Jin Khoja Tin Paiyan #9

The first thing is this: it is true that if food is not chewed, the stomach will become strong. The work that the mouth is doing will then be done by the stomach. But the consequences will be very harmful.

First, understand that the mouth is a part of the stomach. It is not something separate from the stomach; it is the beginning of the stomach. The mouth and the stomach are not two different things; the mouth is where the stomach begins. So the dervish with whom Gurdjieff spoke did not really know where the stomach starts. Where does the stomach begin? It begins at the mouth. And if you do not let the mouth do its work—its work is necessary and indispensable—if you drop it, then the stomach will have to take over that work. But in doing so there will be a double loss.

The inner links between the mouth and the brain
One loss will be this: the body’s entire functioning is divided. There is a kind of division of labor within the body. If we break this division of labor and start making one organ do extra work, that organ may become powerful, but the organ whose work we stop will become utterly weak. If the stomach becomes very strong, you may become a powerful animal; but if the mouth becomes weak, you will no longer remain human. Because the weakness of the mouth has very dangerous consequences. The mouth has deep, inner connections with our brain, just as it has with the stomach. The strength of our brain’s nerves depends, in part, on the strength and vitality of the mouth.

For example, if a person is mute and cannot speak, many areas of his brain will remain useless forever. A blind person can become very intelligent. A mute person becomes an idiot; his intelligence does not develop—because many connections of the brain are with the mouth. And with the movement of the mouth, the movement of the stomach begins. If you do not move the mouth, even the initiation of the stomach’s functioning becomes very difficult. And our mouth has certain faculties which the stomach does not have.

And here is an even more curious point: when we divide much of the stomach’s work—some done by the mouth, some by the stomach—our energy cannot remain concentrated in the stomach; it begins to be freed from it. That is why as soon as you eat, drowsiness sets in: the stomach summons the power that was in your brain into itself. It says, “Now put that to work too; food is fundamental to life. Thinking and so on are secondary; we will attend to them later—first let the stomach digest.” So the moment you eat, the mind wants to sleep. The reason is that the energy has been called back from the brain.

The more work the stomach has, the weaker the brain becomes, because the stomach will need that much more energy, and it will draw it from the non‑essential parts of life. The brain is a luxurious organ; animals manage without it. It is not indispensable for being alive. But the stomach is indispensable; without it nothing can function—no creature, not even a tree, can do without it. It is a central essential element.

Our brain and such get power only when energy is spared from the stomach. If it gets tied up in the stomach, it does not reach the brain. That is why among poor peoples the brain slowly becomes depleted, it does not develop—because all their energy goes into the stomach. Nothing is left from the stomach to go anywhere else, to expand into other parts of the body.

The development of the brain through refined food
So the less work we leave for the stomach, the more the brain develops. Hence, the more refined the food—the less effort the stomach must expend to digest it—the more the brain grows. The day we can take synthetic food—just a pill, and you are done—that day the brain will receive more energy than it ever has, and the consequences of that energy will be immeasurable.

In truth, the aim is not to increase the stomach’s work but to reduce it day by day. If you observe, the farther down you go in the animal world, the more the stomach has to work. A buffalo chews and eats almost all day long; its stomach is never done. So you do not find the glimmer of a brain there. The more human beings free energy from the stomach, the more they will develop. Properly understood, the day man is free of the stomach, he will be free of animality. After that there will be no meaning to being an animal. So do not increase the stomach’s work; reduce it continually.

This is precisely the purpose of fasting: if the stomach’s work stops completely for a while, the brain receives the full charge of energy. In fasting there is a strong surge of power in the brain. Eat heavily and the brain’s power flows immediately into the stomach; then the brain simply cannot function. So keep reducing the stomach’s work. Let the mouth share the load. The more you chew, the better—chew so well that nothing is left for the stomach to do; that is even more beneficial. And here is the delightful thing—worth noticing: all of human development is a development away from the stomach. We are steadily trying to become free of it, seeking the right kind of food so the trouble of digestion is minimized.

So, for one, I would not testify to that.

Now another point: our mouth is linked in two directions—on one side to the stomach, on the other to the brain. The mouth lies between the two. If you look at all of human development, it is, rightly understood, the development of the mouth. The whole rest of the body is working for this little head. Whether it is our love or our intelligence or our talent, deep down they are closely related to the mouth—how we use it, how much we use it, how strong it is. The stronger it is, the more energy will begin to move upward rather than downward. So it should be used as much as possible.

And if one has chewed properly, one’s teeth will not fall. If one has chewed properly, what that dervish says will never happen. If someone chews properly all his life, the teeth will simply not fall; he will go to his last breath with the very teeth he came with—perhaps even stronger, because they will have worked so well. And the stronger the mouth, the stronger the stomach—because the mouth is the beginning of the stomach. The mouth is the doorway to the stomach; it is not something separate. To treat it as separate is a mistake. And as for bones—as he says, swallow the bone whole—yes, you can gulp them down, and the stomach will attempt to handle them, but that effort will be inhuman. Then the stomach will need so much energy that you will do nothing else—having digested the bone will be achievement enough—and you will become stomach‑centered; your personality will revolve around the belly.

Life’s important tasks—in the dark
There is another point: the more unconscious the stomach’s functioning is, the better. The less you notice it, the smoother it will work. If you become aware of your stomach, you will become ill. In our personality there are things that should not be in consciousness; if they come into consciousness, you suffer loss. The lighter the stomach’s task, the more unconscious it remains. You will not even notice it. And the less you notice your stomach, the more healthy and well‑being you feel. Properly seen, your sense of illness begins with awareness of the belly. The moment you realize there is a stomach in the body, you are sick. If you do not notice it, you are healthy. The stomach’s work belongs outside your knowing. There is no need to bring it into knowledge. But if you load the stomach heavily, it will immediately intrude into your awareness, because it has been overburdened—and once the stomach is in awareness, you are ill round the clock.

Gurdjieff did have a sense for certain very wondrous things, but there was a danger with him: he drew from many traditions; in many ways he was a mixed bag, and he could never truly reconcile them. When a dervish said this, it appealed to him. Had he also heard what I am saying, that too might have appealed. But fitting the two together becomes very difficult.

The risk of harm from pranayama and artificial breathing
Another point he raises is about pranayama and artificial breathing; there, too, some things are true. In fact, there is no falsehood that does not contain some truth; there simply isn’t. And it is precisely the truth in it that has effect, while the untruth slips in along with it and we never notice what has happened. There is much truth here: as far as possible one should not obstruct life’s spontaneous order. There is the danger of disturbance. So, as far as you can, do not interfere with the natural functioning—your breathing, your getting up, sitting, walking. Interference triggers changes.

Remember: harm is a change and benefit is a change—both are changes. If you want to remain just as you are, then no tampering is appropriate. But if you want anything to shift—any transformation—then you must accept the risk of harm. That risk is there: if you give a new order to your breathing, your whole personality will be altered. If you are content with your personality, fine. But if you feel it is not adequate, then changes will have to be made.

Transformation of personality through breath change
And then breath is the most precious place to begin. The moment you change the breath, many things inside you will begin to break and many new things will be formed. After thousands of experiments it has become almost certain which changes of breath create which effects—what will be formed, what will dissolve.

Some of this is in everyone’s experience. When you are angry, your breathing changes; it is not as it was. When you are in deep silence, your breathing changes; it is not as it was. If you know what the breath is like in silence, and you can breathe that way, silence will arise. The two are interconnected. When the mind is lustful, breathing changes. If the mind is lustful and you do not allow the breath to change, you will immediately find the lust dissolves; it cannot persist. The body’s mechanisms require harmony among all parts; only then can something happen. If anger is surging and at that very moment you begin to breathe slowly, anger cannot persist, because the breath will give it no foothold.

Scientific laws of breath and mind
So changes in breath are very valuable. Through them, the mind begins to change. And now it is clear, very scientifically clear: what rhythm of breath gives what rhythm to the mind. Then there is no danger. The danger was for those who did the first experiments; and danger exists today for anyone who pioneers in any direction of life. But when the experiments are established, they are very scientific. It is impossible for someone to keep the breath tranquil and yet be angry. The two cannot happen together. Conversely, if you begin to breathe just as you do in anger, in a little while you will find anger has arisen. Pranayama has discovered many means for transforming consciousness.

Natural and unnatural breath
Another thing: what we call “artificial” breathing and what we call “natural” breathing—this distance too needs understanding. What you call natural is not natural either; it is an artificial pattern you have become habituated to—doing it for so long, since childhood, that it feels natural. You do not know what natural breathing is. All day you breathe one way; at night you breathe another way. The daytime breathing was artificial; at night the natural begins—which lies outside your habit.

So the process of breathing at night is more natural than in the day. By day we have imposed patterns on our breath, for many reasons. Notice when you walk in a crowd and when you sit alone—you will find your breath changes. In a crowd you feel tense; with people all around, your breath becomes short, returning quickly from the top; it will not go fully deep. When you are at ease, alone, it will go deep. So when you sleep at night, it goes fully deep—deeper than you ever let it go in the day, sometimes so deep it even becomes audible.

Breathing from the belly is a sign of innocence
What we call natural is not natural; it is merely conditioned and artificial. That is why children breathe differently. Lay a child down and you will see the belly move; when you breathe, your chest moves.

The child breathes naturally. If you breathe as a child breathes, the same inner states that are in the child will begin to arise in you—innocence will begin to return. Or, if you become innocent, your breathing will begin from the belly.

That is why in Japan and China the statues of Buddha are made differently from Indian ones. In India Buddha’s belly is small; in Japan and China it is large, the chest small. To us it looks absurd, out of proportion. But that is the accurate symbol. Because a man as peaceful as Buddha breathes from the belly. One so innocent cannot breathe from the chest; hence the belly grows. That big belly is a symbol.

So once this is clear in our minds, we should move toward natural breathing. Our breathing is artificial. That dervish is mistaken when he says, “Don’t do artificial breathing.” We are already doing artificial breathing. As our understanding grows, we will take steps toward natural breathing. And the more natural the breathing becomes, the more the highest possibilities of life will begin to manifest from within us.

It is also worth understanding that sometimes, quite abruptly, doing an unnatural kind of breathing can bring great benefits. And one thing is clear: where there are great benefits, there are great harms too. A shopkeeper’s gains and losses go together. A gambler has as many losses as gains—the ratio remains the same. So he is right that there are many dangers—but that is only half the truth. There are great possibilities there as well. It is a gambler’s throw.

If for a short while, at some moment, we breathe in a way that is absolutely unnatural—in the sense that we have not breathed like that before—then we begin to discover new states within ourselves. In those states we can go mad, and in those states we can be free—we can be deranged, and we can be liberated. And since we ourselves are creating that state, it can be stopped at any moment. Therefore there is no danger. The danger is only when you cannot stop. If you have created it, you can stop it immediately. And moment to moment you can feel which direction you are moving in. Are you moving toward bliss, toward sorrow, into danger, into peace? It becomes very clear to you at each step.

A jolt to unconsciousness through the unfamiliar
And when breathing is suddenly, swiftly changed, your entire inner state changes at once. With our fixed habit of breathing, we never come to know that we are separate from the body. A bridge has formed there—between body and soul the fixed habit of breath has made a bridge; we have become accustomed to it.

It is like this: every day you drive home; you turn the wheel and never have to think about it—you find yourself parked at your house. But if suddenly it happens that you turn the wheel right and it turns left, that the road you take every day is suddenly reversed and another road appears in its place, then you will find yourself in a state of strangeness, and for the first time you will be filled with awareness. This strangeness—anything unfamiliar—breaks your stupor instantly. In a well-ordered world where everything repeats daily, your stupor never breaks; it breaks where something sudden happens.

As I am speaking, your stupor may not break. But if suddenly you find that this table has begun to speak, not one person here will remain unconscious—there will be no way to remain unconscious. If this table were to utter a single word—even if I speak a thousand—you would all be catapulted into an awareness you have never known; because it is strange, and the strange shatters your inner set-up.

So when unique experiences of breath take you into strangeness, great new possibilities open within you; you attain awareness and you can see something. And if a person can go mad consciously, there is no experience more precious—if one can go mad consciously.

The arising of unfamiliar, unknown states in meditation experiments
What I am calling an experiment is of such a kind that within, you remain fully aware, and outwardly you look absolutely mad. If you saw anyone else doing it, you would say, “He’s crazy.” Inside, you are utterly alert, watching yourself dance. You know that if it were someone else, you’d call him mad. Now you can call yourself mad. Yet both things are happening together—you know it is happening. Therefore you are not mad; because you are totally conscious and still the very thing is happening that happens to a madman.

In this condition, a strange moment arrives within you when you experience yourself as separate from your body. You don’t make it happen—it happens. Suddenly you find the whole coordination has snapped. Where yesterday the way was connected, it isn’t; where your bridge used to join, it doesn’t; where the wheel used to turn, it no longer turns. Everything is out of joint. The everyday relevance is broken; something else is going on. You don’t intend to move your hand—and it moves. You don’t wish to cry—and tears are flowing. You want the laughter to stop—but it won’t stop.

Such strange moments are tremendously wondrous for awareness. And nothing brings them as swiftly as breath; no other practice does. What might take years with other methods can happen with breath in ten minutes—because breath is so intimately linked with our very being that the slightest jolt to it reverberates everywhere.

The value of disordered breathing
So the breath-experiments were immensely valuable. But I do not insist much on the organized patterns of pranayama. The moment they become systematic, their strangeness is lost. For example, someone inhales twice through this nostril, twice through that, holds for so long, exhales for so long. He practices it. Then it becomes part of his routine—a bridge, a method.

The breath I’m talking about is utterly non-methodical, absurd. There is no question of holding or releasing. It is about instantaneously creating such a strange feeling that you get into such a tangle you cannot impose order on it. If you impose order, the mind is very clever— it will agree, “All right.” He’s pinching this nostril, opening that, exhaling this much, closing that much—then it becomes merely a new system. The strangeness, the unfamiliarity, won’t arise.

What I want is that, for a certain moment, whatever roots you have—your habits, your identifications—are all ripped out. One day you suddenly find: I have no roots, no identity, no mother, no father, no brother, this body is not mine. You reach such an absurd state where a person would be called mad. But if you come upon this state through your own intentional experiment, you will never go mad—because it is in your hands; this very second you can return.

Freedom from madness through the experiment of meditation
My understanding is: if we could have even a mad person do this breathing, there is every possibility he can be healed. If he can see, “I can produce madness,” he will also see, “I can erase it.” Right now madness descends on him; it isn’t in his hands.

So this experiment has dangers, yes—but within the danger are equal possibilities. Even a madman can be helped by it. And I am beginning to feel that this deserves to be tried even with the insane. As for those who practice it, there is a guarantee they cannot go mad. Why? Because they possess the art of producing madness. What they can switch on, they can switch off. You cannot drive such a person mad—he can never be beyond his own control, because even what is “beyond control” he has once brought within control.

The breath I speak of is totally non-rhythmic, non-methodical. And as you did it yesterday, you cannot repeat it today—because there is no method. Not even from the start of a sitting to its end can you keep it the same. It will be as it will be. The single concern is that all the conditioning of the mind loosens.

The dervish is right in saying many nuts and bolts will loosen. They must be loosened. Those tight bolts hold so rigidly that no space can open between soul and body. Only when they loosen suddenly will you know there is something else within—once joined, now separate. But since they are loosened only by the shock to the breath, the moment the shock ceases, they tighten on their own. No special effort is needed to retighten them.

Yes, if your breathing itself becomes mad—out of your control, an obsession, running twenty‑four hours that way—then the situation can turn bad. But if one practices for an hour, starts and stops the experiment, then the moment one stops, everything resets by itself. What remains is the memory of an experience: there was a time when I was separate, and now everything has set back in place. Yet even after the reset, you know: I am separate—joined, united, and still separate.

Without breath, nothing of this work is possible. The dervish is right that there are dangers. But there are always dangers; and the greater our quest for life, the greater the dangers we must be prepared to take. I only distinguish between two kinds of danger: one that befalls us unexpectedly, which we cannot avoid; and one we ourselves produce, which we can always step out of. Now the body is in great movement—crying, shouting, dancing—and in a single second, if you say “No,” it all stops. Because it is created—he has produced it. That is one thing. Another is when it happens by itself—like a man dancing in the street who has done nothing; now he cannot stop, because he doesn’t know where it came from or how it began.

My sense is that sooner or later what I am saying will be recognized as a great therapy. And, sooner or later, it will become an essential way to heal the insane. If we can teach this to every child in school, we will be ensuring that the child never goes mad; he will become immune—and he will become the master, the master of all these states.

Various Sufi methods
But the dervish he spoke with—Gurdjieff’s people—are travelers of a different path. They did not use breath. They produced strangeness by other means. Here is the difficulty: one who knows one path will immediately call the other path wrong. Yet right and wrong are always relative to a particular path.

A bullock-cart has a peg and pin in the wheel. A car-man might say, “Useless!” In a car it is useless; in a bullock-cart it is as meaningful as anything in a car is meaningful there.

So right and wrong do not carry absolute meaning. But people forget this.

Night‑vigils
A Sufi dervish approaches it differently; his devices are different. For instance, he strikes at sleep, not at breath. For a dervish, night‑vigils carry great value. He will remain awake for months. Staying awake also produces the same strangeness that breath can produce. Remain awake for a month and you reach the same mad state you can reach through breath.

So first he attacks sleep, because sleep is a very fundamental arrangement. Disturb it and peculiar phenomena begin within. But the dangers are at least as many—indeed more—because the experiment must be prolonged. A single night without sleep won’t do. One must break sleep for a month or two.

And if after two months’ sleeplessness something happens, you cannot stop it in a second. With ten minutes of breath, whatever happens can be stopped in a second. If you have not slept for two months, even if you go to bed today, those two months’ sleep won’t be completed today. In fact you may not be able to sleep at all, because you have begun from a very dangerous place.

So night‑vigils are widely used; fakirs keep vigil night after night, waiting for what happens. They start from there. Second, they also begin with dance.

The use of dance
Dance too can be used to separate from the body. But again, if the dance is learned, it won’t happen. As I said with pranayama: if it is organized, it fails. If a man learns a dance, he becomes one with the body. No—say to someone who does not know dance, “Dance!” and he suddenly begins to jump and leap—then it will happen. It happens because it is so strange you cannot identify it as “I am dancing.” You cannot make that one. So they began with dance, and with breaking sleep.

Woolen garments, fasting, beds of thorns
Other forms of deliberate disturbance: wearing wool in the blazing desert heat—moving against the body. Fasting—again against the body. Standing on thorns, lying on a bed of thorns—these too are devices to produce strangeness.

But a traveler of one path never imagines—and naturally so—that the very same state can be produced by another path as well.

The dervish knows nothing of pranayama. Yes, if he tries it, he could harm himself. He could be harmed; the dangers could be greater. Dangers like hammering a bullock‑cart pin into a car wheel—he’ll say, “This pin is dangerous; never use it—our vehicle was ruined by it.”

Now, one who has been awake all night—if he practices pranayama, he will go mad—instantly. There are reasons: the personality cannot bear both blows at once.

Asanas and pranayama harmful during long fasting
Therefore the Jains never used pranayama, because they bring about strangeness through fasting. Combine fasting with pranayama and you will be in great danger—immediate danger. So for a Jain there is no place for pranayama; he will say there is no need. He doesn’t realize he is not denying pranayama per se—he is only saying: in his system there is no room for it; he produces the same effect by another means.

For this reason the Jains never bothered with yogasanas either. Because during long fasts, asanas can be very dangerous. The body then needs very gentle food—ghee, milk, highly nourishing diet. Fasting makes the interiors dry; the gastric fire flares up—fasting sets the belly aflame. In that fiery condition, any asana can be dangerous. That fire can rise to the brain and cause madness. So a Jain monk will say, “No, no—there’s no substance in asanas; they are useless.”

But on the path where they belong, their value is extraordinary. If the diet is right, asanas can do wonders. But for that the body must be very unctuous—well‑lubricated—because every bone, every nerve, every tendon has to glide, to shift. If there is the least dryness, something will snap. Great elasticity is needed. And in that elastic condition, if the body is put into all these—

Asanas: unusual body‑positions
These asanas are strange positions in which you otherwise never are. We don’t realize how our postures are tied to our states of mind. A man is worried—and begins to scratch his head. Ask him, “Why are you scratching your head? What has worry to do with it?” But if you hold his hand, you will find he cannot remain worried. For his worry to take hold, it is necessary that the hand reach the head; the fingers must touch this spot; this nerve must be touched; once in that posture, at once the worry becomes active. In just this way there are many mudras, asanas.

Through endless experiment it was discovered: in which state of mind which posture arises. Then the reverse became possible—adopt the posture, and the corresponding state of mind is more likely to arise. If you sit exactly as Buddha sits, it will be easier to enter Buddha’s state of consciousness. Because the state of mind is also yoked to bodily states. Walk as Buddha walks; breathe as Buddha breathes; lie down as Buddha lies down—and it becomes easier to attain Buddha’s consciousness. Or, if you attain Buddha’s consciousness, you will find your walking, rising, sitting begin to harmonize with his. The two run parallel.

Gurdjieff’s incomplete information
People like Gurdjieff are, in one sense, uprooted—there is no thousands‑year‑long work behind them—and so they don’t know. He doesn’t know—there is no ancient groundwork. And then the man gathered this and that from twenty‑five different sources. He brought parts of many machines. Each was right in its own place—but together they became very odd. Sometimes one thing works for someone, but nothing works fully. That is why, among those who worked with Gurdjieff, none reached completion. They cannot. Because when one comes, some device may impact him, he becomes intrigued and enters; but other devices begin to work in reverse—because it is not a single coherent system. One should say he took in many multi‑systems.

And there are systems of which he has no idea at all. His knowledge is mostly of Sufi dervishes. He knows little of Tibetan yoga; he does not especially know Hatha‑yoga. What he has heard, he has heard from opponents—again from dervishes. He is not a hatha‑yogi. So whatever he says about hatha‑yoga or kundalini, heard through the mouths of adversaries, often becomes incongruent.

About kundalini, for instance, he speaks with sheer ignorance. He keeps calling it a buffer. And “buffer” is not a good word. He says kundalini is something that prevents you from attaining knowledge; it functions like a buffer. It must be overcome—erased and crossed. Therefore don’t even get into awakening it.

He does not know what he is saying. There are buffers in the personality—things by which we endure many shocks. Kundalini is not that; kundalini is the shock. When kundalini awakens, the greatest shock hits your personality. The buffers are other mechanisms within you that act like shock‑absorbers; they drink it down. Those buffers must be broken. But he mistakes kundalini for the buffer. Because he does not know. He has no experience of it; nor has he sat with those who do.

Hence very strange situations arise with men like Gurdjieff or Krishnamurti. The oddity is: the secrets behind certain words and powers have never been coherently known to them. And it is very difficult. In fact, in one lifetime it is not possible. Only if a man grows across ten or twenty births within ten or twenty systems can he, in a final life, find a synthesis among them; otherwise not.

But usually, once a man arrives by one system, why take another birth? The story is over. Hence synthesis does not happen. Yet I am thinking about this—it is worth working upon—that among all the systems of the world a synthesis is possible. One must catch it from different ends; the events are the same, the tricks to make them happen are different.

Zen fakirs’ unusual devices
A Zen fakir may pick a man up and throw him out the window—he is only producing strangeness, nothing else. He will say there is no need for pranayama—what will bhastrika do? He has his reason. But if bhastrika will not do it, how will throwing someone out a window do it? Go to Buddha or Mahavira and say, “By throwing someone out a window, enlightenment happened,” and they will say, “Idiot! People fall from buildings every day—where is enlightenment?”

But falling is one thing; being thrown is quite another. When a man falls, it is like going mad. But when four people lift Kaku‑bhai and toss him out, and Kaku‑bhai knows he is being tossed, a strangeness will be experienced. As he falls and as he is thrown, the whole time he remains aware of what is happening. At that moment he separates—separates from the body.

You go to a Zen master; he picks up a stick and cracks you on the skull. Strange! You went seeking inner peace, and he hits you. An instant strangeness is produced. But in India it won’t work. If you strike someone here, he will strike you back; he’ll be ready to fight. It works in Japan because there it has entered the culture that a Zen monk may do something by striking.

Another fakir—if you go to him, he starts hurling obscenities at you! That too produces strangeness. You went to a knower of Brahman, and he is cursing you openly. But only if you know. If you don’t, you’ll be offended; you won’t return: “This man is wrong—he abuses.” Yet within that system, even abuse was used. By cursing, he creates strangeness.

There was a fakir near Gadarwara, in a place called Saonkheda. He could do anything. He would abuse—and while you all sat there, he might stand up and urinate right there before everyone! The atmosphere would turn utterly strange—you’d be jolted: “What is this!” He used to abuse; he would also chase to beat—and if he started, he would run for miles after that man. Those who went to him and began to understand, benefited greatly. Those who didn’t understand thought, “Mad fellow.” But what has he to do with those who don’t understand! Those who understood gained—because the man he chased for two miles, he placed him in a very strange state. Thousands are running; he is chasing to beat him; the man is fleeing—now the whole atmosphere has turned strange!

The same can be done through many systems. Those on other systems never come to know. And there is another difficulty: even if one knows—say I know—still, when I speak of one system, I have to speak in extremes; otherwise it will bear no fruit. Even if I know it can be done otherwise too, when I am speaking of one thing I will say, “Only this will do—not anything else!” There is a reason: you don’t have the mind to hold, “It can be done by all.” If you take it so, it will amount to “by none.” And since these systems are so contrary, you’ll be caught in the tangle of “how by all?” Therefore, many times even the wise—who know—must speak the language of the ignorant. They must say, “Only this works; nothing else can!”

That is why I am in great difficulty. I am in great difficulty—because I know: it can happen by that too. It can happen by that as well.