People are cowards; don´t be worried about them. Go on your way, go on your way dancing. Remember only one thing: whatsoever feels good is good, whatsoever feels beautiful is beautiful, and whatsoever makes you joyful, gay, delighted, is truth. Let that be your only criterion.
Don´t be bothered by others´ opinions. Let this be your only touchstone – whatsoever makes you happy is bound to be true. Ananda, bliss, is the only criterion of truth.
I feel I have a legacy of laziness and escapism. Either I don’t feel energy, or if I do, I find it difficult to just completely let go. I feel a control.
I feel it is somewhere and has become part of your bio-computer. The mind functions as a computer, and we go on feeding it attitudes. They go on accumulating there and by and by they become deeply ingrained. Personalities can be divided into two categories. One, psychologists call the T-personality, toxic, and the other they call the N-personality, nourishing.
This toxic personality always thinks of that which is not and never looks at that which is, so discontent becomes natural. A toxic personality poisons his own being; not only that – he drips poison.
It can be a heritage. If you have lived with people in your childhood who had a negative attitude towards life.... It may be hiding in glowing terms, beautiful language, ideals, heaven, God, religion, the soul; they can use beautiful words, but they are simply trying...and they talk about the other world just to condemn this one. They are not concerned with the other world. They have no interests in saints, but just to prove that others are sinners, they will talk about saints.
It is a very morbid attitude. They will say, ‘Become like Jesus.’ They are not interested in Jesus at all. If Jesus were there they would be the last person to go to him, but just to condemn you, this is their device. You cannot become Jesus, so you become a victim. They always condemn you. They create values, moralities, puritan attitudes. They are the moralists, the moralisers; they are the great poisoners of the world.
And they are everywhere. These people tend to become teachers, educationalists, professors, vice-chancellors, saints, bishops, popes; they tend to become these things because then they can condemn. They are even ready to sacrifice everything if they are just allowed the joy of condemning others. They are everywhere, hiding in many ways. And they are always doing things for your good, for your own good, so you are defenceless against them. Their heritage is real, big. They have dominated the whole history.
These people immediately become dominators. Their very ideology helps them to dominate because they can become condemnators. And they talk in rational terms. Rationalism is also part of the T-personality. They are very argumentative...very difficult to defeat them in argumentation. They are never reasonable, but they are always rational.
One must know the distinction between a reasonable man and a rational man. A reasonable man is never only rational, because a reasonable man knows by experience that life has both – the rational and the irrational; that life has both – reason and feeling, the mind and the heart.
A reasonable man is reasonable. A rational man is never reasonable. He forces logic on life – and logic can be perfect; life can never be. He always looks to the ideal, and he tries to force life to follow the ideal. He never looks into life and the reality of life. His ideals are against life.
The second personality, the N personality, the nourishing personality, is totally different. It has no ideals, really. It just looks into life and the reality decides its ideal. It is very reasonable. It is never perfectionistic; it is wholistic but never a perfectionist. And it always looks on the good side of things. The N personality is always hopeful, radiant, adventurous, trusting, not condemnatory. These are the people who become poets, painters, musicians.
If an N-type person becomes a saint, then there is a real saint. If a T-type person becomes a saint, there is a false saint, a pseudo-saint. If an N-type person becomes a father, then there is a real father. If an N-type person becomes a mother, there is real mothering. A T-type is a pseudo father and a pseudo mother. That is just a trick to exploit the child, to torture, to dominate, possess and to crush the child, to feel powerful by crushing the child. The T-type is in the majority, so you may be right that you are carrying a heritage everybody is. But once you become aware, there is not much of a problem. You can travel from T to N very easily.
A few things to remember. If you feel lazy, don’t call it laziness. Listen to your nature; maybe that’s what fits you. That’s what I call a reasonable man. What can you do? If laziness comes to you, then that’s what you have to do. Who are you to decide against it? And how can you win against it? Even in your fight you will be lazy. Who is going to win? You will be constantly defeated, and then you will feel unnecessarily miserable.
Be realistic. Listen to your own being. Everybody has his own pace. A few people are very active, rushing; nothing is wrong in it. If they feel good in it, it is good for them.
And don’t create any ideals that you have to do this. Don’t have any ‘shoulds’. The ‘should’ creates a sort of neurosis. Then one is obsessed. The ‘should’ is always there, standing and condemning you, and you cannot enjoy anything. Enjoy! Kill the ‘should’ completely and be herenow. Whatsoever you can do, do; whatsoever you cannot do, accept. That is the way you are, and you are here to be yourself, nobody else. By and by you will see that your T is turning into N. You will become nourishing and you will enjoy more, you will love more, and you will become more meditative.
In fact, for a lazy person to become meditative is easier than for an active person. That’s why the whole East became lazy – they meditated too much. Meditation is a sort of passivity. An active person feels very restless. Just to sit silent is the most difficult thing. Not to do anything is the most difficult thing to do for an active person.
Just enjoy and move as fits your being – no shoulds, no ideals, otherwise they will poison you. Look at life with deep hope. It is really beautiful. Just look at it, and don’t wait for perfection. Don’t think in terms of your enjoying things only when they are perfect; then you will never enjoy.
If a T-type person encounters God, he will immediately find some faults in him. That’s why God is hiding...because of T-type people. He reveals himself to the N-type, never to T-types. He reveals only to those who can take nourishment from him – not only that, but to those who can nourish him.
So just relax, enjoy, accept, and the problems will disappear
The Inner Rhythm of Being
You are searching for the inner rhythm – sometimes in money, sometimes in power, sometimes in prestige, sometimes in so many kinds of relationships. You go on begging. You want to know something of the transcendental, you are thirsty for the transcendental.
And remember, it happens always together: whenever you fall in harmony with yourself, you fall in harmony with existence too.
Harmony has two sides: the individual and the universal. If the individual is in harmony, then there is no reason why he should not be in harmony with the whole. If inside you all conflict has disappeared, even for a single moment, in that moment you are part of the whole, you are no longer an island, you are no longer separate. All walls have suddenly disappeared; you are no longer imprisoned.
If you look back you can remember a few moments...and those will be the moments when you were relaxed, those will be the moments when there was no particular desire in your mind, when you were not worried, when you were not tense, when somehow you simply were.
Watch these sudden accidental moments minutely, because there is the secret key. If it happens in a relaxed state, when you are very loose, non-tense, then you can create the context! You can relax. If it happens to you while swimming, then you can swim and create the context. If it happens to you while running...and it happens to different people in different ways. Many runners know it, that beyond a certain limit if you go on running, go on running, go on running, suddenly it happens – because man’s energies have three layers.
The first layer is only for day-to-day activities.
It is a very thin layer. It is enough for your office, wife, children – the ordinary life.
The second layer is for emergencies.
Your house is on fire; you may have been feeling very tired after the whole day’s work and you were coming home and hoping to have a good rest, and suddenly when you come home your house is on fire. Immediately, all fatigue disappears; you are no longer tired. You have forgotten all about rest, and the whole night you try to put the fire out. And even after the whole night’s work, you are not tired. It was not the ordinary level of energy that worked – that was exhausted – the emergency layer started working.
The third layer is deeper than that.
You go on and on.... For example, if for one day, two days, three days, you go on working, then the emergency level will also be finished – and then you come in contact with the cosmic layer. That is the source of life, and that is inexhaustible. Whenever you are in contact with it, tremendous joy starts overflowing you.
It happens to joggers, to runners, to swimmers sometimes. First layer finished, then the second layer, and if you go on running the second is also finished – and the moment you are in contact with the third, tremendous ecstasy happens for no reason at all.
It may happen to you while making love. It may happen to you while listening to music. It may happen to you while simply lying in your bed doing nothing. It may happen to you while painting, absorbed, utterly absorbed in it. Or it may happen in a thousand and one ways. But watch: whenever it happens, whenever that tremendous blissful moment comes to you, when the divine knocks on your door, watch in what context it is happening. Be alert! Look around – in what space it is happening. Then you have the key. Whenever you will be able to create that context, that space, the moment will come again.
You cannot make it happen, but you can make yourself available for it to happen.
You cannot force it to happen, but you can create all that is necessary for it to happen. It is not a doing on your part: it is a happening. But, still, you can play a great role. That’s how all techniques of meditation have been developed. That’s how Yoga came into existence.
That accord is present in you, because without it you cannot be alive.
That music is already there, flowing underground in you, because that music is your connection with the whole.
Once it is cut you will be dead. You are alive – that is enough proof that the music is happening. The only thing is to go deep inside your own being and to find where it is happening.
Celebration is the foundation of my way of living – not renunciation but rejoicing. Rejoice in all the beauties, all the joys, all that life offers, because this whole life is a gift of God.
Love life. Live your life totally, be drunk with the divine through life. I am in tremendous love with life, hence I teach celebration. Everything has to be celebrated; everything has to be lived, loved. To me nothing is mundane and nothing is sacred. All is sacred, from the lowest rung of the ladder to the highest rung. It is the same ladder: from the body to the soul, from the physical to the spiritual, from sex to samadhi – everything is divine!
Misery needs no talents – anybody can afford it. Happiness needs talents, genius, creativity.
Only creative people are happy.
Let this sink deep in your heart: only creative people are happy. Happiness is a by-product of creativity. Create something, and you will be happy. Create a garden, let the garden bloom, and something will bloom in you. Create a painting, and something starts growing in you with the growing painting. As the painting comes to the finish, as you are giving the last touches to the painting, you will see you are no more the same person. You are giving the last touches to something that is very new in you.
Write a poem, sing a song, dance a dance, and see: you start becoming happy.
Existence has only given you an opportunity to be creative. Life is an opportunity to be creative.
If you are creative you will be happy.
When you want to climb to the highest peak of the mountains, it is arduous. And when you have reached the peak and you lie down, whispering with the clouds, looking at the sky, the joy that fills your heart – that joy always comes whenever you reach any peak of creativity.
It needs intelligence to be happy, and people are taught to remain unintelligent. The society does not want intelligence to flower.
The society does not need intelligence; in fact it is very much afraid of intelligence. The society needs stupid people. Why? – because stupid people are manageable. Intelligent people are not necessarily obedient; they may obey, they may not obey. But the stupid person cannot disobey; he is always ready to be commanded. The stupid person needs somebody to command him, because he has no intelligence to live on his own. He wants somebody to direct him; he seeks and searches his own tyrants.
Politicians don’t want intelligence to happen in the world, priests don’t want intelligence to happen in the world, generals don’t want intelligence to happen in the world. Nobody really wants it. People want everybody to remain stupid, then everybody is obedient, conformist, never goes outside the fold, remains always part of the mob, is controllable, manipulatable, manageable.
The intelligent person is rebellious. Intelligence is rebellion. The intelligent person decides on his own whether to say no or yes.
The intelligent person cannot be traditional, he cannot go on worshipping the past; there is nothing to worship in the past. The intelligent person wants to create a future, wants to live in the present. His living in the present is his way of creating the future.
The intelligent person does not cling to the dead past, does not carry corpses.
Howsoever beautiful they have been, howsoever precious, he does not carry the corpses. He is finished with the past; it is gone, and it is gone forever.But the foolish person is traditional. He is ready to follow the priest, ready to follow any stupid politician, ready to follow any order – anybody with authority and he is ready to fall at his feet. Without intelligence there can be no happiness. Man can only be happy if he is intelligent, utterly intelligent.
Meditation is a device to release your intelligence. The more meditative you become, the more intelligent you become.
But remember, by intelligence I don’t mean intellectuality. Intellectuality is part of stupidity.
Intelligence is a totally different phenomenon, it has nothing to do with the head. Intelligence is something that comes from your very center. It wells up in you, and with it many things start growing in you. You become happy, you become creative, you become rebellious, you become adventurous, you start loving insecurity, you start moving into the unknown. You start living dangerously, because that is the only way to live.
For stupid people there are superhighways where crowds move. And for centuries and centuries they have been moving – and going nowhere, going in circles. Then you have the comfort that you are with many people, you are not alone.
Intelligence gives you the courage to be alone, and intelligence gives you the vision to be creative. A great urge, a great hunger arises to be creative. And only then, as a consequence, can you be happy, you can be blissful
Physical labor has become a shameful act.
A Western thinker, Albert Camus, has written jokingly, in one of his letters, that a time will come when people will start asking their servants to make love for them. If someone falls in love with somebody, he will appoint a servant to go and make love on his behalf!
This can happen some day. We have already started getting everything done by others; love is the only thing which we still do ourselves. We appoint others to pray for us. We employ a priest and tell him to pray on our behalf, to do the rituals on our behalf. We appoint a priest in the temple and tell him to worship on our behalf. Even the things like prayer and worship we are getting done by our servants. So if we are getting our servants to worship for us, it is not unthinkable that some day wise people will tell their servants to make love to their beloved on their behalf. What is the difficulty? And those who will not be able to afford servants to do their job, will feel ashamed that they are so poor that they have to make love themselves.
It is possible someday because there is so much in life which is significant but which we are now getting done by our servants! And we are not at all aware of what we have lost by losing the significant things.
All the strength, all the vitality of life is lost because man’s body and man’s being have been created for a certain amount of labor, and now he has been spared from all that work.
Right labor is also an essential part in the awakening of man’s consciousness and energy.
One morning Abraham Lincoln was polishing his shoes in his house. One of his friends who was visiting him, said, “Lincoln! What are you doing? You polish your own shoes?”
Lincoln said, “You surprise me! Do you polish other people’s shoes? I am polishing my own shoes; do you polish others’ shoes?”
The friend said, “No, no, I get my shoes polished by others!”
Lincoln said, “It is worse to get your shoes polished by others than to polish others’ shoes.”
What does it mean? It means that we are losing our direct contact with life. Our direct contacts with life are those that come through labor.
In the time of Confucius, about three thousand years ago, Confucius once went to visit a village. In a garden he saw an old gardener and his son pulling water out of a well. For the old man the work of drawing water out of a well was very difficult even with the help of his son. And the old man was very old.
Confucius wondered if this old man did not know that bulls and horses were now being used to draw water out of the well. He was drawing it himself. He was using such old methods!
So Confucius went to the old man and said, “My friend! Don’t you know that there has been a new invention? People are drawing water out of wells with the help of horses and bulls. Why are you doing it yourself?”
The old man said, “Speak softly, speak softly! For me, it does not matter what you say but I am afraid my young son may hear you.”
Confucius asked, “What do you mean?”
The old man replied, “I know about these inventions, but all inventions like this take man away from labor. I do not want my son to become disconnected, because the day he becomes disconnected from labor, he will be disconnected from life itself.”
Life and labor are synonymous. Life and labor have the same meaning. But slowly, slowly we have started calling those people who do not have to do physical exertion, fortunate, and those who have to do physical exertion, unfortunate. And in a way it has become so, because in a way many people have dropped doing labor so some people have to do too much labor. Too much labor kills one. Too little labor also kills one.
Hence I said “Right labor. Proper distribution of physical labor.” Each person should do some physical labor. The more intensely, the more blissfully, the more gratefully a man enters the labor part of his life, the more he will find that his life-energy has started moving down from the brain closer to the navel. For labor neither the brain nor the heart is needed. The energy for labor is derived directly from the navel. This is its source.
Along with the right diet a little physical labor is very essential. And it is not that it should be in the interest of others – that if you serve the poor, it benefits the poor; if you go to a village and do farming, it benefits the farmers; if you are doing some labor, you are doing a great social service. These are all false things. It is for your own sake, not for anyone else’s sake. It is not concerned with benefiting anybody else. Someone else may benefit by it, but primarily it is for your own good.
When Churchill retired, one of my friends went to see him at his house. In his old age, Churchill was digging and planting some plants in his garden. My friend asked him some questions about politics. Churchill said, “Drop it! Now it is over. Now if you want to ask me something, you can ask me about two things. You can ask me about the Bible, because I read it at home, and you can ask me about gardening because I do it here in the garden. Now I have no concern about politics. That race is over. Now I am doing labor and prayer.”
When my friend returned he said to me, “I do not understand what kind of man Churchill is. I thought he would give me some answers. But he said he was doing labor and prayer.”
I told him, “Saying labor and prayer is a repetition. Labor and prayer mean the same, they are synonymous. And the day that labor becomes prayer and prayer becomes labor is the day that right labor is attained.”
A little labor is very essential but we have not paid any attention to it. Not even the traditional sannyasins of India paid any attention to labor; they refrained from doing it. There was no question of their doing it. They simply moved in another direction. Rich people stopped laboring because they had money and they could pay for it and sannyasins stopped because they had nothing to do with the world. They neither had to create anything, nor did they have to earn money, so what did they need labor for? The result was that two respected classes of society moved away from labor.
So those in whose hands labor remained, slowly, slowly became disrespected.
For a seeker labor has great significance and usefulness...not because you will produce something from it but because the more you are involved in some kind of labor, the more your consciousness will start becoming centered. It will start coming downwards from the brain. It is not necessary that the labor has to be productive. It can be non-productive also, it can be a simple exercise. But some labor is very essential for the agility of the body, complete alertness of the mind, and total awakening of the being. This is the second part.
There can be a mistake in this part also. Just as one can make a mistake with one’s diet : either one eats too little or one eats too much, so a mistake can happen here also. Either one does not do labour at all or one does too much. Wrestlers do too much labor. They are in a sick state. A wrestler is not a healthy person. A wrestler is putting too much of a burden on the body ; he is raping the body. If the body is raped, then some parts of the body, some muscles, can be developed more. But no wrestler lives long! No wrestler dies in a healthy state.
Do you know this? All wrestlers – whether he is a Gama, or a Sandow, or anybody else with a great body, even the greatest in the world – die unhealthy. They die earlier and they die of violent diseases. Raping the body can swell the muscles and make the body worth looking at, worth exhibiting, but there is a great difference between exhibition and life. There is a great difference between living, being healthy and being an exhibitionist.
Each person should find out according to himself, according to his body, how much labor he should do to live more healthily and more freshly. The more fresh air there is inside the body, the more blissful each and every breath is, the more vitality a person has to explore the inner.
Simonbel, a French philosopher, has written a very wonderful thing in her autobiography. She said, “I was always sick until the age of thirty. I was unhealthy and I had many headaches. But it was only at the age of forty that I realized that until the age of thirty I was an atheist. I became healthy when I became a theist. Only later did I see that my being sick and unhealthy was related to my atheism.”
A person who is sick and unhealthy cannot be full of gratitude towards existence. There can be no thankfulness in him towards existence. There is only anger. It is impossible for such a person to accept something towards which he is full of anger. He simply rejects it. If one’s life does not attain a certain balance of health through right labor and right exercise, then it is natural that one will have some negativity, a resistance, an anger towards life.
Right labor is an essential rung on the ladder to ultimate theism.
“Death is always close by. It is almost like your shadow. You may be aware, you may not be aware, but it follows you from the first moment of your life to the very last moment. Death is a process just as life is a process, and they are almost together, like two wheels of a bullock cart. Life cannot exist without death; nor can death exist without life.
“Our minds have an insane desire: we want only life and not death. We don’t look at the existential truth, we always cling to our own insane desire. Any desire that goes against nature is insane. And this desire is in almost every living creature, not only human beings. Even the trees are afraid of death, but trees can be forgiven. They are not conscious beings, they are only unconscious – fast asleep.
But you are a little bit awake: you can sense the presence of death. Hence the possibility opens for a deeper understanding: life and death are both together, two extremes of one energy.
“Life is the active force and death is the inactive force. Life is the positive electricity and death is the negative electricity, but they cannot be separated.
“You are saying, ‘When I was coming for discourse, my heart was trembling with fear; I felt as if I was going to die.’ Those who are aware are aware that death is possible at any moment – the very next moment and you may be gone. This awareness is going to help you to live this moment as deeply as possible, because death can cut your roots without informing you, without any previous intimation of ‘I am coming.’ It simply comes. You know only when it has happened. But it is not the greatest misery. The greatest misery is when there was the chance and the opportunity, you did not live – you went on postponing.
“Life is an opportunity. Death is the end of the rope. If you understand death, your life will become intense and total. But instead of understanding death, you become overwhelmed by it. Hence the heart starts trembling with fear. Fear is not going to help at all, fear is going to cloud your mind even more. There has never been any understanding out of fear.
So whenever you feel fear, it is a tremendous opportunity to understand that life is momentary.
“It is ephemeral, it is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. How real the dream looks when you are asleep – in fact, more real than your experiences when you are awake. You may have never thought about it, but while you are awake you can doubt: ‘Perhaps what I am seeing may be just a dream.’ I may be a dream, you may be a dream, this whole communion may be happening just as a dream. Soon you will be awake and you will find, ‘My God! It was just a dream.’
“There is a possibility when you are awake to suspect, to doubt the reality that surrounds you. But when you are asleep, you cannot even doubt the existence of the dream. It is so real, it is more real than reality. Have you ever doubted any dream, thinking that perhaps what you are seeing is a dream? The moment you doubt, you are awake, and the dream is immediately finished. The dream can remain there only if you are totally asleep, so deep that no doubt, no suspicion, can arise in you.
“But to those who have understood both life and death as nothing but two aspects of one reality, the dream and the so-called reality of your waking consciousness are not basically different. Just as in the morning you wake up and the dream life is finished, one day in death you wake up into another reality and all that was real up to then – for seventy years – becomes just a dream. Not even a trace of it is left anywhere in your consciousness.
Death is a constant reminder – ‘I can come any moment. Be prepared.’ And what is the preparation? The preparation is: live life so totally, so intensely, be so aflame with it that when death comes there is no complaint, there is no grudge.
“You are absolutely ready because you have lived life so totally, you have known all its mysteries – there is no point in living anymore. Death has come exactly at the right time, when you may have thought to die yourself. I call that death perfect which comes at the moment when you yourself may have thought, ‘It is enough.’
“Death comes, and you understand that life has been lived totally, so now there is no point to go on breathing and go on waking and sleeping unnecessarily – because nothing new is going to happen. Now everything is past and there is no future. In such a moment, death is a welcome guest. And unless you are ready to welcome death, know well that you have missed life. Those who feel sadness and fear about death are the people who have missed the train. But in our unconsciousness, we are all continuously missing the train. The train is moving every moment, just in front of you, but somehow you go on missing.
“I have told you about those three professors, all belonging to the Department of Philosophy…
“They were talking, standing on the platform. They had come to send off one of them on a long journey. But they got so involved in their talking and discussions that the train left. It was only when the last compartment was moving just in front of them that all three became aware of it. They all ran. Two jumped into the compartment, one could not.
“An old man, a porter on the railway station, was watching the whole scene. And this man standing there was looking so sad that the old man said, ‘I can understand that you missed the train, but don’t be worried, because within two hours another train will be coming.’
“He said, ‘I am not worried about myself. I am worried about those two fellows who have entered the compartment. They had come to send me off…’
“But such was the rush – and everything had to be done so quickly.
“This is our state. It can happen to anybody, just because our actions arise out of our unconsciousness. Your heart trembling with fear is nothing but your misunderstanding. As far as death is concerned, what you experienced is true for everybody, every moment, until you die. It is not true only for those who are already dead. In one thing they are better off than you: they cannot die anymore – no fear, no trembling of the heart. They just lie down and rest in their graves. Nothing is going to happen to them anymore.
“But as long as you are alive, the possibility of death is absolutely certain. Only the timing is not certain. But the happening is absolutely certain. What does it matter whether you die after seven days or seven years or seventy years? One thing is certain: you are going to die.
Life is not something that you can go on missing. Otherwise at the moment of death you will feel the greatest misery and pain, the deepest agony, from missing the whole opportunity that was given to you.
“Existence gives so abundantly, it is not miserly. You are just not alert enough to use the opportunity to transform yourself into something immortal, eternal, into some experience which will make you beyond the reach of death. Just fearing death is not of any help. If you see that death is following you, it is time to start searching deeper into yourself for that point which is beyond death. We have been calling that point sat-chit-anand: the truth of your being, the ultimate consciousness of your life, and the tremendous blessing of your coming to flower.
If you are unhappy, that simply means that you have learned tricks for being unhappy. Nothing else! Unhappiness depends on the frame of your mind. There are people who are unhappy in all kinds of situations. They have a certain program in their mind that transforms everything into unhappiness. If you tell them about the beauty of the rose, they immediately start counting the thorns. If you say to them, "What a beautiful morning, what a sunny day!" they will say, "Only one day between two dark nights, so why are you making so much fuss?"
All depends on what kind of frame you are carrying in your head. Millions of people are carrying crosses. Naturally, obviously, they are burdened; their life is a drag. Their frame is such that it immediately becomes focused on everything that is negative. It magnifies the negative. That is a morbid approach towards life, pathological. But they go on thinking, "What can we do? The world is such."
No, the world is not such! The world is absolutely neutral. It has thorns, it has roses, it has nights, it has days. The world is utterly neutral, balanced - it has all. Now it depends on you as to what you choose. That´s how people create hell and heaven on the same earth
If you are listening with all kinds of prejudices, that is a wrong way of listening; it is really a way of not listening. You appear to be listening, but you are only hearing not listening. Right listening means you have put aside your mind. It does not mean that you become gullible, that you start believing whatsoever is said to you. It has nothing to do with belief or disbelief. Right listening means, "I am not concerned right now whether to believe or not to believe. There is no question of agreement or disagreement at this moment. I am simply trying to listen to whatsoever it is. Later on I can decide what is right and what is wrong. Later on I can decide whether to follow or not to follow."
And the beauty of right listening is this: truth has a music of its own. If you can listen without prejudice, your heart will say it is true. If it is true, a bell starts ringing in your heart. If it is not true, you remain aloof, unconcerned, indifferent; no bell rings in your heart, no synchronicity happens. That is the quality of truth: if you listen to it with an open heart, it immediately creates a response in your being – your very center is uplifted. You start growing wings; suddenly the whole sky is open.
It is not a question of deciding logically whether what is being said is true or untrue. On the contrary, it is a question of love, not of logic. Truth immediately creates a love in your heart; something is triggered in you in a very mysterious way.
But if you listen wrongly – that is, full of your mind, full of your garbage, full of your knowledge – then you will not allow your heart to respond to the truth. You will miss the tremendous possibility, you will miss the synchronicity. Your heart was ready to respond to truth.... It responds only to truth, remember, it never responds to the untrue. With the untrue it remains utterly silent, unresponsive, unaffected, unstirred. With the truth it starts dancing, it starts singing, as if suddenly the sun has risen and the dark night is no more, the birds are singing and the lotuses are opening – the whole earth is awakened
Become more watchful and anger will be less and greed will be less and jealousy will be less.
I don’t say to you: 'Don’t be angry,' because that’s what has been said to you down the ages. Your so-called saints have been telling you, “Don’t be angry!” so you have learned ways of repressing anger. But the more you repress anger, the bigger the unconscious you are creating in yourself. You are throwing things into the basement, and then you will be afraid to enter into the basement, because all these things – anger and greed and sex – are there. You know! You have been throwing them there. All kinds of rubbish are there, and dangerous, poisonous. You will not be ready to go in.
That’s why people don’t want to go in, because going in means encountering all these things. And nobody wants to encounter these things; one wants to avoid them. For thousands of years you have been told to repress, and because of repression you have become more and more unconscious. I cannot say to you repress. I would like to say to you just the opposite: don’t repress – watch, be alert.
When anger arises, sit down in your room, close your doors and watch it.
You know only two ways: either to be angry, be violent, destructive, or to repress it. You don’t know the third way, and the third way is the way of the buddhas: neither indulge nor repress – watch.
Indulgence creates habit. If you become angry today and again tomorrow, and the day after tomorrow again, you are creating a habit; you are conditioning yourself to be more and more angry. So indulgence cannot take you out of it.
That’s where the modern growth movement is stuck. Encounter groups, primal therapy, gestalt, bioenergetics...and so many beautiful things are happening in the world, but they are stuck at a certain point. Their problem is: they teach expression – and it is good, it is far better than repression.
If there is only this choice, repress or express, then I would suggest express. But this is not the real choice; there is a third alternative, far more important than both these.
If you express, you become habitual; you learn by doing it again and again – you can’t get out of it.
In this commune there are at least fifty therapy groups running, for a certain reason. It is just to balance the thousands of years of repression; it is just to balance. It is just to bring to light all that you have repressed as Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas, Buddhists. It is just to undo the centuries’ old harm that has been done to you.
But remember, these groups are not the end; they only prepare you for meditation. They are not the goal; they are just simple means to undo the wrong of the past.
Once you have thrown out of your system all that you have been repressing all along, I have to lead you into watchfulness. Now it will be easier to watch.
Indulgence creates habit, repression gathers the poison within. In indulgence you throw the poison on others, but they are not going to remain silent – they will throw it back. It becomes a match: you throw your anger on others, they throw their anger on you – but nobody is helped, everybody is harmed and hurt.
And if you repress.... Because of this futility of indulgence, priests invented repression. It keeps you out of danger. Repression keeps you a good citizen, a gentleman. It keeps you out of the dangers of getting caught by the law, getting caught into enmity; it keeps you smooth. Repression helps you to become a better social person, that’s true. But it makes you a wound inside, just a wound, and the pus goes on gathering inside. Outside it functions as a lubricating agent, but inside you become more and more mad.
Meditate – meditation means watchfulness – and you will attain to freedom and bliss
I’m a makeup artist in New York and I feel makeup can be used to spiritually enhance a woman’s natural beauty.... But I notice the women at the Meditation Resort don’t wear makeup.
Makeup is the invention of the ugly people. It is not that makeup is ugly, but makeup itself is the invention of the ugly. The ugly feels inferior compared to the naturally beautiful – jealous, competitive. The ugly tries to compensate for it with artificial methods. The natural has no need to compensate. But naturally beautiful people are very few; hence makeup has become almost a routine thing.
For thousands of years, man has been trying to hide in every possible way all that is ugly in him – in the body, in the mind, in the soul. Even people who were naturally beautiful started imitating the ugly and the artificial, for the simple reason that the artificial can deceive. For example, breasts naturally are not as good looking as they can be made to look. Even if a woman has naturally beautiful breasts, she will start feeling that the women who have no natural beauty in their breasts can at least pretend and show that they are far more beautiful. So the naturally beautiful also start imitating.
Makeup, and the whole idea of makeup, is basically hypocrisy. One should love and accept one’s nature...and not only on the physical level, because that is where the journey starts. If you are false there, then why not pretend the same falseness as far as mind is concerned? Then what is wrong in pretending to be a saint, a sage, when you are not? The logic will be the same. And sometimes it happens that the pretender can defeat the real, because the pretender can practice, can rehearse, can manage and manipulate in many ways.
I am not saying that all that is not natural is bad.
Nature can be improved upon. That’s what intelligence is for, but it should not be against nature.
For example, the lips can be red through better food, through better exercise, through better medicine. That too is improving upon nature, but improving upon nature in a natural way. Putting on lipstick is cheap; it is not really improving. It is good for the stage.
Women can shave their legs and underarms. It is good, it is hygenic; nothing is wrong in it. Unless you take every care to clean your body.... If you take a bath every day and clean your body, then the hairs under your arms are not bad. There is nothing wrong about it. There is no need to remove them, they have their place. But if you are not taking a bath and if you are not being hygenic and clean, then certainly they will collect dust and they will collect perspiration and they will stink. Then it is good to remove them. I am not against removing them. It is beautiful to shave the hairs on your legs and give your legs a beautiful shape.
...You can deceive others, but how can you deceive people who are close to you? And is it right to deceive them? And if they love you because of your breasts, the moment they discover that the breasts are false – plastic or rubber – will their love remain? It will disappear. The whole of humanity has become false. The idea seems to be to deceive, to pretend.
Nature should be helped to go beyond itself, it should not be repressed. If nature is repressed, you start becoming schizophrenic. You start having double individualities: one that you are; one that you show to others. And you can get very messed up within yourself. Who are you? – this or that? It is not only a question of having two personalities, you will have to have many personalities. The mother will have one personality towards the child – she has to pretend to be a mother – and to the husband she has to pretend to be a wife. And to the lover she has to pretend to be a lover, and so on, so forth. So she will have many personalities around herself, and in the jungle of all these personalities her own individuality will be lost. She will find it very difficult to discover her original face.
You say to me, “Makeup can be used to spiritually enhance a woman’s natural beauty....”
That is sheer nonsense. Spirituality cannot be enhanced by any makeup.
Spiritual beauty has nothing to do with anything that can be done from the outside.
Spirituality is your original face; it is the discovery of your intrinsic nature. It has not to be tampered with, it has not to be painted, it has not to be arranged. It has no hairs on the legs because there are no legs, no armpits, no lips.
Your innermost being is pure consciousness. It needs no makeup.
My whole effort here is to help you to be yourself, to be totally free from personalities. Personality is the false thing that surrounds you, and individuality is the gift of existence. It is already there inside you. If you drop your personalities, you will discover it. The moment personalities are removed, it wells up.
Real life has to be natural, and the real life has to go one day beyond nature. But nature has to become its foundation.
Then is the transcendence, and that is the most beautiful experience. It beautifies you, your body, your mind, your soul. It not only beautifies you, it beautifies even people who come in contact with you. This beauty belongs to the beyond; it is called grace. Something descends from the above and floods you
Money
I have heard:
Two men were walking along a crowded sidewalk in a downtown business area. Suddenly one exclaimed, "Listen to the lovely sound of that cricket!" But the other did not hear. He asked his companion how he could detect the sound of a cricket amidst the din of people and traffic. The first man had trained himself to listen to the voices of nature, but he did not explain.
"We hear," he said, "what we listen for."
There are people who can listen only to the sound of a falling coin on the ground - that´s their only music. Poor people! They think they are rich, but they are poor people, whose whole music consists only in the sound of a coin falling on the ground. Very poor people... starving. They don´t know what life consists of. They don´t know the infinite possibilities, they don´t know the infinite melodies surrounding you - the multidimensional richness.
You hear only that which you listen for.
On an Emotional Roller-Coaster
I feel I’m always on a roller-coaster of feelings. How to get off it? I’ve tried just watching them all but as soon as one has gone, up comes something else!
Live each emotion that you feel. It is you.
Hateful, ugly, unworthy – whatever it is, actually be in it. First give the emotions a chance to come totally up into the conscious. Right now, by your effort of watchfulness you are repressing them in the unconscious. Then you get involved in your day-to-day work and you force them back again. That is not the way to get rid of them.
Let them come out; live them, suffer them. It will be difficult and tedious but immensely rewarding. Once you have lived them, suffered them and accepted them – that this is you, that you have not made yourself in this way so you need not condemn yourself, that this is the way you have found yourself.... Once they are lived consciously, without any repression, you will be surprised that they are disappearing on their own. Their force on you is becoming less; their grip on your neck is no longer that tight. And when they are going away there may be a time when you can start watching.
Once everything comes into the conscious mind it disperses, and when only the shadow is there, that is the time to become aware. Right now it will create schizophrenia; then it will create enlightenment.
Fear comes – it is natural, absolutely natural. To think of a man who is without fear is impossible because he will be dead. Then somebody will be honking the horn on the road and a man without fear will go on, he will not bother. Then a snake will be on the path and a man without fear will not bother, he will go on. A man without fear will be absolutely foolish and stupid.
Fear is part of your intelligence; nothing wrong in it.
Fear simply shows there is death; and we human beings are here only for a few moments. That trembling says that we are not going to be permanently here, we are not eternally here; a few days more and you will be gone.
In fact because of fear man has been in deep search of religion; otherwise there would have been no point. No animal is religious because no animal is in fear.
No animal can be religious because no animals can be aware of death. Man is aware of death, every moment death is there, surrounds you from everywhere. Any moment you will be gone; that gives you a trembling. Why be afraid – tremble! But again the ego says: “No, you – afraid? No, this is not for you, this is for cowards. You are a brave man.”
It is not for cowards. Allow fear. Only one thing is to be understood: when you allow fear and you tremble, watch it, enjoy it, and in that watching you will transcend it. You will see the body is trembling, you will see the mind is trembling but you will come to feel a point within you, a deep center which remains unaffected. The storm passes by but somewhere deep within you is a center that is untouched: the center of the cyclone.
Allow fear, don’t fight with it. Watch what is happening. Go on watching. As your watching eye becomes more penetrating and intense – the body will be trembling, the mind will be trembling – deep within you will be consciousness, which simply is a witness, which only watches. It remains untouched, like a lotus flower in water. Only when you attain to that will you attain to fearlessness.
But that fearlessness is not being unafraid. That fearlessness is not bravery. That fearlessness is a realization that you are two – a part of you will die and a part of you is eternal. That part which is going to die is going to remain always afraid. And the part that is not going to die, which is immortal – for it there is no point in being afraid. Then a deep harmony exists.
You can use fear for meditation. Use all that you have for meditation so that you go beyond.
