The Happiness that comes from Within EMPTY HANDS

We come with empty hands and we will go with empty hands, so what is the point of claiming so much in the meantime? But this is what we know, what the world tells us: Possess, dominate, have more than others have. It may be money or it may be virtue; it does not matter in what kind of coins you deal– they may be worldly, they may be otherworldly. But be very clever, otherwise you will be exploited. Exploit and don’t be exploited– that is the subtle message given to you with your mother’s milk. And every school, college, university, is rooted in the idea of competition.

A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without comparing yourself to others. It will not teach you that you can be happy only when you are the first– that is sheer nonsense. You can’t be happy just by being first, and in trying to be first you go through such misery that by the time you become the first you are habituated to misery.

By the time you become the president or the prime minister of a country you have gone through such misery that now misery is your second nature. You don’t know now any other way to exist; you remain miserable. Tension has become ingrained; anxiety has become your way of life. You don’t know any other way; this is your very lifestyle. So even though you have become the first, you remain cautious, anxious, afraid. It does not change your inner quality at all.

A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatever you are doing, not for the result, but for the act itself. Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician…

You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone. You are on an ego trip, and the problem is that to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can existence flow through you. Only then can your hands and your fingers and your brush be used as vehicles. Only then can something of superb beauty be born.

Real beauty is never created by you but only through you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that’s all; you don’t hinder it.

But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result– that you have to become famous, that you have to be the best painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto– then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can’t paint something original; it will be ordinary.

Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the dancer. So is the case with everybody.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: Don’t think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don’t think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost in it, lose the doer in the doing. Don’t "be"– let your creative energies flow unhindered. That’s why he said to Arjuna: "Don’t escape from the war… because I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously– as if there will be no war if you are not there."

Krishna says to Arjuna, "Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence, ‘Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally available.’ Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it."

Jesus says: Remember, those who are first in this world will be the last in the kingdom of God, and those who are the last will be the first. He has given you the fundamental law– he has given you the inexhaustible, eternal law: Stop trying to be the first. But remember one thing, which is very much possible, because the mind is so cunning it can distort every truth. You can start trying to be the last– but then you miss the whole point. Then another competition starts: "I have to be the last"– and if somebody else says, "I am the last," then the struggle, the conflict, begins again.

I have heard a Sufi parable:

A great emperor, Nadirshah, was praying. It was early morning; the sun had not yet risen, it was still dark. Nadirshah was about to start the conquest of a new country, and of course he was praying to God for his blessings, to be victorious. He was saying to God, "I am nobody. I am just a servant– a servant of your servants. Bless me. I am going on your behalf, this is your victory. But I am a nobody, remember. I am just a servant of your servants."

A priest was also by his side, helping him in prayer, functioning as a mediator between him and God. And then suddenly they heard another voice in the darkness. A beggar of the town was also praying, and he was saying to God, "I am nobody, a servant of your servants."

The king said, "Look at this beggar! He is a beggar and saying to God that he is nobody! Stop this nonsense! Who are you to say your are nobody? I am nobody, and nobody else can claim this. I am the servant of God’s servants– who are you to say that you are the servant of his servants?"

Now you see? The competition is still there, the same competition, the same stupidity. Nothing has changed. The same calculation: "I have to be the last. Nobody else can be allowed to be the last." The mind can go on playing such games on you if you are not very understanding, if you are not very intelligent.

Never try to be happy at the expense of another man’s happiness. That is ugly, inhuman. That is violence in the true sense. If you think you become a saint by condemning others as sinners, your saintliness is nothing but a new ego trip. If you think you are holy because you are trying to prove others unholy… That’s what your holy people are doing. They go on bragging about their holiness, saintliness. Go to your so-called saints and look into their eyes. They have such condemnation for you! They are saying that you are all bound for hell; they go on condemning everybody. Listen to their sermons; all their sermons are condemnatory. And of course you listen silently to their condemnations because you know that you have made many mistakes in your life, errors in your life. And they have condemned everything– so it is impossible to feel that you can be good. You love food, you are a sinner. You don’t get up early in the morning, you are a sinner; you don’t go to bed early in the evening, you are a sinner. They have arranged everything in such a way that it is very difficult not to be a sinner.

Yes, they are not sinners. They go early to bed and they get up early in the morning… in fact, they have nothing else to do! They never commit any mistakes because they never do anything. They are just sitting there almost dead. But if you do something, of course, how can you be holy? Hence for centuries the holy man has been renouncing the world and escaping from the world, because to be in the world and be holy seems to be impossible.

My whole approach is that unless you are in the world, your holiness is of no value at all. Be in the world and be holy! We have to define holiness in a totally different way. Don’t live at the expense of others’ pleasures– that is holiness. Don’t destroy others’ happiness, help others to be happy– that is holiness. Create the climate in which everybody can have a little joy.

Meditation is a state of total relaxation; not of concentration, not of contemplation, but of relaxation. When one is so absolutely relaxed that there is no tension either in the body or in the mind, then suddenly there is an opening of the heart. Only in total relaxation does the heart open, it becomes a flower. Without its opening one remains unfulfilled, discontented.

The opening of the heart as a flower is the ultimate ecstasy; there is nothing more than that. One has come to the highest peak, one’s life has blossomed. And that is the meaning of Teresa. Teresa means a reaper, a harvester. When one has come to the blossoming, the flowering, the ripening, then one can reap the crop. Then life is tremendously significant, a gift of god. Otherwise it is just a possibility, and nobody can be blissful with only a possibility. It has to become actual, it has to become a realisation.

Being with me means only one thing: learning how to relax. The moment you relax you are in the present. The past is a tension. Relaxation is going beyond time — no past, no future. One simply disappears into the infinity of the now and the here. And that is springtime as far as the inner ripening, flowering, is concerned.

If you really want to get rid of misery and suffering then you will have to understand — you don’t have a self. Then it will be not just a small relief but a tremendous relief. And if you don’t have a self, the need for the other disappears. It was the need of the unreal self to go on being nourished by the other. You don’t need the other. And listen carefully: when you don’t need the other, you can love. And that love will not bring misery. Going beyond needs, demands, desires, love becomes a very soft sharing, a great understanding. When you understand yourself, that very day you have understood the whole of humanity. Then nobody can make you miserable. You know that they are suffering from an unreal self, and they are throwing their misery on anybody who is close by. Your love will make you capable of helping the person you love to get rid of the self.

THE VITAL BALANCE

An interview with Acharya Rajneesh by Dr. Jean Georges Henrotte, Paris (France) and Ma Yoga Maitri (Mme. Yuki Fujita) Tokyo, (Japan). on 6-1-1971



Dr. Henrotte: There is a problem with people like me, in our civilization and especially in our profession. We make too much use of our intelligence, so much so, that we tend to view life through the intellect only, thus negating all other means of doing so. This tends to make life boring and dull and robs it of its lustre.

Acharya Rajneesh: No one can use his intellect too much. It is such a great force, with so much potentiality that you cannot use it too much. Not only too much, we never even use it totally - never. Ordinarily, we do not use more than 10 to 15% of the total potentiality. Another thing, when you do intellectual work, it does not necessarily mean you are using your intelligence. Intellectual work too, is mechanical. It does not require any intelligence at all! Once you get the know-how, no intelligence is required at all. Then the mind works just like a computer.The real problem is, not the use of too much of intelligence, but the non-use of emotion. Emotion is completely discarded in our civilization and the balance is lost. Our whole civilization is anti-emotional. So a lopsided personality develops. If emotion is also used then there is no imbalance. An emotion-intellect balance must be maintained in the proper ratio; otherwise, the whole personality gets diseased. It is just like using your one leg only. You may keep on using it but you reach nowhere. You will simply tire yourself. The other leg must be used. Emotion and intellect are two legs - they are like two wings. When we use only one wing, the only outcome will be frustration and then the Bliss that comes by using both the wings, simultaneously, in balance and in harmony is never attained. So do not fear to use intellect. Only when intelligence is used, then you touch the depths. You are stimulated in your potentiality. Intellectual work is merely superficial. No depth is touched, nothing is challenged. That gives rise to boredom. That creates
lustreless work - work without enjoyment. Enjoyment always comes - when your individuality is challenged
and you have to prove yourself or when you have to respond to a challenge, intelligence or emotion when
challenged create their own bliss.A person becomes schizophrenic if only one part of his personality is working and the other is dead. Then even the part that is working will not be really working well due to overwork. It cannot work because personality is a totality, it is not divided - it has no division at all. Actually the whole personality is a flowing energy. When energy is used logically, it becomes intelligence and when used, not logically but emotionally, it becomes the heart. These are not two separate things but the same
energy is challenged through different channels.When there is no heart but only intellect, then you can never relax. For relaxation means the same energy working in a different channel. Relaxation is never nowork.
It is work in another dimension, so that the dimension which is already overtaxed relaxes. So a person, who
follows an intellectual pursuit continuously, never relaxes. He has not diverted his energy to other dimensions, thus causing the mind to go on working unnecessarily in one direction only. This creates boredom. The thoughts just come and go and energy is diffused, wasted. You cannot enjoy it. On the contrary, you will be disappointed and disgusted with this unnecessary burden. However, the mind or the intellect is not at fault, because an alternate dimension has not been provided. The energy is veritably ruined, and it keeps circling round and round, as no other door is open to it. Energy can never be stagnant. Energy means - that which
is not stagnant - that which is always flowing. So relaxation does not mean energy-stagnant or energyasleep.
Relaxation scientifically means energy in another channel, another dimension, in another room. Even if the room is different but not the very opposite, the mind will not relax. You work on a scientific problem, and then you can relax by reading a novel. The work is different. As to deal with a scientific problem is to be active - a very masculine trait - to read a novel is to be passive - an absolutely feminine trait. The work is different, and although the mind is used, all the same you will be at ease, as another and opposite pole of
the mind is used. You are not solving anything, you are not active. You are just a receptor - receiving something. The dimension is the same, only emotion - the opposite polarity is brought into use. Similarly when we love, the intellect does not come into play at all. Rather, quite the opposite; the irrational part of your personality comes into action. Intelligence must be balanced by love. But ordinarily this balance is not found anywhere. If someone is loving and he is not intelligent this too becomes a case of boredom. Even love becomes a tension if it is a twentyfour hour business. It will create its own boredom. Once the challenge is lost, the enjoyment too will be lost. The `play' will be lost and it will become - just work. The same happens with the intellectual. These two parts, two polarities of the human individuality must be in balance. Only then the integrated and individuated being is born. Otherwise, it is the same disease; whether from the part
of emotion, or from the part of the intellect.The East became warped with the heart. Now the West has tried the other polarity. Both have achieved disastrous results. There is rebellion in the West's new generation against intellect, against reason. The whole mind of the new generation is leaning towards the irrational. Nature takes its own revenge - always. Nature is very revengeful. It never pardons, it never forgets. If some part of it remains suppressed or unfulfilled, it will have its revenge. So the irrational in the West is taking its
revenge. In the East, the rational has got the appeal, the scientific has got the appeal and communism has got the appeal. Religion has lost - it no longer appeals to the East, as reason has been all along suppressed. So to me, neither a human being nor a human culture can be healthy without an inner balance between the rational and the irrational. I do not take these two as two different parts; I take them as the two poles existing in the same energy. All energy exists between two opposite poles. Otherwise, it can never exist. Energy requires an inner tension to create itself - to be. It could be the negative and the positive, as in electricity. It could be one pole and another, as in magnetism. It could be the male and the female, as in biology. Energy cannot exist in one pole. The other - the opposite is needed to challenge, to stimulate, to create the necessary tension. But in the human society, the other is always suppressed - either the intellect or the emotion. Therefore, the total culture has not come into existence yet. There has only been civilization either of the intellect or of the emotion. Culture as such is yet unborn. Culture means the polarities functioning simultaneously. So always balance one by the other. The more the other is put to use, the more the one for which it proves to be a relaxation brightens, is illumined. So the mind must be capable of changing poles, just as easily as waking and sleeping. One must be able to close one dimension and open another. When this happens, life is no longer dull. It becomes bliss. Unfortunately we become addicted to one polarity. Why this addiction to one? We become addicted to one, because the one which is in use, and for which we are trained, is easier to do. You can do it without any conscious effort. Consciousness is not required. When you change the pole, when you change the total perspective, you become an amateur. Then you are not an expert in this realm. You are not trained in it. So, you try to escape from it. Then in the realm in which you are proficient you tend to overdo. This over-doing is the problem. One must not be an expert all the twenty-four hours! One must also do something in which one is `no-one'. One must also do something about which one knows nothing. One must be a child, sometimes playing, immature, unknowing and ignorant; and that will be a help to the expert part of the mind. So every genius has the child in him. No genius can exist without the child in him. And the child is the source of all his energy. He can, in moments, be a novice. He can, in moments, be totally ignorant. He can touch realms of which he knows nothing. A mathematician turning to
poetry is never the loser. He comes back to his mathematics with a purer mind, with new experiences
unknown to the mathematical realms. All that has been invented and discovered has never been done by the professional. It is always the outsider, because he comes with the mind of a child. Only a child is inventive - never an old man, for he is an expert! But he cannot invent. He will go on repeating the same thing - doing it, and over-doing it. He will make it more perfect but never new. So a professional cannot contribute
anything new to knowledge. He knows too much. He cannot touch anything which is new. So persons who
know, who are professionals, are always orthodox. They are never revolutionaries. They cannot be. Their very being is heavy. They cannot see the new. They are always oblivious of the new. So whenever it happens that a scientist turns to poetry; or a poet turns to mathematics, or a businessman turns to painting; or a painter comes to be a sannyasin, then something new is born. And to give birth to something new is blissful. Otherwise, your every work will be dull and boring. Man cannot work like a machine. He cannot just go
on producing the same things mechanically, repeating the same routine endlessly. If he goes on doing this, he will be completely dead, long before he dies. He will only know that he has been alive when death comes. In a mechanical routine, there is every danger of the human machines being replaced by `machine-humans'. These human machines can be replaced because whatsoever they can do, can be more efficiently done by a
mechanical device. One can never be at ease if one has just turned into a mechanical device. Society does not need individuality, it needs efficiency. So the more a person becomes a person, the less useful he becomes to the society - and more dangerous. So the whole pattern of our civilization, and in fact of all civilizations that have existed in this world, is to turn the human being into an automaton. Then he is obedient, efficient, and, not dangerous! Otherwise, a mind which is inventive, inquiring, searching for the new, seeking the new and always trying to give birth to something unknown is bound to create disturbances. The establishments cannot be at ease with him. So they begin to kill individuality as soon as a child is born. Before he is seven they kill his individuality completely. If by change they are not successful in doing this, then only a person becomes his own individual self. But this is rare. Every type of social institution is a means to kill the individual and convert him into a machine. All our universities are factories to kill the spontaneous - to kill the spark, to kill the spirit and change man into a machine. Then the society feels at ease with him. He can
be relied upon. He knows what he can do, what he will do. He can be predicted. Man becomes predictable as soon as he be-comes a machine. We can predict a husband, a wife, a doctor, a lawyer, a scientist. We know who they are and how they will react. We can be at ease with them. But with a person who is living, spontaneous, it is impossible to be at ease. Because we do not know what he will do! He is unpredictable; and unpredictability is always a source of insecurity. A wife will not be at ease with a husband who is unpredictable. The moment he is unpredictable, he is unmanageable. He cannot be managed, he cannot be manipulated. No one is at ease with an unpredictable person. Not even a father with an unpredictable son. And only the unpredictable can feel happiness - can feel life, no one else. Life itself is unpredictable, unmanageable. Life as such is from moment to moment - towards the unknown. It is an opening into the unknown - nothing more, nothing else. So if you are open, just like life itself, then you necessarily live in all your dimensions - the physical, the intellectual, the emotional and the spiritual. Then you live totally. Then there is no bifurcation, no division. Your energy flows as if from one room to the other, and then to another. There is no barrier to your energy. It is not pulled from anywhere. It is a flowing river. You have just to switch on to any realm. You are always fresh and relaxed. And, whenever you return to your particular
field of work, you approach it with newness, a freshness that comes only from relaxing in the opposite fields.
So the problem as I see it is not excessive intellectual work, but too little or no work in the other dimensions - specifically the emotional. Reason is balanced by emotion. If you can do an exercise in logic but cannot
weep, then you are bound to be in trouble. If you can only argue and not laugh, you are inviting trouble. But
whenever a person appears, whose life is like a flowing river, it is difficult to understand him, because he cannot be categorized.  There is a Zen story. A famous monk died, he was a great teacher. He was well known, however, because of his chief disciple. Thousands of people came to pay homage to this monk. To their amazement, they found the chief disciple weeping. They were at a loss to understand him. An unattached person should not weep,especially he, who had always said that the spirit never dies! One comes and asks, “Why do you weep?”The monk replied, "I cannot live with the `Why' always. There are moments when there is no `why'. I am weeping and that is all." They still insisted, "You always say that the soul is immortal. Then why do you weep?" He replied, "I still maintain that the soul is immortal. But that does not check me from weeping"! This sounds illogical - 'the soul is immortal so one must not weep'. But the monk says, "The soul itself is weeping and I cannot do anything about it. I have never done anything myself. Whatsoever comes to me, I am with it. Tears are coming and I am one with them." This attitude cannot be
categorized. We can understand someone weeping if he believes the soul to be mortal. If one believes the soul to be immortal and does not weep, that too is understandable. It is alright. The soul is immortal, for whom to weep? No one has died; but this man says that the soul is immortal and yet he weeps. There is no `why'. The tears just flow. They ask, "Then do you weep for the body?" The Monk says, "Yes, it must be for the body that I weep. The body too was beautiful and it will never be seen again. I weep for the body." "But you are a spiritualist," they say. And so the arguments go on. They accuse him of confusing them. "I myself am confused - Life is such. The soul is important but so also are the tears! Such is Life - so contradictory! It exists in contradictions. I myself am confused. But I am at ease with my confusions. I am at ease with my contradictions. So I am not tense. See my tears! See me weeping, I am at ease; I am relaxed. I am blissful."
The other part must not be denied. The more you use reasons, the more you must use the irrational to balance it. The moment it is balanced, you become weightless. You feel free. The weight of one is set off by the weight of the other. The balance is achieved. You are free. Otherwise you will feel the burden, the weight, more till a moment comes when there is only burden and you are no more! You will feel only the burden; that is the only reality you will be conscious of. This burden will be so much with you always that you cannot conceive, what it is to be without it. No one is without burden. But burden can be balanced by another burden - from the opposite pole. When the two burdens are balanced, there is no burden. Thus a mind which has no burden is not a mind without burden. Rather, it is a mind with balanced burdens. So I
am in favour of reason and `no-reason' at the same time and I advise a perpetual balance between the two. As soon as the burden is felt, you should know that the balance is lost. You must set about to restore it, by
adding the necessary weight, wherever it is required. If the intellect is heavy, do something irrational - meditate. Meditation is not reason. It is irrational. So when someone asks me to explain meditation, I am at a loss! Simply because you cannot understand meditation. You can do it and know it. It is not at all concerned with logic, reason, arguments and understanding. There are people who have been studying meditation all their lives, and still not understood it. They cannot. Krishnamurti talks about understanding it and makes
understanding equivalent to meditation, as if meditation is something to be understood! Rather, understanding
must be balanced by meditation. It is the opposite pole. So, once you try not to understand meditation you can do it. If one goes on trying to understand meditation, there is less possibility of practising it. And because
understanding is intellectual, there are people who say they understand Krishnamurti perfectly. Intellectually we understand him. And even though he says intellectual understanding will not do, he still equates understanding with meditation. If intellectual understanding will not do, then I say a non-intellectual JUMP will do. There is no understanding which is not intellectual. Whenever you go into meditation, it is less like understanding and more like feeling. It is felt. It is never understood. Philosophy and science are intellectual processes. Religion and art are non-intellectual processes. Philosophy must be balanced by religion and science must be balanced by art. Otherwise, a topsy-turvy, lopsided world is created in which everyone is diseased. I have not come across a single individual who is at ease. Something or the other is always disturbing him. It does not matter what! All that matters is that he is disturbed. Everyone is disturbed. Then there must be something in our very conception of a human being which has gone  wrong. In the very structure of our society something has gone wrong. Therefore, persons who are diseased in the mind are only symptomatic. There is a very surprising fact. In the 30's, all the mental patients who visited the psychoanalysts were  basically disturbed by violence. Then came the Second World War. The same thing happened in the early 19th century and this was followed by the First World War. So as I see it, the mental patients are the forerunners of us all. They herald that which is to come. In a way they are more sensitive. They perceive things beforehand. The same happens with the artist. Everything that is to happen first happens in poetry, painting, music, etc. If we look deep in the art of Picasso we will find the indication of a diseased civilization. In his painting `Guernica', or for that matter in any of his other works, he never portrays a human figure as it is. He never paints all his parts together, nor in the right context. The head will be in one place and the neck somewhere else. The eyes are under the head. Such is his painting - schizophrenic, schizoid! He is an extra sensitive person who sees the shape of things to come, the plight of the human being in time to come.A society basically philosophic only, will be lacking in religion. A society basically scientific only, will be lacking in aesthetic art. Art will become ugly. Thus the whole Western art has become ugly. Rather, the
grotesque and the absurd has become the criterion. Ugliness is appreciated as greatness in art. The uglier a
painting, the more distorted, the better it is appreciated. There should be no harmony, no rhythm, no music -
everything should be deranged and decayed like the present human mind. These are indications and symptoms. They are symbolic expressions. The other part of the human mind is taking revenge. It is demanding attention. When a society becomes less and less religious, religion takes its revenge. It will become ugly, ritualistic. Priesthood will come up, religion will go down. The Church will come up. The Church is religion turned ugly. The priest is the revenge of the prophet. The prophet has no place, so the
priest comes in. He fills the vacuum. We have not yet even conceived a total culture, a total personality, a total mind. The totality is the sum total of both the opposite polarities. Therefore, a totally consistent personality is an imperfect and partial personality, and is in a way on the path to madness. This is dangerous. The part that has been denied expression, denied attention, because of a consistent mind, will take its revenge. The irrational will become aggressive. It will come with a revengeful force and shatter all reason.
You must not only understand, but also feel this. This is not difficult to understand intellectually. The problem comes only with the question of feeling. You must also feel it. This can only be possible when you do something irrational. Just jump and dance for an hour and see how relaxed and refreshed you feel - and how bright! The mind gets purified because the irrational is satisfied. Now reason can work freely without any enemy behind. There is now a freedom in its working. Thus give an opportunity to both sides of the mind to express freely. Always balance the two. Live in these two complementary compartments. They are not
contradictory. They look so, because we have been living only in one and become fixed in it. When you dream, you do not feel the contradiction, the inconsistency of the dream. You see a friend approaching. Suddenly he turns into something else. But you take this as a fact in the dream. You feel no inconsistency, no contradiction. You do not ask how man can change into an animal. This is because a dream has no logic. Dream has still to know its Aristotle. In a dream you cannot say that, if A is A, then he cannot be B. If A
is A, he cannot be `not-A'. In a dream, A can be `not-A' and `not-A' can be A. No logic is taken into account, nor is any contradiction imposed. So there are realms totally lacking in logic. All the same they are part of you. Rather, you are part of them, for they are greater. If this balance is achieved between the rational and the irrational, boredom vanishes. There is moment to moment bliss. Then every moment comes with bliss of its own. Otherwise, life becomes a burden. But life is not responsible for this. We alone are responsible, for the choice lies with us.

Dr. Henrotte: If one tries to balance oneself, he will not fit into a category. Then he will be rejected by society. He will become redundant.

Acharya Rajneesh: It is better to be rejected by society than to be rejected by life!

Ma Yoga Maitri: How should I plan to proceed in this method of yours when I go back to Japan?

Acharya Rajneesh: Do not plan anything. Just go on digging. Things will take their own course. Planning always presupposes frustration. When you plan you create seeds of frustration. Do not plan. Just go on digging. Let it come. It is always beautiful when it comes by itself. It is always fulfilling, never frustrating, because there has been no expectation! Where there is no expectation, you are never disappointed. The less you are disheartened the more you can do. The more you are disheartened, the less you do! So I say again: "Do not plan." Just go on. Let it come by itself. Let it come. It WILL come. When we plan, we hinder the way of its coming. Because of our plans, the plans we have made, life cannot work. Our plans come in
the way. I have made my life without plan and I have never been frustrated. There is no question of  frustration.So, I am always successful! I cannot be a failure as there is no plan against which I calculate.
No failure is a failure, no success is a success, only our conceptions and pre-determined plans make them so. If you fail in your plan you feel disappointed; the ego is hurt. If you succeed, the ego is strengthened and it will plan more, ceaselessly, causing perpetual strain and burden on the mind. The ego is always in fear of life. In life we never know what is going to happen, so we make plans for our security. Life disturbs them, as we are not whole and sole. We are only a negligibly small part of the infinite existence.

Ma Yoga Maitri: The plan I was following in Japan, seems to be identical with yours.

Acharya Rajneesh: Yes, it will be so. The moment you start planning, you begin to compare and contrast. Doubts and fears will catch hold of you. "Will I succeed? Is it possible? What will happen? What will people say?" The moment you plan, the seeds of frustration take root. Now anxiety follows. We normally plan to be free from anxiety but the plan itself is an anxiety! We become anxious! The anxiety comes because of planning. So do not plan. Just go on. You do not plan your breathing! You just go on breathing. So let it come easily. And all that comes easily becomes Divine. And all that comes with effort cannot be divine. The divine comes effortlessly. It is in fact coming all the time. So let it come. Just let go of yourself and see; things will begin to move. You will find yourself in the midst of movement, but there will be no anxiety. Then there will not be any trouble created for the mind. If something happens, it is alright. If nothing happens, then too it is alright. Everything is alright with this type of a mind. Only then you can do something for meditation,
otherwise not. Because meditation is not a business, it should not be made a business. Then you will not be
helpful to others towards meditation; much less to yourself. Rather, you will be suicidal to your own meditation, as it will be a burden to you.

Ma Yoga Maitri: So I should not plan!

Acharya Rajneesh: But if you plan for not to plan, then again the same thing will happen. Do not plan - just go on. If meditation has come to you, if something has flowered in you, the perfume will spread. It will work in its own way. Something has happened to you. You are calm and at ease. Tranquility is achieved. It WILL work. You will not have to work. It will gather people there. They will come by themselves. They will ask. Let them plan. You just go and meditate. Things will begin to happen. They must happen. Only then they have a beauty of their own - a beatitude, otherwise not. Business is always tiring. It has no beauty, no joy.
Meditation is not a business. Yet it has been converted into a business in India - a flourishing business. There are shops and there are factories. Do not take meditation in this way. You have experienced meditation. You have come to a door. You have seen something. You have felt something. Let it go on. Let God work.
Go completely without planning. Do not think about it at all. You just be there. Your very presence will begin
to work. Only then it will be my work. If you plan, then it will not be my work at all. That way, you will be merely distracting yourself and others. You will not be a help to others in meditation if you yourself are tense. You cannot help. You will be helpful only if you go without planning. Just go. Sit there. Meditate and see what happens. Things are bound to take their own course.

SunRise

Deva means divine, and aruna means early morning, dawn… the sun is just going to rise, just before sunrise. Mm? the East becomes red but the sun is not yet on the horizon – it is coming; it is very imminent, just within a second it will be there but it is not there yet. That is the most precious moment in twenty-four hours. The night is no more, it has gone, and the sun has not yet appeared. Between the two there is a different quality of light in existence. Darkness is not there, and because the sun is not there the light is not coming from the sun; it is a very diffused light, a very cool light. With the sun things will become hot; more energy, more heat will be there. So this cool light is very symbolic of the inner experience of light. Sooner or later you will understand the meaning of your name. It is light with no heat in it, it cannot burn. It can only enlighten; it cannot burn. It is almost like moonlight but still with a difference: the moonlight is a reflected light; it is not original. The moon has no light of its own: it simply reflects the sunrays. The sun has its own light, it is original. This inner light is also original: it is not a reflected light; it is not the reflected glory of anything else or anybody else. It is your own, authentically your own, but it needs no fuel. The sun needs fuel, so every day the sun is becoming exhausted and tired, every day its treasure is being spent. Sooner or later, one day – scientists say in somewhere around four thousand million years time – the sun will be spent and will become a dark hole. 

No more light will be coming: it will have given all its heat to the world and it will die. Stars are born and stars die. Whenever there is some source it cannot be infinite. This inner light has no source, hence it is infinite; it does not depend on any kind of fuel so it is inexhaustible. It has been there for eternity and it will remain there for eternity. We may look at it, we may not look at it, but it is always there. When one starts turning inwards one starts feeling it. 

Because of this inner experience, in the east the early dawn became of tremendous importance, the most auspicious moment… very symbolic of the inner. The night is no more and the sun has not come yet: it is an interval, a gap, where gears change, where day is born and night disappears.

Because of this gap, this moment is for prayer, for meditation. The same happens inside, a gap arises, and the outer gap can be of help for the inner gap, because outer and inner are not really two; they are joined together. So whenever it is possible, get up early in the morning and meditate on the early dawn. Once the sun has come up there is no need, but just before the sun is coming up look to the east and be filled by it, be possessed by it, dissolve into it. Drink it and become it….

We don´t need a better man, we need a new man. Betterment has gone on for centuries and nothing has happened. Now we don´t need any better man — enough is enough! Now we want a totally new man, discontinuous with the past. We want to begin again as if we are Adam and Eve, just now expelled from the Garden of Eden.

Wait Twenty-Four Hours

“Whenever the mind begins to flow downward, become aware as early as possible — as early as possible!
“Someone has insulted you. For you to become angry, a little time is needed because it is a mechanism. You will get angry, but after a gap. Things will happen like a flash. First you will feel insulted. The moment you feel insulted, the second current will begin to flow: you will become angry. At first the anger will not be conscious; first it will be just like a fever. Then it will become conscious. Then you will begin to express or suppress it. So when I say ‘the earlier the better,’ I mean when someone insults you, become aware as soon as you begin to feel that you have been insulted. And whenever you become aware, just make an effort to stop. Don’t fall into the automatic track even for a single moment. Even a single moment’s stop will help much. Longer stops will help even more.
“When [the Russian mystic] Gurdjieff’s father was dying he called his boy. He was just nine, and Gurdjieff remembered the incident all his life. The father called him. He was the youngest child and the father said, ‘I am so poor, I cannot give you anything, my boy. But one thing which my father gave to me I can give you. You may not even be able to understand what it means now, because I myself was not able to understand what it meant when my father gave it to me. But it proved the most precious thing in my life, so I am just giving it to you. Preserve it! Sometime you may begin to understand it.’
“So Gurdjieff just listened. The father said, ‘Whenever you feel angry, never reply before twenty-four hours. Reply, but let there be a gap of twenty-four hours.’
“Gurdjieff followed his dying father’s advice. It became deeply impressed in his mind the very day his father died, and Gurdjieff said, ‘I have practised many, many, many spiritual exercises, but that was the best. I never could be angry in my life, and that changed the whole flow, the whole current, because I had to stick to the promise.
“‘Whenever someone would insult me, I would create something, some situation. I would just tell him that I would come back after twenty-four hours to reply, and I have never replied because it proved such nonsense to reply.’ Only a gap was needed. And the whole life of George Gurdjieff became something different.”

 

BE BORN AGAIN , BECOME INNOCENT ITS IN YOUR HANDS

Man is born to achieve life, but it all depends on him. He can miss it. He can go on breathing, he can go on eating, he can go on growing old, he can go on moving towards the grave – but this is not life. This is gradual death from the cradle to the grave, a seventy-year-long gradual death. And because millions of people around you are dying in this gradual, slow death, you also start imitating them. Children learn everything from those who are around them, and we are surrounded by the dead.

So first we have to understand what I mean by life. It must not be simply growing old. It has to be growing up. And these are two different things. Growing old, any animal is capable of. Growing up is the prerogative of human beings. Only a few claim the right.

Growing up means moving every moment deeper into the principle of life, it means going farther away from death, not towards death. The deeper you go into life, the more you understand the immortality within you. You are going away from death; a moment comes when you can see that death is nothing but changing clothes, or changing houses, changing forms. Nothing dies, nothing can die; death is the greatest illusion there is.

For growing up, just watch a tree. As the tree grows up, its roots are growing down, deeper. There is a balance: the higher the tree goes, the deeper the roots will go. You cannot have a tree one hundred and fifty feet high with small roots; they could not support such a huge tree. In life, growing up means growing deep within yourself – that’s where your roots are.

To me, the first principle of life is meditation.

Everything else comes second. And childhood is the best time. As you grow older, it means you are coming closer to death, and it becomes more and more difficult to go into meditation. Meditation means going into your immortality, going into your eternity, going into your godliness. And the child is the most qualified person because he is still unburdened by knowledge, unburdened by religion, unburdened by education, unburdened by all kinds of rubbish. He is innocent.

But unfortunately his innocence is being condemned as ignorance. Ignorance and innocence have a similarity, but they are not the same. Ignorance is also a state of not knowing, just as innocence is. But there is a great difference too, which has been overlooked by the whole of humanity up to now. Innocence is not knowledgeable, but it is not desirous of being knowledgeable either. It is utterly content, fulfilled. A small child has no ambitions; he has no desires. He is so absorbed in the moment: a bird on the wing catches his eye so totally; just a butterfly, its beautiful colors, and he is enchanted; the rainbow in the sky… And he cannot conceive that there can be anything more significant, richer than this rainbow. And the night full of stars, stars beyond stars… Innocence is rich, it is full, it is pure.

Ignorance is poor, it is a beggar – it wants this, it wants that, it wants to be knowledgeable, it wants to be respectable, it wants to be wealthy; it wants to be powerful. Ignorance moves on the path of desire. Innocence is a state of desirelessness.

But because they both are without knowledge, we have remained confused about their natures. We have taken it for granted that they are both the same. The first step, in the art of living, will be to create a demarcation line between ignorance and innocence. Innocence has to be supported, protected – because the child has brought with him the greatest treasure, the treasure that sages find after arduous effort. Sages have said that they become children again, that they are reborn.

In India the real brahmin, the real knower, has called himself dwij, twice born. Why twice born? What happened to the first birth? What is the need of the second birth? And what is he going to gain in the second birth? In the second birth he is going to gain what was available in the first birth but society, parents, the people surrounding him crushed it, destroyed it.

Every child is being stuffed with knowledge. His simplicity has somehow to be removed, because simplicity is not going to help him in this competitive world. His simplicity will look to the world as if he is a simpleton; his innocence will be exploited in every possible way. Afraid of the society, afraid of the world we have created ourselves, we try to make every child be clever, cunning, knowledgeable, to be in the category of the powerful, not in the category of the oppressed and the powerless. And once the child starts growing in the wrong direction, he goes on moving that way, his whole life moves in that direction.

Whenever you understand that you have missed life, the first principle to be brought back is innocence. Drop your knowledge, forget your scriptures, forget your religions, your theologies, your philosophies. Be born again, become innocent – and it is in your hands. Clean your mind of all that is not known by you, of all that is borrowed, all that has come from tradition, convention, all that has been given to you by others: parents, teachers, universities. Just get rid of it. Once again be simple; once again be a child. And this miracle is possible by meditation.

Meditation is simply a strange surgical method which cuts you away from all that is not yours and saves only that which is your authentic being. It burns everything else and leaves you standing naked, alone under the sun, in the wind. It is as if you are the first man who has descended onto earth – who knows nothing, who has to discover everything, who has to be a seeker, who has to go on a pilgrimage.

The second principle is the pilgrimage. Life must be a seeking, not a desire, but a search; not an ambition to become this, to become that, a president of a country or a prime minister of a country, but a search to find out: “Who am I?”

It is very strange that people who don’t know who they are are trying to become somebody. They don’t even know who they are right now! They are unacquainted with their being, but they have a goal of becoming. Becoming is the disease of the soul.

Being is you. And to discover your being is the beginning of life. Then each moment is a new discovery, each moment brings a new joy; a new mystery opens its doors, a new love starts growing in you, a new compassion that you have never felt before, a new sensitivity about beauty, about goodness. You become so sensitive that even the smallest blade of grass takes on an immense importance for you. Your sensitivity makes it clear to you that this small blade of grass is as important to existence as the biggest star; without this blade of grass, existence would be less than it is. And this small blade of grass is unique, it is irreplaceable, it has its own individuality.

And this sensitivity will create new friendships for you – friendships with trees, with birds, with animals, with mountains, with rivers, with oceans, with stars. Life becomes richer as love grows, as friendliness grows.

In the life of St. Francis, there is a beautiful incident. He is dying, and he has always traveled on a donkey from place to place sharing his experiences. All his disciples are gathered to listen to his last words.

The last words of a man are always the most significant that he has ever uttered because they contain the whole experience of his life.

But what the disciples heard, they could not believe… St. Francis did not address the disciples; he addressed the donkey. He said, “Brother, I am immensely indebted to you. You have been carrying me from one place to another place with never a complaint, never grumbling. Before I leave this world, all that I want is forgiveness from you; I have not been humane to you.”

These were the last words of St. Francis – a tremendous sensitivity to say to the donkey, “Brother donkey,” and ask to be forgiven.

As you become more sensitive, life becomes bigger. It is not a small pond; it becomes oceanic. It is not confined to you and your wife and your children; it is not confined at all. This whole existence becomes your family, and unless the whole existence is your family, you have not known what life is – because no man is an island, we are all connected. We are a part of a vast continent, joined in millions of ways. And if our hearts are not full of love for the whole, in the same proportion our life is cut short.

The Alchemy of Being: Brahmacharya

The third [of the five vows] is asteya, achaurya — nonstealing, honesty.

The mind is a great thief. In many ways it goes on stealing. You may not be stealing things from people, but you can steal thoughts. I say something to you; you go out and you pretend that that is your thought. You have stolen it, you are a thief. You may not be aware what you are doing.

Says Patanjali, “Be in a state of nonstealing.” Knowledge, things — nothing should be stolen. You should be original and should always be aware that “these things don’t belong to me.” Remain empty, it is better, but don’t fill your house with stolen things, because if you go on stealing you will lose all originality. Then you will never be able to find your own space: you will be filled with others’ opinions, thoughts, things. And, finally, they don’t prove of any value. Only that which comes out of you is valuable. In fact only that which comes out of you can you possess, nothing else. You can steal but you cannot possess.

A thief is never at ease, cannot be; he is always afraid of being caught. And even if nobody catches him he knows that this is not his. This remains a constant burden in his being.

Patanjali says, “Don’t be a thief...in any way, in any dimension,” so that your originality can flower. Don’t burden yourself with stolen things and thoughts, philosophies, religions. Allow your inner space to flower.

The fourth is brahmacharya. This word is really very difficult to translate. It has been translated as sexual continence, celibacy. That’s not right, because brahmacharya is a wide word, very vast. Sexual celibacy is a very narrow thing; it is one part of it but not the whole of it. The word brahmacharya means living like a god. The very word means living like a god, living a life divine. Of course, in a life divine, sex disappears.

Brahmacharya is not against sex. If it is against sex then sex can never disappear. Brahmacharya is a transmutation of the energy: it is not being against sex, rather it is changing the whole energy from the sex center to the higher centers. When it reaches to the seventh center of man, the sahasrar, then brahmacharya happens. If it remains in the first center, the muladhar, then sex; when it reaches to the seventh center, then samadhi. The same energy moves. It is not being against it; rather, it is an art how to use it.

A man who is indulging in sex is a suicidal man. He is destroying his own energy. He is like a man who goes to the market, gives his diamonds, and purchases pebbles — and comes home happy that he has made a great bargain! In sex you attain such a little, a tiny moment of happiness, and you lose so much energy. The same energy can give you tremendous blissfulness, but then it has to move on a higher level.

Sex has to be transformed — don’t be against it. If you are against it you cannot transform it, because when you are inimical towards something you cannot understand it. Great sympathy is needed for understanding. If you are inimical, how can you give sympathy? When you are inimical to something, you cannot even observe it: you want to withdraw from your enemy, to escape from the enemy.

Be in friendship with your sex, because it is your energy, with tremendous possibilities hidden in it. It is the divine, raw. Sex is samadhi, raw. It can be transmuted, it can be changed, it can be transfigured.

The whole of Yoga is the path to transfer, to change, the baser metal into the higher metal. The whole art is how to change iron into gold. Yoga is alchemy, the alchemy of your inner being.

Brahmacharya means: trying to understand sex energy, trying to understand how it moves in your being, trying to understand why it gives you pleasure, trying to understand from where pleasure really comes — whether it comes from sexual congress, sex release, or it comes from somewhere else. If you are an observer, soon you will realize and discover it is coming from somewhere else.

When you are in sexual intercourse a deep shock happens to the whole body. It is a shock because so much energy is released; the whole body trembles in a shock. In that shock thoughts stop. It is just like an electric shock.

A man goes mad; you go to the psychiatrist and he gives him an electric shock. For what? Because if you give an electric shock, then for a moment when the shock passes through the mind everything stops.

For example, you are listening to me. Still, thoughts will be there. Then suddenly a bomb explodes here: immediately, there will be no thought. For a second the shock will be too much so that the whole system will stop functioning. Electric shock helps mad people because the shock gives a discontinuity. After the shock they cannot remember what they were before it. The gap.... If they are thinking before that they have become horses — madmen can become anything...if they are thinking that they have become horses just before the shock, after the shock they cannot remember what the idea was with which they were obsessed. Now a new circle starts. Shock helps.

Sexual energy is as electrical as any energy. All energies are electrical, and sex energy is bioelectricity. It comes out of your body. In sex you create energy; by the sexual movement, fantasy, desire, you create energy. The whole energy moves towards muladhar, the sex center, concentrates there; then comes a peak, a buildup; then sudden explosion, a shock all over the body. Then peace follows. This peace is at a very great cost. You are destroying valuable life energy — for nothing.

Brahmacharya is: to understand the whole phenomenon, what is happening. And if by shocks you become peaceful and you attain a little glimpse of happiness...this cannot be eternal. It can only be momentary. And soon the energy will be lost and then you will be frustrated. No, something else has to be found and discovered, something of the eternal, something so that you remain blissful. It cannot be through the shock; it can be only through the transmutation of the energy.

When the same energy moves upwards you become a dam of energy. That is brahmacharya. You go on accumulating energy. The more you accumulate, the higher it rises. Just as in a dam: it will be raining now, and the water level will go higher and higher and higher. But if there is a leakage, then the water level will not go high. Your sexuality is a leakage of your being. If the leakage is not there, the water level goes higher and higher and higher, and a moment comes — then it passes through many centers.

First it comes to the hara; from the muladhar it comes to the second center. At that center you have a feeling of deathlessness; you become aware that nothing dies. Fear disappears. Have you observed, whenever you feel afraid something hits you just near the navel? There is the center of death and deathlessness. When the energy passes to that center, comes to that level, you feel deathless. If somebody even kills you, you know that you are not being killed.

Then the energy goes higher and comes to the third center. At the third center you start becoming very, very peaceful. Have you ever observed that whenever you are peaceful you start breathing from the belly and not from the chest?...because the center of peace is just above the navel. Below the navel is the center of death and deathlessness; above the navel is the center of peace and tensions. If there is no energy you will feel tension; if there is no energy you will feel fear. If there is energy, tension disappears; you feel very, very peaceful, tranquil, calm, quiet, collected.

Then the energy moves to the fourth center, of the heart. There arises love. You cannot love right now, and whatsoever you call love is nothing but sex camouflaged in a beautiful word love. That word is not true to you...cannot be. Love is possible only when energy reaches to the fourth center of the heart. Suddenly you are in love — in love with the whole existence, in love with everything. You are love.

Then the energy moves to the fifth center, in the throat. That center is the center of silence — silence, thought, thinking, speech. Speech, no-speech — both are there. Right now your throat only works to speak. It does not know how to function in silence, how to go into silence. When the energy comes to it, suddenly you become silent. Not that you make any effort, not that you force yourself to be silent — you find yourself to be silent, full of silence Even if you have to speak, you have to make effort. Your voice becomes musical; whatsoever you say becomes poetry a subtle glow in your words, of life. Your words carry silence within them, around them. In fact your silence becomes more pregnant than your words.

Then the energy goes to the sixth center, the third eye. There you find light — awareness, consciousness. That is the point where sleep happens, where hypnosis happens. Have you watched any hypnotizer? He says to fix your eyes to a point. When you fix your two eyes to a point, your third eye goes into sleep. That is just a trick to create sleep in the third eye.

When the energy reaches to the third eye, you feel so full of light...all darkness disappeared, infinite light surrounds you. In fact there is no shadow in you then. The oldest saying in Tibet is, “When a yogi becomes realized in awareness, there falls no shadow of his body.” Don’t take it literally; the body will create a shadow. But deep inside, because there is so much light everywhere.... Light without source! If light is with a source there will be shadow; light without source: there cannot be any shadow.

Llife now has a different meaning and dimension. You move on the earth but you are no longer of the earth; it is as if you fly. You have come nearest to buddhahood. Now the garden is very near; you can feel the fragrance. At this point, for the first time, you become capable of understanding a buddha. Before it, by and by, gradually, fragments happen to you, but not total understanding. But at this point you are close, just near the door. The temple has arrived; a knock, and the door shall open and you yourself will be a buddha. Now, so near and at such close quarters, you for the first time start feeling what understanding is.

Then the energy moves to the seventh, the sahasrar. There it becomes brahmacharya, a life divine. Then you are no longer a man; then you are a god. You have attained to bhagwatta, to divineness. This is brahmacharya.

painting credit: Jennifer Ferdinandsen

Massage is the Message

I’ve been working as a diplomat but thinking I might study something like massage because I like working with my hands, and I know it’s a job where one can be open and receptive.
 
It’s very good. To do something with the hands is always good.
Rather than to be a head, it is always good to be hands.
It will make you more alive and more in contact with life. It will make you more grounded. Massage is perfectly good. It is better than to be a diplomat! It is very very good to forget all about that nonsense.
Get more into your body. Make your senses more alive. See more lovingly, taste more lovingly, touch more lovingly, smell more lovingly. Let your senses function more and more. Then suddenly you will see the energy that was moving too much in the head is now well-divided in the body.

The head is very dictatorial. It goes on taking energy from everywhere and is a monopolist. It has killed the senses.
The head is taking almost eighty percent of the energy, and only twenty percent is left for the whole body. Of course the whole body suffers, and when the whole body suffers, you suffer, because you can only be happy when you are functioning as a whole, as an organic unity, and every part of your body and being is getting its proportion; not more than that, not less than that. Then you function in a rhythm. You have a harmony.
Harmony, happiness, health — they are all part of one phenomenon, and that is wholeness. If you are whole, you are happy, healthy, harmonious.
The head is creating a disturbance. People have lost many things. People cannot smell. They have lost the capacity to smell. They have lost the capacity to taste. They can only hear a few things. They have lost their ears. People don’t know what touch really is. Their skin has become dead. It has lost the softness and receptivity. So the head thrives like an Adolf Hitler, crushing the whole body. The head becomes bigger and bigger. It is very ridiculous.

Man is almost like a caricature — a very big head and just very small limbs, hanging.
So bring back your senses. Do anything with the hands, with the earth, with the trees, with the rocks, with bodies, with people.

Do anything that needs not much thinking, not much intellectualization.
And enjoy. Then your head will by and by be unburdened. It will be good for the head too, because when the head is burdened too much, it thinks — but it cannot think. How can a worrying mind think? For thinking you need clarity. For thinking you need a non-tense mind.

It will look like a paradox, but for thinking you need a thoughtless mind.
Then you can think very easily, very directly, intensely. Just put any problem before yourself and your non-thinking mind starts solving it. Then you have intuition. It is not worry — just insight.
When the mind is burdened too much with thoughts, you think too much but to no purpose. It comes to nothing; there is nothing in the head. You go round about, round about; you make much noise, but the end result is zero. So it is not against the head to disperse the energy into all the senses. It is in favor of it, because when the head is balanced, in its right place, it functions better; otherwise it is jammed. It is such great traffic. It is almost a rush hour; for twenty-four hours a rush hour.
So start doing something...whatsoever you feel. Massage is very good. The body is beautiful...anything to do with the body is beautiful.

Never misunderstand intellect with intelligence, they are polar opposites. Intellect is of the head; it is taught by others, it is imposed on you. You have to cultivate it. It is borrowed, it is something foreign, it is not inborn. But intelligence is inborn. It is your very being, your very nature.

Thorns and Roses

We are in conflict bringing up our son. My husband wants to be stricter and I want to be more loving.

 
So let him do his thing and you go on doing your thing; there is no problem. The child needs both, because this is how life is: if a child only gets love he will suffer; if he only gets hardness, then he will suffer. He needs both. That’s the function of the mother and the father: the mother should go on giving love so the child knows that love is possible and the father remains hard so the child knows life is not so easy. It is how life is!
There are thorns and there are roses and the child has to be prepared for both. The world is not going to be a mother; the world is going to be a hard struggle. So if you just go on giving him love he will not have any bone. When life is there in reality he will simply collapse, because he will wait for the mother and [she] is not there; life does not bother about him. Then he will be grateful to [his father] because life will put him out the door many times, will shout at him, and then he will know that he can tackle that too; he has been prepared for that too.
A child has to be prepared for both softness and hardness, yin and yang both, and that’s the function of the father and mother. The feminine and the masculine both have to be given so the child is ready: whatsoever the situation he will be able to respond. If life is hard, he can he hard too; if life is loving, he can be loving too; he will not have any fixation.
Now if [his father] alone is training him he will be fixed. He will be a hard person, he will be a perfect German, but he will never be able to love and he will never be able to accept love because he does not know what love is. He will be a soldier, he will be ready to fight, to kill or be killed. That will be his only logic, he will not know anything else. That too is dangerous. That’s what happened to the German nation, that’s what helped Adolf Hitler. Two world wars have proved that German mothers have not been as loving as they should be and German fathers have been too disciplinarian. That’s why the whole world has suffered because of Germany.
So if the child is left alone to him [his father], the child will become a victim of any Adolf Hitler any day; that is dangerous. If the child is left to you, the child will become too Indian, so wherever there is any fight he will simply escape, he will surrender; before even fighting he will surrender! He will be a slave. Both ways he will get fixed, and a really alive person has no fixation. He is liquid: he can move and be hard when the circumstances are such that he needs to be hard like steel, and when circumstances are such that he needs to be like a rose flower, soft and vulnerable, he can soften.
This whole expanse should be available to the child’s consciousness so that he can move easily. So both are good; I will not say to choose any. And there is no need to be in any conflict: just go on doing your thing and let him do his thing, and sometimes even if the conflict is there that too is good! But sometimes too much of anything becomes ugly.
Sometimes the child should know this too — that his father and mother can fight — because some day he will find a woman and there will be fight; he should know that fight is natural. In fact whatsoever is natural is good. And now that you are both becoming alert things will change.

What is this attachment to misery?

There are reasons. Just look into your misery, watch, and you will be able to find what the reasons are. Then look into those moments when once in a while you allow yourself the joy of being in joy, and then see what differences are there. These will be the few things....
When you are miserable you are a conformist.
Society loves it, people respect you, you have great respectability, you can even become a saint; hence your saints are all miserable. The misery is written large on their faces, in their eyes. Because they are miserable they are against all joy. They condemn all joy as hedonism; they condemn every possibility of joy as sin. They are miserable, and they would like to see the whole world miserable. In fact only in a miserable world can they be thought to be saints. In a happy world they would have to be hospitalized, mentally treated. They are pathological.

Look into your misery and you will find certain fundamental things are there. One: it gives you respect. People feel more friendly towards you, more sympathetic. You will have more friends if you are miserable.
This is a very strange world, something is fundamentally wrong with it. It should not be so; the happy person should have more friends. But become happy and people become jealous of you, they are no longer friendly. They feel cheated; you have something that is not available to them. Why are you happy? So we have learned down the ages a subtle mechanism: to repress happiness and to express misery. It has become our second nature.
My sannyasins have to drop this whole mechanism. You have to learn how to be happy, and you have to learn to respect happy people and you have to learn to pay more attention to happy people, remember. This is a great service to humanity.

Don’t sympathize too much with people who are miserable.
If somebody is miserable, help, but don’t sympathize. Don’t give him the idea that misery is something worthwhile. Let him know perfectly well that you are helping him, but “This is not out of respect, this is simply because you are miserable.” And you are not doing anything but trying to bring the man out of his misery, because misery is ugly. Let the person feel that the misery is ugly, that to be miserable is not something virtuous, that “You are not doing a great service to humanity.”

Be happy, respect happiness, and help people to understand that happiness is the goal of life – Sat-Chit-Anand.
The Eastern mystics have said the divine has three qualities. It is sat: it is truth, being. It is chit: consciousness, awareness. And, ultimately, the highest peak is anand: bliss. Wherever bliss is, the dvine is.

Whenever you see a blissful person, respect him, he is holy.
And wherever you feel a gathering which is blissful, festive, think of it as a sacred place.

We have to learn a totally new language, only then can this old rotten humanity be changed. We have to learn the language of health, wholeness, happiness.
It is going to be difficult because our investments are great.
That is why it is so difficult to be happy and so easy to be miserable.

If you have authority, you want to show it. But then the son also has some authority. He starts jumping, he creates a tantrum, and he knows that he will create trouble and the neighbors will listen and people will think wrong about you, so

you say, “Okay, go.”

In every human encounter you will see it happening – people are throwing their authority all around; either bullying people or being bullied by others. And if somebody bullies you, you will immediately find some weaker person somewhere to take the revenge.

If your boss bullies you in the office, you will come home and bully your wife. And if she is not a lib movement woman, then she will wait for the child to come home from the school, and she will bully the child. And if the child is old-fashioned, not American, then the child will go to his room and crush his toys, because that is the only thing he can bully. He can show his power on the toy. But this goes on and on. This seems to be the whole game. This is what real politics is.

To get out of the political mind is the meaning of this sutra:

It is difficult not to abuse one’s authority. So whenever you have some authority…. And everybody has some authority or other. You cannot find a person, you cannot find the last person who has no authority; even he has some authority, even he has a dog he can kick. Everybody has some authority somewhere. So, everybody lives in politics. You may not be a member of any political party; that doesn’t mean that you are not political. If you abuse your authority, you are political. If you don’t abuse your authority, then you are non-political.

Become more aware not to abuse your authority. It will give you a very new light – how you function – and it will make you so calm and centered. It will give you tranquillity and serenity.

It is difficult to be even-minded and simple-hearted in all one’s dealings with others.

It is very difficult, because people are cunning. If you are simple-hearted, you will be cheated.

Buddha says, be cheated. It is better to be cheated than to cheat. If these are the only alternatives – to be cheated or to cheat – then Buddha says choose the first, be cheated. At least your inner being will remain uncorrupted.

That is the meaning when Jesus says, “If somebody hits, slaps your face, then give him the other side also. If somebody forces you to carry his load for one mile, go two miles. And if somebody tries to steal your coat, give him your shirt also.”

The whole meaning is this: that it is better to be cheated, because when somebody is cheating you, he can cheat you only of immaterial things, meaningless things. When you cheat somebody, you are losing something of your inner being…something which is tremendously valuable.