To become free in an unfree society

The first question:

YES, I don't give much value to Freud, Jung, Adler, or Assagioli. Freud, Jung, Adler, and others, are just children playing on the sand of time. They have gathered beautiful pebbles, beautiful colored stones, but when you look at the ultimate, they are just children playing with pebbles and stones. Those stones are not real diamonds. And whatsoever they have gained is very, very primitive.

You will have to go slowly with me to understand.

Man can be physically ill; then the physician, the doctor is needed. Man can be psychologically ill; then a little help can be given by Freud and Jung and others.

But when man is existentially ill, neither a physician nor a psychiatrist can be of any help. Existential illness is spiritual. It is neither of the body nor of the mind, it is of the total -- and the total transcends all parts. The total is not just a composition, a composition of the parts. It is something beyond the parts. It is something that holds all the parts into itself. It is a transcendence.

And the illness is existential. Man suffers from a spiritual illness. Dreams won't be of any help towards that. What in fact can dreams do? At the most they can help you to understand your unconscious a little bit more. Dreams are the language of the unconscious; the symbols, indications, hints and gestures of the unconscious; a message from the unconscious to the conscious. Psychoanalysts can help you to interpret the dreams, they can become mediators, they can tell you what your dream means. Of course, if you can understand your dream, you will come a little closer to your unconscious. This will help to make you more adjusted with your unconscious. You will have a little understanding. Your two parts, the conscious and the unconscious, will not be so far apart; they will be a little closer. You will not be split as much as before. A little unity, a sort of unity will exist in you. You will be more normal, but to be normal is nothing. To be normal is not even worth talking about. To be normal means you are as you should be ordinarily; nothing else has happened, nothing from the beyond has penetrated you. You will be a more adjusted person in the society also. Of

course, you will be a little better husband, a little better mother, a little better friend, but only a little.

But this is not self realization. And when Jung starts talking about self-realization through dream analysis, he is talking very stupidly. It is not self-realization, because self realization comes only when there is no mind. Dreams interpreted are not interpreted; they belong to the mind, they are part of the mind. And no psychology of the West -- except for Gurdjieff, Eckhart and Jacob Boehme -- no psychology of the West goes beyond mind. And these few people, Jacob Boehme, Eckhart, and Gurdjieff, in fact don't belong to the West, they belong to the East.

Their whole standpoint is Eastern. They are born in the West, but their attitude, their way of life, their very understanding is of the East. When I say 'of the East', always remember that I don't mean geographically.

To me, East is a standpoint and West is also a standpoint. I am not concerned with geography. 'West' is a way of looking at things, 'East' is also a way of looking at things. When East looks at things it looks at the total, and when West looks at things it always looks at the part. The Western attitude is analytical -- it analyzes. The Eastern attitude is synthetic -- it synthesizes, it tries to find the one in the many. The Western attitude tries to find the many in the one.

The Western attitude has become very efficient in analyzing, dissecting, taking things apart. Even a movement like the Psychosynthesis of Assagioli is not a real synthesis, because the very standpoint is missing. First Freud and Jung have taken things apart, they have broken the whole, and now Assagioli is trying to put those parts together somehow.

You can dissect a man into parts, he was alive; when you have dissected him, he is no longer alive. Now you can put the parts back again, but the life will not come. It will be a dead corpse. And even parts put together again will not make it a whole. What Freud and Jung did, Assagioli is simply repenting for. He is putting the parts together again but it is a corpse. There is no synthesis in it.

You have to look at the whole, and the whole is something totally different. Now even biologists have become aware, even medicine is becoming more and more aware every day that when you take the blood out of a man to examine it, it is no longer the same blood that was running through the man because now it is dead.

You are examining something else. The blood circulating in man is alive. It belongs to a whole, a system; it runs through it. It is as alive as a hand of the body. You cut the hand -- it is no longer the same hand. How can the blood be the same when you take it out of the body, take it to the lab and examine it? It is no longer the same blood.

Life exists as a unity, and the Western standpoint is to dissect, to go to the part, to understand the part and through the part to try to comprehend the whole. You will always miss. Even if you can comprehend like Assagioli, then that comprehension will be like a corpse: somehow put together but with no living unity in it.

Freud and Jung worked with dreams. It was a discovery in the West, a great discovery in a way, because the Western mind had completely forgotten about sleep, about dreams. Western man has existed for at least three thousand years without thinking about dreams and about sleep. Western man has been thinking as if only the waking hours are life, but the waking hours are only one third. If you live sixty years, you will be asleep for twenty years. One third of life will be in dreams and in sleep. It is a big phenomenon; it takes one third of your life. It will not be simply discarded; something is happening there. It is part of you, and not a small part but a major part. Freud and Jung brought back the concept that man has to be under stood through his dreams and his sleep, and much has been done along that line. But when Jung starts thinking that this is something towards self realization, then he has gone too far.

It is good. For psychological health it can be helpful, but psychological health is not existential health.

You may be physically healthy, you may be psychologically healthy, but you may not be existentially healthy at all. On the contrary, when you are psychologically and physically healthy, for the first time you become aware of the existential anxiety, of the anguish inside. Before it you were so occupied with the body and the mind and the illnesses that you couldn't afford to look at the inward being. When everything is set right: body functions well, mind is not in any trouble, suddenly you become aware of the greatest anxiety in the world -- the existential, the spiritual. Suddenly you start asking, 'What is the meaning of it all? Why am I here, for what?' This never occurs to an ill man because he is too occupied with the illness. First he has to look after the body, and then he will think. Then he has to look after the mind, and then he will think. Body and mind, if healthy, will allow you for the first time to be really in trouble. And that trouble will be spiritual.

When Jung talks about his analytical psychology as a way to self realization, he does not know what he is saying. He himself is not a self realized man. Go deep into Jung's life, or Freud's life, and you will find them ordinary human beings.

Freud got as angry as anybody, even more than ordinary people. He hated as much as anybody. He was jealous, so much so that when a fit of jealousy came to him, he would fall on the ground and become unconscious. This happened many times in Freud's life. Whenever jealousy would take him, he would be so disturbed that he would fall into a swoon, a fit. This man, self-realized? Then what about Buddha? Then where will you put Buddha?

Freud lived with ordinary human ambition; the political mind. He was trying to make psychoanalysis a movement just like communism, and he tried to control it. He tried to control it just like any Lenin or Stalin, even more dominatingly. He even declared Jung to be his successor -- and look at Jung's pictures! Whenever I have come upon a picture of Jung, I always look at it very deeply; it is a rare thing. Always look at Jung's pictures; you will see everything written on the face: the ego. Look at his nose, the eyes, the cunningness, the anger; every illness is

written on the face. He lived as an ordinary, fear-ridden man. He was very afraid of spirits, ghosts, and very jealous, competitive, argumentative, quarrelsome.

The West really does not know what self-realization is, so anything becomes a self-realization. The West is not aware of what self-realization means. It means such an absolute silence that it cannot be disturbed by anything. Such absolute nonbeing; how can possessiveness, ambition, jealousy exist in it? With a no mind, how can you dominate, how can you try to dominate? Self realization means the complete disappearance of the ego. And with the ego, everything disappears.

Remember, the ego cannot disappear through the interpretation of dreams. On the contrary, the ego may get stronger, be cause the gap between the conscious and the unconscious will be less. Your ego will be strengthened, your mind will be stronger. The less trouble there is in the mind, the more strong mind will be.

You will have a new lease for the ego. So what psychoanalysis can do is to make your ego more grounded, more centered; to make your ego stronger, more confident. Of course, you wilt be able to exist in the world better than before, because the world believes in the ego. You will be more able to fight in the struggle for survival. You will be more confident about your self, less nervous.

You will be able to achieve a few ambitions more easily than if you were troubled inside and the unconscious and conscious were in a constant quarrel within. But this is not self realization. On the contrary, it is ego realization.

The whole Western psychology up to now has not come to the point of non-ego.

It is still thinking in terms of the ego: how to make the ego more strongly rooted, centered; how to make the ego more healthy, normal, adjusted. The East takes the ego itself as the disease; the whole mind is the disease. There is no choice about it -- conscious and unconscious both have to go. They have to go and that's why the East has not tried to interpret. Because if something has to go, why bother about its interpretation? Why waste time? It can be dropped. Look at the difference: the West is somehow trying to make an adjustment between the conscious and the unconscious and strengthen the ego, so that you become a more adjusted member of society, and also a more adjusted individual inside.

With the rift bridged, you will be more at ease with the mind. The East has been trying to drop the mind, to go beyond it. It is not a question of adjustment to the society, it is a question of adjustment to existence itself. It is not a question of an adjustment between the conscious and unconscious, it is a question of the adjustment of all the parts that constitute your whole being.

Dreams are important. If a man is ill, dreams are important; they show symptoms of the illness. But you don't know about the man who has no dreams.

Dreaming is a pathology in itself; dream itself is pathology. Buddha never dreamed. What would Freud have done? If Freud had been there, what would he have done with a Buddha? What would he have interpreted about him? -- there was nothing to interpret. If Freud had gone inside Buddha, he would not have found anything to interpret. His whole psychology would have been absolutely useless.

It happened that in America, there was a man who was very, very efficient in reading other people's thoughts -- a mindreader. He was always a hundred percent right. He would sit before you; you would close your eyes and start thinking, and he would close his eyes and start talking about what you were thinking. Immediately that you would think, the thought would be transferred and he would receive it. This is an art. Many people know about it. It can be learned, you can do it, because thought is a subtle vibration. If you are receptive the other mind becomes a broadcasting station, you become the receiver.

Thought is a broadcast because ripples arise in the electricity around the man. If you are silent enough, receptive, you will catch them.

When Meher Baba was in America, somebody brought a man to Meher Baba.

The man had lived for many years in silence. The man sat before Meher Baba, closed his eyes and meditated and meditated and meditated. Again he would open his eyes and look at Meher Baba. It took too long; people became worried.

They said, 'You never took such a long time.' The man said, 'Well, what to do?

This man is not thinking at all. There is no thought.'

If Freud or Jung were near Buddha, or if they had come to me, they would not have found anything to interpret, they would not have found any thought to catch.

The East says, 'Dreaming itself is pathology.' It is a sort of illness; it is a disturbance. When you are really silent, thinking disappears in the day and dreaming disappears at night. Think ing and dreaming are two aspects of the same thing: during the day while you are awake, it is thinking, and at night while you are asleep, it is dreaming. Dreaming is a primitive way of thinking; thinking in pictures just as children think. That's why in children's books we have to make many colored pictures. Children cannot move with words very much. By and by, they will move. You have to draw a big mango, and write in small letters, 'mango'. First they vv-ill see the picture, and then they will become associated with the word. By and by, the picture will become smaller and smaller and disappear. Then the word 'mango' will do.

A primitive mind thinks in pictures just like children do. When you are asleep, you are a primitive. The whole civilization disappears, culture disappears, society disappears. You are no longer part of the contemporary world, you are a primitive in the cave. Because the unconscious mind has remained uncultivated, you start thinking in pictures.

Dreaming and thinking are both the same. When dreaming stops, thinking stops; when thinking stops, dreaming stops. The whole effort in the East has been: how to drop the whole thing. We are not worried about how to adjust it or how to interpret it, but how to drop it. And if it can be dropped, then why bother about the interpretation? Why waste time?

Sooner or later the West is going to realize this, because now meditative techniques are penetrating into the West. Meditations are the way of dropping dreaming, thinking, the whole complex of the mind. And once they are dropped,

you attain to a well-being not of the mind. You attain to something which is not even conceivable in your state of mind right now. You cannot even imagine it, what it will be like when you don't think, when you don't dream, when you will just be.

Psychoanalysis or other trends take such a long time: five years, three years, just interpreting dreams. The whole thing seems to be so boring, and only few people can afford it. Even those who can afford it, what do they gain out of it? Many people have come to me who have been through psychoanalysis; no self realization has happened. They had been in psycho, analysis for many years. Not only have they been psychoanalyzed, they have psychoanalyzed many others and nothing has happened, they remain the same, the ego is the same. On the contrary, they are a little firmer, stronger. And the existential anxiety continues.

Yes, I don't place much value on Freud and Jung, because my attitude is: how to drop the mind? It can be dropped and it takes less time to drop it, it is easier to drop it. In fact, it can also be dropped without anybody's help.

The East stumbled upon the fact near about five thousand years ago. They must have interpreted, because in the ancient Eastern books there are interpretations of dreams. I have not come across a single new discovery which has not already been discovered in the East somewhere in the past. Even Freud and Jung are nothing new. It is a rediscovering of the old territory again In the East they must have discovered, but at the same time they discovered that you can go on interpreting the mind and there is no end to it: it goes on dreaming, it goes on creating new dreams again and again.

In fact, no psychoanalysis is ever complete. Even after five years it is not complete. No psychoanalysis can ever be complete because the mind goes on weaving new dreams. You go on interpreting, it goes on weaving new dreams. It has infinite capacity -- it is very creative, very imaginative. It ends only with life, or, it ends with meditation if you take the jump and die on your own. Death is needed for the mind, not analysis. And if death is possible, what is the point of analysis? These are two absolutely different things and you have to be aware.

Jung and Freud are geniuses gone astray; great intellects, but wasting their time.

And the problem is that they have discovered so many things about the mind, but they themselves cannot use it -- and that should be the criterion.

If I discover a technique of meditation and I cannot meditate myself, what meaning can my discovery carry? But that too is different in the East and the West. In the West they say, 'Maybe the physician cannot heal himself, but he can heal you.' In the East we have always been saying, 'Physician, heal thyself first.

That will become the criterion of whether you can do it to others or not.' In the West they don't ask, they don't ask that. In the West science goes on its own.

Personal questions are not asked because science is thought to be an objective study, no thing to do with the subjectivity. It may be so in science, but psychology cannot be absolutely objective. It has to be subjective too, because mind is subjective.

The first thing that should be asked of Jung is, 'Have you realized yourself?' But he was really very egoistic. He was thinking that he had realized. He was reluctant to come to India. Only once he came, and he was reluctant to go and see a saint, even a saint like Ramana Maharshi. He was reluctant, he would not go. What was there for him to learn? -- he had everything already. And he knew nothing, just a few fragments of some dreams that he had interpreted -- and he thought that he had interpreted life.

You go on interpreting dreams, and you think dreams are the reality. In the East our standpoint is just the opposite. We have been looking into life and we have found that life itself is a dream. You think that by interpreting dreams you have interpreted reality. Just on the contrary, we have looked into life and found that it is nothing but a dream. And why this reluctance? The East was a fear to Jung.

He was afraid of the East and there was something in it: he was afraid of the East because the East would reveal the reality of his own understanding -- that it was false. Had he been to Ramana, had he been to some other mystic in the East, he would have immediately realized that whatsoever he had attained was nothing.

It was just on the steps of the temple. He had not entered the shrine yet. But in the West, anything goes. Without their knowing what self-rea]ization is, they call it self realization. You can call it any thing; it depends on you.

Self realization is coming to no-self, coming to an absolute emptiness within, coming to the point where you are not. The drop has dissolved into the ocean and only the ocean exists. Then who dreams? Then who is left there to dream?

The house is empty, there is nobody.

The second question:

Yes, culture, society, civilization, all are alien to religion. Religion is a revolution, a revolution in your cultural condition ing, a revolution in your social conditioning, a revolution in all the spheres that you have lived and you are living. Every society is against religion. I'm not talking about your temples and mosques and churches that society has created. Those are tricks. Those are things to befool you. Those are substitutes for religion, they are not religion. They are to misguide you. You need religion: they say, 'Yes, come to the temple, to the church, to the gurudwara. Here it is religion. You come and pray and the preacher is there who will teach you religion.' This is a trick. Society has created false religions: those religions are Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism. But a Buddha, or a Mahavira, or a Jesus, or a Mohammed, always exist beyond society. And

society always fights with them. When they are dead, then the society starts worshipping them, then the society creates temples. And then there is nothing; the reality is gone, the flame has disappeared. Buddha is no longer there in the statue of a Buddha. In the temples you will find the society, the culture, but not religion. But what is religion?

In the first place, religion is a personal thing. It is not a social phenomenon. You alone go into it, you cannot go into it with a group. How can you go into samadhi with somebody else? Not even your nearest, not even your closest will be with you. When you go inwards, everything will be left out: the society, the culture, the civilization, enemies, friends, lovers, beloveds, children, wife, husband -- everything will be left, by and by. And a moment comes when you also will be left out. Then only, the flowering; then the transformation. Because you are also a part of the society, a member of society: a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian, an Indian, a Chinese, a Japanese. First, others will be left; then, by and by, nearer ones will be left, closer ones will be left. Finally you will come to yourself, which is also a part of the society, trained by the society, conditioned by the society: your brain, your mind, your ego -- given by the society. That too has to be left outside the temple. Then you enter in your absolute aloneness. Nobody is there, not even you.

Religion is personal. And religion is revolutionary. Religion is the only revolution in the world. All other revolutions are false, pseudo, games, not revolutions. In fact, because of those revolutions, the real revolution is always postponed. They are anti-revolutions.

A communist comes and he says, 'How can you change yourself unless the whole society is changed?' And you feel, 'Right. How can I change myself? How can I live a free life in an unfree society?' The logic seems relevant. How can you be happy in an unhappy society? How can you find bliss when everybody is miserable? The communist hits, he appeals.'Yes,' you say, 'unless the whole society is happy, how can I be?' Then the communist says, 'Come, let us first have a revolution in the society.' And then you start on a march, morcha, gherao, all types of nonsense. You have been caught in the trap. Now you are going to change the whole world.

But have you forgotten how long you are going to live? And when the whole world is changed, by that time you will not be here. You will have lost your life.

Many stupid people are losing their whole lives marching against this and that, for this and that; trying to transform the whole world and postponing the only transformation which is possible, and that is self-transformation.

And I tell you, you can be free in an unfree society, you can be blissful in a miserable world. There is no hindrance from others; you can be transformed.

Nobody is hindering you except you yourself. Nobody is creating any obstacle.

Don't bother about the society and the world because the world will continue.

And it has continued the same for ever and ever. Many revolutions come and go and the world remains the same.

If all the revolutionaries could be revived from their graves -- Lenin and Marx -- they would not be able to believe that the world has remained the same and the revolution has happened. In Russia or in America, nothing is different, just a formal difference. Forms differ; the basic reality remains the same, the basic misery of man remains the same. Society will never come to any utopia. This word 'utopia' is very beautiful. The very word means: that which never comes.

The word 'utopia' means: that which never comes. It is always coming but it never comes; always the promise but the goods are never delivered. And this will be so. It has been so. There is only one possibility: you can change.

Politics is social, religion is personal. And whenever religion becomes social, it is part of politics. It is no longer religion. Islam and Hinduism and Jainism, they are politics. They are now no longer religion; they have become social.

It is a personal understanding.

You, in your 'deepest core of being, realize that a change is needed, that as you are, you are wrong; as you are, you are creating a hell around you; as you are, you are the very seed of misery. You realize this in the deepest core of your being, and the very realization becomes a change. You drop the seed; you move in a different dimension. It is personal, it is not cultural.

And that's why it is so difficult for you to become religious. You would like the society to teach you. If religion could be taught, you all would have become religious. But religion cannot be taught. It is not a teaching, it is a jump into the unknown. It needs courage, not learning. And who can teach you courage? And how can courage be taught? Either you have it or you don't have it, so try to find out if you have courage. And if you try to find it, everybody will find somewhere hidden in him a vast possibility for courage. Because without courage, life is not possible.

Life is a risk every single moment. How can you live without courage? How can you breathe without courage? The courage is there, but you are unaware. Find the courage, give the responsibility of a personal commitment. Forget about the world and the utopias, and change yourself. And this is the beauty: if you change yourself you have already started changing the world. Because with your change a part of the world has changed. You are an organic part of the world. Even if one part changes, it will affect the whole because the whole is one; everything is related.

If I change, I change the whole world in a way. The world will never be the same because one part -- one millionth, but still one part -- has changed, has become totally different, is no more of this world. Another world has penetrated through me. The eternity has penetrated into time. God has come to dwell in a human body; nothing can be the same, everything will change through me.

Remember this, and remember also that religion is not an imitation. You cannot imitate a religious person. If you imitate, it will be a pseudo-religion -- false, insincere. How can you imitate me? And if you imitate, how can you be true to yourself ? You will become untrue to yourself. You are not here to be like me.

You are here to be just like yourself. You are not here to be like me; you are here to be just like yourself, like you.

I have heard about a Jewish mystic, Josiah. He was dying and somebody asked, 'Josiah, pray to Moses, and ask him to help you.' Josiah said, 'Forget about Moses.

Because when I am dead, God will not ask me why I am not like Moses. He will ask why I am not like Josiah. He will not ask me, "Why are you not like Moses?"

That is not my responsibility, to be like Moses. If God wanted me like Moses, He would have made me a Moses. He will ask me, "Josiah, why are you not like Josiah?" And that is my trouble: my whole life I have been trying to be like somebody else. But at least now, at the last moment, leave me alone! Let me be myself, because that is the face I should show to God. And that is the only face that He will be waiting for.'

Be authentically yourself. You cannot imitate. Religion makes everybody unique.

No Master who is really a Master will insist that you imitate him. He will help you to be yourself, he will not help you to be like him.

And all culture is imitation. The whole society is imitative. That's why the whole society is more like a drama than like a reality. Hindus call it maya -- a game, a play, but not real. Parents are teaching their children to be like themselves. Every body is pushing and pulling everybody else to be like himself -- a whole chaos all around.

I was staying with a family, and I was sitting on the lawn. The small child of the house came, and I asked, 'What are you thinking to become in your life?' He said, 'Difficult to say, be, cause my father wants me to be a doctor. My mother wants me to be an engineer; my uncle, he wants me to become an advocate, because he is an advocate. And I am confused. I don't know what I am going to become.' I asked him, 'What do you want to become?' He said, 'But nobody has asked me that!' I told him, 'You think about it. Tomorrow you tell me.' The next day he came and he said, 'I would like to become a dancer, but my mother won't allow, my father won't allow.' He told me, 'Help me. They will listen to you.'

Every child is being pushed and pulled to become something else. That's why there is so much ugliness all around. Nobody is himself. If you become the greatest engineer in the world, even that will not be a fulfillment if it was not your own urge. And I tell you, you may become the worst dancer in the world; that doesn't make any difference. If it was your own urge, you will be happy and fulfilled.

I have heard about a great scientist who won a Nobel Prize. He was one of the greatest surgeons the world has ever known. And on the day when he received the Nobel Prize, somebody said, 'You must be happy' -- because he was not looking happy at all. His face was sad. Somebody asked, 'You must be happy.

Why are you looking so sad? This is the greatest prize, the greatest reward the world can give to you, the greatest honor. Why are you not happy? And you are one of the greatest surgeons in the world.' He said, 'That is not the point. When the Nobel Prize was given to me, I was thinking of my childhood. I had never

wanted to become a surgeon. It has been forced on me. My whole life has been a wastage. What will I do with this Nobel Prize? I would have liked to become a dancer. Even the lousiest, that would have done; I would have been fulfilled.

That was my urge.'

Remember this: why do you feel so discontented? Why do you feel so discontented; why do you feel always so dissatisfied for no particular reason at all? Even if everything is going well, something is missing. What is missing? -- you have never listened to your own being. Somebody else has manoeuvred, manipulated you, somebody else has dominated you, somebody else has forced you into a life-pattern which was never yours, which you never wanted. I tell you, even if it happens that you become a beggar, don't be worried if that is your urge. Find the urge and follow k, because God will not ask, 'Why are you not a Mahavir? Why are you not a Mohammed, or why are you not a Zarathustra?' He will ask Josiah, 'Why are you not a Josiah?' You have to be yourself, and the whole society is a great imitation, a false show.

That's why there is so much discontent on every face. I look into your eyes and I see discontent, unfulfillment. Not even a small breeze comes to you which gives you happiness, ecstasy -- it is not possible. And ecstasy is possible. It is a simple phenomenon: be natural and loose and follow your own inclination.

I'm here to help you to be yourself. When you become a disciple, when I initiate you, I am not initiating you to be imitators. I am just trying to help you to find your own being, your own authentic being -- because you are so confused, you have so many faces that you have forgotten which is the original one. You don't know what your real urge is. The society has confused you completely, misguided you. Now you are not certain of who you are. When I initiate you, the only thing that I want to do is to help you come to your own home. Once you are centered in your own being, my work is finished. Then you can start. In fact, a Master has to undo what the society has done. A Master has to undo what the culture has done. He has to make you a clean sheet again.

That's the meaning of a Master giving you a rebirth: again you become a child, your past cleaned, your slate washed. How can you come to the first point where you had entered into this world, forty, fifty years ago? And the society got hold of you, trapped you, led you astray. For fifty years you have wandered and now suddenly you have come to me. I have to do only one thing: to wash clean whatsoever has been done to you, to bring you back to your childhood, to the initial stage from where you started the journey, and to help you to start the journey again.

The third question:

If you are impressed by words and personality you can never become a disciple; you will become an imitator. And a disciple is not an imitator. But I understand your trouble -- you know only one way of being related, and that is, being impressed. That's what the society has done to you. If you are impressed, you think you are related. Then you don't know how to be come a disciple. You know only how to become a student, a shadow phenomenon.

When you listen to me, forget about being impressed. When you listen to me, just listen. Be with me, open -- don't try to judge either way. Whatsoever I am saying, you simply be open listen, allow it and allow me to penetrate you, but don't judge. Don't say, 'Yes, it is right,' because then you are impressed. If you say, 'No, this is not right,' then you are trying not to be impressed. One is a positive impression, another is a negative impression, and both ways will be wrong.

Don't say yes to me, don't say no to me. Why can't you just be here without saying yes or no? Listen, watch, allow things to happen. If you say yes, that yes means: now you are ready to imitate. If you say no it means: no, you are not going to imitate me, you are going somewhere to imitate somebody else. You have some other guru, some other Master whom you will imitate. This man is not for you. You are seeking somebody who can become an ideal for you, and you can become a shadow. And you can find many -- many enjoy becoming the ideals because ego feels very, very good. When so many people imitate a person, it feels wonderful for the ego -- 'I am the ideal of so many people. I must be absolutely right, otherwise why are so many people following me?' The greater the crowd behind a man, the more strong the ego becomes. So there are people who would like you to imitate but I am not one of them, I am just the opposite. I don't enjoy your imitation. Once you start, I feel very sorry for you. I discourage it in every way.

Don't imitate me. Just watch, listen, feel. In this listening, watching, feeling, just being aware here with me, by and by your energy will start falling on your own center. Because listening to me, the mind stops. Watching, the mind stops. Being here with me, open, the mind stops. In that stopping of the mind, the phenomenon is happening -- you are going back to the source of your own being, you are falling to your own center. The disturbance of the mind is not there; suddenly you gain a balance, you are centered.

And that is what I would like. From that falling to your own source and center will arise your life. Not because of the impressions that I leave on you; I don't want to leave any impressions. And if they are left, I am not responsible. You must have done something yourself. You must be clinging to those words, impressions. It is subtle just to be without judgment, just to be listening, watching, being, sitting with me.

My talking is nothing but an excuse to help you to sit with me, to help you to be here with me. I know, because I can sit in silence, but then your mind will chatter. You will not be silent. So I have to talk so that your mind is not allowed to chatter. You become engrossed, involved in listening. The mind stops. In that gap you reach to your own source. I am to help you to find your center, and this is the real discipleship. It is really totally different to what people think that discipleship is. It is not following, it is not imitating, it is not making an ideal of the Master. It is nothing of that sort. It is to allow the Master to help you to fall toward your own center.

The fourth question:

Whenever you listen to the voice of the ego, sooner or later there will be trouble.

You will fall into the trap of misery. This you have to watch: ego always leads into misery, always, unconditionally; always, categorically, absolutely. And whenever you listen to nature, it leads you to a well-being, a contentment, a silence, a bliss. So this should be the criterion. You will have to make many errors; there is no other way. You have to watch your own choice, from where the voice is coming, and then you have to see what happens -- because the fruit is the criterion.

When you do something, watch, be alert. And if it leads to misery, then you know well that it was ego. Then the next time, be alert, don't listen to that voice.

If it is nature, it will lead you towards a blissful state of mind. Nature is always beautiful, ego always ugly. There is no other way but trial and error. I cannot give you a criterion so that you can judge every thing, no. I if e is subtle and complex and all criteria fall short. You will have to make your own efforts to judge. So whenever you do something, listen to the voice from within. Make a note of it, of where it leads. If it leads to misery, it was certainly from the ego.

If your love leads to misery, it was from the ego. If your love leads to a beautiful benediction, a blessedness, it was from nature. If your friendship, even your meditation, leads you to misery, it was from the ego. If it were from nature everything would fit in, everything would become harmonious. Nature is wonderful, nature is beautiful, but you have to work it out.

Always make a note of what you are doing and where it leads. By and by, you will become aware of that which is ego and that which is nature; which is real and which is false. It will take time and alertness, observation. And don't deceive yourself -- because only ego leads to misery, nothing else. Don't throw the

responsibility on the other; the other is irrelevant. Your ego leads to misery, nobody else leads you into misery. Ego is the gate of hell, and the natural, the authentic, the real that comes from your center, is the door to heaven. You will have to find it and work it out.

If you work it out diligently, soon you will be absolutely certain of what is from nature and what is from the ego. Then don't follow the ego. In fact, then you will by yourself not be following the ego. There will be no need to make an effort; you will be simply following the natural. The natural is Divine. And in nature the supernature is hidden. If you follow the natural, by and by, by and by, slowly and slowly, without even making any noise, suddenly one day the natural will disappear and the supernatural will appear. Nature leads to God, because God is hidden in nature.

First, be natural. Then you will be flowing in the river of the natural. And one day the river will fall into the ocean of the supernatural.

The fifth question:

The immediate jump is the longest way. Because to be ready for the immediate jump, it will take many years, even many lives to be ready for it. So when I say 'immediate jump', do you take it immediately? Have you taken the jump? Just by my saying so you have not taken it. I say 'immediate', but the immediate for you may take many lives.

A jump is never a shortcut, because a jump is not a way. There are long ways and there are short ways. A jump is not a way at all; it is a sudden phenomenon. To be ready for the jump means to be ready to die. To be ready to jump means to be ready to jump into the unknown, into the insecure, into the uncharted. That readiness will take many, many years.

Don't think that an immediate jump is a shortcut -- it is not. Shortcuts are when somebody says to you, 'Take a mantra, do the mantra for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen minutes in the evening, and then you need not do anything else. Within fifteen days you will already be a meditator.'

In the West people are so conscious of time that they are always victims.

Somebody comes and says, 'This is the short cut. My way is not the bullock-cart way but the jet way,' as Maharishi Mahesh Yogi says. He says, 'I give you a shortcut, just a mantra to repeat for fifteen minutes in the morning and fifteen in the evening. And within two weeks, you are already enlightened.'

In the West people are in so much of a hurry: they want instant coffee, they want instant sex, they want instant God; shortcut, packaged, everything prefabricated.

Time is too much in the Western head, too much, and that is creating many tensions inside. Anybody can come and say, 'This is the panacea and everything can be solved within just fifteen minutes.' And what do you do? -- you sit and repeat a mantra.

The East has been repeating mantras for millions of years and nothing has happened. And within two weeks of TM training, you become enlightened?

These types of stupid things continue because you are in a hurry. Somebody or other will exploit you.

I was reading a book the other night, a collection of small essays by Richard Church. The name of the book is A STROLL BEFORE THE DARK. In that book he remembers one incident that happened to one of his friends.

A friend who was much too time-obsessed was travelling by train. Suddenly he became aware that he had forgotten his wristwatch, so he was very worried. The train stopped at a small station. The friend looked out of the window as the porter was passing. He asked the porter about the time. The porter said, 'I don't know.' The friend said, 'What! You, a railway man and you don't know what time it is? Don't you have a clock in the station?' The porter said, 'Yes the clock is there. But why should I be distressed with time?' The porter said, 'Why should I be distressed by time? The clock is there; that is none of my business.'

It's wonderful, the porter saying, 'Why should I be distressed with time?' People are distressed with time, and in the West much too distressed -- time and time and time. They say that time is money, and time is flowing, going out of the hand continuously, therefore a shortcut is needed. Somebody immediately supplies the demand.

Time is not running short. Time is eternal; there is no hurry. Existence moves in a very lethargic way. Existence moves very slowly, just like the Ganges flows in the plains -- slow, as if not flowing at all. Still it reaches the ocean.

Time is not short, don't be in a panic. Time is enough. You relax. If you relax, even the longest path will become the short est. If you are in a panic, even the short path will become very long -- because in panic, meditation is impossible.

When you are in a panic, in a hurry, the very hurry is the barrier. When I say, 'Take the jump' -- and you can take the jump immediately -- I am not talking about shortcuts or longcuts. I am not talking about the way at all, because a jump is not a way. A jump is a courageous moment -- it is a sudden phenomenon.

But I don't mean that you can do it right now. I will go on insisting, 'Take the jump immediately, as soon as possible.' This insistence is just to help you to prepare for it. Some day you may be ready. Somebody may be ready right now -- because you are not new; for many lives you have already been working. When I say, 'Take the immediate jump,' there may be someone who has been working for many lives, and just standing on the brink, on the abyss, and afraid. He may gather courage and take the jump. Somebody who is very far away, thinking that the immediate jump is possible, will gather hope and start walking.

When I say something, it is a device to help many sorts of people in many sorts of situations. But my path is not a short cut, because no path can be a shortcut.

The very word is deceptive. Life knows no shortcuts because life has no beginning. God knows no shortcuts. God is not in a hurry -- eternity is there.

You can work it out slowly. And the more patiently, the more slowly, the more unhurriedly you work, the sooner you will reach. If you can be so patient, so infinitely patient that you are not worried about reaching at all, you may reach right now.