Jyon Ki Tyon #6

For man, violence is a disease; for the animal, it is not. For the animal, violence is natural. On the animal plane there is no possibility of nonviolence, therefore there is no awareness of violence either. For the animal, violence is natural—nonviolence is impossible. For man, violence is a conditioning inherited from the animal. But for his evolved consciousness, it is a disease that obstructs. The moment consciousness begins to evolve, its past becomes chains for it. For those who are growing, their “yesterday” becomes a bondage every day.

Therefore, one who wishes to evolve must drop yesterday each day and go on. One who is unwilling to erase his past is refusing to evolve. If I remain today what I was yesterday, then my today is wasted. And if I am to evolve today, there is no way except to go beyond my yesterday. The past must be transcended. That which is past has to be overstepped.

The transcendence of the past is growth.

Man’s past is his animality; his future is becoming divine. But one who cannot transcend the animal cannot even enter the temple of the divine. And one who is to attain the future must die to the past every day—“dying to the past.” One who cannot die to the past becomes morbid, diseased. That morbidity is like this: a child is given certain clothes—if he grows up and yet refuses to remove them, the body will become sick! As the body develops, changing clothes becomes necessary. A child’s clothes are natural for a child; for a youth, they become an unnatural, painful prison. They may have protected the child; for the youth, one now has to protect oneself from those very clothes.

Animality is man’s past. We have all passed through the journey where we were animals. Scientists say it; the spiritual ones also say it. Darwin only recently announced that man has come from the animal. But Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna announced thousands of years ago that man’s soul has evolved from the animal. Man’s previous link was the animal, and before stepping onto the next link he will have to break the previous one.

Man is a transition, a bridge—where the animal transmutes and is transformed into the divine. But the past is very weighty, because it is familiar. It is not so easy to be free of it. It begins to seem that our past is what we are. Millions of years ago man was a cave-dweller in the mountains; when there was neither fire nor any way to make light in those caves—then the fear of night’s darkness entered man’s mind, and it still pursues him.

Now darkness itself holds no threat; there is no darkness gathered outside a cave; wild beasts will not attack man in the dark. And yet darkness is still a cause of fear! I say this as an example.

Violence too is a conditioning acquired in animal life. An animal cannot live without violence; we cannot live with violence. The animal cannot live without violence; man is not born with violence. Therefore for ten thousand years man has been doing nothing but fighting; he is not living, he is only fighting. It would not be an exaggeration to say that man lives only in order to fight.

In the last three thousand years, fifteen thousand wars have been fought. And those are on a large scale; even within twenty-four hours we keep fighting. It is difficult to find such moments in a day when we are not engaged in some kind of fight. Sometimes we are fighting enemies. Sometimes we are fighting friends. Sometimes we fight for wealth. Sometimes we fight for fame. Sometimes we fight for position and our fighting becomes politics. Sometimes we fight for money and our greed becomes exploitation. And sometimes we fight without any cause, because the habit of fighting demands: fight.

A man goes hunting—he is fighting without cause, fighting as sport. If nothing else, we will develop games in which the fighting instinct is gratified. All our games are miniatures of war—small forms of fighting. Games are our battles—fights without purpose, where there is no cause. And when no cause is found for fighting, we wish to fight without cause. If we cannot fight on the battlefield, we will seat chessmen and wage war. If in chess, too, swords seem to be drawn, it is not surprising. Chess, at a very deep level, is the relish of defeating the other and the flavor of fighting the other.

All our games are forms of war. Either say all our games are forms of war, or say this as well: war is our most terrible game. But man is fighting. What we call relationships—even they are our battles. If a traveler from Mars were to watch a husband and wife for twenty-four hours, he would not believe that these two people have agreed to live together. He would only understand that these two people have agreed to this: we will fight twenty-four hours. Perhaps what we call a family is an institution of those who have decided that they will fight and yet not withdraw—nor will they part!

Life all around is violence. This violence is a disease for man. It may have been a necessity for the animal.

And remember as well: whenever a new step of evolution is taken, there is also a step into new responsibilities and new obligations. Every step of evolution is a step into greater responsibility. It will carry us into a larger responsibility. From the day man left the animal and became human, from that very day nonviolence became part of his responsibility. For man cannot blossom amidst violence; his full flower can open only in love.

Therefore I say nonviolence is health, violence is disease. Perhaps there is no greater disease than violence.

And our thousands of diseases are perhaps born of violence. If you go to a madhouse, you will find ninety-nine out of a hundred mad only because it became impossible for them to commit violence while remaining ordinary. To do violence, they needed the freedom of madness; therefore they had to go mad. If we go into our mental hospitals and ask psychiatrists, we will find that when the violence accumulated within explodes—when it explodes—the fibers of the mind scatter and a man becomes deranged and ill.

It is difficult to find a person who is not mentally ill. Those whom we call normal, healthy—this does not mean healthy; it only means normal madness. It only means that others too are that mad. It is average madness. One whom we call mad is abnormal; he has gone a little beyond the average. He has made a small leap. Perhaps we are boiling mad at ninety degrees; the one we call mad has reached a hundred and turned into steam. There is no difference of quality between us and him, only a difference of quantity.

Between the madhouse and those outside it, there is only a distance of a few steps. However high a wall we build around the madhouse, nothing changes. The gap between us and the mad is only a few steps. And it is not a distance toward which our backs are turned; it is a distance toward which our faces are turned. Nor is it a distance at which we are standing still; each moment we are moving toward it and closing the gap.

Those who are able to see the human mind say that perhaps the whole of humanity is slowly turning into a madhouse. What we call bodily diseases—more than ninety percent of them are manufactured by the diseases of the mind and then spread into the body. And the fundamental disease of the mind is violence.

Let me give a sense of what violence means, so that this disease may be understood.

Violence means a mind eager to fight; a mind whose relish is in fighting; a mind that will become restless if it does not fight; a mind that cannot feel joy without hurting someone, without causing someone pain.

A mind that is by nature eager to make another suffer—or a mind for which making another suffer has become the only joy—such a mind cannot be happy. Deep within, such a mind will be miserable.

There is a very deep law: we give to others only what we have; otherwise we cannot give. When I am eager to give pain to another, it simply means pain fills me within and I want to pour it upon someone. Just as a cloud, when filled with water, releases it upon the earth, so too, when we are filled within with sorrow, we begin to throw sorrow on others.

The thorns with which we want to prick others must first be grown in our own soul—where else will we bring them from? And the pains we want to give to others—we have to endure the labor of giving birth to those pains ourselves long beforehand. And the darkness we wish to carry to others’ homes cannot be carried without first extinguishing our own lamp.

If my lamp is lit and I go to bring darkness to your house, the reverse will happen—light will reach your house with me; darkness cannot reach!

One who is eager in violence has already committed violence upon himself—he has already done violence. Therefore let me state another aphorism: violence is the extension of self-violence. When within we are committing violence upon ourselves, that very violence overflows, spreads like a flood, breaks the banks and reaches others. Therefore the violent can never be healthy; within he will be unhealthy. Within him there cannot be harmony, consonance, balance, music. Within there will be dissonance, duality, conflict, struggle. That is inevitable. One who wants to do violence to another must have already done violence to himself. That is the prior preparation.

Therefore, for me, violence is an inner conflict. Spreading outward, it becomes another’s suffering; when its seed sprouts and spreads within, it becomes conflict and inner pain for oneself. Violence is a state of inner conflict, inner disharmony, inner schism, inner strife. Violence fights the other later; first it fights within itself and grows. Every violent person is fighting himself.

And one who is fighting himself cannot be healthy. Health means harmony. Health means one who has come upon an inner unison, a singleness of tone, a cadence, a rhythm.

The stamp of music on the faces of Mahavira or Buddha—such a stamp of music is not even on the faces of musicians sitting with a vina, yet it is present in Mahavira’s vina-less hands. That music is not music produced by any instrument; it is the outward diffusing of the inner harmony of the soul. In Buddha’s walk there is that rhythm—in Buddha’s rising and sitting; in Buddha’s eyes there is a unison. It is not the song bound between any verses, nor notes produced upon instruments—it has arisen from the dissolution of all inner conflict.

Nonviolence is an inner music. And when the life-breath within fills with music, life fills with health; when the life-breath within fills with dissonance, life fills with illness, with disease.

The English word “disease” is very significant. It comes from “dis-ease.” When ease within is lost, when rest is lost; when all balance within totters, and all rhythms break, and the links of poetry scatter, and all the strings of the sitar snap—the state that remains is disease. And when a mind becomes sick within, the body cannot remain healthy for long. The body follows the life-force like a shadow.

Therefore I say that violence is a disease, a dis-ease; and nonviolence is freedom from disease, nonviolence is health.

Just as I said the English word “disease” is significant, so too the Hindi word “swasthya” is significant. Understand: swasthya does not merely mean health, just as disease does not merely mean illness. Swasthya means: one who has become established in oneself; who has settled in oneself; who has stood in oneself; who has merged and drowned in oneself; who has become oneself; who has attained one’s own selfhood. Where there is now no “other,” no second, with whom there could be conflict; no alien note—every note has become one’s own—such a state is called “swasthya,” health.

In this sense, nonviolence is health; violence is disease.

From the standpoint of mental structure, violence is the mind breaking into fragments—disintegration. Nonviolence is integration, the mind becoming whole and undivided.

We say we have a mind, but perhaps it isn’t right to speak in the singular. We should say we have minds—not a mind. We are poly-psychic, not uni-psychic. We do not have one mind; we have many minds. Each person carries a multitude of minds.

Ordinarily we think we have just one mind; that is a mistake. Psychologists today—Jung and others—say man is poly-psychic, multi-minded. But it may surprise you that Mahavira first spoke of this multiplicity twenty-five hundred years ago. Mahavira said man is multi-minded, poly-psychic.

There isn’t a single mind within a person, there are many. That’s why in the evening you decide, “Tomorrow I will not be angry,” and tomorrow you get angry. You wonder, “What sort of person am I? I decided yesterday!” and again you get angry—and again by evening you repent.

A person doesn’t make brand-new mistakes every day; he repeats the same mistakes again and again—mistakes for which he has already repented a thousand times. Why? Because the mind that gets angry and the mind that makes the decision are two different minds. They don’t even know of each other; there is no communication between them.

When you determine, “I will not be angry,” one fragment of mind is deciding. Let us call it A. And in the morning when you pounce on your wife, it is B that is angry. When B recedes, A returns and repents: “I had decided not to be angry—why did I get angry?” Then, in the evening, someone’s shoe brushes your foot, B comes to the front and expresses anger, and A moves to the back. As the spokes on a bicycle wheel keep rotating up and down, so, moment to moment, the minds within you keep changing places. Your inner house holds many minds.

Gurdjieff used to tell a story. He had heard of a great house whose master had gone on a long journey. It was a large mansion with many servants. Years passed—no word of the master, no message. Gradually the servants forgot there had ever been a master. In truth, they wanted to forget—so they forgot quickly! If a traveler passed the mansion and asked a servant at the gate, “Who is the master of this house?” the servant would say, “I am.” But the townspeople were perplexed, because sometimes they met one servant at one gate, sometimes another at another gate—there were many servants—and each said, “I am!” Whenever anyone asked, “Who is the master of this house?” whoever was found would say, “I am!” People became anxious: “How many masters does this house have?”

So the whole village gathered. They investigated and assembled all the servants—and there were many “masters.” A great difficulty arose: the servants began to quarrel, each claiming, “I am the master!” At last an old servant said, “Forgive me, we are arguing needlessly. The master has gone out. We are all servants. It has been a long time since he left; we have forgotten. And now there has been no need to remember—perhaps he will never return.”

Then the master returned. Instantly the twenty-five “masters” departed—they immediately became servants again!

Gurdjieff would say: this is the story of the human mind.

Until the inner self awakens, each fragment—each servant—declares, “I am the master!” When the fragment that is anger comes forward, it says, “I am the master!” and for a while it becomes the master; the whole body follows it. The body knows nothing; it follows the master. Then the repentant fragment comes and declares, “I am the master!” and the body weeps. The same body that picked up the sword now sheds tears. It knows nothing; it follows whichever master is in front. Whoever shouts most loudly, “I am the master!”—the body lines up behind him. One fragment says, “Celibacy,” and the body says, “A noble thing—I am ready.” Another fragment says, “Indulgence,” and the body says, “Agreed—I follow the master.”

Man is poly-psychic. The psychic structure—the structure of his mind—is made of many parts. The mind is divided into many fragments, and it will remain divided until the undivided self awakens at the center. Violence is the mutual conflict of these fragments—the servants’ rival claims, “I am the master!” When they confront one another the mind falls into great inner strife. All day long the mind fights over who the master is. And the conflict, the anguish, the suffering generated by these battling fragments—that is what such a mind then unloads by fighting with others as well.

It is a curious thing: we often project our inner battles outward. There is a thief within you; you are struggling with him, suppressing him: “I will not allow theft.” If a theft occurs in your neighborhood and the thief is caught, you will beat him the most—because you have longed to thrash the inner thief but could not. Now that a thief appears outside, your own thief is projected, and you beat him.

To beat a thief, a thief is required. A saint cannot beat up a thief—there is no mechanism for projection. That is why those who are thieves talk day and night against thieves; those who are scoundrels keep condemning scoundrels; those who are lust-ridden keep denouncing sex. Whatever fills us within, we project without.

Bertrand Russell said somewhere: when someone shouts very loudly, “A thief! Catch him! A theft has happened—dreadful!” first catch that man—because if not today then tomorrow he will steal.

We often attribute our illnesses—our mind’s diseases—to others. So when a person condemns someone else, he tells us little about the one he condemns and much about himself. His condemnation reveals what he is projecting. Some inner battle is ongoing, which he plants upon another. If no inner battle remains, the possibility of projection ends—there is no way to plant it outside.

The human mind is fragmented. That fragmentation is the birth of violence. And when the human mind begins to be nonviolent, it becomes whole, one. When the mind becomes one—when no discordant voices remain—then in a person’s life the dance of bliss begins, the flute of joy is heard. Along the melody of that flute people have reached the divine—and by no other path have they reached, nor can they.

Water rushing down from the mountains runs toward the low; it looks for ruts, ravines, lakes—it descends, it hurries downward. Then the same water, heated, becomes vapor. It starts racing toward the sky. The very same water begins to seek heights, rides upon the bosoms of clouds, sets out on the sun’s journey. The water is the same, the energy is the same, but a transformation has taken place, a revolution has happened.

A violent mind seeks pits and ravines; it flows downward. A nonviolent mind becomes vaporous; it starts seeking mountain peaks, the journey to the sky begins, the upward flight begins; it sets out on the sun’s path, oriented toward liberation and the divine.

The violent mind always seeks the other; the other is the abyss. The nonviolent mind seeks itself. To seek oneself is the height. For whenever we seek the other, we have already started moving downward. Why? Why do I say the other is the abyss, the descent, hell itself? Why is the other the path that pulls you down? Because when we seek the other, one thing has become certain: there is no joy with oneself, no bliss in one’s own company.

A person is never as miserable with an enemy as he becomes with himself. He is never as bored with even the dullest person as he becomes with himself. Man is not at all at ease with himself—what does this mean? No one wants to make himself a companion—strange, isn’t it?—and yet when someone else doesn’t want to make him a companion, he feels deeply hurt. Though he himself has already rejected himself! He has already declared, “Friendship with myself will not do!” You are not willing to sit alone with yourself even for an hour. If you had to sit alone all day, you would panic—“I might commit suicide, what will I do?” If you had to live alone for a year, could you live?

To live with oneself is very difficult, because only one who has discovered inner bliss can live with himself. The desire to live with the other belongs to the one who is full of sorrow within. And I have said: violence is inner sorrow—therefore the violent mind always seeks the other—sometimes as “friend,” sometimes as “enemy,” but it seeks the other. And it does not take long before the friend becomes the enemy and the enemy becomes the friend. In fact, if you want to make someone an enemy, you first have to make him a friend. Without making him a friend, making him an enemy is very difficult—except for relatives; relatives are enemies in advance! Otherwise, to make anyone an enemy, you must first make him a friend.

Man seeks the other because he wants to escape from himself. That is why I say: the other is the abyss. One who wants to escape from himself cannot set out on any high journey; if one is not willing to arrive at oneself, how will one gather the courage to reach God? If one is not willing to touch one’s own peaks, how will one set out toward the lofty peaks of existence? Hence we keep seeking the other. And whenever we seek the other, violence will happen through us.

There is also the company of the one who lives with himself. He too can live with others, but he does not need them; others are not his necessity, not his compulsion. Others may be near him, they may share in his joy, but he is not dependent. There is no dependence. Even if there is no one else, he will be just as blissful.

If no one goes to Buddha, there will be no difference in Buddha’s joy. If millions go to him, there will still be no difference. But if one person turns his face away from us for a single day and does not come, immediately we descend into hell. One who depends so much on the other will forge chains for the other—lest the other leave, turn away. He will bind the other. He will put fetters on the other’s feet—sometimes calling it wife, sometimes husband, sometimes son, sometimes father—he will clamp the other in a thousand kinds of shackles. And whenever anyone shackles another, violence begins. Nonviolence sets free; violence enslaves, makes the other a prisoner.

There are many kinds of slavery. There are sweet slaveries too—which are always worse than the bitter ones. Because in bitter slavery there is a certain honesty, a certain sincerity, a straightforwardness. Sweet slaveries are very dangerous—sugar-coated; poison within, sugar outside. We have sugar-coated all our relationships; inside there is poison. The moment the thin layer peels off, the poison oozes out. Then we smear it over again, fix the coating, and somehow keep going.

But our seeking of the other is definite proof that we have not found the joy of being with ourselves. Then violence will begin. And when we seek the other because we cannot live without him—whoever we cannot live without, we will make a slave of; we will possess him; we will claim ownership, we will become his master. And whomever we become master of, we will efface, we will destroy. Whatever the form of ownership, every kind of ownership effaces and destroys. Ownership is very subtle violence; ownership is very subtle murder. Ownership is the slow killing of someone. Alexander kills by enslaving; Hitler kills by enslaving. A religious guru can also kill someone by enslaving. All kinds of slaveries exist.

Whenever we grab the other, grip his neck, and become dependent upon him, we hang around his neck like a stone. And this hanging is the downward journey. There is no end to it. It will go on spreading. One will not be satisfied with one; one will want a second, a third, thousands. A politician wants millions. Until he becomes president and hangs around the neck of the whole nation, he cannot be satisfied. He must hang around everyone’s neck. He must become a weight, a burden to all.

This mind that keeps seeking the other is moving downward. Its violence will keep increasing. It will take many forms—thousands of faces, thousands of methods—but it will oppress, subdue, torture the other.

There are very refined ways to torture. A father can torture his son; the son can torture the father. A mother can torture her son; the son can torture the mother. And psychologists say humanity has been doing it—endlessly tormenting one another. But we don’t notice.

It will continue until a person is delighted in his own company, until he is willing to be with himself. The moment one consents to be with oneself, the journey shifts away from the other, away from the outside—because the other is always the outer, the other is always the without. He will always be outside. As long as the search is toward the other—be it wife, beloved, lover, or even God—if someone sees God as the other, violence will continue; there can be no release from violence there.

That is why Mahavira denied an external God; because Mahavira saw: God is the Other—then the path of violence will open. Very few understood this point of Mahavira—why he denied God. The uncomprehending thought he was an atheist; they thought perhaps he denied God’s existence.

Mahavira said, there is no God except you. And the fundamental reason is simply this: if there is any God—as the other—then the violent mind will make even that God a road to the outside and downward. Mahavira said, there is no God outside. Turn toward yourself, within. The self itself is the supreme Self. And the moment one goes within, the summits begin.

Within there are great heights; outside there are great depths. Within are the peaks of Gauri Shankar; outside are the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Go on descending outward and you fall into bottomless depths—where there is darkness, sorrow, death, agony, hell. Move inward, toward yourself, and there will be great heights—the peaks of Kailash, the golden spires of temples—there will be liberation, moksha, heaven! It is an inner journey.

When life-energy becomes violence, it degenerates. When life-energy becomes nonviolence, it ascends. The life-energy is one and the same. Flowing outward it brings sorrow and gives sorrow; flowing inward it brings joy and gives joy.

In any moments when you have known bliss, you will have found you were utterly alone. In any moments when the thrill of joy has spread within you, you will have found you were inside yourself. In any moments when even a single drop of that nectarous rain has fallen within, you will have found: no one else—only me. And every sorrow you will always have found bound to someone else. All sorrows are tied to the other; all joys, always, to oneself.

Yes, there are pleasures that seem to come from the other—they never actually do. There are pleasures that give the illusion they will come from the other, but when they arrive and the fist opens, you discover you sought pleasure and found pain. Such pleasures call from the other—“Come, I am here”—but when you approach, you discover the invitation was from pleasure, but you were deceived. Like Rama going after the golden deer. And everyone knows there are no golden deer. At least Rama should have known—there are no golden deer!

But the story is sweet, meaningful. We too go after golden deer! We all know they do not exist—and yet we go! Rama goes in search of a golden deer! Who would be so mad as to believe there could be a deer of gold? How could it be? Yet even Rama goes! The Rama within us also goes! And in the end, what do we find? For what can you obtain by chasing a golden deer?

Pleasure is the golden deer. When it appears to come from the other, know that Rama has gone chasing the golden deer—and now the theft of Sita is bound to happen. When you go searching after the other, your inner soul—call her Sita—is stolen. You become fallen. Then comes a long war—then the struggle with Ravana, then killings, then blood. With that single pursuit of the golden deer, the whole world of Rama’s turmoil and violence began. From the golden deer the journey of upheaval started, and it went on until the violence was complete. In my view, this is a symbolic tale, a parable.

We too, when we run toward pleasure seen in the other, go chasing the golden deer. The fall of energy happens. It happened the very moment we believed there are golden deer. It happened the moment we believed the other could give happiness. It happened the moment we believed happiness could be outside. And lifetime after lifetime the experience is that outside, nothing but sorrow is ever found. From the other, when has happiness been found except sorrow? Yes, the thought persisted that it will come, it will come; it never came. It always appears to be in the future. Look back—when did it come? Who has ever found happiness from another? The truth is, the one from whom we expected the most happiness is the one from whom we received the most sorrow.

That is why the boy whose parents arrange his marriage does not get as much sorrow from his wife as the boy who marries for love. The boat of love-marriage is more likely to smash on the rocks, because the expectation of happiness is greater. The one whose marriage is arranged by charts and rituals has not spun very great hopes of happiness, so the chances of the boat crashing are a little less. Sorrow will come—in the measure of the hopes woven by horoscopes and charts, that much “happiness” will arrive. In life we receive sorrow in the measure of the happiness we hope for. The greater the hope of happiness, the deeper the sorrow. One who does not weave hopes of happiness—there is no way to make him suffer.

When life-energy flows toward the other, it is violent. It flows toward sorrow, toward hell. We are all searching for our respective hells. Only a few occasionally turn back and discover heaven. When life-energy returns, travels inward, it becomes upward-moving. It is one and the same energy.

In existence, forces are not different—only directions are different. The forces are not separate—only the distance between ascent and descent. Are you going down the temple steps or climbing up? It may even be that you and your friend stand on the same step—your face turned downward, his upward. On that very same step, heaven and hell will happen. Your neighbor, whose face is upward, will be in heaven on that step; and you, with your face downward, will be in hell on the same step.

So heaven and hell are not geographical locations; everything depends on the orientation of your consciousness. Which way are you facing? Everything depends on that.

Violence is the descent of life-energy; nonviolence is its ascent.

Violence is a fact given by nature, but it is not man’s nature; it is the animal’s nature. And man has passed through that nature; therefore he has brought along all the experiences of animal life. Violence is like this: a man walks down a road and dust particles settle upon his body; when he enters a palace he refuses to brush off those dust motes, saying, “They have been coming along with me; they are me.” They are dust particles that, during the animal journey, have adhered to the human soul, have stuck to it; they are not nature. For the animal they are nature, because the animal has no choice at all. For man they are not nature, because man has choice.

In fact, humanity begins with choice. Man begins with decision. Man begins with resolve. Man stands at a crossroads; no animal stands at a crossroads. All animals are on a one-dimensional path; there is only one track, without choice. Man stands at a crossroads. If he wishes, he can be violent; if he wishes, he can be nonviolent. This is his freedom. The animal has no such freedom. For the animal it is a compulsion to be whatever it can be.

It is also delightful to understand this: an animal is exactly what it can be. Hence there is no difference between the animal’s nature and the animal’s fact. There is no distance between the animal’s future and past. There is no gap between the animal’s being and its possibility. The animal is what it can be. That which is possible is actual. There is no difference between an animal’s actuality and its possibility. With man, the case is altogether different. Man can be other than what he is. Man’s actuality is not his possibility. What man really is today, tomorrow he can be something else.

Therefore we cannot say to a dog, “You are somewhat less of a dog”; but we can say to a man, “You seem somewhat less of a man.” To tell a dog, “You are a little less of a dog,” would be an absurd statement. It would have no meaning. All dogs are equally dogs. They may be weak or strong—there will be no difference in their dogness. They may be sick or healthy—there will be no difference in their dogness.

But there are degrees of manhood. We cannot say to a Krishna that there is no difference in humanity between him and a Hitler. We cannot say to a Buddha that there is no difference in humanity between him and a Ravana. No—of some we must say, “Your humanity seems very little.” Of some we must say, “Your humanity is so abundant that we have to search for the word ‘God.’” For those for whom we found the word God, it simply means that their humanity was so overflowing that to call them “man” did not seem sufficient.

Man as he is is not all; he can be much more. In what man is, his past—his journey through the animal—is present; that is his violence. What man can be—that is his nonviolence. Man’s nature is that which will be when he manifests in his fullness. Man’s fact is that which he has accumulated on the journey up to now.

Therefore I say, violence is acquired; nonviolence is nature. Therefore violence can be dropped; nonviolence can only be attained, it cannot be dropped. This difference also needs to be understood. Violence can be dropped; nonviolence can be attained. And once nonviolence is attained, dropping it is impossible. And no matter how violent a man becomes, dropping it is always possible—because it is not his nature.

Every sinner has a future; and every sinner’s future is the future of a saint. Every sinner’s future is the future of a saint! We can meaningfully say to every sinner, “You are a saint in the making.” Every saint has a past; and every saint’s past is the past of a sinner. We can meaningfully say to every saint, “You are a sinner of the past.” But the saint has no further future.

A saint means one who has attained his full nature, who has become that which he could be. The flower has fully blossomed. The bud has a future. The bud, if it wishes, can remain a bud; if it wishes, it can become a flower. But a flower cannot return to being a bud, even if it wishes to. Once it is a flower, it is a flower. So when we say to a bud, “To become a flower is your nature,” it does not mean we are stating a fact; we are speaking of possibility, of potentiality. We say to the bud, “It is your nature to become a flower,” meaning: if you choose, you can become a flower.

But if some bud remains a bud and says, “The fact is that I am a bud; therefore I will remain a bud, because being a bud is my nature—since I am a bud!”—if a man says, “Violence is my nature,” he is saying exactly what that deluded bud is saying.

Violence is not man’s nature; it is the acquisition of his past, the conditioning of his past. Violence is man’s conditioning, which was inevitable while emerging from the animal—like someone coming out of a room full of lampblack, and the kohl sticking to his body and clothes, which was inevitable. The animal is excusable; in its life violence is necessary. Man cannot be excused. Now violence is his preference, no longer a necessity. Now he is choosing it; therefore there is violence.

If a bud insists on remaining a bud, it can. But that is not its compulsion; it is not its destiny. It is its own mistaken decision. And then only it will be responsible. Standing before the Divine, it will not be able to say, “Why did you keep me a bud?” Because within the bud the possibility of becoming a flower was given in full by God. It could have become a flower. The responsibility for remaining a bud will be ours.

Violence, for the animal, is a compulsion; for us, it is a responsibility. For the animal, it is a fact; for us, it is only a historical memory. The animal’s present is our past. Choice is before us. Man can decide to be nonviolent, and he can decide to be violent.

Therefore when a man decides to be violent, no animal can match him. In fact, no animal can be as violent as a man can be. Because an animal is spontaneously violent, while man is violent by design. That is why we cannot find among animals the likes of a Genghis Khan, a Tamerlane, a Nadir Shah, a Hitler, a Mao, a Stalin. If we ask the history of animals whether there was any animal parallel to our Genghis Khan, the animals would say, “We are very poor in this matter. We have no such memory.”

It is a curious fact that no animal is violent toward its own species—except man! No animal kills an animal of its own kind, commits violence against it. Even in the animal’s violence there is this much discernment. Only man is the solitary animal who kills man.

It is also a curious fact that if you leave an Indian wolf among Pakistani wolves, he will not kill. But leaving an Indian man among Pakistani men is a risky affair!

Linguists say that perhaps language has done the mischief. It may be so. The linguists’ idea seems very right. They say: since neither wolf speaks a language—neither does the Pakistani wolf speak Urdu, nor does the Indian wolf speak Hindi—they cannot recognize that the other is a foreigner! There is no other reason. But a man becomes a foreigner from one district to the next. A Gujarati is a foreigner to a Marathi. A Hindi-speaker is a foreigner to a Tamil-speaker. If what the linguists say is true—and it seems true to me—then perhaps someday we will have to do this: man will have to become silent; only then will he become man. Perhaps without silence it is difficult for humanity to arise on this earth.

But how unfortunate it is that no animal attacks one of its own kind—yet man does! And no animal ever kills without cause—this too is curious—except man. An animal does not kill without cause. If it ever kills, there is a need. It is hungry, so it kills. It has to defend itself, so it kills. Man kills without need. There is no need, and yet he kills. Sometimes it even seems that because he has to kill, he manufactures the need! He cannot live without killing, so he creates the need. Sometimes he creates the need in Vietnam, sometimes in Korea, sometimes in Kashmir.

There is nothing necessary in it—neither in Kashmir nor in any Vietnam nor in any Cambodia. Nowhere is there a real need. But man creates the need, because to kill without a need would not look proper!

Man is rational only in one sense: he rationalizes even his stupidities; in no other sense is he rational. Aristotle certainly said that man is a rational animal, but man’s history so far does not prove it. History has proved Aristotle wrong. Man shows intelligence only in this one thing—that he tries to prove his stupidities intelligent. He kills, yet he rationalizes it. He says, “We have to kill, because he is a Muslim!” “We have to kill, because he is a Hindu!” “We have to kill, because he is not an Indian, he is a Pakistani!” As if someone’s being a Pakistani were a sufficient cause for death! As if it were enough that a man is a Muslim—kill him! Man searches for reasons to make killing necessary: “He is a capitalist, he must be killed; he is a communist, he must be killed!” When the old reasons get worn out and stale, he goes on finding new ones. He invents new pretexts: “All right, the old reason has become useless; stop that game, play a new one!” “We have killed many as Hindus and Muslims; now let it be Hindus and Jains.” If Hindu–Jain will not do, then let it be poor and rich. Man wants to kill—he will find a reason. Animals never kill without a reason.

What I am saying is that if we understand man’s violence, we will find that if a man becomes violent, it is his choice. And therefore a man can be as violent as no animal can. Because an animal’s violence is only its nature—it is not its choice—therefore a Nadir Shah cannot be born among them. Therefore a Mahavira cannot be born among them either, because the animal has no choice for nonviolence. Man has the choice for nonviolence as well.

If we have seen the abysses of Nadir Shah, Stalin, and Mao, we have also seen the heights of Mahavira, Krishna, and Christ. Both are our possibilities. The abysses are the memory of our past; the heights are the aspirations of our future.

If there are more questions, then tomorrow.

I am deeply obliged for your listening to my words with such love and peace. And in the end, I bow to the God seated within everyone. Please accept my salutations.