KABIR
The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty 13
Thirteenth Discourse from the series of 15 discourses - The Fish in the Sea is Not Thirsty by Osho.
You can listen, download or read all of these discourses on oshoworld.com.
Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world,
I hold to and keep spinning out!
I gave up sewn clothes and wore a robe,
but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.
So I bought some burlap, but I still
throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.
I pulled back my sexual longings
and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.
I gave up rage and now I notice
that I am greedy all day.
I worked hard at dissolving the greed
and now I am proud of myself.
When the mind wants to break its link with the world,
it still holds on to one thing.
Kabir says: Listen my friend,
there are very few that find the path!
Man is a dilemma because man is a duality. Man is not one single being; he is the past and the future. The past means the animal and the future means the divine. Between the two is the present moment, between the two is man’s existence – divided, torn apart, pulled in diametrically opposite directions.
If man looks backward, he is an animal. That’s why science cannot believe that man is anything more – just another animal – because science only searches in the past. Charles Darwin and others are right that man is born of the animals. It is true about the past, but it is not true about man’s totality.
Religion looks into the possible: that which can happen and has not yet happened. Science dissects the seed and cannot find any flowers there. Religion is visionary, it dreams and is capable of seeing that which has not happened yet: the flower. Of course, it cannot be found, that flower cannot be found by dissecting the seed. It needs great insight, not the capacity to analyze, but some intuitive flight, some vision, some poetic approach. It needs a real dreamer who can see that which has not happened yet.
Religion looks into the possible and finds man is not an animal, but divine. He is godliness. Both are true. The conflict is baseless. The conflict between science and religion is futile. Their directions, their methods of work, their fields, are totally different.
Science always reduces everything to the source and religion always takes a flight to the goal. Man is both, hence man is a dilemma, a constant anxiety: to be or not to be, to be this or to be that?
Man can find peace only in two ways. Either he becomes an animal again – then he will be one. There will be no division and again there will be peace, silence, harmony. And that’s why millions of people try to be animals in different ways.
War gives a chance for man to become animal; hence war has great attraction. In three thousand years’ history, man has fought five thousand wars – continuously, somewhere or other, the war continues. Not even a single day passes when man is not killing other men. Why such tremendous joy in destruction, in killing? The reason is deep down in the psychology of man.
The moment you kill, suddenly you are one and you become the animal again, the duality disappears. Hence, there is a tremendous magnetic force in murder, suicide. Man cannot be persuaded yet to be nonviolent. Violence erupts. Names change, slogans change, but the violence remains the same. It may be in the name of religion, in the name of political ideology, or any absurd thing – a football match is enough for people to get violent, a cricket match is enough.
People are so interested in violence that if they cannot do it themselves – because it is risky and they think of the consequences – they find vicarious ways to be violent. In a movie, or on the TV, violence is a must. No one is going to watch a film if it doesn’t contain violence. Seeing violence and blood, suddenly you are reminded of your animal past; you forget your present, you completely forget your future and you become your past. You become identified. What is happening on the screen somehow becomes your own life. You are no longer a spectator and in those moments you become a participant, you fall en rapport. Violence has great attraction.
Sexuality has a great attraction because it is only in sexual moments that you can become one; otherwise you remain two, divided, and the anxiety, the anguish persist. Violence, sex, drugs, all help you, at least for the time being, temporarily, to fall back, to become completely animal. But this cannot become a permanent state of affairs.
One fundamental law has to be understood. Nothing can go backward. At the most you can pretend, at the most you can deceive, but nothing can go backward because time does not move backward. Time always goes ahead. You cannot reduce a young man to a child and you cannot reduce an old man to a young man – it is impossible. The tree cannot be reduced back to the original seed – it is impossible.
Evolution goes on and on and there is no way to prevent it or to force it backward. Hence all the efforts of men to become animals and find peace are doomed to fail. You can be drunk with alcohol or with other drugs – marijuana, LSD – you can be completely drowned. And for the moment all worries disappear, for the moment you are no longer part of a problematic existence, for the moment you move in a totally different dimension – but for the moment only.
Tomorrow morning you will be back and when you are back the world is going to be more ugly than it ever was before. Life is going to be more of a problem than it ever was before because while you were intoxicated, unconscious, asleep in the drug, the problems were growing. The problems were becoming more and more complicated. While you were thinking that you had gone beyond the problems, they were taking root more in your being, in your unconscious.
Tomorrow you will be back in the same world. It will look more ugly compared to the peace that you had attained by reduction, by intoxication, by forgetfulness. Compared to that peace, the world will look even more dangerous, more complex, more scary. The only way is to go on increasing the doses of your drug. But that too does not help for long. And this is no way to get out of the dilemma. The dilemma remains, persists.
The only way is forward, to grow toward the divine. The only way is to become that which is your potential. The only way is to transform the potential into the actual.
Man is potential godliness and unless he becomes actual godliness there is no possibility of contentment. People have tried that too. How to become divine? And when becoming divine, what to do with the animal? The simplest solution that has appeared again and again down the ages is to repress the animal. It is the same solution; either repress the divine – through violence, sex, drugs and forget about the divine – that is one solution, which never succeeds, cannot succeed. In the very nature of things it is bound to fail. The second suggestion that comes to the mind is – repress the animal, forget the animal. Keep the animal at the back, don’t look at it. Throw it deep down in the basement of your unconscious, so you don’t come across it in your daily life, so you don’t see it.
Man thinks almost in the same way as the ostrich. The ostrich thinks if he cannot see the enemy, the enemy does not exist. Hence, when the ostrich encounters the enemy he simply closes his eyes. By closing his eyes he thinks now there is no enemy because he cannot see him.
That’s what has been done down the ages by ninety-nine percent of religious people. In that one percent, I omit Buddhas, Krishnas, Kabirs. Ninety-nine percent of religious people have just been doing nothing but an ostrich exercise – an exercise of utter futility. Repress the animal! But you cannot repress the animal because the animal has great energy. It has been your whole past and is millions and millions of years old. It has deep roots in you. You cannot so easily get rid of it, just by closing your eyes. You are simply being stupid.
The animal is your base, it is your very foundation. You are born as an animal and are not different from any other animal. You can be different, but you are not. Just by being born you don’t become different. Yes, you have a different kind of body, but not so very different. You have a different kind of intelligence, but not very much different. The difference is only of quantity, not of quality.
Now modern research in plants says that even plants are intelligent, sensitive, alert, aware. What to say about animals? A few researchers say that even metals have a kind of intelligence of their own. So the difference between man and the elephant, between man and the dolphin, between man and the monkeys, is not of quality, it is only of quantity, of degrees. We have a little bit more intelligence, that’s all.
It is not much of a difference; at least not one that makes any difference. The qualitative change happens only when a man becomes fully awakened, when a man becomes a buddha. Then the real difference happens. He is no longer an animal. He is simply divine. But how to attain it?
That ninety-nine percent of religious people have been doing something utterly wrong – just the same logic, the same logic that is being followed by the violent people, the sexual people, the alcoholics. The same kind of logic: forget the animal. Many techniques have been developed to forget the animal. You can chant mantras so that you can forget the animal; you become occupied in chanting and go on repeating, “Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama.” You repeat it so fast that your whole mind becomes full of the vibe of this single word Rama. This is simply a way to avoid the animal – and the animal is there.
You can go on chanting Rama for centuries. The animal is not going to be changed by such a simple trick. You cannot deceive the animal. It will remain only a very superficial religiousness. Scratch any religious man and you will find the animal inside; just scratch a little. It is not even skin-deep, the so-called religiousness. It only pretends, it is only a formality, a social ritual.
You go to church and read the Bible, read the Gita, chant, pray, but it is all formal. Your heart is not in it. The animal inside goes on laughing at you, he ridicules you. He knows you perfectly well, who you are, where you are. He knows how to manipulate you. You can go on chanting for hours and then a beautiful woman passes by. Suddenly all chanting disappears and you have forgotten all about God. Just the smell from the bakery… And all is gone. Hare Krishna, Rama, all is gone.
Just any small thing is enough. Someone insults you and there is anger; the animal is ready to take revenge, you are in a rage. In fact, religious people become more angry than anyone else – because others don’t repress. Religious people are more sexually perverted than anyone else because others don’t repress. The religious person’s dreams have to be watched because in the day he can go on repressing, but what about the night when he is asleep?
Mahatma Gandhi wrote that even at the age of seventy he was having sexual dreams. Why sexual dreams at the age of seventy? He said, “In the day I have become disciplined. The whole day not even a single thought of sex comes to me. But in the night I am incapable, I am unconscious, so all the discipline and control disappears.”
Sigmund Freud’s insight is very valuable; that to know about a man you have to know his dreams, not his waking life. His waking life is pseudo. His real life asserts itself in his dreams because his dreams are more natural – no repression, no discipline, no control. Hence, psychoanalysis does not bother about your waking life. Just see the point. Your waking life is so pseudo that psychoanalysis does not believe in it at all. It is worthless. Psychoanalysis penetrates your dreams because dreams are far truer than your so-called waking life.
This is ironical that the waking life, which we think is real life, is not thought by psychoanalysis to be real; it is thought to be more unreal than your dreams. Your dreams are far more real because you are not there to distort, you are fast asleep. The conscious mind is asleep and the unconscious is free to have its say. The unconscious is your true mind because the conscious is only one tenth of your total mind. Nine-tenths is the unconscious – nine times more powerful, nine times bigger than your conscious mind.
What will you do when you are fighting with your sexuality, anger, greed? – you will go on throwing them into the unconscious, into the darkness of the basement, thinking that by not seeing them you are getting rid of them. You are not getting rid of them. Not even a man like Mahatma Gandhi… What to say about small mahatmas like Morarji Desai etcetera.
A man like Mahatma Gandhi continued to have sexual dreams. That simply shows that his whole effort in the waking life was futile and that whatever he was trying to do in the waking life was of no use. He recognized it. At the very end of his life he recognized the whole futility of his discipline. His whole life had been a wastage and he recognized it. In the end, just before he died, for two years he was experimenting with the science of Tantra. It is not talked about, not at least by the Gandhians. They are very afraid of those two years. He was advised by his followers, “Please, don’t do such experiments.”
You will be surprised that even Morarji Desai had advised him, “Don’t do such experiments.” Why? – they were afraid about the prestige of the Mahatma. They were afraid about themselves too. But he was a man of courage; however wrong, he was a sincere man. He had the courage to accept that his effort of disciplining according to the traditional way had failed. In the last two years he was sleeping with naked women. For the first time not repressing but expressing, being loving, open; for the first time not on guard.
My own understanding is that those two years of his life, which are not talked about, are the most important. Not only were they not talked about, the followers deny, hide those facts. Those two years are the most important in his life. In those two years, for the first time he became aware that sexual energy need not be repressed. It can be transformed.
His life was cut short because a fanatic from this very city, Pune, killed him. Otherwise it would have been a totally different story. If he had lived ten more years, all these so-called Gandhians would have left him. Many had already left when he started experimenting with Tantra. If he had lived ten more years, it would have been a great boon to humanity because he would have been able to say, “My whole life’s effort of repression failed while Tantra succeeded.”
Ninety-nine percent of religious people go on repressing and whenever you repress something it goes deeper in you, it becomes more a part of your being. It starts affecting you in such subtle ways that you may not even be aware of it. It takes very devious routes; it cannot come in direct ways because if it comes directly, you repress it. It comes in such subtle ways, such devious ways, such deceptive ways, with masks, that you cannot even recognize that it is sexuality.
It can even use masks of prayer, love, religious ritual. But if you go deep down, if you allow yourself to be exposed to someone who can observe and who understands the inner functioning of your mind, you will be surprised that it is the same energy moving through different channels. It has to move through different channels because no energy can ever be repressed.
Let it be understood once and for all. No energy can ever be repressed. Energy can be transformed, but never repressed. The real religion consists of alchemy, of transforming techniques, methods. The real religion consists not of repressing the animal but of purifying the animal, of raising the animal to the divine; using the animal, riding on the animal to go to the divine. It can become a tremendously powerful vehicle, because it is power.
Sex can be used as a great energy – you can ride on it to the very door of godliness. But if you repress it, you will become more and more entangled. This is a very modern approach, but the sutras of Kabir will say to you that what Sigmund Freud discovered is not a discovery. It is only a discovery in the West. As far as the East is concerned, it is an ancient truth. The sages have always known about it.
These sutras are very beautiful, very scientific. Meditate over each sutra:
Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world,
I hold to and keep spinning out!
The original is:
Avadhu, maya taji na jai.
Avadhu literally means a friend, but it has a special meaning, not just a friend. In English there is no word to give the real meaning of avadhu, but it can be explained. Avadhu means a friend, a companion, a comrade, on the way toward the divine – a special kind of friendship. The friendship of two seekers, the friendship of those who are in search of the unknown and the unknowable, the friendship of those who are ready for the ultimate venture, who are ready to go in the uncharted sea. Avadhu means friends in the search for truth. It is risky and such a friendship needs guts. It is no ordinary friendship. It is utterly extraordinary, it is not of this world.
This friendship means satsang: when many seekers gather together around a man who has known. Such a friendship is possible only around a man who has known, such a gathering is possible only around a buddha, around one who has awakened – because he will function as the center of the commune. Without the center, the commune will not have any significance; it will be an ordinary crowd.
Without Christ, Christians are just a crowd, an ordinary crowd. With Christ, it is a communion, it is satsang. It is the ultimate friendship. Christ can call his disciples avadhu – friends, comrades, companions, soul mates – that’s exactly the meaning of avadhu. The friendship is not worldly, has no motive. The friendship is not that of dependence. The friendship has no relationship which can be explained in any worldly way – but two souls in a deep rhythm, two soul mates.
It is difficult to search alone. The path is arduous, hazardous, dangerous and there is every possibility of getting lost. It is easier if people move with friends. It is like Gurdjieff used to say… When he was traveling in Sufi countries, a Sufi master gave him a technique. The technique was that twenty friends of Gurdjieff had to go deep into the desert, but at least one person had to remain awake. Including Gurdjieff, there were twenty-one people. Twenty people could go to sleep, but one had to be awake constantly, for twenty-four hours a day. When he was tired he had to wake someone else, then he could go to sleep and the other had to remain awake. But one had to be awake!
If you are alone, you will have to fall asleep once in a while, but if you are moving with friends at least one can always be awake. In a desert, a forest, a jungle, it is needed that at least one should be awake.
When you go on the journey, the ultimate pilgrimage to godliness, it is good to have a few friends with you because at least one can always be awake. The person who is awake will become your protection, will help you not to go astray, will keep you together and will become a kind of glue which will integrate your energies.
But if you can find a man who is awake, twenty-four hours awake – that’s the meaning of being a buddha – then naturally a commune of friends gathers around him. His light, his understanding, slowly, slowly permeates their being too.
Kabir is not talking to the public, he is talking to a few friends. Hence he says:
Avadhu, friends, maya taji na jai.
It is very difficult to drop this mind – it is very difficult to drop this mind because who is going to drop it? Even the idea of dropping is part of the mind. It is very difficult to drop the mind because even if you drop it, the one who drops it will remain – that will become your mind. It is a very vicious circle. How to come out of it?
This mind is illusory, hence he calls it “maya” – all illusion. It is not really there; it has no substance, but still it continuously persists– day in, day out, your mind continues. Thoughts, dreams, desires, imagination, memory… The traffic goes on and on. All is nonsubstantial. If you wake up, suddenly you will find all the dreams, all the desires, all the thoughts have disappeared. But how can you drop this mind? Who is going to drop it? If you try to drop it, you are the mind.
You can escape to the Himalayan caves, but the mind will go with you because really the mind will be going to the Himalayan caves – who else? You can renounce the family, but who will renounce? You can stand on your head, but it will be the same mind. You are simply being stupid. It has to be understood.
Nothing has to be done on your part because anything done is always done by the mind. Doing is the very function of the mind. So nothing can be done with the mind to drop it. Avadhu, maya taji na jai.
So Kabir says, “It is very difficult, friends, to drop this mind and its illusions.” In the first place they are so nonsubstantial – if they had been substantial it would have been easy. You can leave the house, you can renounce your wife, your children, you can go away from the world – it is very substantial. But how will you leave your mind? It will be with you.
When Bayazid, a Sufi saint, went to see his master, he renounced his family, his friends and went to the master. The master used to live in the ruins of an old mosque. When Bayazid entered he said, “Now I have come, I have renounced all – please accept me.”
The master looked at Bayazid and looked around and said, “Why have you brought this crowd with you?”
Bayazid was surprised. He looked back – there was no one else. Has this man gone mad? He said, “What crowd are you talking about?”
The master replied, “Don’t look back – look in. All those people that you have left behind are there.”
Bayazid closed his eyes. The master was right, he was not crazy. His wife was still crying, the children were saying to him, “Daddy, don’t go.” His friends were holding his hands to the very last. When he said good-bye to them, they followed him as far as possible; he had to persuade them again and again, “Please go back. I have decided and my decision is absolute.” When he closed his eyes they were all there.
The master said, “Bayazid, it is easy to renounce the world, but how are you going to renounce the mind because the mind is the real world? They are all there. You will sit meditating and will remember your wife. You may not have ever remembered her when you were with her; that’s how mind functions. That which is, it takes for granted; that which is not, it hankers for. Now you will be more and more involved with your wife, your children. More and more memories will come: ‘What is happening to my children? What is happening to my wife? Has she betrayed me? Has she gone with someone else? Can she do that?’ Jealousy, possessiveness and all kinds of things are bound to arise.”
There is a beautiful story in Jaina scriptures…
A great king, Bimbisara, went to see Mahavira, the last Jaina teerthankara – the last Jaina prophet. On the way, he met one of his old friends. They had studied in the same school and he was also a son of a king, but had renounced and become a Jaina monk. He was standing naked underneath a tree.
Bimbisara was overwhelmed with tremendous respect for this man and started feeling a little guilty about himself, “I am still involved in the world – money, power, prestige, war. And look at my friend; he was also a king, he would also have been a king like me, but he has renounced – a man of courage.” He bowed down, touched the feet of his old friend and then went to see Mahavira.
Just a few yards further away was Mahavira, sitting underneath a tree. Bimbisara asked him, “One question arose in my mind. When I saw my old friend Prasannachandra, who has become a monk, a disciple of yours, a question arose in my mind. If he dies right now, where will he be born?”
Jainas say that there are seven hells and seven heavens. “In what heaven will he be born?” Bimbisara asked. “Of course, there is no question of his being born in hell as he has renounced such a great kingdom and all. So in what heaven?”
Mahavira replied, “He would have gone to the seventh hell – if he had died at the time you touched his feet.”
Bimbisara was shocked. He said, “In the seventh hell? Then what about me? There are no other hells below the seventh. My friend, who has renounced all and looks so pious, so silent, so serene, is going to be born into the seventh hell?”
Mahavira said, “Don’t be worried. If he dies now, he will be born in the seventh heaven.” And just a few minutes had passed.
Bimbisara said, “You puzzle me very much. Now you have confused me even more. What has happened within these few minutes that now he will be born in the seventh heaven?”
Mahavira replied, “You don’t know the whole story. Just before you, your prime minister had passed. He had come to accompany you just to see that everything is safe. Your prime minister, your generals and your guards, passed just a few minutes before you. Your prime minister said, ‘Look at this fool, Prasannachandra. He would have been a great king if he hadn’t become hypnotized by this Mahavira. And now standing naked in this heat, wasting his life. He used to be a beautiful man. Now look at his body. He is an utter fool because he has trusted his prime minister and has given the whole kingdom to him till his children are grown up enough to take possession of it – and the prime minister is a cheat. By the time the children are grown up, there will be nothing left in the treasury.’
“Hearing this, Prasannachandra forgot completely that he had become a monk – completely. He was so shocked, and became so angry, that he said inside his heart, ‘I am still alive.’ And his hand, just out of old habit went to his sword – which was not there. He pulled the sword out of the sheath and said, ‘I will go and kill this man immediately.’ And in his imagination he cut off the head of the prime minister.
“When you touched his feet,” Mahavira said, “he had just killed the prime minister. Hence, I told you that in that moment if he had died he would have gone to the seventh hell. He was in a murderous attitude. Now, things have changed. When he put his sword back in the sheath, he recognized, ‘What am I doing? Where is the sword and where is the sheath? What have I done? Killed my prime minister in my imagination! It is as much a crime as actually killing a person.’
Mahavira says, “Whether you think of killing or you kill, it makes no difference; it is the same, psychologically it is the same. ‘What have I done? When I have renounced, I have renounced! Who am I to interfere now? If he cheats that is his business; if he breaks the trust, he will suffer for it. But who am I to punish him? I am finished with all this. And who are my children and what is my kingdom?’
“A great understanding came to him. He became quiet, silent, serene, detached. Right now if he dies, he is in such a beautiful space that he will be born in the seventh heaven.”
The question is of the mind, not of the world. You can go to the Himalayan caves, but what are you going to think about? You will think of the world. That’s why Kabir says: “Avadhu maya taji na jai – it is very difficult to drop this mind.”
Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world…
the world of the mind
…I hold to, and keep spinning out!
I gave up sewn clothes and wore a robe,
but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.
He says, “I renounced beautiful clothes and wore a robe, but then one day I saw that even this robe is well woven – my mind has played a trick. I am still as much concerned about my clothes as before. I still want to look beautiful, I still want to look special, I still want to look like somebody. The mind has played a trick with me. I am the same man. I have dropped those beautiful clothes and now I am wearing a single robe, but it doesn’t matter. The mind can project in the same way.”
The screen makes no difference; the film continues the same. You can use the wall as the screen and you can project the same film. You need not have a perfect screen. The film is the same, even projected on the wall. The wall may be rough, may be a poor man’s house wall, but it makes no difference. The film is the same.
Kabir says, “I recognized that the mind is still functioning in the same way. I still walk in such a way that people should recognize that I am no ordinary man. I used to walk in my beautiful clothes. Why do people use beautiful clothes? – so that they look special. Now I am wearing a robe, but still, deep down, the same desire persists.”
The original is:
Girah taj ke bastar band,
bastar taj ke feri.
I have left the house, I have moved to the cave, with only a small bag. One day, I recognize that the cave has become the home, the cave has become the house. The small possession that I brought with me can function perfectly well for my possessiveness. My possessiveness remains the same. Now if someone enters the cave, I am going to say, “Get out! This is my cave.”
You can go and see this. Go to the Himalayas, enter some cave and some yogi will be sitting there. He will say, “Get out! What are you doing here? This is my cave. I have lived here for thirty years. If you want to live in a cave, find your own.”
Now what is the difference? – “my house” or “my cave.” The question is of “my” and “mine.” So Kabir says, “I left the house with a small bag, went to the cave, but I found it was the same – because I am the same. So I left the cave and I left that small possession and became a wanderer, but nothing changes. Now I feel great that I am a wanderer, not an ordinary monk who lives in the shelter and safety of a cave. I live in insecurity – look. This is how one should live. I am a wanderer with no security, no safety. Now this wandering has become a prop to my ego.” Girah taj ke bastar bandha,bastar taj ke feri. Now I have become a vagabond, but great pride has arisen in me.
So I bought some burlap, but I still
throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.
Seeing that the robe was well woven, I purchased coarse canvas and made a shawl out of it: …but still I throw it elegantly over my left shoulder. The same mind. You can stand naked in the sun – it doesn’t matter. It will be the same mind. How is one going to drop the mind? It comes from the backdoor and finds new ways to enter back into you.
I pulled back my sexual longings
and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.
This is of tremendous importance to understand. Kabir has looked deep in the human mind and its workings, its subtle cunning ways. He has found exactly the whole process of inner alchemy. If you repress, this is how things happen. I pulled back my sexual longings and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.
If you repress sex you will become angry; the whole energy that was becoming sex will become anger. It is better to be sexual than to be angry. In sex at least there is something of love; in anger there is only pure violence and nothing else. If sex is repressed, the person becomes violent – either to others, or to himself. These are the two possibilities: either he will become a sadist and will torture others, or he will become a masochist and will torture himself. But torture he will.
Do you know that down the ages, soldiers have not been allowed to have sexual relationships? Why? – because if soldiers are allowed to have sexual relationships, they don’t gather enough anger in them, enough violence in them. Their sex becomes a release, they become soft and a soft person cannot fight. Starve the soldier of sex and he is bound to fight better. In fact, his violence will be a substitute for his sexuality.
Sigmund Freud is again right when he says that all our weapons are nothing but phallic symbols. The sword, the knife, the bayonet, are nothing but phallic symbols. The soldier hasn’t been allowed to enter someone’s body, some woman’s body. Now he is going crazy to enter; now he can do anything. A great perverted desire has entered his being now. Repressed sex – he would like to enter someone’s body through a bayonet, through a sword.
Down the ages, the soldier was forced to repress his sexual desires.
In this century we have seen one thing happening. American soldiers are the most well-equipped soldiers in the world – scientifically, technologically, they are the most well-equipped soldiers, but they proved weaker than any other soldier. For years on end in Vietnam, a poor country, they tried and had to accept defeat. Why? – for the first time in history, the American soldier is sexually satisfied. That is the problem.
He is the first soldier in history who is sexually satisfied, who is not starved sexually. He cannot win. A poor country like Vietnam, a small country like Vietnam – it is a miracle. If you don’t understand the psychology, it is a miracle. With all the technology, with all the modern science, with all the power – and the American soldier couldn’t do anything.
But this is not new; this is an ancient truth. The whole history of India proves it. India is a big country, one of the biggest, next only to China, it is the second biggest country in the world. But India was conquered many times by small countries. Turks, Mongols, Greeks – anyone came and this big country was immediately defeated, conquered. What was the reason? And those people who had come to conquer were poor people, starving.
My own analysis of Indian history is that in the past India was not sexually repressed. Those were the days when temples like Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri, were built – India was not sexually repressed. In spite of the few so-called mahatmas, the greater part of the country was sexually satisfied; there was a softness, a loving quality, a grace. It was difficult for India to fight. For what? Just think of yourself; if you want to fight, you will have to starve yourself sexually for a few days. You can ask Mohammed Ali and other boxers; before they fight they have to become celibate for a few days. That’s a must. You can ask the Olympic competitors; before they participate in Olympic competitions they have to starve themselves sexually for a few days. It gives a thrust, it gives great violence and it makes you capable of fighting. You run faster, you attack faster because the energy is boiling within. Hence the soldier has been repressed.
Just allow all the armies of the world to be sexually satisfied and there will be peace. Just allow people sexual satisfaction and there will be less Hindu-Mohammedan riots, less Christian and Mohammedan crusades. All that nonsense will disappear. If love spreads, war will disappear – both cannot exist together.
Kabir is exactly right. He says: I pulled back my sexual longings and now I discover that I’m angry a lot. He is a great observer, a very minute observer. This is what awareness is. He is watching. He represses his sexual desire and watches – “Now what is happening inside?” Soon he finds that he becomes more angry, for no reason at all; just angry, irritated, ready to fight with anyone, any excuse will do.
Remember, sex can be transformed because it is a natural energy. Anger is not so natural, one step removed from nature. Now it will be difficult to change anger. First anger will have to be changed into sex, only then can anything be done. That’s what my work here is and that’s what I am being condemned for all over the world.
I am trying to change your anger into sex – that has to be done first. That is the way of inner change. First, all your perversions have to disappear and you have to become a natural human being. You have to become a natural animal, to be exact. Only then can you become divine. The animal can be transformed into the divine, but your animal is also very perverted, your animal is not sane – your animal has become insane. First the insanity has to be transformed, changed. Change anger.
That’s why I send people first to encounter groups and then to Tantra. First they have to go in some type of encounter group phenomenon, some process where their anger can be expressed, relaxed. Only then can they move in some process of Tantra, in some inner alchemy that can use sexual energy as a vehicle.
But people who are angry will not understand it. Anger does not allow understanding. Now, if you want to become a politician, you have to repress your sex; otherwise you will not be able to compete, you will not be able to reach New Delhi – impossible. It is not an accident that Morarji Desai has reached there – fifty years of sexual repression is bound to help him become the prime minister of the country. So much rage. It is difficult to compete with such people. They go madly into competition. They don’t look sideways, they simply go ahead and don’t care what happens. By fair or foul means, but they have to reach the top.
Politicians can succeed only if they are sexually repressed people. Adolf Hitler was sexually repressed, very repressed. Had he been in deep love with a single woman there would have been no Second World War. Had he loved a single human being deeply, the whole history of humanity would have been different. But he was very sexually suppressed.
He was as big a mahatma as Morarji Desai – in fact, a little bigger. You will be surprised to know that he was a vegetarian. To find a vegetarian in Germany is difficult, but he was a vegetarian. He was not a smoker and was against drinking any kind of intoxicating beverages. He used to go early to bed and would get up early in the morning. He avoided all kinds of loving relationships. What to say about love? He had not even a single friend. There was not a single man who could call him friend. He never allowed that much closeness. He was afraid, continuously afraid of his sexuality.
This man became the cause of the greatest war the world has known. My own feeling is that had he smoked a little bit, had he become drunk once in a while, had he fallen in love with a woman, the whole history of humanity would have been different. Then he would have been soft and would have been more human, more accepting of his own limitations; hence more accepting of others’ limitations. He would have been more humane.
Says Kabir:
I pulled back my sexual longings
and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.
I gave up rage and now I notice
that I am greedy all day.
So he repressed his anger – that’s what one will logically do. You repress sex, anger bubbles up; you repress anger. But he is a close observer, a very minute observer. He says, “The moment I repressed my anger I became greedy.”
This too is proved. If you watch human history you will find a thousand and one proofs for it. For example, in India, Mahavira taught nonviolence and the result has been that all the followers of Mahavira became the most greedy people in the world. They are the Jews of India. The Jainas are the Jews of India. Why did they become so greedy?
Mahavira taught them to be nonviolent. Obviously, they started repressing anger; that is the only way that seems possible to the stupid mind. Repress anger. Don’t be violent. They tried really hard, in every possible way they tried not to be violent. They even stopped agriculture because it is a kind of violence. You have to pull up the plants and cut the crop and that is violence because plants have life. So Jainas stopped agriculture completely.
Now, they cannot go to the army, they cannot be kshatriyas – they cannot become warriors – because of their ideology of nonviolence and they cannot even be agriculturists, gardeners; that is impossible. They would not like to become sudras – the untouchables – who clean the roads, the sweepers and the cobblers because that is too humiliating. And brahmins won’t allow them to function as brahmins – brahmins are very jealous about that. They have been in power for centuries and they don’t allow anyone. No one can become a brahmin; one can only be a brahmin by birth. You may become a great learned man – that doesn’t matter – but you can’t be a brahmin. There is no way of becoming a brahmin. You have to be born one only. You have to be very careful when you choose your parents; that is the only opportunity to become a brahmin.
So Jainas could not be brahmins, would not like to become sudras, were not able to become warriors. Then what was left for them? Only business. They became business people. All their repressed anger became their greed. They became great money maniacs. Their number is very small. In India their number is so small, not more than thirty lakhs. In a country of sixty crores, thirty lakhs is nothing. But they possess more money than anyone else. You will not find a Jaina beggar anywhere. They are all rich people.
Mahavira wanted them to be nonviolent and what really happened was totally different. They became greedy. Repress your anger and you will be greedy.
I gave up rage and now I notice
that I am greedy all day.
I worked hard at dissolving the greed
and now I am proud of myself.
So he repressed his greed and the ultimate result is that he has become a great egoist, he finds himself being very proud. “Look! I have repressed sex, repressed anger, repressed greed. I have done this, I have done that. I have done impossible things.” Now a great “I” arises, the ego becomes strengthened.
That’s why you will find the most crystallized egos in monks and nuns. You will not find such crystallized egos anywhere else. The more a person renounces, the more he represses, the more egoistic he becomes. Indians are very egoistic and the reason? – they have all tried in some way or other to be religious. The only way seems to be repression – and repression brings the ego.
A nonrepressed person becomes a nonegoist; he cannot carry the ego. There is no prop to support it. He becomes humble, he becomes simple, he becomes ordinary, he has no claim. He knows he is nothing. This whole process that Kabir is describing is beautiful.
Repression is not the way, transformation is the way. Don’t repress anything. If sexuality is there, don’t repress it otherwise you will create a new complexity – which will be more difficult to tackle. If you repress anger, greed is even more difficult. If you repress greed, ego, pride arises, which is the most difficult thing to drop.
Move back: from pride to greed, from greed to anger, from anger to sex. If you can come to the natural, spontaneous sexuality, things will be very simple. Things will be so simple that you cannot imagine. Your energy is natural and natural energy creates no hindrance in transformation. Hence I say: from sex to superconsciousness. Not from anger, not from greed, not from ego, but from sex to superconsciousness.
The transformation can happen only if first you accept your natural being. Whatever is natural is good. Yes, more is possible, but more will be possible only if you accept your nature with totality. If you welcome it, if you have no guilt about it. To be guilty, to feel guilty, is to be irreligious. In the past you have been told just the opposite. Feel guilty and you are religious. I say to you: feel guilty and you will never be religious. Drop all guilt.
You are whatever the divine has made you. You are whatever existence has made you. Sex is not your creation; it is a gift of existence. Something tremendously valuable is hidden in it – it is just a shell of your samadhi. If the seed is broken, the shell is broken, the flower will bloom, but not by repression. You will have to learn inner gardening, you will have to become a gardener. You will have to learn how to use dirty fertilizers, manure, and transform manure into roses.
Religion is the most delicate art.
Kabir says:
When the mind wants to break its link with the world,
it still holds on to one thing.
The ultimate problem is that you can leave one thing, but you cling to another. You leave that and you cling to another. You go on changing things, but the clinging remains. The clinging has to disappear. How can the clinging disappear? – only by understanding, awareness, meditation; not by doing anything about it. If you do, you will create a new clinging.
An ancient story…
A man was very afraid of ghosts and the problem was more troublesome because he had to pass through a cemetery every day while going to work and returning home. Sometimes, if he had to come at night – some overtime or something and he was delayed – it was really a problem to pass through the cemetery. It was only a three, four minute walk, but it was almost a death to him.
He went to a fakir and said, “Do something. I have heard you do miracles. I don’t ask much, just a simple thing. Give me somehow some protection so that I can pass through the cemetery without fear.”
The fakir replied, “This is so simple, there is no problem. Take this locket and keep it always with you. It will protect you from ghosts. No ghost will ever trouble you.”
He tried and no ghost ever troubled him. In fact, there are no ghosts, it was only his fear. With the locket in hand, he went through the cemetery, from this side to that, from that side to this. He tried at different times, even in the middle of the night – and it worked. He said, “This locket is really powerful. This man is a miracle man.”
The whole miracle was that there were no ghosts. There are no ghosts anywhere. But now this idea that he had a protection helped him.
But a new problem arose. He started becoming afraid that someone might steal it, or someday he might forget it somewhere, or he might put it outside while taking a bath and ghosts might come there. So he had to carry it everywhere and it became an obsession. His wife would say, “It looks embarrassing. People ask me, ‘Why does your husband go on carrying this locket in his hand, this stupid locket? What is the matter with him? He never leaves it.’” Even at night when he went to sleep, he would keep it in his hand. Even once or twice in the night he would wake up to see whether the locket was in his hand or not because it might have fallen in his sleep and ghosts might jump on his chest, waiting to take revenge.
Now one problem is solved, another problem has arisen and far more complicated because the ghosts used to torture him only once in a while when he was late or he had to pass through the cemetery. In twenty-four hours, just for one or two minutes the problem was there. Now the locket was a twenty-four hour problem. “If it is lost, if someone takes it away, if I forget it somewhere…” Even in his sleep it was difficult for him to sleep totally. He had to keep a little alert. He started becoming ill because his sleep was not good and he was so constantly afraid.
He went to another fakir who said, “I will give you another thing. Keep this box. The locket is creating trouble and this box is far more powerful. You can even keep it six feet away from you and its power works.”
He said, “This is far better. At least I can go in my bathroom and leave it outside.”
Now a new problem arose. He always used to keep the locket in his hand. Now taking his bath inside and the box was outside. “If children, just for fun, take it away or something happens?” Now it was even more difficult; that distance of six feet.
The story is significant. This is not the way to drop the ghosts. You will have to cling to something or other. Ghosts are not to be dropped; your eyes have to be opened so that you can see that there are no ghosts at all. The problem disappears. The problem is not solved, but dissolved. When the mind wants to break its link with the world, it still holds on to one thing.
Unless you drop all clinging – all clinging. I say, unless you are ready to be nothing, empty, no one, with no protection, with no security, no safety; unless you are ready to be in that kind of space… Which will look like death in the beginning. It is a kind of death. The old dies, but then the new arises. The new can arise only when the old is gone. The old has to cease for the new to be. Only when all clinging disappears – you are not clinging even to the name of God, you are not clinging even to the master, you are not clinging to the scripture, you are simply in a state of nonclinging – then suddenly from your own inner source a great light wells up, a great bliss wells up. You are transformed.
The mind is not dropped. It is a ghost. If you try methods to drop it, you will cling to the methods. Those methods will torture you. You will remain always in bondage.
Kabir says: Listen my friend,
there are very few that find the path!
A few people remain indulgent, remain animals; a few people start repressing the animal, become obsessed with repressions, perversions. Only rarely does it happen that a person is neither indulgent, nor repressive. Only when a person is neither does he find the secret key to the door of the divine.
The original is:
Man bairagi maya tyagi,
shabd men surat samai.
Kabir says, “I have become a sannyasin, a renunciate, I have dropped the world, but that doesn’t matter. Now I cling to God, now God has become my world. Man bairagi maya tyagi, shabd men surat samai. Now the name of God – shabd – has become my treasure, now I cling to it. Now the idea of God has become the center of my clinging.”
Kahain kabir suno bhai sadho,
yah gam birle pai.
There are very few people who have found the secret path. Out of a hundred, ninety remain indulgent in the animal and they never move beyond the animal. Out of the remaining ten, nine become repressive and pathological. Only one out of a hundred finds the true way. What is the true way? – the true way is that of understanding your mind, not of dropping it. The true way is: sitting silently and watching your mind – all its cunning ways, subtle ways, all its strategies – just watch, just be a witness to your mind. Slowly, slowly by witnessing it, you will understand what games it has been playing with you. You stop it from one door, it comes from another one. You stop it from that door, it makes a third door – and it goes on and on, ad nauseam.
Watch. Don’t renounce the world and don’t try to drop the mind. Just become more alert. In that alertness, suddenly the mind disappears and with the mind, the whole world disappears. When there is no mind and no world, godliness is.
Enough for today.
I hold to and keep spinning out!
I gave up sewn clothes and wore a robe,
but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.
So I bought some burlap, but I still
throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.
I pulled back my sexual longings
and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.
I gave up rage and now I notice
that I am greedy all day.
I worked hard at dissolving the greed
and now I am proud of myself.
When the mind wants to break its link with the world,
it still holds on to one thing.
Kabir says: Listen my friend,
there are very few that find the path!
Man is a dilemma because man is a duality. Man is not one single being; he is the past and the future. The past means the animal and the future means the divine. Between the two is the present moment, between the two is man’s existence – divided, torn apart, pulled in diametrically opposite directions.
If man looks backward, he is an animal. That’s why science cannot believe that man is anything more – just another animal – because science only searches in the past. Charles Darwin and others are right that man is born of the animals. It is true about the past, but it is not true about man’s totality.
Religion looks into the possible: that which can happen and has not yet happened. Science dissects the seed and cannot find any flowers there. Religion is visionary, it dreams and is capable of seeing that which has not happened yet: the flower. Of course, it cannot be found, that flower cannot be found by dissecting the seed. It needs great insight, not the capacity to analyze, but some intuitive flight, some vision, some poetic approach. It needs a real dreamer who can see that which has not happened yet.
Religion looks into the possible and finds man is not an animal, but divine. He is godliness. Both are true. The conflict is baseless. The conflict between science and religion is futile. Their directions, their methods of work, their fields, are totally different.
Science always reduces everything to the source and religion always takes a flight to the goal. Man is both, hence man is a dilemma, a constant anxiety: to be or not to be, to be this or to be that?
Man can find peace only in two ways. Either he becomes an animal again – then he will be one. There will be no division and again there will be peace, silence, harmony. And that’s why millions of people try to be animals in different ways.
War gives a chance for man to become animal; hence war has great attraction. In three thousand years’ history, man has fought five thousand wars – continuously, somewhere or other, the war continues. Not even a single day passes when man is not killing other men. Why such tremendous joy in destruction, in killing? The reason is deep down in the psychology of man.
The moment you kill, suddenly you are one and you become the animal again, the duality disappears. Hence, there is a tremendous magnetic force in murder, suicide. Man cannot be persuaded yet to be nonviolent. Violence erupts. Names change, slogans change, but the violence remains the same. It may be in the name of religion, in the name of political ideology, or any absurd thing – a football match is enough for people to get violent, a cricket match is enough.
People are so interested in violence that if they cannot do it themselves – because it is risky and they think of the consequences – they find vicarious ways to be violent. In a movie, or on the TV, violence is a must. No one is going to watch a film if it doesn’t contain violence. Seeing violence and blood, suddenly you are reminded of your animal past; you forget your present, you completely forget your future and you become your past. You become identified. What is happening on the screen somehow becomes your own life. You are no longer a spectator and in those moments you become a participant, you fall en rapport. Violence has great attraction.
Sexuality has a great attraction because it is only in sexual moments that you can become one; otherwise you remain two, divided, and the anxiety, the anguish persist. Violence, sex, drugs, all help you, at least for the time being, temporarily, to fall back, to become completely animal. But this cannot become a permanent state of affairs.
One fundamental law has to be understood. Nothing can go backward. At the most you can pretend, at the most you can deceive, but nothing can go backward because time does not move backward. Time always goes ahead. You cannot reduce a young man to a child and you cannot reduce an old man to a young man – it is impossible. The tree cannot be reduced back to the original seed – it is impossible.
Evolution goes on and on and there is no way to prevent it or to force it backward. Hence all the efforts of men to become animals and find peace are doomed to fail. You can be drunk with alcohol or with other drugs – marijuana, LSD – you can be completely drowned. And for the moment all worries disappear, for the moment you are no longer part of a problematic existence, for the moment you move in a totally different dimension – but for the moment only.
Tomorrow morning you will be back and when you are back the world is going to be more ugly than it ever was before. Life is going to be more of a problem than it ever was before because while you were intoxicated, unconscious, asleep in the drug, the problems were growing. The problems were becoming more and more complicated. While you were thinking that you had gone beyond the problems, they were taking root more in your being, in your unconscious.
Tomorrow you will be back in the same world. It will look more ugly compared to the peace that you had attained by reduction, by intoxication, by forgetfulness. Compared to that peace, the world will look even more dangerous, more complex, more scary. The only way is to go on increasing the doses of your drug. But that too does not help for long. And this is no way to get out of the dilemma. The dilemma remains, persists.
The only way is forward, to grow toward the divine. The only way is to become that which is your potential. The only way is to transform the potential into the actual.
Man is potential godliness and unless he becomes actual godliness there is no possibility of contentment. People have tried that too. How to become divine? And when becoming divine, what to do with the animal? The simplest solution that has appeared again and again down the ages is to repress the animal. It is the same solution; either repress the divine – through violence, sex, drugs and forget about the divine – that is one solution, which never succeeds, cannot succeed. In the very nature of things it is bound to fail. The second suggestion that comes to the mind is – repress the animal, forget the animal. Keep the animal at the back, don’t look at it. Throw it deep down in the basement of your unconscious, so you don’t come across it in your daily life, so you don’t see it.
Man thinks almost in the same way as the ostrich. The ostrich thinks if he cannot see the enemy, the enemy does not exist. Hence, when the ostrich encounters the enemy he simply closes his eyes. By closing his eyes he thinks now there is no enemy because he cannot see him.
That’s what has been done down the ages by ninety-nine percent of religious people. In that one percent, I omit Buddhas, Krishnas, Kabirs. Ninety-nine percent of religious people have just been doing nothing but an ostrich exercise – an exercise of utter futility. Repress the animal! But you cannot repress the animal because the animal has great energy. It has been your whole past and is millions and millions of years old. It has deep roots in you. You cannot so easily get rid of it, just by closing your eyes. You are simply being stupid.
The animal is your base, it is your very foundation. You are born as an animal and are not different from any other animal. You can be different, but you are not. Just by being born you don’t become different. Yes, you have a different kind of body, but not so very different. You have a different kind of intelligence, but not very much different. The difference is only of quantity, not of quality.
Now modern research in plants says that even plants are intelligent, sensitive, alert, aware. What to say about animals? A few researchers say that even metals have a kind of intelligence of their own. So the difference between man and the elephant, between man and the dolphin, between man and the monkeys, is not of quality, it is only of quantity, of degrees. We have a little bit more intelligence, that’s all.
It is not much of a difference; at least not one that makes any difference. The qualitative change happens only when a man becomes fully awakened, when a man becomes a buddha. Then the real difference happens. He is no longer an animal. He is simply divine. But how to attain it?
That ninety-nine percent of religious people have been doing something utterly wrong – just the same logic, the same logic that is being followed by the violent people, the sexual people, the alcoholics. The same kind of logic: forget the animal. Many techniques have been developed to forget the animal. You can chant mantras so that you can forget the animal; you become occupied in chanting and go on repeating, “Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama.” You repeat it so fast that your whole mind becomes full of the vibe of this single word Rama. This is simply a way to avoid the animal – and the animal is there.
You can go on chanting Rama for centuries. The animal is not going to be changed by such a simple trick. You cannot deceive the animal. It will remain only a very superficial religiousness. Scratch any religious man and you will find the animal inside; just scratch a little. It is not even skin-deep, the so-called religiousness. It only pretends, it is only a formality, a social ritual.
You go to church and read the Bible, read the Gita, chant, pray, but it is all formal. Your heart is not in it. The animal inside goes on laughing at you, he ridicules you. He knows you perfectly well, who you are, where you are. He knows how to manipulate you. You can go on chanting for hours and then a beautiful woman passes by. Suddenly all chanting disappears and you have forgotten all about God. Just the smell from the bakery… And all is gone. Hare Krishna, Rama, all is gone.
Just any small thing is enough. Someone insults you and there is anger; the animal is ready to take revenge, you are in a rage. In fact, religious people become more angry than anyone else – because others don’t repress. Religious people are more sexually perverted than anyone else because others don’t repress. The religious person’s dreams have to be watched because in the day he can go on repressing, but what about the night when he is asleep?
Mahatma Gandhi wrote that even at the age of seventy he was having sexual dreams. Why sexual dreams at the age of seventy? He said, “In the day I have become disciplined. The whole day not even a single thought of sex comes to me. But in the night I am incapable, I am unconscious, so all the discipline and control disappears.”
Sigmund Freud’s insight is very valuable; that to know about a man you have to know his dreams, not his waking life. His waking life is pseudo. His real life asserts itself in his dreams because his dreams are more natural – no repression, no discipline, no control. Hence, psychoanalysis does not bother about your waking life. Just see the point. Your waking life is so pseudo that psychoanalysis does not believe in it at all. It is worthless. Psychoanalysis penetrates your dreams because dreams are far truer than your so-called waking life.
This is ironical that the waking life, which we think is real life, is not thought by psychoanalysis to be real; it is thought to be more unreal than your dreams. Your dreams are far more real because you are not there to distort, you are fast asleep. The conscious mind is asleep and the unconscious is free to have its say. The unconscious is your true mind because the conscious is only one tenth of your total mind. Nine-tenths is the unconscious – nine times more powerful, nine times bigger than your conscious mind.
What will you do when you are fighting with your sexuality, anger, greed? – you will go on throwing them into the unconscious, into the darkness of the basement, thinking that by not seeing them you are getting rid of them. You are not getting rid of them. Not even a man like Mahatma Gandhi… What to say about small mahatmas like Morarji Desai etcetera.
A man like Mahatma Gandhi continued to have sexual dreams. That simply shows that his whole effort in the waking life was futile and that whatever he was trying to do in the waking life was of no use. He recognized it. At the very end of his life he recognized the whole futility of his discipline. His whole life had been a wastage and he recognized it. In the end, just before he died, for two years he was experimenting with the science of Tantra. It is not talked about, not at least by the Gandhians. They are very afraid of those two years. He was advised by his followers, “Please, don’t do such experiments.”
You will be surprised that even Morarji Desai had advised him, “Don’t do such experiments.” Why? – they were afraid about the prestige of the Mahatma. They were afraid about themselves too. But he was a man of courage; however wrong, he was a sincere man. He had the courage to accept that his effort of disciplining according to the traditional way had failed. In the last two years he was sleeping with naked women. For the first time not repressing but expressing, being loving, open; for the first time not on guard.
My own understanding is that those two years of his life, which are not talked about, are the most important. Not only were they not talked about, the followers deny, hide those facts. Those two years are the most important in his life. In those two years, for the first time he became aware that sexual energy need not be repressed. It can be transformed.
His life was cut short because a fanatic from this very city, Pune, killed him. Otherwise it would have been a totally different story. If he had lived ten more years, all these so-called Gandhians would have left him. Many had already left when he started experimenting with Tantra. If he had lived ten more years, it would have been a great boon to humanity because he would have been able to say, “My whole life’s effort of repression failed while Tantra succeeded.”
Ninety-nine percent of religious people go on repressing and whenever you repress something it goes deeper in you, it becomes more a part of your being. It starts affecting you in such subtle ways that you may not even be aware of it. It takes very devious routes; it cannot come in direct ways because if it comes directly, you repress it. It comes in such subtle ways, such devious ways, such deceptive ways, with masks, that you cannot even recognize that it is sexuality.
It can even use masks of prayer, love, religious ritual. But if you go deep down, if you allow yourself to be exposed to someone who can observe and who understands the inner functioning of your mind, you will be surprised that it is the same energy moving through different channels. It has to move through different channels because no energy can ever be repressed.
Let it be understood once and for all. No energy can ever be repressed. Energy can be transformed, but never repressed. The real religion consists of alchemy, of transforming techniques, methods. The real religion consists not of repressing the animal but of purifying the animal, of raising the animal to the divine; using the animal, riding on the animal to go to the divine. It can become a tremendously powerful vehicle, because it is power.
Sex can be used as a great energy – you can ride on it to the very door of godliness. But if you repress it, you will become more and more entangled. This is a very modern approach, but the sutras of Kabir will say to you that what Sigmund Freud discovered is not a discovery. It is only a discovery in the West. As far as the East is concerned, it is an ancient truth. The sages have always known about it.
These sutras are very beautiful, very scientific. Meditate over each sutra:
Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world,
I hold to and keep spinning out!
The original is:
Avadhu, maya taji na jai.
Avadhu literally means a friend, but it has a special meaning, not just a friend. In English there is no word to give the real meaning of avadhu, but it can be explained. Avadhu means a friend, a companion, a comrade, on the way toward the divine – a special kind of friendship. The friendship of two seekers, the friendship of those who are in search of the unknown and the unknowable, the friendship of those who are ready for the ultimate venture, who are ready to go in the uncharted sea. Avadhu means friends in the search for truth. It is risky and such a friendship needs guts. It is no ordinary friendship. It is utterly extraordinary, it is not of this world.
This friendship means satsang: when many seekers gather together around a man who has known. Such a friendship is possible only around a man who has known, such a gathering is possible only around a buddha, around one who has awakened – because he will function as the center of the commune. Without the center, the commune will not have any significance; it will be an ordinary crowd.
Without Christ, Christians are just a crowd, an ordinary crowd. With Christ, it is a communion, it is satsang. It is the ultimate friendship. Christ can call his disciples avadhu – friends, comrades, companions, soul mates – that’s exactly the meaning of avadhu. The friendship is not worldly, has no motive. The friendship is not that of dependence. The friendship has no relationship which can be explained in any worldly way – but two souls in a deep rhythm, two soul mates.
It is difficult to search alone. The path is arduous, hazardous, dangerous and there is every possibility of getting lost. It is easier if people move with friends. It is like Gurdjieff used to say… When he was traveling in Sufi countries, a Sufi master gave him a technique. The technique was that twenty friends of Gurdjieff had to go deep into the desert, but at least one person had to remain awake. Including Gurdjieff, there were twenty-one people. Twenty people could go to sleep, but one had to be awake constantly, for twenty-four hours a day. When he was tired he had to wake someone else, then he could go to sleep and the other had to remain awake. But one had to be awake!
If you are alone, you will have to fall asleep once in a while, but if you are moving with friends at least one can always be awake. In a desert, a forest, a jungle, it is needed that at least one should be awake.
When you go on the journey, the ultimate pilgrimage to godliness, it is good to have a few friends with you because at least one can always be awake. The person who is awake will become your protection, will help you not to go astray, will keep you together and will become a kind of glue which will integrate your energies.
But if you can find a man who is awake, twenty-four hours awake – that’s the meaning of being a buddha – then naturally a commune of friends gathers around him. His light, his understanding, slowly, slowly permeates their being too.
Kabir is not talking to the public, he is talking to a few friends. Hence he says:
Avadhu, friends, maya taji na jai.
It is very difficult to drop this mind – it is very difficult to drop this mind because who is going to drop it? Even the idea of dropping is part of the mind. It is very difficult to drop the mind because even if you drop it, the one who drops it will remain – that will become your mind. It is a very vicious circle. How to come out of it?
This mind is illusory, hence he calls it “maya” – all illusion. It is not really there; it has no substance, but still it continuously persists– day in, day out, your mind continues. Thoughts, dreams, desires, imagination, memory… The traffic goes on and on. All is nonsubstantial. If you wake up, suddenly you will find all the dreams, all the desires, all the thoughts have disappeared. But how can you drop this mind? Who is going to drop it? If you try to drop it, you are the mind.
You can escape to the Himalayan caves, but the mind will go with you because really the mind will be going to the Himalayan caves – who else? You can renounce the family, but who will renounce? You can stand on your head, but it will be the same mind. You are simply being stupid. It has to be understood.
Nothing has to be done on your part because anything done is always done by the mind. Doing is the very function of the mind. So nothing can be done with the mind to drop it. Avadhu, maya taji na jai.
So Kabir says, “It is very difficult, friends, to drop this mind and its illusions.” In the first place they are so nonsubstantial – if they had been substantial it would have been easy. You can leave the house, you can renounce your wife, your children, you can go away from the world – it is very substantial. But how will you leave your mind? It will be with you.
When Bayazid, a Sufi saint, went to see his master, he renounced his family, his friends and went to the master. The master used to live in the ruins of an old mosque. When Bayazid entered he said, “Now I have come, I have renounced all – please accept me.”
The master looked at Bayazid and looked around and said, “Why have you brought this crowd with you?”
Bayazid was surprised. He looked back – there was no one else. Has this man gone mad? He said, “What crowd are you talking about?”
The master replied, “Don’t look back – look in. All those people that you have left behind are there.”
Bayazid closed his eyes. The master was right, he was not crazy. His wife was still crying, the children were saying to him, “Daddy, don’t go.” His friends were holding his hands to the very last. When he said good-bye to them, they followed him as far as possible; he had to persuade them again and again, “Please go back. I have decided and my decision is absolute.” When he closed his eyes they were all there.
The master said, “Bayazid, it is easy to renounce the world, but how are you going to renounce the mind because the mind is the real world? They are all there. You will sit meditating and will remember your wife. You may not have ever remembered her when you were with her; that’s how mind functions. That which is, it takes for granted; that which is not, it hankers for. Now you will be more and more involved with your wife, your children. More and more memories will come: ‘What is happening to my children? What is happening to my wife? Has she betrayed me? Has she gone with someone else? Can she do that?’ Jealousy, possessiveness and all kinds of things are bound to arise.”
There is a beautiful story in Jaina scriptures…
A great king, Bimbisara, went to see Mahavira, the last Jaina teerthankara – the last Jaina prophet. On the way, he met one of his old friends. They had studied in the same school and he was also a son of a king, but had renounced and become a Jaina monk. He was standing naked underneath a tree.
Bimbisara was overwhelmed with tremendous respect for this man and started feeling a little guilty about himself, “I am still involved in the world – money, power, prestige, war. And look at my friend; he was also a king, he would also have been a king like me, but he has renounced – a man of courage.” He bowed down, touched the feet of his old friend and then went to see Mahavira.
Just a few yards further away was Mahavira, sitting underneath a tree. Bimbisara asked him, “One question arose in my mind. When I saw my old friend Prasannachandra, who has become a monk, a disciple of yours, a question arose in my mind. If he dies right now, where will he be born?”
Jainas say that there are seven hells and seven heavens. “In what heaven will he be born?” Bimbisara asked. “Of course, there is no question of his being born in hell as he has renounced such a great kingdom and all. So in what heaven?”
Mahavira replied, “He would have gone to the seventh hell – if he had died at the time you touched his feet.”
Bimbisara was shocked. He said, “In the seventh hell? Then what about me? There are no other hells below the seventh. My friend, who has renounced all and looks so pious, so silent, so serene, is going to be born into the seventh hell?”
Mahavira said, “Don’t be worried. If he dies now, he will be born in the seventh heaven.” And just a few minutes had passed.
Bimbisara said, “You puzzle me very much. Now you have confused me even more. What has happened within these few minutes that now he will be born in the seventh heaven?”
Mahavira replied, “You don’t know the whole story. Just before you, your prime minister had passed. He had come to accompany you just to see that everything is safe. Your prime minister, your generals and your guards, passed just a few minutes before you. Your prime minister said, ‘Look at this fool, Prasannachandra. He would have been a great king if he hadn’t become hypnotized by this Mahavira. And now standing naked in this heat, wasting his life. He used to be a beautiful man. Now look at his body. He is an utter fool because he has trusted his prime minister and has given the whole kingdom to him till his children are grown up enough to take possession of it – and the prime minister is a cheat. By the time the children are grown up, there will be nothing left in the treasury.’
“Hearing this, Prasannachandra forgot completely that he had become a monk – completely. He was so shocked, and became so angry, that he said inside his heart, ‘I am still alive.’ And his hand, just out of old habit went to his sword – which was not there. He pulled the sword out of the sheath and said, ‘I will go and kill this man immediately.’ And in his imagination he cut off the head of the prime minister.
“When you touched his feet,” Mahavira said, “he had just killed the prime minister. Hence, I told you that in that moment if he had died he would have gone to the seventh hell. He was in a murderous attitude. Now, things have changed. When he put his sword back in the sheath, he recognized, ‘What am I doing? Where is the sword and where is the sheath? What have I done? Killed my prime minister in my imagination! It is as much a crime as actually killing a person.’
Mahavira says, “Whether you think of killing or you kill, it makes no difference; it is the same, psychologically it is the same. ‘What have I done? When I have renounced, I have renounced! Who am I to interfere now? If he cheats that is his business; if he breaks the trust, he will suffer for it. But who am I to punish him? I am finished with all this. And who are my children and what is my kingdom?’
“A great understanding came to him. He became quiet, silent, serene, detached. Right now if he dies, he is in such a beautiful space that he will be born in the seventh heaven.”
The question is of the mind, not of the world. You can go to the Himalayan caves, but what are you going to think about? You will think of the world. That’s why Kabir says: “Avadhu maya taji na jai – it is very difficult to drop this mind.”
Friend, please tell me what I can do about this world…
the world of the mind
…I hold to, and keep spinning out!
I gave up sewn clothes and wore a robe,
but I noticed one day the cloth was well woven.
He says, “I renounced beautiful clothes and wore a robe, but then one day I saw that even this robe is well woven – my mind has played a trick. I am still as much concerned about my clothes as before. I still want to look beautiful, I still want to look special, I still want to look like somebody. The mind has played a trick with me. I am the same man. I have dropped those beautiful clothes and now I am wearing a single robe, but it doesn’t matter. The mind can project in the same way.”
The screen makes no difference; the film continues the same. You can use the wall as the screen and you can project the same film. You need not have a perfect screen. The film is the same, even projected on the wall. The wall may be rough, may be a poor man’s house wall, but it makes no difference. The film is the same.
Kabir says, “I recognized that the mind is still functioning in the same way. I still walk in such a way that people should recognize that I am no ordinary man. I used to walk in my beautiful clothes. Why do people use beautiful clothes? – so that they look special. Now I am wearing a robe, but still, deep down, the same desire persists.”
The original is:
Girah taj ke bastar band,
bastar taj ke feri.
I have left the house, I have moved to the cave, with only a small bag. One day, I recognize that the cave has become the home, the cave has become the house. The small possession that I brought with me can function perfectly well for my possessiveness. My possessiveness remains the same. Now if someone enters the cave, I am going to say, “Get out! This is my cave.”
You can go and see this. Go to the Himalayas, enter some cave and some yogi will be sitting there. He will say, “Get out! What are you doing here? This is my cave. I have lived here for thirty years. If you want to live in a cave, find your own.”
Now what is the difference? – “my house” or “my cave.” The question is of “my” and “mine.” So Kabir says, “I left the house with a small bag, went to the cave, but I found it was the same – because I am the same. So I left the cave and I left that small possession and became a wanderer, but nothing changes. Now I feel great that I am a wanderer, not an ordinary monk who lives in the shelter and safety of a cave. I live in insecurity – look. This is how one should live. I am a wanderer with no security, no safety. Now this wandering has become a prop to my ego.” Girah taj ke bastar bandha,bastar taj ke feri. Now I have become a vagabond, but great pride has arisen in me.
So I bought some burlap, but I still
throw it elegantly over my left shoulder.
Seeing that the robe was well woven, I purchased coarse canvas and made a shawl out of it: …but still I throw it elegantly over my left shoulder. The same mind. You can stand naked in the sun – it doesn’t matter. It will be the same mind. How is one going to drop the mind? It comes from the backdoor and finds new ways to enter back into you.
I pulled back my sexual longings
and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.
This is of tremendous importance to understand. Kabir has looked deep in the human mind and its workings, its subtle cunning ways. He has found exactly the whole process of inner alchemy. If you repress, this is how things happen. I pulled back my sexual longings and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.
If you repress sex you will become angry; the whole energy that was becoming sex will become anger. It is better to be sexual than to be angry. In sex at least there is something of love; in anger there is only pure violence and nothing else. If sex is repressed, the person becomes violent – either to others, or to himself. These are the two possibilities: either he will become a sadist and will torture others, or he will become a masochist and will torture himself. But torture he will.
Do you know that down the ages, soldiers have not been allowed to have sexual relationships? Why? – because if soldiers are allowed to have sexual relationships, they don’t gather enough anger in them, enough violence in them. Their sex becomes a release, they become soft and a soft person cannot fight. Starve the soldier of sex and he is bound to fight better. In fact, his violence will be a substitute for his sexuality.
Sigmund Freud is again right when he says that all our weapons are nothing but phallic symbols. The sword, the knife, the bayonet, are nothing but phallic symbols. The soldier hasn’t been allowed to enter someone’s body, some woman’s body. Now he is going crazy to enter; now he can do anything. A great perverted desire has entered his being now. Repressed sex – he would like to enter someone’s body through a bayonet, through a sword.
Down the ages, the soldier was forced to repress his sexual desires.
In this century we have seen one thing happening. American soldiers are the most well-equipped soldiers in the world – scientifically, technologically, they are the most well-equipped soldiers, but they proved weaker than any other soldier. For years on end in Vietnam, a poor country, they tried and had to accept defeat. Why? – for the first time in history, the American soldier is sexually satisfied. That is the problem.
He is the first soldier in history who is sexually satisfied, who is not starved sexually. He cannot win. A poor country like Vietnam, a small country like Vietnam – it is a miracle. If you don’t understand the psychology, it is a miracle. With all the technology, with all the modern science, with all the power – and the American soldier couldn’t do anything.
But this is not new; this is an ancient truth. The whole history of India proves it. India is a big country, one of the biggest, next only to China, it is the second biggest country in the world. But India was conquered many times by small countries. Turks, Mongols, Greeks – anyone came and this big country was immediately defeated, conquered. What was the reason? And those people who had come to conquer were poor people, starving.
My own analysis of Indian history is that in the past India was not sexually repressed. Those were the days when temples like Khajuraho, Konarak, Puri, were built – India was not sexually repressed. In spite of the few so-called mahatmas, the greater part of the country was sexually satisfied; there was a softness, a loving quality, a grace. It was difficult for India to fight. For what? Just think of yourself; if you want to fight, you will have to starve yourself sexually for a few days. You can ask Mohammed Ali and other boxers; before they fight they have to become celibate for a few days. That’s a must. You can ask the Olympic competitors; before they participate in Olympic competitions they have to starve themselves sexually for a few days. It gives a thrust, it gives great violence and it makes you capable of fighting. You run faster, you attack faster because the energy is boiling within. Hence the soldier has been repressed.
Just allow all the armies of the world to be sexually satisfied and there will be peace. Just allow people sexual satisfaction and there will be less Hindu-Mohammedan riots, less Christian and Mohammedan crusades. All that nonsense will disappear. If love spreads, war will disappear – both cannot exist together.
Kabir is exactly right. He says: I pulled back my sexual longings and now I discover that I’m angry a lot. He is a great observer, a very minute observer. This is what awareness is. He is watching. He represses his sexual desire and watches – “Now what is happening inside?” Soon he finds that he becomes more angry, for no reason at all; just angry, irritated, ready to fight with anyone, any excuse will do.
Remember, sex can be transformed because it is a natural energy. Anger is not so natural, one step removed from nature. Now it will be difficult to change anger. First anger will have to be changed into sex, only then can anything be done. That’s what my work here is and that’s what I am being condemned for all over the world.
I am trying to change your anger into sex – that has to be done first. That is the way of inner change. First, all your perversions have to disappear and you have to become a natural human being. You have to become a natural animal, to be exact. Only then can you become divine. The animal can be transformed into the divine, but your animal is also very perverted, your animal is not sane – your animal has become insane. First the insanity has to be transformed, changed. Change anger.
That’s why I send people first to encounter groups and then to Tantra. First they have to go in some type of encounter group phenomenon, some process where their anger can be expressed, relaxed. Only then can they move in some process of Tantra, in some inner alchemy that can use sexual energy as a vehicle.
But people who are angry will not understand it. Anger does not allow understanding. Now, if you want to become a politician, you have to repress your sex; otherwise you will not be able to compete, you will not be able to reach New Delhi – impossible. It is not an accident that Morarji Desai has reached there – fifty years of sexual repression is bound to help him become the prime minister of the country. So much rage. It is difficult to compete with such people. They go madly into competition. They don’t look sideways, they simply go ahead and don’t care what happens. By fair or foul means, but they have to reach the top.
Politicians can succeed only if they are sexually repressed people. Adolf Hitler was sexually repressed, very repressed. Had he been in deep love with a single woman there would have been no Second World War. Had he loved a single human being deeply, the whole history of humanity would have been different. But he was very sexually suppressed.
He was as big a mahatma as Morarji Desai – in fact, a little bigger. You will be surprised to know that he was a vegetarian. To find a vegetarian in Germany is difficult, but he was a vegetarian. He was not a smoker and was against drinking any kind of intoxicating beverages. He used to go early to bed and would get up early in the morning. He avoided all kinds of loving relationships. What to say about love? He had not even a single friend. There was not a single man who could call him friend. He never allowed that much closeness. He was afraid, continuously afraid of his sexuality.
This man became the cause of the greatest war the world has known. My own feeling is that had he smoked a little bit, had he become drunk once in a while, had he fallen in love with a woman, the whole history of humanity would have been different. Then he would have been soft and would have been more human, more accepting of his own limitations; hence more accepting of others’ limitations. He would have been more humane.
Says Kabir:
I pulled back my sexual longings
and now I discover that I’m angry a lot.
I gave up rage and now I notice
that I am greedy all day.
So he repressed his anger – that’s what one will logically do. You repress sex, anger bubbles up; you repress anger. But he is a close observer, a very minute observer. He says, “The moment I repressed my anger I became greedy.”
This too is proved. If you watch human history you will find a thousand and one proofs for it. For example, in India, Mahavira taught nonviolence and the result has been that all the followers of Mahavira became the most greedy people in the world. They are the Jews of India. The Jainas are the Jews of India. Why did they become so greedy?
Mahavira taught them to be nonviolent. Obviously, they started repressing anger; that is the only way that seems possible to the stupid mind. Repress anger. Don’t be violent. They tried really hard, in every possible way they tried not to be violent. They even stopped agriculture because it is a kind of violence. You have to pull up the plants and cut the crop and that is violence because plants have life. So Jainas stopped agriculture completely.
Now, they cannot go to the army, they cannot be kshatriyas – they cannot become warriors – because of their ideology of nonviolence and they cannot even be agriculturists, gardeners; that is impossible. They would not like to become sudras – the untouchables – who clean the roads, the sweepers and the cobblers because that is too humiliating. And brahmins won’t allow them to function as brahmins – brahmins are very jealous about that. They have been in power for centuries and they don’t allow anyone. No one can become a brahmin; one can only be a brahmin by birth. You may become a great learned man – that doesn’t matter – but you can’t be a brahmin. There is no way of becoming a brahmin. You have to be born one only. You have to be very careful when you choose your parents; that is the only opportunity to become a brahmin.
So Jainas could not be brahmins, would not like to become sudras, were not able to become warriors. Then what was left for them? Only business. They became business people. All their repressed anger became their greed. They became great money maniacs. Their number is very small. In India their number is so small, not more than thirty lakhs. In a country of sixty crores, thirty lakhs is nothing. But they possess more money than anyone else. You will not find a Jaina beggar anywhere. They are all rich people.
Mahavira wanted them to be nonviolent and what really happened was totally different. They became greedy. Repress your anger and you will be greedy.
I gave up rage and now I notice
that I am greedy all day.
I worked hard at dissolving the greed
and now I am proud of myself.
So he repressed his greed and the ultimate result is that he has become a great egoist, he finds himself being very proud. “Look! I have repressed sex, repressed anger, repressed greed. I have done this, I have done that. I have done impossible things.” Now a great “I” arises, the ego becomes strengthened.
That’s why you will find the most crystallized egos in monks and nuns. You will not find such crystallized egos anywhere else. The more a person renounces, the more he represses, the more egoistic he becomes. Indians are very egoistic and the reason? – they have all tried in some way or other to be religious. The only way seems to be repression – and repression brings the ego.
A nonrepressed person becomes a nonegoist; he cannot carry the ego. There is no prop to support it. He becomes humble, he becomes simple, he becomes ordinary, he has no claim. He knows he is nothing. This whole process that Kabir is describing is beautiful.
Repression is not the way, transformation is the way. Don’t repress anything. If sexuality is there, don’t repress it otherwise you will create a new complexity – which will be more difficult to tackle. If you repress anger, greed is even more difficult. If you repress greed, ego, pride arises, which is the most difficult thing to drop.
Move back: from pride to greed, from greed to anger, from anger to sex. If you can come to the natural, spontaneous sexuality, things will be very simple. Things will be so simple that you cannot imagine. Your energy is natural and natural energy creates no hindrance in transformation. Hence I say: from sex to superconsciousness. Not from anger, not from greed, not from ego, but from sex to superconsciousness.
The transformation can happen only if first you accept your natural being. Whatever is natural is good. Yes, more is possible, but more will be possible only if you accept your nature with totality. If you welcome it, if you have no guilt about it. To be guilty, to feel guilty, is to be irreligious. In the past you have been told just the opposite. Feel guilty and you are religious. I say to you: feel guilty and you will never be religious. Drop all guilt.
You are whatever the divine has made you. You are whatever existence has made you. Sex is not your creation; it is a gift of existence. Something tremendously valuable is hidden in it – it is just a shell of your samadhi. If the seed is broken, the shell is broken, the flower will bloom, but not by repression. You will have to learn inner gardening, you will have to become a gardener. You will have to learn how to use dirty fertilizers, manure, and transform manure into roses.
Religion is the most delicate art.
Kabir says:
When the mind wants to break its link with the world,
it still holds on to one thing.
The ultimate problem is that you can leave one thing, but you cling to another. You leave that and you cling to another. You go on changing things, but the clinging remains. The clinging has to disappear. How can the clinging disappear? – only by understanding, awareness, meditation; not by doing anything about it. If you do, you will create a new clinging.
An ancient story…
A man was very afraid of ghosts and the problem was more troublesome because he had to pass through a cemetery every day while going to work and returning home. Sometimes, if he had to come at night – some overtime or something and he was delayed – it was really a problem to pass through the cemetery. It was only a three, four minute walk, but it was almost a death to him.
He went to a fakir and said, “Do something. I have heard you do miracles. I don’t ask much, just a simple thing. Give me somehow some protection so that I can pass through the cemetery without fear.”
The fakir replied, “This is so simple, there is no problem. Take this locket and keep it always with you. It will protect you from ghosts. No ghost will ever trouble you.”
He tried and no ghost ever troubled him. In fact, there are no ghosts, it was only his fear. With the locket in hand, he went through the cemetery, from this side to that, from that side to this. He tried at different times, even in the middle of the night – and it worked. He said, “This locket is really powerful. This man is a miracle man.”
The whole miracle was that there were no ghosts. There are no ghosts anywhere. But now this idea that he had a protection helped him.
But a new problem arose. He started becoming afraid that someone might steal it, or someday he might forget it somewhere, or he might put it outside while taking a bath and ghosts might come there. So he had to carry it everywhere and it became an obsession. His wife would say, “It looks embarrassing. People ask me, ‘Why does your husband go on carrying this locket in his hand, this stupid locket? What is the matter with him? He never leaves it.’” Even at night when he went to sleep, he would keep it in his hand. Even once or twice in the night he would wake up to see whether the locket was in his hand or not because it might have fallen in his sleep and ghosts might jump on his chest, waiting to take revenge.
Now one problem is solved, another problem has arisen and far more complicated because the ghosts used to torture him only once in a while when he was late or he had to pass through the cemetery. In twenty-four hours, just for one or two minutes the problem was there. Now the locket was a twenty-four hour problem. “If it is lost, if someone takes it away, if I forget it somewhere…” Even in his sleep it was difficult for him to sleep totally. He had to keep a little alert. He started becoming ill because his sleep was not good and he was so constantly afraid.
He went to another fakir who said, “I will give you another thing. Keep this box. The locket is creating trouble and this box is far more powerful. You can even keep it six feet away from you and its power works.”
He said, “This is far better. At least I can go in my bathroom and leave it outside.”
Now a new problem arose. He always used to keep the locket in his hand. Now taking his bath inside and the box was outside. “If children, just for fun, take it away or something happens?” Now it was even more difficult; that distance of six feet.
The story is significant. This is not the way to drop the ghosts. You will have to cling to something or other. Ghosts are not to be dropped; your eyes have to be opened so that you can see that there are no ghosts at all. The problem disappears. The problem is not solved, but dissolved. When the mind wants to break its link with the world, it still holds on to one thing.
Unless you drop all clinging – all clinging. I say, unless you are ready to be nothing, empty, no one, with no protection, with no security, no safety; unless you are ready to be in that kind of space… Which will look like death in the beginning. It is a kind of death. The old dies, but then the new arises. The new can arise only when the old is gone. The old has to cease for the new to be. Only when all clinging disappears – you are not clinging even to the name of God, you are not clinging even to the master, you are not clinging to the scripture, you are simply in a state of nonclinging – then suddenly from your own inner source a great light wells up, a great bliss wells up. You are transformed.
The mind is not dropped. It is a ghost. If you try methods to drop it, you will cling to the methods. Those methods will torture you. You will remain always in bondage.
Kabir says: Listen my friend,
there are very few that find the path!
A few people remain indulgent, remain animals; a few people start repressing the animal, become obsessed with repressions, perversions. Only rarely does it happen that a person is neither indulgent, nor repressive. Only when a person is neither does he find the secret key to the door of the divine.
The original is:
Man bairagi maya tyagi,
shabd men surat samai.
Kabir says, “I have become a sannyasin, a renunciate, I have dropped the world, but that doesn’t matter. Now I cling to God, now God has become my world. Man bairagi maya tyagi, shabd men surat samai. Now the name of God – shabd – has become my treasure, now I cling to it. Now the idea of God has become the center of my clinging.”
Kahain kabir suno bhai sadho,
yah gam birle pai.
There are very few people who have found the secret path. Out of a hundred, ninety remain indulgent in the animal and they never move beyond the animal. Out of the remaining ten, nine become repressive and pathological. Only one out of a hundred finds the true way. What is the true way? – the true way is that of understanding your mind, not of dropping it. The true way is: sitting silently and watching your mind – all its cunning ways, subtle ways, all its strategies – just watch, just be a witness to your mind. Slowly, slowly by witnessing it, you will understand what games it has been playing with you. You stop it from one door, it comes from another one. You stop it from that door, it makes a third door – and it goes on and on, ad nauseam.
Watch. Don’t renounce the world and don’t try to drop the mind. Just become more alert. In that alertness, suddenly the mind disappears and with the mind, the whole world disappears. When there is no mind and no world, godliness is.
Enough for today.