Cheti Sake To Cheti #2

That would be easier if I came again and stayed a day or two. But for now, there is only one thing before the country: do not be in a hurry to do anything, and spread a climate of thought. Do not rush into action right now. Until the country has a right clarity, any attempt at doing will more likely lead to mistakes and upheaval. The country does not yet have a clear mind; haste for action will drop us into a ditch and take us nowhere.

So I say: for the next five to ten years, the nation should strive to create a mind. Then action follows that mind the way a shadow follows you. Action in itself is not the main issue. Once the country’s mind is clear, what to do and how to do it both become easy. The real difficulty is: who is the doer, what is his quality? With the mind we presently have, we can keep shouting “What should we do? How should we do it?”—it will make no difference.

My effort is: how to bring about a mental revolution. And we should not worry just now about what form that mental revolution will take. If we hurry with that, it won’t happen. For now, the whole country should think with a very free mind. And we should be able to compel the country to think—to create arrangements that put pressure from all sides so that people have to think.

For example, there are youth organizations. No speaker should be able to go to a village without being compelled by you to think thoroughly. When anyone comes to speak, there should be a thousand questions. It should be clear to the nation that we are no longer willing to listen to empty talk. If you want to speak, come after thinking deeply, and come with answers point by point—otherwise we will not listen.

Right now, anyone says anything and everyone sits listening. If Indian youth do just this much—shut down the country’s empty talkers, force every speaker to think, and turn every gathering into a discussion—then for one or two years let nothing in the country remain unquestioned. Let there be questions about everything, doubts about everything. Let not a single thing proceed without having been doubted and contended with. If the national mind absorbs just this in two years, we will reach very clear results; there will be no difficulty.

But that is exactly what is not happening. There is no such thing as reflection. And those we call “thinkers” keep repeating stale clichés—there is not an ounce of thinking in it. And all the youth keep listening—astonishingly, without protest. Individually some may oppose or think, but there is no thinking on the collective plane.

How to create a dialogue across the whole nation!

There are thousands of things that have gone unquestioned for thousands of years—no one even raises a question about them. Often, if a question isn’t raised, we don’t even know it could be raised. Aristotle wrote in his book that women have fewer teeth than men—Aristotle, a man of such intelligence! And for a thousand years no one questioned it. Such a simple thing: a woman’s teeth can be counted. But since for thousands of years before Aristotle this notion prevailed in Greece, it was simply accepted. Neither any woman nor any man bothered about it. Aristotle himself had two wives—not just one; he could have sat either down and counted. But it simply never occurred as a question.

A thousand years later, when someone first counted a woman’s teeth and said, “This is all wrong—women have as many teeth as men,” no one was willing to accept it. “How can this be? If they were equal all along, someone would have counted! Someone would have asked!”

In this country there are thousands of such unasked, inherited notions. We are born hearing them; they seep into our blood. We die still hearing them. We never ask. The nation has stopped asking.

My entire effort now is to create questioning and dialogue across the country—on every issue from the smallest to the largest. We should not be willing to believe anything blindly. It will be painful at first, because everything will look disorderly. Whatever felt settled will be shaken. But it is necessary to shake it. From this quest, this reflection, this air of inquiry, a new mind will be born—a mind that thinks. And once that mind is there, moving it into action will not be difficult. Once it is clear what to do and how to do it, action follows—but that clarity will belong to a mind that asks, thinks, and searches. We neither think, nor ask, nor search.

So I am not emphasizing detailed work-plans right now. My emphasis is to shake you somehow and force you to think. And even here I am not much concerned with steering your thinking in a particular direction. The moment I worry about leading you in a direction, I no longer want you to think fully; I only want you to think what I want. Then bondage begins. If I carry an idea—“I must lead everyone this way”—I too would not want you to think. I would want you to think just enough to agree with me, and not so much that you begin to doubt me.

That is why ideologists never bring real thinking to life. Those who belong to an “ism” also never accelerate thought. Their inner insistence is: think only so much that you agree with me; do not think beyond that—you might start doubting me.

So I say: I have no ism, no doctrine, no ideology. My sole concern is: how to generate thought. I have no desire to create an ideology. Youth and youth organizations can be very useful in this. There should be intense discussion across the nation.

Recently I spoke on sex. I received thousands of letters. They said: whether we agree with you or not, we thank you for opening discussion on this subject. But even that discussion does not run as strongly as it should. Those who wish to write against me do so loudly; on my side there are hundreds of thoughtful people who write nothing! They think, “Alright, we liked it; that’s that.” That won’t do. I am not asking you to write in my favor; I am asking that people write from all sides. Let debates be so vigorous that one single issue becomes the churning of the entire nation. That is not happening. No issue becomes the nation’s churning.

We do not want to raise issues; we are afraid—because who knows what the consequences of such debates might be. India’s leaders absolutely do not want any controversy, any reflection, any thinking. Nor do India’s religious gurus. No vested interest in India wants questioning to begin—not the father, not the schoolteacher, not the vice-chancellor—no one. All vested interests want the status quo to continue. And it can continue only if you do not ask anything and keep silently accepting. That is their effort—and it has become deadly.

I say: let it be as Socrates made it in Greece and Athens—questioning in every lane and alley. He made it hard for people to walk the streets: if you saw Socrates, you would take another lane, because if he caught you, he would ask something, a crowd would gather, and he would put you in a spot where you could give no answer. Athens filled with anger at that man.

Today the country needs hundreds of Socrateses. Let them do nothing else—let them raise questioning in every village, and create such a situation that no one can stand with undoubted certainty and declare, “This is the truth,” or say, “We know; you must believe.”

From this, a totally new leadership will arise. The old leadership cannot be changed otherwise. If you try to replace old leaders, you end up using their very tricks. Then, in the process of replacing them, you become what you opposed.

That is what is happening now: if some party replaces the Congress leadership, it uses all the tactics Congress used. In replacing them, it assumes the same form—often worse, because it must use even more tactics. If Congress inflames Hindu versus Muslim, or mobilizes Bhangi and Chamar for votes—uses casteism—then the opposition uses the same. If they distribute money, the opposition distributes money. In the end, fighting them, you become the same.

This is happening in every field: those who fight to replace the old leadership finally become exactly that.

Therefore I say: do not bother about replacing old leaders or old systems. Challenge directly the mind that sustains old systems and old leaders; shake its roots. If a ten to fifteen-year period of intense anarchy arises in the nation’s psyche, then in that upheaval those who rise to the top will be of a wholly different kind. From them, action will also come, work will happen. Otherwise, it will not.

(The recording of the question is not clear.)
Sarojini-ji, you may not realize that in Russia, before Lenin and Trotsky, a powerful movement of nihilists arose. The nihilist, by definition, is a kind of anarchist: “We accept neither this nor that; we accept nothing. We do not believe in anything.” From 1900 onward, for fifteen or twenty years, their intense movement loosened the entire country’s psyche from its old roots. Then a new leadership arose—the groundwork for it had been laid by the nihilists.

No socialist or communist movement can succeed in India because India has had no nihilist-like movement to shake its old roots. Only when the old roots shake does the tree demand new roots; otherwise it does not even ask. That is why, in my understanding, even the socialist here uses thoroughly capitalist methods. Whatever anyone does here, they do what is already being done—and nothing is solved.

So for now I do not worry about what to do or how to do it. I worry about how to completely unsettle the nation’s psyche. How to create doubt about every issue. How to make us ask again, about every question: “Alright, the old solutions are not solutions—now what is the solution?” I am not offering solutions right now. I am saying: if questioning arises before the nation, then out of that very reflection the solution-finders will come, the givers of new thought will come, and new leadership—new leaders in religion, society, and politics—will arise on all fronts. And if we hurry…

We never notice why we hurry. People ask me daily: “You say these things—we understand—but what should we do? Tell us your complete plan so we can do it.” Why are they in such a hurry? Because when I shake them, their old plan and vision are shaken; they want a new plan quickly to hold on to. But the mind that wants to grab will remain the same. I say: do not rush to grab; stay shaken for a while. Do not worry about “what new thing will be” or “what shall we do.” Be willing to think. You do get my point, don’t you?

So for now my stance is in a sense negative. I trust that positivity will arise from it, but I do not worry about that. For ten to fifteen years the country needs to be powerfully shaken from all sides. We need friends who can strike everywhere and create, in village after village, a condition in which the whole village becomes doubtful that anything remains settled. What we had taken as settled is not settled. What we took as truth is not truth. The book we called a scripture is not a scripture. The person we called a guru is not a guru. From this reflection everything else will arise by itself.

In the West, the science that blossomed over two or three centuries stands behind the work of a few people who were not scientists at all. In the French Revolution, the Encyclopedists created a great deal of doubt about everything—they became, in a fundamental way, the progenitors. Once doubt arose, many began to doubt. And when doubt arises, it spreads to many things. Once doubt arose in one domain…

The Church arrested Galileo and told him—privately—the Church officials said to him: “What you say may even be right, but we cannot accept it, because if even one statement in the Bible is wrong, people will begin to doubt the rest. Then it will be hard to control.” They dragged the old man into court and forced him to write a confession.

He wrote it. But what he wrote is astonishing: “You say that the sun circles the earth; I accept it, and I apologize for having said that the earth circles the sun. But my apology changes nothing—the earth circles the sun. I can do nothing about that; it is not in my power. It is not my fault that the earth moves. I have apologized for what I said—but the earth goes around the sun, and the sun does not go around the earth.”

Galileo’s statement raised so many doubts that the whole edifice shook. One man brought the Biblical building crashing from bottom to top. When people realized one doubt is possible, a second is possible too.

India’s difficulty is this: you will be amazed to know that for three thousand years Indian youth have not raised a single doubt about the Gita! Will this country not die then? Not a single doubt about the Vedas. Not a single suspicion about Mahavira or Buddha—“this man could also be wrong here.” Isn’t it astonishing? In a three-thousand-year-old culture, we cannot raise even one doubt?

Only two meanings are possible: either they were omniscient, and said everything correctly; or we have forgotten that raising a question is an art—and if you do not raise it, trouble follows. Until Indian youth raise doubts about the Gita, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira, Rama, and Gandhi…

And I tell you: even if you raise just one doubt about each, the foundation will fall. Just one each! You need not doubt everything. You raise one; someone else will raise another. In ten years you will see thousands of doubts that never arose before. It only needs a beginning. Once it is clear that Krishna erred at one place, it becomes clear he could err elsewhere too. No one has taken a contract to always be right.

This is my effort for now. And a single person cannot do much else. I do not believe in organization, because organizations obstruct thinking. I do not believe in sects, because sects inhibit. My trust is in the individual’s reflection, courage, and daring. How to awaken that—that is my effort. From that awakening, some will feel there is something worth doing; they will do it; and if they ask me, I am always ready to say whatever occurs to me.

But let those people first appear—then it is right to say something. Otherwise a new faction will arise. If I give a plan—“Do this”—a small class of believers in me will form, and they will start telling me, “Now please stop with this doubt and skepticism—our whole work gets disturbed.”

So I do not go there at all. For now I strive to have you even doubt me—completely. Let no one in India be beyond doubt; let all persons and all ideas be subject to doubt—so we can think every day and move forward day by day.

I will come again some time for two or three days—make some arrangements so we can talk with real force on all these issues.