SLOW-DOWN! -- "RELAX"

Society certainly prepares you for activity, for ambition, for speed,
for efficiency. It does not prepare you to relax and do nothing
and to rest. It condemns all kinds of restfulness as laziness. It con-
demns people who are not madly active--because the whole soci-
ety is madly active, always trying to reach somewhere. Nobody
knows exactly where, but everybody is concerned: "Go faster!"
    I have heard about a man and his wife driving on a road as fast
as they can. The wife was telling the man again and again, "Just
look at the map."
    And the man was saying, "You keep quiet. Shut up! I am the
driver. It doesn't matter where we are going, what matters is that
we are going with speed. The real thing is speed." Nobody in the
world knows where they are going, and why they are going there.
    There is a very famous anecdote about George Bernard Shaw.
He was traveling from London to some other place and the ticket
collector came. He looked in all his pockets, in his bag, then he
opened his suitcase. And the ticket collector said, "I know you.
Everybody knows you. You are George Bernard Shaw. You are a
world-famous man. The ticket must be there, you must have for-
gotten where you have put it. Don't be worried. Leave it."
    George Bernard Shaw said to the man, "You don't under-
stand my problem. I'm not looking for the ticket just to show
you. I want to know where I am going. That stupid ticket--if it
is lost, I am lost. You think I am looking for the ticket for you?
You tell me where I am going."
      The ticket collector said, "That is too much. I was just trying
to help you. Don't get disturbed. Maybe you can remember it
later on by the time you reach the station. How can I tell you
where you are going?"
     But everybody is in the same position. It is good that there
are no spiritual ticket collectors around, checking, "Where are
you going?" Otherwise you would be simply standing around
without any answer. You have been going somewhere; there is
no doubt about it. Your whole life you have been going some-
where, but you don't actually know where you are going.
     You eventually reach a graveyard, that is one thing that's cer-
tain. But that is the one place you were not going to, the one
place nobody wants to go to, but everyone finally gets there.
That is the terminus where all trains end up. If you don't have a
ticket, wait for the terminus. And then they say, "Get down. The
train goes no farther."
     The whole society is geared for work. It is a workaholic so-
ciety. It does not want you to learn relaxation, so from the very
childhood it plants antirelaxation ideas in your mind.
     I am not telling you to relax for the whole day. Do your
work, but find out some time for yourself, and that can be found
only in relaxation. And you will be surprised that if you can relax
for an hour or two hours out of each twenty-four hours, it will
give you a deeper insight into yourself.
    It will change your behavior outwardly--you will become
more calm, more quiet. It will change the quality of your work--
it will be more artistic and more graceful. You will be commit-
ting fewer mistakes than you used to, because now you are more
together, more centered.
    Relaxation has miraculous powers. It is not laziness. From the
outside, the lazy man may look as if he is not working at anything,
but his mind is going as fast as it can. The relaxed man--his body
is relaxed, his mind is relaxed, his heart is relaxed--for two
hours he is almost absent, in these two hours his body recovers,
his heart recovers, his intelligence recovers, and you will see that
in his work.
    He will not be a loser--although he will not be frantic any-
more, he will not be unnecessarily running hither and thither.
He will go directly to the point where he wants to go. And he
will do things that are needed to be done; he will not be doing
anything unnecessary. He will say only that which is needed to be
said. His words will become telegraphic; his movements will be-
come graceful; his life will become poetry.
    Relaxation can transform you and transport you to such
beautiful heights--and the technique is so simple. There is noth-
ing much to it. For a few days you will find it difficult because of
old habits. To break down the old habits takes a few days.
    With deeper and deeper relaxation it becomes meditation.
     Meditation is the name of the deepest relaxation.
             ALLOW THE WISDOM OF THE BODY
The body has great wisdom--allow it. Allow it more and more
to follow its own wisdom. And whenever you have time, just re-
lax. Let your breathing go on on its own. Do not interfere. Our
habit to interfere has become so ingrained that you cannot even
breathe without interference. If you watch your breathing, you
will immediately see you have started to interfere. You begin
taking deep breaths, or you start exhaling more. There is no
need to interfere at all. Just let your breath be as it is; your body
knows exactly what it needs. If it needs more oxygen it will
breathe more; if it needs less oxygen it will breathe less.
     Just leave it all to your body! Become absolutely noninter-
fering. And wherever you feel any tension anywhere, relax that
part. And slowly, slowly . . . First begin while you are sitting,
resting, and then while you are doing things. When you are
cleaning the floor or working in the kitchen or in the office, keep
that relaxedness. Action need not be an interference in your re-
laxed state. And then there is a beauty, a great beauty, to your ac-
tivity. Your activity will have the flavor of meditativeness.
     But people go on making unnecessary efforts. Sometimes
their efforts are their barriers; their efforts are the problems that
they are creating.


				*SLOW-DOWN! -- "RELAX"*