge is not yet aware. It is innocent. It is simply there, as a matter of fact. And he is not separate from his knowledge; he is his knowledge. He has no mind, he has simple being.

What Patanjali is saying is this: what you are seeking you had known before. Not knowing it, you had known it before. Otherwise, there would be no way to seek it because we can only seek something which we have known in some way - maybe very dimly, vaguely. Maybe the awareness was not clear: it was clouded in mist; but how can you seek something which you have not known before?

How can you seek God? How can you seek bliss? How can you seek truth? How can you seek the self, the supreme self? You must have tasted something of it, and that taste, the memory of that taste is still treasured somewhere within your being. You are missing something; that's why search, seeking arises.

The first experience of samadhi, the first experience of infinite power, siddhi, of potentiality, of being a god, is revealed at birth. But at that time, you cannot make a knowledge out of it. For that you will have to go through a dark night of the soul; you will have to go astray. For that, you will have to sin.

The word 'sin' is very beautiful. It simply means going off-track, missing the right path, or missing the target, missing the goal. The Adam has to go out of the Garden of Eden. It is a necessity. Unless you miss God, you will not be able to know Him. Unless you come to a point where you don't know whether God is or is not, unless you come to a point where you are miserable, in pain and anguish, you will never be able to know what bliss is. Agony is the door to ecstasy.

Patanjali's first sutra is simply saying that whatsoever is attained by the yogi is nothing new. It is a recovery of something lost. It is a remembrance. That's why in India once somebody attains samadhi, we call it a rebirth; he is reborn. We call him dwija: twice born. One birth was unconscious, the first birth; the second birth is conscious. He has suffered, gone astray, and come back home.

When Adam returns home, he is Jesus. Every Jesus has to go far away from the home; then he is Adam. When Adam starts the returning journey, he is Jesus. Adam is the first man, Jesus the last.

Adam is the beginning, the alpha, and Jesus the end, the omega; and the circle is complete.

"The powers are revealed at birth.:.." Then arises 'the world'; what Hindus call maya. It has been translated as illusion, magic, but the best way to translate it is as hypnosis. Then arises the hypnosis.

A thousand and one hypnoses are all around: here he's being taught that he is a Hindu - now it is a hypnosis; he's being taught that he is a Christian - now it is a hypnosis. Now his mind is being conditioned and narrowed down. He's a Mohammedan - it is a hypnosis. Then he is taught that he is a man or a woman - it is a hypnosis.

Ninety per cent of your manhood or womanhood is simply hypnosis; it has nothing to do with your biology. The biological difference between man and woman is very simple, but the psychological difference is very complicated and complex. You have to teach small boys to be boys and small girls to be girls, and you bifurcate them. You create an intention: the girls are going to become beautiful women, and the boys are going to become very powerful men. The girls are going to be just confined in the home: householders, housewives, mothers; and the boys are going on a great adventure in the world: money, power, prestige, ambition. You create different intentions in them.

In different societies, different conditionings are given. There are societies which are matriarchal; the woman is predominant. Then you will see an unbelievable truth there: whenever there is a society in which the woman is predominant, the man becomes weak and woman becomes powerful. She manages all outside work and the man simply looks after the home.

But because we live in a male-dominant society, man becomes powerful and woman becomes weak and fragile. But this is a hypnosis; it is not natural. It is not so in nature. You give a certain direction, then a thousand and one sorts of hypnoses go round.

In India, if a man is born in a poor, untouchable's family, is a shudra, he's confined to being a shudra for his whole life. He cannot. even change his business. He cannot become a brahmin. He's confined: a very narrow hole, a tunnel-like hole is given to him. He has to go through that; no other alternatives are available. And he will think in those terms, he will live a certain style of life. And each conditioning of the mind is self-perpetuating: it goes on creating itself more and more skillfully.

Then you are given ideas about God. In Soviet Russia, you are given the idea that there is no God.

Stalin's daughter, Svetlana, has written in her memoirs that from the very beginning, of course, since she was Stalin's daughter, she was taught very strictly to be an atheist. But by and by, she started feeling, "Why? If there is no God, why is there so much propaganda against Him? What is the point? There is no point in it; if God is not there, finished. Why be worried? Why create anti-God propaganda, literature, this and that; why try to prove? The very effort shows that something seems to be there, something may be there." She became suspicious, and when Stalin died she revolted.

She became a religious person, but her mind was narrowed down. She must be a very rare human being, because to be a theist in Soviet Russia is as difficult as to be an atheist in India.

These things are not taught, these things are caught - with the blood of the mother, with the milk of the mother, with the breathing of the mother. Your whole atmosphere surrounds you as a subtle conditioning. These things are not taught. Nobody is teaching you these things in particular; you catch them. The first thing a Hindu child hears when he opens his eyes and his ears here, the first thing is going to be a mantra, or something from the Bhagavad-Gita. He does not understand anything, but the first impact is of Sanskrit, the first impact is of some religious scripture. Then he starts growing; he sees his mother praying, the statues of gods, and flowers and incense, and he goes on crawling there, watches and sees what is happening. He can see that the mother is crying, tears are coming, and she looks so happy and so graceful. Something tremendously great is happening; he cannot know what it is, but something is happening. He is catching. Then the temple, then the priest, then the flamboyant robes, and the whole atmosphere; he goes on drinking the atmosphere. It becomes part of his being. Either from the mother's breast or from the state's breast, but these things are just caught while he is unaware. You become a Christian: by the time you become alert you are already a Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Jaina, a Buddhist, and it is very difficult to uncondition you.

The whole effort of Patanjali is how to uncondition you, how to help you so that you can uncondition yourself. All that has been given to you has to be dropped so that again you come out of the clouds into the open sky, so that again you can come out of this small, tunnel-like existence of being a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a communist, this and that; how to find the open sky again - dimensionless. No religion, particularly no organized religion, is in favor of it. They decorate their tunnels. They force things on people, as if theirs is the only way to reach to God.

I have heard about a man, a Protestant, who died and reached to heaven. He asked Saint Peter, "First, before I settle somewhere, I would like to have a tour. I would like to see the whole of heaven."

Saint Peter said, "Your curiosity is understandable, but one thing you will have to remember: I will take you around, but don't talk, be completely quiet. And walk so that no noise is made." The Protestant was a little worried, "Why so much...?" but they walked. Whenever he wanted to say anything, Saint Peter would put his finger on his lips and say, "Shhh! Keep quiet." When the tour was over he asked, "What is the matter? Why so much quietness?" Peter said, "Everybody here believes.

For example, the Catholics believe only they are in heaven; the Protestants believe only they are in heaven; the Hindus believe only they are; the Mohammedans believe only they are. So they feel very much offended if they come to know that somebody else is also there. That is impossible for them to believe."

On the earth people live in tunnels, and in heaven also.

No organized religion can be in favor of a totally open mind. That's why an organized religion is not a religion at all; it is a politics.

Just the other day I received a letter from Amida. She was in Arica. Now she has come here, so those Arican people are very much disturbed. She has become a sannyasin, so they have written a letter of expulsion. She is expelled. This looks like nonsense. This seems to be politics. Now she cannot be allowed to attend their meetings anymore, or to participate with them. In their jargon they have said, "Now you are put in water." She is condemned. The same goes on everywhere.

Scientology does the same to people. Once you are in scientology and you leave it, just as Amida has been put in water, they give a notice that you are now an enemy. An enemy!

But this is how it has always happened. Always remember, wherever your mind is being narrowed, escape from there. It is not religion, it is politics. It is an ego-trip.

Religion widens you.

Religion widens you so much that the whole house around you, by and by, disappears. You are just under the sky, absolutely nude, in total communication with existence. Nothing exists between you and existence. This point is achieved easily, naturally, spontaneously, at the time of birth. The powers are revealed at birth - everything is revealed at birth. It is only a question of reclaiming it. It is a question of remembering it again. It is not going to be a discovery, it is going to be a re-discovery.

Many people come to me and they ask, "If samadhi happens, if enlightenment happens, how are we going to recognize it, that it is that?" I say to them, "Don't you be worried; you will recognize it because you know what it is. You have forgotten. Once it happens again, suddenly, in your consciousness, the memory will arise, surface, and immediately you will recognize."

And this can be also acquired in four ways. The first is through drugs. Hindus have made drugs for thousands of years. In the West the craze is very new; in India it is very ancient.

Patanjali says,

He's in favor only of samadhi, but he's a very, very scientific man. He has not left anything out.

Yes, it can be acquired through drugs, but that is the lowest glimpse of it. Through chemicals, you can have a certain glimpse, but that is almost a violence, almost a rape of God - because you are not growing into the glimpse; rather, you are forcing the glimpse upon yourself. You can take LSD, or marijuana, or something else: you-are forcing your chemistry. If the chemistry is forced too much, for a few moments it becomes loosened from the conditioning of the mind. From the tunnel-like style of your life it becomes loose. You have a certain glimpse, but the glimpse is at a very great cost.

Now you will become addicted to the drug. Whenever you need the glimpse you will have to go to the drug, and each time you go the drug, more and more quantity of it will be needed. And you will not be growing at all, you will not be maturing at all. Only the drug will grow in quantity, and you will remain the same: This is getting a glimpse of the divine at a very great cost. It is not worth it. It is destroying yourself. It is suicidal, but Patanjali puts it there as a possibility. Many have tried that, and many have gone almost insane through it. It is dangerous to try any violence on existence. One should grow naturally. At the most, it can be like a dream, but it cannot be a reality. A person who has been taking LSD for long remains the same person. He may talk about new spaces that he has achieved and he will talk about 'far-out experiences', but you can see that the man has remained the same. He has not changed. He has not attained to any grace. It may be otherwise: he may have lost any grace that he already had before. He has not become more happy and blissful. Yes, under the impact of the drug he may laugh, but that laughter is also ill: it is not arising naturally, it is not flowering naturally. And after the impact of the drug he will be dull, he will have a hang-over; and he will again and again seek, again and again he will seek and search for the same glimpse. Now he will become hypnotized by the experience of the drug. It is the lowest possibility.

The second, better than this, is of mantra. If you repeat a certain mantra for a long time, that too creates subtle chemical changes in your being. It is better than drugs, but still, that too is a subtle drug. If you repeat, Aum, Aum, Aum, continuously, the very repetition creates sound waves in you.

It is as if you go on throwing rocks into the lake and waves arise and arise and go on spreading, creating many patterns. The same happens when you use a mantra, the continuous repetition of any word. It has nothing to do with Aum, Ram, Ave Maria or Allah; it has nothing to do with them.

You can say,."Blah, blah, blah"; that will do. But you have to repeat the same, the same sound with the same tone, in a rhythm. It goes on falling on the same center again and again, and creating ripples, vibrations, pulsations. They move inside your being and spread out. They create circles of energy. It is better than drugs, but it is still of the same quality.

That's why Krishnamurti goes on saying that mantra is a drug. It is a drug, and he is not saying anything new; Patanjali says the same. It is better than the drug: you don't need any injection, you are not dependent on any outside agency. You are not dependent on the drug-pusher because he may not be giving you the right thing. He may be handing you something bogus. You need not depend on anybody. It is more independent than drugs. You can repeat your mantra inside you, and it is more in tune with the society. The society will not object that you repeat: Aum, Aum, Aum, but if you take LSD the society will object. Chanting is better, more respectable, but still a drug. It is through sound that the chemistry of your body is changed.

Now, much experimentation is going on with sound, music, chanting. It certainly changes chemistry.

A plant grows faster if it is surrounded by music - by a certain music of course - classical or Indian; not by modern Western music. Otherwise, the growth stops, or, the plant goes crazy With subtle vibrations, with great rhythm and harmony, the plant grows faster. The growth is almost doubled and the flowers come bigger, more colorful; they live longer and they have more fragrance. Now these are scientific truths. If a plant is affected so much by sounds, much more will happen to human beings. And if you can create an inner sound, a continuous vibration, it will change your physiology, your chemistry - your mind, your body - but it is still an outside help. It is still an effort: you are doing something. And by doing you are creating a state which has to be maintained. It is not naturally spontaneous. If you don't maintain it for a few days, it will disappear. So, that too is not a growth.

Once a Sufi visited me. For thirty years he had been doing a Sufi mantra, and had done it really sincerely. He was full of vibrations - very alive, very happy, almost ecstatic the whole day, as if in samadhi... drunk. His disciples brought him to me. He stayed with me for three days. I told him, "Do one thing: for thirty years you have been doing a certain chanting; stop for three days." He said, "Why?" I said, "Just to know whether it has happened to you yet or not. If you go on chanting you will never know. You may be creating this drunkenness by chanting continuously. You drop it for three days and just see." He became a little afraid, but he understood the point.

Because unless something becomes so natural that you need not do it, you have not attained to it.

Just within three days, everything disappeared; just within three days! A thirty-year effort, and after the third day the man started crying and he said, "What have you done? You have destroyed my whole SADHANA!" I said, "I have not destroyed anything; you can start again. But now remember, if you repeat for thirty lives even, you will not attain. This is not the way. After thirty years, you cannot go for a three-day holiday? That seems to be a bondage, and it has not yet become spontaneous.

It has not yet become part of you; you have not grown. These three days have revealed to you that for thirty years the whole effort has been in the wrong direction. Now it is up to you. If you want to continue, continue. But remember, now don't forget that any day it can disappear; it is a dream that you are holding through continuous chanting. It is a certain vibration that you are holding, but it is not arising there. It is cultivated, nurtured; it is not yet your nature."

The third way is by austerities, by changing your way of life, not hankering for comfort, convenience:

for food, for sleep, for sex; dropping all that the mind naturally desires and doing just the opposite.

That is still a little higher than mantras. If the mind says go to sleep, the man of austerities says, "No, I'm not going to sleep. I am not going to be a slave to you. When I would like to go to sleep, I will go; otherwise not." The mind says, "You are feeling hungry, now go and beg"; the man of austerities says, "No!" The man of austerities says no continuously to his mind. That is what austerity is: saying no to the mind. Of course, if you continuously say no to the mind, the conditioning becomes loosened.

Then the mind is no longer powerful over you, then you are released a little. But that no has to be said again continuously. Even if you listen to the mind for one day, again the whole power of mind will return to dominate and possess you. So just a moment's going astray, and all is lost.

The man of austerities is doing better; he is doing something more permanent than the man of chanting - because when you chant, your life-style remains unchanged. Just inside, you feel good:

a certain well-being. That's why Maharishi Mahesh Yogi's Transcendental Meditation has so much appeal in the West, because he does not ask you to change your life-style. He says, "Whatsoever, wherever you are, it's okay." He does not want you to make a disciplined life; simply repeat the mantra, twenty minutes in the morning and twenty minutes in the evening, and that will do. Of course, it will give you better sleep, a better appetite. You will be more calm and quiet. In situations where anger was easy, it will not be so easy. But you have to continue the chanting every day. It will give you a certain inner bath in sound waves. It will give you a little cleansing, but it is not going to help you grow. Austerities help more because your life starts changing.

If you decide not to do a certain thing, the mind will insist that you do it. If you go on denying the mind, your whole life pattern changes. But, that too is forced. People who are in austerities too much lose grace, become a little ugly. Constant struggle and fight, and constant repression and saying no creates a very deep rift in their beings. They may have more permanent glimpses than the man of chanting or the man who is addicted to drugs. They will have more permanent results than Timothy Leary and Mahesh Yogi, but still, it is not a spontaneous flowering. It is still not Zen, not real Yoga, not Tantra.

... OR SAMADHI.

Then comes the fourth which Patanjali has been trying to explain to you. Through samyama, through samadhi, everything has to be attained. Whatsoever he has been teaching up to now is through samyama, samadhi - bringing your awareness to. it. The man of drugs works through the chemistry; the man of austerities works through the physiology; the man of chanting works through the sound- structure of his being, but they are all partial. His totality is not yet touched by them. And they all will create a sort of lopsidedness. One part will grow too big, and other parts will lag behind, and he will become ugly.

Samadhi is the growth of the total.

And the growth has to be natural, spontaneous, not forced. The growth has to be through awareness; not through chemistry, not through physics, not through sound. The growth has to be through awareness, witnessing: that's what samadhi is. Samadhi will bring you to the same point when you were born. Suddenly, it will reveal your being to you, who you are.

Now, a few things about samadhi will have to be understood.

One: it is not a goal to be achieved, it is not a desire to be achieved. It is not an expectation, it is not a hope, it is not in the future; it is here-now. That's why the only condition for samadhi is desirelessness - not even the desire for samadhi.

If you desire samadhi, you are continuously eroding samadhi yourself. The nature of desire has to be understood, and in that understanding it drops by itself, on its own accord. That's why I say that when your hopes are frustrated, you are in a beautiful space; use it. That is the moment when you can enter into samadhi more easily.

Blessed are those who are hopeless: let it be added to Jesus' other beatitudes.

He says, "Blessed are the meek, because they shall inherit the earth." I say to you: blessed are the hopeless, because they will inherit the whole.

Try to see how hope is destroying you. With hope arises fear. Fear is the other side of the same coin.

Whenever you hope you also become afraid. You become afraid of whether you are going to fulfil your hope or not. Hope never comes alone; it keeps company with fear. Then, between fear and hope you are spread out. Hope is in the future and fear is also in the future, and you start swinging between hope and fear. Sometimes you feel, "Yes, it is going to be fulfilled"; and sometimes you feel, "No, it seems impossible," and fear arises. Between fear and hope, you lose your being.

Let me tell you one very famous old Indian story.

A fool was sent to buy flour and salt. He took a dish in which to carry his purchases. He was told not to mix the two ingredients, but to keep them separate. After the shop-keeper had filled the dish with flour, the fool, thinking of the instructions, inverted the dish asking that salt be poured on the upturned bottom. Therewith the flour was lost, but he had the salt. He brought it to his boss who enquired, "But where is the flour?" The fool turned the dish over to find it, so the salt was gone too.

Between hope and fear, your whole being is lost.

That's how you have become so disintegrated, split, schizophrenic. Just see the point of it: if you don't have any hope, you will not be creating any fear - because fear cannot come without hope.

Hope is a step of fear in you. Hope creates the door for the fear to enter. If you don't have any hope then there is no point in fear. And when there is no hope and no fear, you cannot move away from yourself. You are simply that which you are. You are here-now. This moment becomes intensely alive.

The second sutra:

Very significant....

If you are a man of austerities you will not be overflowing. You will have repressed your energies.

Afraid of sex, afraid of anger, afraid of love, afraid of this and that, you will have repressed all your energies; you will not be in an overflow. And Patanjali says that only through overflow is there transformation. It is one of the most basic laws of life.

Have you watched that when you are feeling low in energy, suddenly love disappears? When you are feeling low in energy, creativity disappears. You cannot paint, you cannot write a poem. If you write, your poetry will not walk; dancing is far away. It will not even walk; it may, at the most, limp.

It will not be much of a poem. If you paint when you are low-energy, your painting will be ill. It will not be healthy. It cannot be because it is your painting and you are feeling low in energy. In fact, the painting is you spread on the canvas. It will be gloomy, sad, dying.

I have heard about one great painter who had asked one of his friends, a doctor, to come and see his painting. The doctor watched, looked from this side and that. The friend, the painter, was very happy at how much he was appreciating. Then he finally asked, because he saw that the doctor was looking puzzled - not even puzzled, but worried. The friend said, "What is the matter? What do you think of this painting?" He said, "Appendicitis." He had made a portrait of somebody and the doctor was looking everywhere, because the face was so pale and the body looked in such agony that he felt it must be appendicitis. Later on, it was found that the painter had the appendicitis, he was suffering from it.

You spread yourself in your poetry, in your painting, in your sculpture. Whatsoever you do, it is you; it has to be so.

Flowers come into the trees only when they are overflowing; the energy's too much. They can afford it. When a tree has not much energy, it will not flower because it has not even energy enough for the leaves. It has not even energy enough for the roots - how can it afford? Flowers will be almost a luxury. When you are hungry, you don't bother to buy paintings for your house. When you don't have clothes, you think of clothes; you don't think of having a beautiful garden. These are luxuries. When energy is overflowing, then only is the celebration, the transformation. When you are overflowing with energy you want to sing, you want to dance, you want to share.

Ordinarily, as man is, he is so blocked and there are so many problems repressed that the energy never comes to a point where it can overflow and just be shared with others. And your sahasrar, which is your flowering, the lotus in the crown of your head, will not flower unless energy is overflowing, unless it is overflowing so much so that it goes on rising higher and higher. The level goes on rising higher and higher; it reaches to the second center, the third center, the fourth center, and whatsoever center is touched by the overflowing energy opens, flowers. The seventh chakra is the flower of humanity: sahasrar. sahasrar dul kamal: the one-thousand-petalled lotus that will flower only when you are in an overflow.

Never repress and never create blocks in your being. Never become too solid. Don't get frozen.

Flow. Let your energy remain always streaming. That's the whole purpose of yoga methods: that your blocks are broken. The yoga postures are nothing but just a methodology to break the blocks that you create inside your body.

Now, something exactly like it has happened in the West. It is Rolfing, founded by Ida Rolf. Because in the West the mind is more technological, people don't want to do their own thing. They want it to be done by somebody else; hence Rolfing. The Rolfer will do the work. He will give you deep massage, and he will try to melt your blocks. The musculature that has become hardened will be relaxed.

The same can be done with yoga, and more easily, because you are your own master. You can feel your inner being more rightly, accurately. You can feel where your blocks are. If you close your eyes and sit silently every day, you can feel where your body is feeling uncomfortable, where your body is feeling tense. Then there are yoga asanas for that particular body part to relax. Those asanas will help to dissolve the musculature which has become hardened and will allow the energy to move.

But one thing is certain: that a repressed person never flowers.

A repressed person remains with dammed energy, pent-up energy. And if you don't channelize your energy in right directions, your energy can become destructive and suicidal to you. For example: if your energy is not moving towards love, it will become anger. It will go sour, bitter. Whenever you see an angry person remember, somehow his energy has missed love. Somehow, he has gone astray; hence, he is angry. He is not angry at you, he is simply angry; you may be just an excuse.

He is anger. The energy is blocked and life is feeling almost meaningless, without any significance; he is in a rage.

There is a very famous poem of Dylan Thomas. His father died, and on that night he wrote this poem. In this poem come the lines, Rage, rage against the dying of the light:

Do not go gently into that good night!

He is saying to his father "Fight with death; rage against it. Don't surrender, don't just let go. Give a good fight even if you are defeated, but don't go without a fight."

If love is not fulfilled, one becomes angry. If life is not fulfilled, one becomes angry at death. A man whose life is a fulfillment will not rage against death, he will welcome. And he will not say that it is dark night; he will say, "So beautiful, so restful." The dark is restful. It is almost warm, like mother's womb. One is moving again into the greater womb of God. Why rage? Those who have flowered, surrender. Those who are frustrated cannot surrender. Out of their frustrations they create more hopes, and each hope brings more frustrations - and the vicious circle goes on and on, ad nauseam.

If you want not to be frustrated, drop hope - then there will be no frustration. And if you want really to grow, never repress. Enjoy energy. Li& is an energy phenomenon. Enjoy energy - dance, sing, swim, run - let energy stream all over you, let energy spread all over you. Let it be a flow. Once you are in a flow, flowering becomes very easy.

Patanjali is saying that, in fact, if you don't have blocks everything will be attained naturally. It is not a question of creating anything; the question is only of removing the blocking. It is as if a spring is there, and a rock is blocking its way. It is streaming behind it, but cannot remove the rock. The spring, the water, has not to be created, it is already there; you simply remove the rock and it bursts forth. It is like a fountain: you just remove the rock and it bursts forth, it flowers. The child has it naturally; you have to attain it by understanding. And, you have to drop all the blocks that the society has enforced upon you.

The society is against sex: it has created a block, just near the sex center. Whenever sex arises you feel restless, you feel guilty, you feel afraid. You shrink; you don't stream, you don't flow. The society is against anger: it has created a block there. So anger comes, but you cannot move into it totally.

You will have to drop all these blocks.

That's why I insist for dynamic methods: they will melt your blocks. If you are angry, scream, yell.

There is no need to yell and scream at anybody; just a pillow will do. Beat the pillow, jump on it, kill the pillow - there is no need to kill anybody. Just the idea that you are killing the pillow is enough.

Just getting into the rage, into the anger, is enough; the block is broken. If you want to kill somebody, or if you want to be angry at somebody, you can never be totally in it - impossible - because the other is going to be hurt, wounded, and you are a human being: you have compassion and love also. So one withholds.

Beat the pillow. Have a good knife and kill the pillow. When the pillow is dead, bury the body and be finished with it. Suddenly, you will feel that something has broken inside you. A rock has been removed. Yell, jump, jog. If sex arises, help it to arise. Forget all that the society has taught you. Enjoy the very feeling of sensuality arising in you. Cooperate with it. Don't shrink and don't resist it; cooperate with it. Soon you will see that the sensuality is transforming. When the pool is full, it starts overflowing. Sensuality overflowing becomes sensitivity. People who repress their sex become insensitive, dull. They don't have life. They become wooden.

The whole effort of yoga is to remove the obstacles, via negativa. Nothing is really to be done because you have everything; it is just not flowing. A few rocks have been put on the path. You have been distracted. It is just like a farmer irrigating a field. Have you seen a farmer irrigating a field?

Water is flowing in one channel; he removes a little earth and the water starts moving into that path.

When that part is irrigated he puts a little earth back on the gate; the water stops flowing on that path. Then he opens the channel somewhere else; the water starts flowing there. Water is there; it needs channelization. Energy you have, you are; it simply needs channelization so it reaches to the sahasrar, to the highest peak, the climax of your being.

And we all have artificial minds. That's what I call the hypnosis that society has done to you.

We have a group in the ashram, and I have been thinking about it. It is called 'Hypnotherapy', but I would like to call it 'deHypnotherapy' - because the basic effort is to de-hypnotize you, or unhypnotize you, uncondition you.

All minds are artificially created minds: nirmana cittany asmita-matrat. Artificially created minds proceed from egoism alone: I am a Hindu, I am a Mohammedan, I am black, I am white, I am this, that - they are all artificial minds. The original face, the original mind, uncreated by man, has to be known and realized.

I have heard: A little colored boy accidentally spilled a tin of white paint over himself. When he arrived home, his father gave him a good hiding and told him to go straight to bed. Sobbing his way out of the room he said, "I have only been white for twenty minutes, and I hate you blacks already!"

Even a twenty-minute-old child has started accumulating the artificial mind. Even a twenty-minute- old child looks at his mother with more love than towards anybody else, because he has learned one trick. The conditioning has started: she is food, and survival depends on food. So howsoever ugly the mother, the mother always looks beautiful. It is survival, and the child has started learning diplomacy. He will not smile so much at the father. He does not know who this man is. He will learn it later on. By and by, he will see that this man is important. Of course, he is not seen very much in the home, but important. Rarely, on Sundays he is there, but even the mother depends on him, even the mother smiles at him. Then the child also smiles at the father. He is learning the artificial mind. He's creating relationships, arranging his survival, creating a situation - diplomacy, politics - but this artificial mind which is a help in survival in the beginning, becomes the greatest problem in the end.

When you have survived and you have used the artificial mind, then it hangs around you like a rock around your neck. It becomes the ego. It has to be learned; nothing can be done about it. Every child will have to move into the artificial mind. But when you become alert and aware, and when you start thinking and meditating about life, then it is time to, by and by, drop it. And drop the ego, because the ego is nothing but the artificial mind. The center of the artificial mind is the ego. And every artificial mind can be continued only if you go on enhancing your ego.

Hindus will say that they have the greatest religion in the world, that they are the most religious people in the world. In fact, if they were really religious they would not utter such nonsense, because a religious mind is humble, simple. This is ego. Then every country has its own ego. The Russian, the Chinese, the American, the German, the English - everybody has his own ego, and every country goes on feeling that, "We are the superb, the chosen." Every country finds ways and means to feel enhanced, as with every race, every group, and every man and woman.

I have heard: The elephant looked down and saw a little, very tiny mouse standing by its foot. "Dear me," said the elephant, "you are very tiny." "Yes," agreed the mouse, "I have not been very well lately."

Even a mouse has his own ego? - he has been ill, that's why.

The artificial mind lives through ego, so if you start dropping your ego, the artificial mind will start disintegrating. Or, if you drop your artificial mind, the ego will start disintegrating. And if you really want to get rid of this rock, start both ways together. Never enhance the ego in any way. The ways are very subtle.

Remember that the original mind is egoless. It does not know the 'I', because 'I' is a shrinking. The original mind is infinite, like the sky.

And one problem arises continuously as far as ego is concerned. In the beginning you try to befool others about yourself, but, by and by, you are befooled yourself. When you start convincing others that you are somebody in particular, you become convinced yourself.

There was a strict rule in the mental asylum: no pets.The warder heard poor Harry talking to a dog called Rover, and marched into his padded cell. There was Harry, leading a tube of toothpaste around on a piece of string. "What is that?" asked the warder. Harry looked at him in surprise.

"Surely any fool can see it is just a tube of toothpaste on a piece of string!" he said. Satisfied, the warder left. Just as he closed the door behind him, Harry breathed a sigh of relief. "Good boy, Rover.

We sure fooled him that time."

The more you try to befool others, to prove that you are somebody in particular, exceptional, extraordinary, this and that - all neurotic ideas - the more you succeed in proving it to others, the more you will only succeed in befooling yourself. Look at the whole nonsense of it.

Nobody is extraordinary, or, everybody is extraordinary. Nobody is special, or, everybody is special.

But there is no point in proving anything either way - there is no need.

Artificially created minds proceed from egoism alone, so if you want to come to the original mind - which is the whole effort of Yoga, Tantra, Zen - then you will have to drop the artificial mind; the mind that has been created by the society and given to you; the mind that has been created from the outside and enforced on you. By and by, drop it. The more you see, the more you will be able to drop. Whenever you start feeling attached to the artificial mind: whenever you say, "I am a Hindu, and I am an Indian; or, I am English, I am British"; or this and that, just catch yourself redhanded.

Deep inside, slap your face, and say "What nonsense!" By and by, don't be defined by society. Then you will find the indefinable; your real, authentic being.

So whatsoever your artificial mind, in fact, in reality, the original mind hiding behind it controls them all. Find the controller. Try to find who you originally are before the society corrupted you, contaminated you, before the society entered, planned you, and destroyed your wildness. In Zen they call it: finding the original face which you had before you were born, and which you will have when you will again die; the original face, untouched by society. That's your nature, your soul, your being.

Finding the original face, you will be reborn, you will become a dwij, twice-born. You will become really a brahmin, one who knows. Then again everything will be revealed to you as it was revealed at the time of birth, because you will be born again. But this time, there is going to be a great difference:

you will be alert. The first time you missed; you will not miss this time. The first time it happened naturally; this time it will happen with your alertness, your awareness. You will be conscious of it. You will see yourself reborn again, being born again, arising out of the past, out of the clouds and confusion - thoughts, prejudices, egos, minds, conditionings - arising out of them, virgin, pure.

Then you will again see the power that you are, the being that you are.

So first, it happens at birth; second it happens at samadhi; in between, it can be managed by three methods - drugs, chanting, austerities - but those three methods are ways of deceiving, cheating.

And you cannot cheat upon God, you can cheat yourself; remember that.