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Mind is nothing but society inside you: the
priest, the politicians, the power-mad people – they have become your mind. They are trying to manipulate you from within.
When awe arises, you are falling into an infinite ocean, not knowing what will happen next. In that moment you would like
to escape, you would like to close your eyes, you would like to somehow control yourself because you have always been told
that control is a great value. So you go on controlling everywhere – where it is not needed at all, where it is a hindrance
to life. Where it is almost a suicide – there too you go on controlling. You cannot trust, because trust means losing
your controlling to somebody else’s hands. You cannot surrender, you cannot love, you cannot pray. Even people making
love cannot surrender, they go on controlling deep down. Hence, the real peak is missed. They learn techniques of how to make
love. They can become very efficient lovemakers, but love is missed because it has nothing to do with you.
*
Love happens
only when you are not there. Love happens only when you are surrendered to existence. Then there is a great orgasmic experience.
Then you reach to the very peak of your being and you look at existence from the topmost peak of the Himalayas, you look from
the Gourishankar. Then a totally different vision arises and that vision transforms your life.
+++ What is the difference between the emptiness of the child before the formation of the ego and the awakened childlikeness
of a Buddha?
*
There is a similarity and there is a difference. Essentially the child is a Buddha, but his buddhahood,
his innocence, is natural, not earned. His innocence is a kind of ignorance, not a realization. His innocence is unconscious
– he is not aware of it, he is not mindful of it, he has not taken any note of it. It is there but he is oblivious.
He is going to lose it. He has to lose it. Paradise will be lost sooner or later; he is on the way towards it. Every child
has to go through all kinds of corruption, impurity – the world.
*
The child’s innocence is the innocence
of Adam before he was expelled from the garden of Eden, before he had tasted the fruit of knowledge, before he became conscious.
It is animal-like. Look into the eyes of any animal – a cow, a dog – and there is purity, the same purity that
exists in the eyes of a Buddha, but with one difference.
*
And the difference is vast too: a Buddha has come back home;
the animal has not yet left home. The child is still in the garden of Eden, is still in paradise. He will have to lose it
– because to gain one has to lose. Buddha has come back home… the whole circle. He went away, he was lost, he
went astray, he went deep into darkness and sin and misery and hell. Those experiences are part of maturity and growth. Without
them you don’t have any backbone, you are spineless. Without them your innocence is very fragile; it cannot stand against
the winds, it cannot bear storms. It is very weak, it cannot survive. It has to go through the fire of life – a thousand
and one mistakes committed, a thousand and one times you fall, and you get back on your feet again. All those experiences
slowly, slowly ripen you, make you mature; you become a grown-up.
*
Buddha’s innocence is that of a mature person,
utterly mature.
*
Childhood is nature unconscious; buddhahood is nature conscious. The childhood is a circumference
with no idea of the center. The Buddha is also a circumference, but rooted in the center, centered. Childhood is unconscious
anonymity; buddhahood is conscious anonymity. Both are nameless, both are formless… but the child has not known the
form yet and the misery of it.
*
It is like you have never been in a prison, so you don’t know what freedom is.
Then you have been in the prison for many years, or many lives, and then one day you are released… you come out of the
prison doors dancing, ecstatic! And you will be surprised that people who are already outside, walking on the street, going
to their work, to the office, to the factory, are not enjoying their freedom at all – they are oblivious, they don’t
know that they are free. How can they know? Because they have never been in prison they don’t know the contrast; the
background is missing.
*
It is as if you write with a white chalk on a white wall – nobody will ever be able
to read it. What to say about anybody else – even you will not be able to read what you have written.
+++ "You have to encounter yourself.
Self-encounter is a suffering in the beginning, painful, deeply painful; it hurts,
and hurts like hell. But only through suffering bliss is achieved; there is no other way. One who has passed through all sufferings
becomes capable of the ultimate ecstasy - what Abraham Maslow and the humanistic psychologists call the "Aha!" experience.
*
When
you have passed through a suffering it is like a long journey. Journey-tired you come, you cannot even move, and suddenly
you see the goal - and your whole being feels: Aha! - an ecstasy, and all suffering disappears. And you are in a totally different
dimension.
*
Self-encounter is the deepest suffering in the world; that’s why you are avoiding it. Socrates goes
on saying: Know thyself - but nobody listens, because to know thyself means to know thyself as suffering. Of course, bliss
follows, but that is not in the beginning, that is in the end. The beginning is painful. It is like a birth. Birth is painful.
*
If
a child becomes afraid in the womb of the mother, afraid to pass through the birth passage - it is very narrow, it is painful,
suffocating, it is a trauma, it leaves a wound forever - if the child becomes afraid, then there will be no birth, and there
will be no life. Then the child will die in the womb. If the bird in the egg becomes afraid to leave the protecting shell….
He is closed in, completely closed in, and protected from everything, and he has whatsoever he needs inside. If a seed becomes
afraid to sprout…because as a seed there is no suffering, there is no death because there is no life. As a seed there
is no danger; the seed can remain for millions of years.
*
In Mohenjo Daro seeds have been found that are ten thousand
years old. They are still alive, they can sprout. In a cave in China seeds have been found which are one million years old.
They are still alive. Put them in the soil, water them, care - and they will sprout. One million years a seed has remained
inside!
*
And you are the same seed. Wherever you are, in the cave of China or in the cave of New York, it makes no
difference: you have been a seed for millions of lives. You have been afraid to take the jump and become a plant. It is a
great jump. It is a risk. The shell is torn asunder, the protection lost; the security disappears.
*
The tender plant
comes out, so delicate, so tender, and such a difficult world! - where all sorts of hazards exist. Animals are there, and
children are there - and nobody knows what will happen. And the plant is so tender, so soft, so feminine, and the seed was
so masculine, so protective, so hard, so strong. And life is soft, death is hard. Life is tender…. For death there exists
no hazard, because a dead person cannot die again. For life - millions of hazards. Hazards and hazards - it is an adventure
into the unknown.
*
Watch a seed sprouting, breaking the hard shell, then the hard crust of the earth, then rising into
the world - the unknown, unmapped, uncharted future. Nobody knows what is going to happen and all sorts of danger all around.
If the plant becomes afraid and remains in the seed, then it will never taste what life is.
Don’t be afraid. Come
out of your ignorance, come out of your protective shell, come out of the ego. Ego is just like the egg: a shell which protects.
Come out of your character, come out of your conscience. Take the challenge! Adventure into the unknown." +++ "The question about morality is immensely significant, because morality is not that which has been told to you for
centuries. All the religions have exploited the idea of morality. They have been teaching in different ways, but the basic
foundation is the same: unless you become moral, ethical, you cannot become religious.
*
By morality they mean that
you have to be truthful, you have to be honest, you have to be charitable, you have to be compassionate, you have to be nonviolent.
In one word, all these great values have first to be present in you, only then you can move towards being religious.
*
This
whole concept is upside down. According to me, unless you are religious you cannot be moral. Religion comes first, morality
is only a by-product. If you make the by-product into the goal of human character, you will create such a troubled, miserable
humanity - and for such a good cause. You are bringing the cart before the bullocks - neither the bullocks can move, nor the
cart can move; both are stuck.
*
How can a man be truthful if he does not know what truth is? How can a man be honest
if he does not know even who he is? How can a man be compassionate if he does not know the source of love within himself?
From where will he get the compassion? All that he can do in the name of morality is to become a hypocrite, a pretender. And
there is nothing more ugly than to be a hypocrite. He can pretend, he can try hard, but everything will remain superficial
and skin-deep. Just scratch him a little bit, and you will find all the animal instincts fully alive, ready to take revenge
whenever they can get the opportunity.
*
Putting morality before religion is one of the greatest crimes that religions
have committed against humanity.
The very idea brings a repressed human being. And a repressed human being is sick, psychologically
split, constantly in a fight with himself, trying to do things which he does not want to do.
*
Morality should be very
relaxed and easy - just like your shadow; you don’t have to drag it with you, it simply comes on its own. But this has
not happened; what has happened is a psychologically sick humanity. Everybody is tense, because whatever you are doing there
is a conflict about whether it is right or wrong. Your nature goes in one direction, your conditioning goes just in the opposite
direction, and a house divided cannot stand for long. So everybody is somehow pulling himself together; otherwise the danger
is always there, just by your side, of having a nervous breakdown.
*
I do not teach morality at all. Morality should
come on its own accord. I teach you directly the experience of your own being. As you become more and more silent, serene,
calm and quiet, as you start understanding you own consciousness, as your inner being becomes more and more centered, your
actions will reflect morality. It will not be something that you decide to do, it will be something as natural as roses on
a rosebush. It is not that the rosebush is doing great austerities, and fasting, and praying to God, and disciplining itself
according to the ten commandments; the rosebush is doing nothing. The rosebush has just to be healthy, nourished, and the
flowers will come in their own time, with great beauty, effortlessly.
A morality that comes with effort is immoral. A morality
that comes without effort is the only morality there is."
*
Meditation is a science, not a superstition. Meditation
says that if you experiment with your mind -- it is too full of thoughts -- thoughts can be dispersed. The clouds can be dispersed
and you can attain to an empty sky of your inner being. And it needs just a little courage, a little effort, a little daring,
a little persistence and perseverance. A little patience, yes, but no trust -- you don’t believe in God? That is not
a hindrance to meditation. You don’t believe in the soul? That is not a hindrance in meditation. You don’t believe
at all? That is not an obstacle. You can meditate, because meditation simply says how to go withinward: whether there is a
soul or not doesn’t matter; whether there is a God or not doesn’t matter. One thing is certain: that you are.
Whether you will be after death, or not, does not matter. Only one thing matters: right this moment, you are.
*
Who
are you? To enter into it is meditation, to go deeper into your own being. Maybe it is just momentary; maybe you are not eternal,
maybe death finishes everything. We don’t make any condition that you have to believe, we say only that you have to
experiment. Just try. One day it happens: thoughts are not there. And suddenly, when thoughts disappear, the body and you
are separate, because thoughts are the bridge. Through thoughts you are joined with the body; it is the link. Suddenly the
link disappears -you are there, the body is there, and there is an infinite abyss between the two. Then you know that the
body will die but you cannot die. Then it is not something like a dogma; it is not a creed, it is an experience -- self-evident.
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