I have heard that on some unknown planet the inhabitants are afflicted with a great madness. The people of that planet have come to believe that to stand with your feet on the earth is a sin. From childhood they teach their children the headstand. They teach them to stand on their heads. Their children’s legs never become capable of walking. Now and then life’s necessities force even those children to walk, because on one’s head one can only stand, one cannot walk. Compelled by life, they have to walk—yet their legs tremble and totter. They cannot walk far. And the greatest difficulty does not come from the weakness of their legs; the greatest difficulty arises because while walking they feel they are committing a heinous crime, that they are sinning. If they walk, it feels sinful; if they remain standing on their heads, living becomes impossible.
In that race some have become such experts that they spend their whole lives standing on their heads. The rest consider them great saints and revere them. The others, however, must sometimes come down from headstand and walk on their feet. At night it is difficult to sleep in headstand. Eating in the day, working in the fields—it is difficult to remain in headstand.
So two castes have arisen on that planet. Those who, while sleeping, come down from headstand, and while farming walk on their feet—these are called worldly. And those who stand in headstand twenty‑four hours a day—these are called sannyasins.
Those who always stand on their heads have of course gone mad. To stand on the head is to flood the head with so much blood that all its veins will be destroyed. Slowly their heads have fallen into the condition of the feet, become just as dull and inert. And those who do not stand on their heads have also gone mad, because all the while they feel that standing on their feet is a grievous sin for which they must roast in the fires of hell. They too are deranged.
When I first heard this, I was amazed. I wondered, where could such a planet be? At that time I did not know that this planet is our very Earth. I had little understanding of the Earth’s ways of living, so I thought perhaps on some moon or star there is such a planet where people are so crazed. But when I looked closely at man, I found everyone standing on his head. This Earth itself is that planet where all have gone mad. This tendency to do headstand has distorted the whole of life—made it ugly, crippled, full of pain and sorrow.
Today I wish to speak of a few points of what we have done in this process of turning life upside down.
In this inversion we have put what should be below above, and what should be above below. That is all a man does when he performs headstand: the head, which should be above, he puts below; the feet, which should be below, he puts above. If we built a house upside down, a house doing a headstand, the foundation would be up and the spire below. So far we have not tried to build such a house, because we know it would be sheer madness. But life—we have tried to build it that way; we have inverted it. We have placed the foundations above and the pinnacle below.
The day man concluded that moksha is worth attaining and the Earth is to be abandoned; the day he decided this life is bad and a life after death is the good life; the day he declared the body sin and the soul virtue—on that very day the edifice of life was overturned. Since then we have been denying the foundation and honoring the spire. And no spire can stand without a foundation. It is a curious thing: a foundation can exist without a spire, but a spire cannot exist without a foundation.
We could lay a foundation in the earth and leave it—there would be a foundation. But we cannot build a temple’s spire in the air without anything below it. The Earth can be without moksha; moksha cannot be without the Earth. A man can live in such a way that he never becomes aware of the soul, living only in the body; but no one can live only in the soul—he will have to live in a body.
In life whatever is higher depends upon what is lower. A veena can exist without music—strings unplucked, asleep, no melody sounding. But music cannot exist without a veena and yet be sounding.
In life, the higher stands upon the lower, and therefore what we call lower is not truly lower; it is the base of all that is higher. And how can the base of the higher be low? How can that be ‘low’ upon which all the high must stand? How can the veena be low and the music high—when music must arise from the veena?
Yesterday two sannyasins came to see me. They said, We want to meditate, we want to learn meditation. I asked them, Have you gone mad? How did you become sannyasins without meditating? If sannyas does not arise out of meditation, how can sannyas be? This is placing a spire without a foundation. They said, Now we have become sannyasins, but we want to learn. We want to learn meditation. I said, Come tomorrow morning to the meditation gathering. One of them asked, Women won’t be there, will they? I said, Can you not come if women are there? He said, No, no—if women are there, we cannot come, because to look at a woman is sin. And if we touch a woman, then we must fast and do penance.
I asked those sannyasins, Were you born from a woman or from a man? Whose blood flows in your veins—a woman’s blood? Your bones—were they not formed from a woman’s bones? Whence your flesh, your skin—where did it come from? From where did you come? And today to look at a woman seems sin, and if you happen to touch a woman, then you must atone! And yet whatever your body is, it is all received from a woman.
These are people doing headstands. They wish to deny the very ground where life stands, the very foundation on which life rests. They are like those who say, We will deny the roots—because roots are sunk in the soil, lost in darkness; who knows, the earth is dirty, the roots go down toward hell—so we deny the roots. We will accept only the flowers that rise above in the trees, lifting toward the sky, blossoming toward the sun. We accept only the flowers—we do not accept the roots.
But have you ever seen a flower that blossomed without roots? And if flowers cannot come without roots, how will roots be inferior? The truth is that what the roots gather from the dark is exactly what appears as the flower. What the roots seek out from the earth appears in the flowers turning toward the sky. In fact the flowers are the final tips of the roots. What the roots have earned and toiled for has manifested in the flowers and poured out its fragrance.
But some will say, We cannot tolerate roots, because roots are in darkness, under the ground, going toward hell. We like only flowers. Cut off the roots and save the flowers. Perhaps, if you cut the roots, the flowers can be saved—but then they will be paper flowers, or plastic; they cannot be real. Paper flowers indeed have no roots. And if we uproot life from its lower roots, we will be left with paper sannyasins, not real ones. A true sannyasin also comes from woman. Yes, a paper sannyasin can imagine he did not. A true sannyasin will be filled with reverence for woman, with respect, because he is a stream emerging from her. But the fake sannyasin will be full of anger, hatred and contempt—he is a paper flower, rootless, or one who is denying the roots.
Has humanity not denied its own roots? We have denied all roots and accepted only the upper flowers. The whole of humanity has become false. The spires remain; the foundations are lost. And no house of life can stand without foundations.
We have denied the body and clutched the soul. We have turned our eyes away from the Earth and fixed them on heaven, on moksha, on distant realms. If there is any moksha, this Earth is its staircase. If there is an Atman, then apart from the doorway of the body there has never been, nor can there ever be, entry into its temple. It is impossible. Life has its own mathematics. In that law we must accept the whole; only then can we stand upright.
Among many things we have done in turning man upside down, the first principle I want to share is this: we reject the lower, the root, and accept the higher, the spire. Whereas every spire arises from the root; it is the spread, the flowering of the root. We have done this in many ways, and we are reaping the fruit—unceasing suffering.
Recently I was in a village. A sannyasin came to see me. Today also a woman came—our conversations with both had the same flavor. The sannyasin said, This world is all maya, it is nothing. When he said, The whole world is maya, a nothing, there was a chair before him. I did not invite him to sit, because if I made him sit on maya and he fell, there would be trouble. I remained silent; he remained standing. I said, If you see anything here worth sitting on, please sit. If I ask you and you fall—since you say it is all maya—then the problem will be mine. Better you remain standing.
I asked, You must be tired—will you have some water? He said, Yes, I’m very thirsty. I said, But water will be maya. How will thirst be quenched with maya’s water? And if even thirst is maya, then to try to quench it is futile. I asked, Do you eat? He said, I do. I said, You are speaking in great contradictions. On the one hand you call everything maya, and on the other you must live with that very maya twenty‑four hours! You will breathe the same maya, you will seek disciples from the same maya, you will build temples and tirthas with the same maya.
If all is maya and your denial stands above it, life will be fractured. The base will be rejected and only the spire accepted. Then dishonesty is born, hypocrisy is born. The culture we have erected on Earth so far is hypocritical because it has not accepted the whole truth of life. And what we have denied remains all the same.
Today a lady came to me. She said, I have a few questions. I said, Do ask. She said, I want to meditate—what should I do? I said, Surrender to the Paramatma and meditation will come. She said, Which Paramatma? I myself am Brahman. I said, If you are Brahman, then why have you come to ask me anything? She said, No, I have understood everything else, that I am Brahman—that I have understood—but one question remains. I said, Does a question remain even for Brahman?
On the one hand she holds, I am Brahman—and life stands exactly where it stood when she was not Brahman. The same entanglements, the same troubles, the same suffering—and above that, the notion of being Brahman! We will drive people insane. We already have. It is no longer that some are locked in asylums; the whole Earth has become an asylum. Slowly, slowly, man has gone mad. How could it be otherwise?
As I said of that planet: if they walk on their feet, they feel sin; if they stand on their heads, they feel virtuous. If all go mad there, no surprise. We too are going mad in the same way. We already are mad. No truth of life is accepted in its wholeness. As life is, we do not accept it. We hack it into fragments, accept the upper parts and deny the lower. Yet all that is above stands by the support of what is below, is born from it, grows from it; it is the expansion and development of the below. In turning man upside down, this delusion has helped a great deal.
I once saw a little Japanese doll. However you throw it, it always stands upright. There was a monk, Bodhidharma. The first such doll was made in his image. The doll is called Daruma. Bodhidharma’s name in Japan is Daruma. He was an Indian bhikshu. The doll too is called Daruma doll. Throw it any way you like, it always stands up. There is weight in its belly. Because of that weight the head always comes up. A friend brought me one. I said, You have brought a very good doll. Give one to each person. Man has become inverted. However you throw him, he never lands upright—he always lands upside down, does a headstand. This doll is wonderful.
I then inquired why this doll was made. Bodhidharma had said: Man has become such that however you hurl him, he will fall upside down. He can never be upright. And Bodhidharma said: I am a man who falls upright; throw me as you will, I will land straight. For I have understood the secret of life: what is below is below and what is above is above. I have given the proper weight to the base, therefore the spire always comes up. In accord with this statement the doll was made.
You should keep such a doll in your home, and each morning before leaving, toss it and see: every time it stands. Its secret is that its base is heavy, its foundation weighty, and its head light. Our head is heavy and our base has no weight. However we fall, we will fall inverted—on the head.
So the second principle I want to share is this: man’s head has become heavy. He has concentrated the whole of life in the skull and drained it from the body. All life has come into the skull. There is no life left in the hand. When you shake hands with someone, no love flows from your hand to the other. You merely think you are shaking with great love. But love does not flow from the hand—truly, it does not. It remains merely an idea: yes, we love, that’s why we shake hands. When you join your hands, you imagine that you are offering great respect, but rays of reverence do not flow from your hands. Life has shrunk from the whole body and settled in the skull. Man is living in the skull. Therefore inversion has become inevitable. However he falls, he will end up upside down. In fact he already is inverted—fall or not. The head is weighty; everything else has become light.
So the second thing: life must be distributed over the whole body, shared in equal measure. Life is not only in the head. Yet we try to do everything from the head. Even when we love, we do it by calculation. If we fall in love, we first ascertain whether the person is Hindu—not a Muslim. In the realm of the heart there is neither Hindu nor Muslim. If we love, we check whether there is money or not. The heart has nothing to do with money. But the skull wants to keep accounts—clear accounts: how much money is arranged, Hindu or Muslim, what and what not—everything must be known first.
In America they have built computers such that if a boy and a girl wish to marry, they feed all their particulars into the computer and it will inform them whether to love or not, whether to marry or not. The computer will calculate compatibility—whether it will be fine or not. This is the ultimate race of intellect: deciding by thought, by machine, whether we should love at all. The computer says whether harmony will arise between you or not. We can only love by thinking. It has gone to the limit! Love has nothing to do with thought. The truth is we have dragged many dimensions of life into the skull and concentrated them there. Hence the head grows heavier each day.
Ask little children to draw pictures and they make astonishing ones—the true picture of man that even great painters do not make. The child draws the head very large, the legs mere thin lines, some little hands—and a big head! It seems children have understood what the real picture of man is.
Search your own life: with which organ have you lived? Have you lived with your whole being, your whole body? Or have you tried to live only with thought? You press your father’s feet without love, without heart—because the mind says, He is my father, it is duty to press his feet. The intellect says, It is duty—therefore serve your mother. The heart knows nothing of duty—duty is an ugly word. Where there is duty, there is no love. Whoever says, It is my duty, therefore I press my father’s feet—that man has never loved his father. He is calculating: since this man gave me birth, I must massage his feet.
This is calculation, mathematics. This woman gave me birth and kept me in her womb nine months, so I must help her in old age. And not only the son speaks so—mother too says to her son, I kept you nine months, I reared you, and now you do not serve me! She too is doing mathematics. There is no heart in it. The heart knows no arithmetic.
We are living our whole life by calculation. Life has shrunk into the skull. Hence the head is heavy.
People come to me and say, We are very restless. The sum total of their unrest is simply this: life, which should be spread through the whole personality, has contracted into one point; unrest is inevitable.
People say, We are very tense; how to become light? How will they become light? They say, The mind is tense, so we are reading the Gita, reading the Quran, going to such-and-such guru—we are reading this, reading that. More calculations. They are making the mind heavier still, for the reason it is heavy is that we have shut the whole of life inside there.
I stayed with a family recently. The father had died. They were well educated; the girls had studied in Europe; the sons, all educated—doctor, lawyer, this and that. Daughters‑in‑law too, all educated. None of them cried when the father died. They said, To cry is uncultured, rustic, unbecoming. The one who has died has died—what is the point of crying? The ‘wise’ in that house said, People die. Those more ‘wise’ said, The Atman is immortal; there is no need to weep. So they suppressed their tears. When I visited, I saw great tension in that house. One daughter‑in‑law said to me, We are in great trouble. The heart wants to cry, but the mind says, What is the use? The heart wants to cry, but the intellect says, How stupid—what will crying do? Will the dead return? The dead will not return—so what use is crying?
The intellect is blocking, not even allowing them to cry. Now the tears are thick within; the life-breath is in danger. What should have happened from the heart is being forced upon the intellect. The mind will grow heavy and create trouble. Tears will accumulate and seek other excuses to come out, for they have filled up—must flow. When clouds are full, they must rain. When tears are full, they must be shed. But the mind puts obstacles: What will crying do?
I told that woman a story. A fakir’s master died. It was believed that this fakir had attained supreme knowing. When his master died, hundreds of thousands came to see. The fakir sat at his door beating his chest, weeping; tears flowed in streams. People said, You—and weeping? We thought you had attained supreme wisdom.
The fakir said, Who told you that there is no weeping in supreme wisdom? And if there were no weeping in supreme wisdom, then I would renounce that wisdom—but I will not renounce weeping. Such wisdom I fold my hands to, in which even tears are not possible.
They said, Have some consideration—what will people think? They thought you had known the immortality of the soul—and you are crying! You yourself used to say the soul is immortal—that weeping is useless.
The fakir said, I am not crying for the soul. I am crying for the body that will never return. That body too was very dear—I weep for that.
They said, You are mad—to weep for the body! What is there to weep for the body?
The fakir said, I am not weeping by calculation. Weeping is coming, so I weep—and I refuse to calculate.
But we calculate everything. We even laugh by calculation—how many inches to smile on which occasion we keep account. How much to weep—we keep account. When to cry, when not to—we keep account. Have we not dumped everything onto the head? What belongs to the whole being, we have crammed into the head.
I was looking at a book recently. A very clever man wrote it—and yet very unwise, because it is hard to find anyone more unwise than the clever. He wrote: There is no need to exercise; people have no time. So he offered a trick: close your eyes and lie down, and imagine that you are running fast. Do not run—just imagine, so fast that sweat begins to appear—and keep running, keep running, while lying on the sofa. He claims this will exercise you. Exercise will indeed happen—not of the body but of the skull. While what is needed is exercise for the body. The skull gets enough—better reduce its exercise.
We have shrunk the whole personality to a point. The body has become almost useless. So if I were to ask you, If we cut off your leg, would you be cut? You would say, No—if a leg is cut, I am not cut. If we cut off your hand, would you be cut? You would say, No. But if someone says, We will cut off your head—then you will say, Then I am cut. It seems you have made your center only in the head. The whole being, the entire self, has gathered in the head. The rest of the personality has become lifeless. You are not cut by the cutting of the legs, but by the head you are!
Man has turned upside down. Because of the load on the head he has entered headstand. And each day we increase that load. We send children to school and they return only with heavier heads. They do not get to learn anything else. They do not learn love, they do not learn how to be angry, nor any other secrets of life. They only return with heavy heads. They learn what can be stuffed into the head and become computer-like machines. The blood of the whole body is sucked up into the head; the strength of the whole body flows into the head. Where all strength is drawn away, the whole personality becomes crippled and ugly.
Have you noticed—why do you feel sleepy after eating? Because immediately the stomach needs energy. It calls all power to itself, so the head becomes drowsy. If the head remains awake it will continue its work. Hence the nodding after food. Drowsiness means the stomach is saying to the head, Please stop your work; let us complete digestion. But after eating we still keep working from the head. And now even sleeping is hard—at night too we keep working from the head; all night the head runs on. Everything is in disorder.
I have heard of a scientist doing an experiment. He fed a cat, then with an x‑ray machine watched what happened in her stomach: food entered, juices were released, digestion began. Then he brought a dog into the room. The moment the cat saw the dog, her brain became ‘heavy’, for seeing a dog cannot be done by the stomach. The head grew active; the cat shrank; the intestines contracted and stopped releasing juices; the food lay there undigested, for the body no longer had the facility to digest—it had sent all energy to the head. The dog was removed after a minute, but it took six hours for the cat’s stomach to become active again. By then the food had gone cold; when juices released, they were unable to digest it. After repeating this for three months, the cat developed ulcers. Of course—cold food, undigested, juices out of time—the stomach was wounded. The cat developed ulcers because her brain remained in constant tension.
If our stomachs are full of ulcers and a thousand diseases, ninety percent of the reason is that the brain draws all energy and leaves none for the rest of the body. It does not allow power to flow to other dimensions of life. The head becomes heavy; the personality inverted.
We must learn things that are not centered only on the head. We must learn practices that distribute the personality throughout the body, that let the Atman spread into every limb—not remain trapped in the head. If the Atman permeates the whole life of a person, then even touching his hand you will sense the soul; touching his feet you will sense the soul. In every atom of his body there will be the diffused presence of his Atman; it will not have shrunk. He will not say, I am not the feet, I am the head. He will say, I am all this—the sum of this whole. And he will live this sum. But we have never lived so.
Have you ever noticed, when you wash your feet, do you wash them in such a way that you feel there is an Atman in the feet too? When you wash your hands, have you ever allowed your hands to receive the joy of water? No. Even while washing, the skull keeps working. The hands will be washed like a machine and you will move on. Have you ever allowed your whole body to enjoy bathing? Where is the time? The water will fall, soap applied and washed away, and all the while your head will be at work. You return from the bath, yet the body has not tasted the joy of bathing.
Try an experiment tomorrow. While bathing, allow your whole body to enjoy the touch of water. Let the freshness of water caress your whole body. Let every pore bathe—and give the skull a little holiday. For a while spread through the body and tell the head, You are not all—this whole body am I. In this whole body I am. Then you will emerge from the bath with a freshness you have never felt. When you eat, let the whole body enjoy the food. When you walk, let the whole body relish the wind. When you love, press the other to your heart with your whole body. Try to live with the whole body—do not live only in the skull.
The body needs to be reborn. Our body has almost disappeared—only one part lives. Hence all tension amasses there. Tensions arise we cannot even imagine. Wherever we stop living, the head is forced to live in its place. Man’s sexuality too has moved into the head—an ugly affair. If ever we could converse with animals, they would be astonished: What is this? Everything has shrunk into the head—even sex.
Food too has gone into the head. When you actually eat, you do not get as much taste as when you sit on a chair and think of eating. Have you noticed the difference? The friend you are eager to meet—meeting him does not bring the joy you felt in thinking about meeting. Strange! The woman you love—the fantasy of one day meeting her brings more pleasure than when she is actually met—then suddenly all turns flat. Has living become less blissful and thinking more? Look carefully and you will see.
You see a long car pass by and your mind delights: If only I had this car! In your imagination you have sat in it many times—because those who actually sit in it get no joy; and if tomorrow you sit, you too will not get it. We have stopped taking joy from life; we enjoy only the idea. Therefore we take more delight in things we can only think about and never get. What we do get yields little joy.
I have heard of two madmen in an asylum. Both were friends, professors at a university. A third professor friend came to visit. Standing by one cell, he asked the superintendent, Why has this friend gone mad? I was abroad two years. Why is he insane? The superintendent said, Strange story. He wanted a certain woman and did not get her—so he went mad. But he is happy. He has drawn her pictures with charcoal all over the walls, holds a photo to his chest, hums songs. He did not get the woman—hence he is mad. The friend asked, But he is happy? The superintendent said, Exactly because he did not get her.
They walked to the next cell—the other friend was there, tearing his hair, banging his head on the bars. Why is he mad? the visitor asked. The superintendent said, Stranger still: the same woman—she he did not get, this one did get. And because he got her, he went mad!
One did not get her—went mad, yet his madness had a certain sweetness, because still he meets her in imagination, clasping her picture to his chest. In this crazy world, those who never get their beloveds are blessed; those who do—there is no end to their trouble. They pull their hair, for she is obtained—and now there is nothing left to imagine.
How strange: life so sorrowful and thought so sweet! It should be the other way. Thought should be bland; life should be dense, rich. But it has happened that what you think feels more pleasurable.
You rush to a hotel: I’ll eat this, I’ll eat that—you look delighted. Sitting at the table, the delight is gone. Perhaps even then you are enjoying imagining another hotel for tomorrow. But what you are eating—there the joy has departed.
Recently some friends went with me to Kashmir. One of them used to say in the capital again and again, I must go with you to the mountains—Pahalgam, Dal Lake—what joy it will be! Whenever he spoke, a sparkle came to his eyes. For twenty days he was with me there—on Dal Lake—but in his eyes I did not see a single glimpse of Dal. He was with me in Pahalgam, yet I did not see that any beauty touched him. Twenty days later, back in Delhi, he said, What a beautiful place—what joy! I said, Do not puzzle me. I was with you for twenty days. I never once saw you embrace a tree, touch a stone as a friend, place your hands or feet in a stream and sit awhile. I never saw you taste even a little juice there. Yes, earlier, you used to enjoy; now again you are saying there is great joy there!
Is this not happening to all of us? It is. The reason is only this: we have begun to live from the head, not from the whole body, the whole being, the whole Atman. Man has turned upside down. Humanity has inverted. If we are to set it right, the greatest compassion will be to help man become upright. The greatest revolution will be that man no longer lives from the head but begins to live from the whole body and total personality; that his life spreads in all directions. We have no inkling how we have blocked things.
Do you know an aspect of a blind person? The way a blind man listens—you have never listened that way. Your ear is as powerful as his, yet the blind hears so much. I was traveling by train one night, boarded around midnight. I did not see who was on the upper berth. As I prepared my bed on the lower, someone peeped from above, called my name and asked, Are you not so‑and‑so? I said, I am. Do you recognize me? I turned on the light and saw a blind man. I asked, How did you recognize me? He said, I heard you once six years ago—your voice remained in memory. When you spoke with the porter, I felt you must be he. Six years ago? I asked. He said, I am blind; I live by the voice; the ear is my recognition. I have no eyes, so my ears do their work. I even recognize footsteps: who is entering the house, who is leaving—I know by the tread; everyone’s footfall is different.
Have you noticed? Personality is so wondrous that no two people make the same sound when walking. Each has a different rhythm, a different spacing—each a different song. That blind man said, By the sound of footsteps I know who goes out and who comes in. Our ears are just as marvelous, yet we perceive nothing—we have never used them. If we could use them fully, the music of life would bring news of God. But we cannot experience music because we have never trained our ears; no education has been given for hearing.
Very few among us truly smell. You will say, You are wrong—we all smell. But you sense fragrance only when it is very strong. That is why there are French perfumes and others. To a sensitive nose they may seem disturbing—so aggressive, violent, sharp. Even then we barely notice them; dab some and we feel, yes, something is there, it is nice. But do we sense each other’s natural scent? Every person has a scent; each has its meaning, its rhythm, its quality. Some psychologists even say: if two people marry whose scents do not harmonize—whether they know it or not—they will never truly harmonize in life. Only if their scents match somewhere deep can they harmonize. Otherwise it is very difficult. But we have no sense of scent; we were never trained. We have no sense of touch either.
Helen Keller traveled the world. She touched faces with her hands. When she met Nehru, she felt his face with both hands—his nose, eyes, his whole face. She said, I have seen few as beautiful. Someone asked, How did you know—how did you see? She said, Touching his face, I felt exactly as when I caress marble statues in Greece—mystery, beauty, the same sharpness of line. From the touch of his nose, of his face, I felt he must be a very sharp man. Can we tell so by touch? Our hands have the same power, but Helen Keller had no eyes, no ears—no other senses. So the hand had to do everything—and it became exquisitely sensitive, capable of knowing by touch what the eye knows.
What does this mean?
It means our whole body is such a sensitive instrument that if we try to live with the whole body, countless realms of bliss will be revealed. By a fragrance, the coming of God may be felt; by a sound, the arrival of the divine may be sensed; by someone’s touch, the joy of God may be experienced. But at present we do not. That is why we call our sages drashta—seers, visionaries. Our philosophy we call darshan—vision. These are concepts of eye‑centered people.
If we were to call a sage a shrota—a listener—no one would accept it. They would say, Call him a seer. What is the meaning of listener? And if we called a sage a toucher, we would be laughed at. We have made a culture centered in the eyes; within the skull thoughts are centered and the eye has become their gate. Living by the eyes, living in the skull, the life of the whole personality has shrunk above. We are not living anywhere else. Thus we have no full contact with life, nor any sense of how many doors there are to its joy.
I call religious that person who lives integrally—totally—one who lives with all the limbs of life in their fullness. Only such a person can experience the divine. One who lives in fragments cannot—there are reasons.
Suppose I try to see a vast house through a tiny hole—what will I see? A corner of a doorway, a patch of wall, a small fragment of a painting, a corner of a photograph—and nothing more. I must enter the room and see it whole; only then will I be acquainted with it.
We cannot be acquainted with the divine because we do not see through the whole of life. We look through tiny apertures—and they become so burdened that even they cannot see.
The head’s work is small. If my legs walk and I need to come to your house, I will walk with my legs. When I sit at home I will not keep my legs moving. But if, while sitting at home, I move my legs twenty‑four hours a day, then when the day comes to go to your house, the legs will fail. They can walk only because they also rest.
But the brain is never resting! All work has fallen upon it. The work of the legs it does; the work of love it does; the work of weeping and laughing; the work of thinking, of sex, of religion; prayer, God, shop, market—everything! No rest at all. The result is that it has become incapable of doing anything—everything is a mess, chaos, anarchy within. It can do nothing; all is disordered. This load has inverted man.
When I looked closely at man, I felt this story is not about some other planet—it is about the people of this Earth. The head has grown heavy. The opposite of the Daruma doll has happened: throw a man any way, he falls inverted—into headstand.
This must change. The headstand condition has left so many wounds upon man that his whole life‑breath is filled with pain and sorrow.
Remember, if we do not fill with bliss, we will inevitably fill with misery. There is no in‑between—either bliss or sorrow. It is not that if we fail to attain bliss we will remain without sorrow somewhere in the middle. There is no middle. If bliss is not attained, sorrow is attained. If we are not healthy, we will be ill. Between health and illness there is no space. If someone says, I am neither ill nor healthy, know that he is wrong or unaware. One is either ill or healthy. And only if healthy are we free of disease.
We have all become miserable; our souls are riddled with a thousand wounds—blood oozes from every one, pus collects, filth and stench everywhere. Yet we do not know how to move toward joy. And if we try, there are always advisors: Sit and chant Om; chant Ram; read the Gita; read the Quran; sit before a statue of God and fold your hands. But no one tells us to change our life.
And if someone does, he speaks great madness: Change your life—drop greed, drop anger, drop sex, drop this and that—and all will be well.
This is like telling a man burning with fever—sweating, one‑hundred‑and‑four degrees—Drop your fever. Why are you clinging to it? And he says, You speak rightly—I too want to drop it, but it does not leave. We say, Why do you hold it? Let go, enjoy, be healthy.
Fever cannot be dropped. One can become healthy, and then fever disappears. No one can drop greed, anger, hatred. Yes—become blissful and they will drop. Because a blissful person will not be angry—not because he lacks the ability to be angry, but because he is no longer willing to lose his bliss by anger. He is not ready to throw away his joy by becoming angry.
Buddha has said: When I was a child I had toys of diamonds and jewels—worth lakhs. But if some child snatched a piece of bread from me while we played, I would throw the jewel‑toy at him. Sometimes pearls would scatter and toys break. The elders would say, For a two‑paisa piece of bread you have ruined a toy worth lakhs. But at that time I did not know the value of bread or of toys. Later I understood. Now if someone says, A child has taken your piece of bread—throw a toy worth a lakh at him—I will not. Not because I have ‘dropped anger’, but because I have understood that the arithmetic of anger is foolish. For two paisa bread I will not throw a toy worth a lakh. Now I know the value of things.
Only when bliss is attained does the value of things become clear.
But the religious preachers keep saying: Drop anger, drop greed—and all will be well. The poor man listens, thinks anger and greed should drop—but they do not. And the preachers are strange—they even make him greedy. They say, Drop greed and you will attain heaven. They do not see that if he drops greed in order to attain heaven, greed has not dropped—it remains as the desire for heaven. They tell him, Leave this, then you will get that—without seeing that the desire to get that is also greed. They are saying, Drop one rupee here and you will get a crore there.
I was once on the banks of the Ganga where sannyasins were teaching people: Give one paisa in charity here and you will get it back a crore‑fold. Drop greed; give charity. And the poor fellow parts with a paisa in the very greed that it will return a crore! They exploit his greed while preaching its renunciation. No one ever drops greed. Yes—greed drops away when such a wealth is found that greed becomes an obstacle to it. That wealth can be found—but by a transformation of life.
What does transformation of life mean?
Today I wanted to share three sutras.
First: for transformation, understand clearly what is foundation and what is spire. Do not, by mistake, make the spire into the foundation. Otherwise transformation will never happen. Never try to set the spire into the ground. I said, guard the roots, for flowers come from roots. Do not cut the roots; it is the roots that become the flowers. Root and flower are two ends of the same reality—what is below and what is above are not two; they are one continuum. This is the first thing to be remembered.
Second: do not allow the head to become heavy. If the head becomes heavy, headstand will set in—whether it is visible or not. If the head is heavy, the feet will go up and the head will go down. Do not become the inverted Daruma doll. We already have. Decentralize the head—spread it out into all the limbs. Gradually let each organ do its own work, so that not all work accumulates at one center. Otherwise that center will go insane, break under the burden, turn to stone; so much weight will lie upon it that all functioning will be disordered. Let the head do its own share; let the rest be left to the body. But we have put all work on the head. This is the second point.
Third: all the doors of our personality—the senses—need training. We must make our ears capable of listening deeper and deeper—so that when even a leaf stirs we hear its music. We must make taste so subtle that when we eat, not only the gross food appears, but the vast, the subtle hidden in the gross is also sensed.
An Upanishadic rishi has said: Food is Brahman. How much savor he must have taken to know that food is Brahman! This is not a doctrine—this is the utterance of a wonder‑filled taster who ate with such bliss that a glimpse of Brahman appeared in food.
Those who spoke of anahad nada—the unstruck sound—cannot be like us, for they must have trained the ear to very subtle planes, listened so delicately that the subtle sound became audible: the music that surrounds the whole cosmos. There is a music that enfolds the universe, but we do not hear it because we have never developed the capacity to listen.
Have you noticed—you walk the road, a painter walks the road. You see all trees as the same green. The truth is no two trees are the same green—there are a thousand greens within green. A painter sees the thousand shades. Green is not one color—there are innumerable shades of green. Each leaf is its own green. We see only one, because our eyes have never been trained to subtleties of color.
I call that education basic—not what Gandhi called basic. That is very non‑basic: teaching someone spinning, mat‑weaving, the alphabet, letter writing—and think education is done. Basic education I call that which makes the ear capable of catching the music of life; which makes the eye capable not only of form but of glimpsing the formless; which makes touch so capable that while touching the body, the touch reaches the soul; which makes taste so capable that one can say, ‘Food is Brahman’; and which makes all the senses so capable that doors open on all sides and through every door the divine is glimpsed. The whole cannot be known otherwise.
We will know the whole only when all the doors of our house are open. We are like those who lock every door and sit inside. Education will be true and revolutionary the day we teach each child not a headstand of the skull, but the opening of all the senses.
Children are more capable than us. If a child loves you, he wants to touch your face. If he loves you, he wants to press his lips to your body. If he loves you, he wants to cling around your neck, to touch your whole body. He is trying to know you with his whole body. But we do not. If children are rightly educated, all the doors of their senses can open.
A revolution can happen in this world—one that can transform all of humanity—if we understand the causes of our sicknesses. And let it arise from karuna, not daya. Remember, ‘daya’ is an insulting word; karuna is altogether different.
Karuna means a shared suffering—a pain we experience together. Daya means, We are above and someone is below upon whom we bestow pity. Daya is not a good word. From daya some alms may come, a dharmashala may be built—but no revolution ever. Revolution comes from karuna.
Karuna means: I too am included; I stand exactly where you stand. Your suffering is my suffering; my suffering is yours. Our pain is collective. Together we have pushed man onto the path of misery; together we can bring him to the way of bliss.
Only the revolution born of karuna will bear fruit. And a revolution has become utterly necessary: the man we knew is close to dying. If a new man is not born, the old will die and humankind may end. The birth of the new is needed. The old will go—is going, has gone. If we do not bring forth the new, a great darkness may come.
Many questions have gathered. Tomorrow I will speak of them all.
You have listened to my words with such peace and love—I am deeply obliged. In the end I bow to the Lord seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.
Osho's Commentary
I have heard that on some unknown planet the inhabitants are afflicted with a great madness. The people of that planet have come to believe that to stand with your feet on the earth is a sin. From childhood they teach their children the headstand. They teach them to stand on their heads. Their children’s legs never become capable of walking. Now and then life’s necessities force even those children to walk, because on one’s head one can only stand, one cannot walk. Compelled by life, they have to walk—yet their legs tremble and totter. They cannot walk far. And the greatest difficulty does not come from the weakness of their legs; the greatest difficulty arises because while walking they feel they are committing a heinous crime, that they are sinning. If they walk, it feels sinful; if they remain standing on their heads, living becomes impossible.
In that race some have become such experts that they spend their whole lives standing on their heads. The rest consider them great saints and revere them. The others, however, must sometimes come down from headstand and walk on their feet. At night it is difficult to sleep in headstand. Eating in the day, working in the fields—it is difficult to remain in headstand.
So two castes have arisen on that planet. Those who, while sleeping, come down from headstand, and while farming walk on their feet—these are called worldly. And those who stand in headstand twenty‑four hours a day—these are called sannyasins.
Those who always stand on their heads have of course gone mad. To stand on the head is to flood the head with so much blood that all its veins will be destroyed. Slowly their heads have fallen into the condition of the feet, become just as dull and inert. And those who do not stand on their heads have also gone mad, because all the while they feel that standing on their feet is a grievous sin for which they must roast in the fires of hell. They too are deranged.
When I first heard this, I was amazed. I wondered, where could such a planet be? At that time I did not know that this planet is our very Earth. I had little understanding of the Earth’s ways of living, so I thought perhaps on some moon or star there is such a planet where people are so crazed. But when I looked closely at man, I found everyone standing on his head. This Earth itself is that planet where all have gone mad. This tendency to do headstand has distorted the whole of life—made it ugly, crippled, full of pain and sorrow.
Today I wish to speak of a few points of what we have done in this process of turning life upside down.
In this inversion we have put what should be below above, and what should be above below. That is all a man does when he performs headstand: the head, which should be above, he puts below; the feet, which should be below, he puts above. If we built a house upside down, a house doing a headstand, the foundation would be up and the spire below. So far we have not tried to build such a house, because we know it would be sheer madness. But life—we have tried to build it that way; we have inverted it. We have placed the foundations above and the pinnacle below.
The day man concluded that moksha is worth attaining and the Earth is to be abandoned; the day he decided this life is bad and a life after death is the good life; the day he declared the body sin and the soul virtue—on that very day the edifice of life was overturned. Since then we have been denying the foundation and honoring the spire. And no spire can stand without a foundation. It is a curious thing: a foundation can exist without a spire, but a spire cannot exist without a foundation.
We could lay a foundation in the earth and leave it—there would be a foundation. But we cannot build a temple’s spire in the air without anything below it. The Earth can be without moksha; moksha cannot be without the Earth. A man can live in such a way that he never becomes aware of the soul, living only in the body; but no one can live only in the soul—he will have to live in a body.
In life whatever is higher depends upon what is lower. A veena can exist without music—strings unplucked, asleep, no melody sounding. But music cannot exist without a veena and yet be sounding.
In life, the higher stands upon the lower, and therefore what we call lower is not truly lower; it is the base of all that is higher. And how can the base of the higher be low? How can that be ‘low’ upon which all the high must stand? How can the veena be low and the music high—when music must arise from the veena?
Yesterday two sannyasins came to see me. They said, We want to meditate, we want to learn meditation. I asked them, Have you gone mad? How did you become sannyasins without meditating? If sannyas does not arise out of meditation, how can sannyas be? This is placing a spire without a foundation. They said, Now we have become sannyasins, but we want to learn. We want to learn meditation. I said, Come tomorrow morning to the meditation gathering. One of them asked, Women won’t be there, will they? I said, Can you not come if women are there? He said, No, no—if women are there, we cannot come, because to look at a woman is sin. And if we touch a woman, then we must fast and do penance.
I asked those sannyasins, Were you born from a woman or from a man? Whose blood flows in your veins—a woman’s blood? Your bones—were they not formed from a woman’s bones? Whence your flesh, your skin—where did it come from? From where did you come? And today to look at a woman seems sin, and if you happen to touch a woman, then you must atone! And yet whatever your body is, it is all received from a woman.
These are people doing headstands. They wish to deny the very ground where life stands, the very foundation on which life rests. They are like those who say, We will deny the roots—because roots are sunk in the soil, lost in darkness; who knows, the earth is dirty, the roots go down toward hell—so we deny the roots. We will accept only the flowers that rise above in the trees, lifting toward the sky, blossoming toward the sun. We accept only the flowers—we do not accept the roots.
But have you ever seen a flower that blossomed without roots? And if flowers cannot come without roots, how will roots be inferior? The truth is that what the roots gather from the dark is exactly what appears as the flower. What the roots seek out from the earth appears in the flowers turning toward the sky. In fact the flowers are the final tips of the roots. What the roots have earned and toiled for has manifested in the flowers and poured out its fragrance.
But some will say, We cannot tolerate roots, because roots are in darkness, under the ground, going toward hell. We like only flowers. Cut off the roots and save the flowers. Perhaps, if you cut the roots, the flowers can be saved—but then they will be paper flowers, or plastic; they cannot be real. Paper flowers indeed have no roots. And if we uproot life from its lower roots, we will be left with paper sannyasins, not real ones. A true sannyasin also comes from woman. Yes, a paper sannyasin can imagine he did not. A true sannyasin will be filled with reverence for woman, with respect, because he is a stream emerging from her. But the fake sannyasin will be full of anger, hatred and contempt—he is a paper flower, rootless, or one who is denying the roots.
Has humanity not denied its own roots? We have denied all roots and accepted only the upper flowers. The whole of humanity has become false. The spires remain; the foundations are lost. And no house of life can stand without foundations.
We have denied the body and clutched the soul. We have turned our eyes away from the Earth and fixed them on heaven, on moksha, on distant realms. If there is any moksha, this Earth is its staircase. If there is an Atman, then apart from the doorway of the body there has never been, nor can there ever be, entry into its temple. It is impossible. Life has its own mathematics. In that law we must accept the whole; only then can we stand upright.
Among many things we have done in turning man upside down, the first principle I want to share is this: we reject the lower, the root, and accept the higher, the spire. Whereas every spire arises from the root; it is the spread, the flowering of the root. We have done this in many ways, and we are reaping the fruit—unceasing suffering.
Recently I was in a village. A sannyasin came to see me. Today also a woman came—our conversations with both had the same flavor. The sannyasin said, This world is all maya, it is nothing. When he said, The whole world is maya, a nothing, there was a chair before him. I did not invite him to sit, because if I made him sit on maya and he fell, there would be trouble. I remained silent; he remained standing. I said, If you see anything here worth sitting on, please sit. If I ask you and you fall—since you say it is all maya—then the problem will be mine. Better you remain standing.
I asked, You must be tired—will you have some water? He said, Yes, I’m very thirsty. I said, But water will be maya. How will thirst be quenched with maya’s water? And if even thirst is maya, then to try to quench it is futile. I asked, Do you eat? He said, I do. I said, You are speaking in great contradictions. On the one hand you call everything maya, and on the other you must live with that very maya twenty‑four hours! You will breathe the same maya, you will seek disciples from the same maya, you will build temples and tirthas with the same maya.
If all is maya and your denial stands above it, life will be fractured. The base will be rejected and only the spire accepted. Then dishonesty is born, hypocrisy is born. The culture we have erected on Earth so far is hypocritical because it has not accepted the whole truth of life. And what we have denied remains all the same.
Today a lady came to me. She said, I have a few questions. I said, Do ask. She said, I want to meditate—what should I do? I said, Surrender to the Paramatma and meditation will come. She said, Which Paramatma? I myself am Brahman. I said, If you are Brahman, then why have you come to ask me anything? She said, No, I have understood everything else, that I am Brahman—that I have understood—but one question remains. I said, Does a question remain even for Brahman?
On the one hand she holds, I am Brahman—and life stands exactly where it stood when she was not Brahman. The same entanglements, the same troubles, the same suffering—and above that, the notion of being Brahman! We will drive people insane. We already have. It is no longer that some are locked in asylums; the whole Earth has become an asylum. Slowly, slowly, man has gone mad. How could it be otherwise?
As I said of that planet: if they walk on their feet, they feel sin; if they stand on their heads, they feel virtuous. If all go mad there, no surprise. We too are going mad in the same way. We already are mad. No truth of life is accepted in its wholeness. As life is, we do not accept it. We hack it into fragments, accept the upper parts and deny the lower. Yet all that is above stands by the support of what is below, is born from it, grows from it; it is the expansion and development of the below. In turning man upside down, this delusion has helped a great deal.
I once saw a little Japanese doll. However you throw it, it always stands upright. There was a monk, Bodhidharma. The first such doll was made in his image. The doll is called Daruma. Bodhidharma’s name in Japan is Daruma. He was an Indian bhikshu. The doll too is called Daruma doll. Throw it any way you like, it always stands up. There is weight in its belly. Because of that weight the head always comes up. A friend brought me one. I said, You have brought a very good doll. Give one to each person. Man has become inverted. However you throw him, he never lands upright—he always lands upside down, does a headstand. This doll is wonderful.
I then inquired why this doll was made. Bodhidharma had said: Man has become such that however you hurl him, he will fall upside down. He can never be upright. And Bodhidharma said: I am a man who falls upright; throw me as you will, I will land straight. For I have understood the secret of life: what is below is below and what is above is above. I have given the proper weight to the base, therefore the spire always comes up. In accord with this statement the doll was made.
You should keep such a doll in your home, and each morning before leaving, toss it and see: every time it stands. Its secret is that its base is heavy, its foundation weighty, and its head light. Our head is heavy and our base has no weight. However we fall, we will fall inverted—on the head.
So the second principle I want to share is this: man’s head has become heavy. He has concentrated the whole of life in the skull and drained it from the body. All life has come into the skull. There is no life left in the hand. When you shake hands with someone, no love flows from your hand to the other. You merely think you are shaking with great love. But love does not flow from the hand—truly, it does not. It remains merely an idea: yes, we love, that’s why we shake hands. When you join your hands, you imagine that you are offering great respect, but rays of reverence do not flow from your hands. Life has shrunk from the whole body and settled in the skull. Man is living in the skull. Therefore inversion has become inevitable. However he falls, he will end up upside down. In fact he already is inverted—fall or not. The head is weighty; everything else has become light.
So the second thing: life must be distributed over the whole body, shared in equal measure. Life is not only in the head. Yet we try to do everything from the head. Even when we love, we do it by calculation. If we fall in love, we first ascertain whether the person is Hindu—not a Muslim. In the realm of the heart there is neither Hindu nor Muslim. If we love, we check whether there is money or not. The heart has nothing to do with money. But the skull wants to keep accounts—clear accounts: how much money is arranged, Hindu or Muslim, what and what not—everything must be known first.
In America they have built computers such that if a boy and a girl wish to marry, they feed all their particulars into the computer and it will inform them whether to love or not, whether to marry or not. The computer will calculate compatibility—whether it will be fine or not. This is the ultimate race of intellect: deciding by thought, by machine, whether we should love at all. The computer says whether harmony will arise between you or not. We can only love by thinking. It has gone to the limit! Love has nothing to do with thought. The truth is we have dragged many dimensions of life into the skull and concentrated them there. Hence the head grows heavier each day.
Ask little children to draw pictures and they make astonishing ones—the true picture of man that even great painters do not make. The child draws the head very large, the legs mere thin lines, some little hands—and a big head! It seems children have understood what the real picture of man is.
Search your own life: with which organ have you lived? Have you lived with your whole being, your whole body? Or have you tried to live only with thought? You press your father’s feet without love, without heart—because the mind says, He is my father, it is duty to press his feet. The intellect says, It is duty—therefore serve your mother. The heart knows nothing of duty—duty is an ugly word. Where there is duty, there is no love. Whoever says, It is my duty, therefore I press my father’s feet—that man has never loved his father. He is calculating: since this man gave me birth, I must massage his feet.
This is calculation, mathematics. This woman gave me birth and kept me in her womb nine months, so I must help her in old age. And not only the son speaks so—mother too says to her son, I kept you nine months, I reared you, and now you do not serve me! She too is doing mathematics. There is no heart in it. The heart knows no arithmetic.
We are living our whole life by calculation. Life has shrunk into the skull. Hence the head is heavy.
People come to me and say, We are very restless. The sum total of their unrest is simply this: life, which should be spread through the whole personality, has contracted into one point; unrest is inevitable.
People say, We are very tense; how to become light? How will they become light? They say, The mind is tense, so we are reading the Gita, reading the Quran, going to such-and-such guru—we are reading this, reading that. More calculations. They are making the mind heavier still, for the reason it is heavy is that we have shut the whole of life inside there.
I stayed with a family recently. The father had died. They were well educated; the girls had studied in Europe; the sons, all educated—doctor, lawyer, this and that. Daughters‑in‑law too, all educated. None of them cried when the father died. They said, To cry is uncultured, rustic, unbecoming. The one who has died has died—what is the point of crying? The ‘wise’ in that house said, People die. Those more ‘wise’ said, The Atman is immortal; there is no need to weep. So they suppressed their tears. When I visited, I saw great tension in that house. One daughter‑in‑law said to me, We are in great trouble. The heart wants to cry, but the mind says, What is the use? The heart wants to cry, but the intellect says, How stupid—what will crying do? Will the dead return? The dead will not return—so what use is crying?
The intellect is blocking, not even allowing them to cry. Now the tears are thick within; the life-breath is in danger. What should have happened from the heart is being forced upon the intellect. The mind will grow heavy and create trouble. Tears will accumulate and seek other excuses to come out, for they have filled up—must flow. When clouds are full, they must rain. When tears are full, they must be shed. But the mind puts obstacles: What will crying do?
I told that woman a story. A fakir’s master died. It was believed that this fakir had attained supreme knowing. When his master died, hundreds of thousands came to see. The fakir sat at his door beating his chest, weeping; tears flowed in streams. People said, You—and weeping? We thought you had attained supreme wisdom.
The fakir said, Who told you that there is no weeping in supreme wisdom? And if there were no weeping in supreme wisdom, then I would renounce that wisdom—but I will not renounce weeping. Such wisdom I fold my hands to, in which even tears are not possible.
They said, Have some consideration—what will people think? They thought you had known the immortality of the soul—and you are crying! You yourself used to say the soul is immortal—that weeping is useless.
The fakir said, I am not crying for the soul. I am crying for the body that will never return. That body too was very dear—I weep for that.
They said, You are mad—to weep for the body! What is there to weep for the body?
The fakir said, I am not weeping by calculation. Weeping is coming, so I weep—and I refuse to calculate.
But we calculate everything. We even laugh by calculation—how many inches to smile on which occasion we keep account. How much to weep—we keep account. When to cry, when not to—we keep account. Have we not dumped everything onto the head? What belongs to the whole being, we have crammed into the head.
I was looking at a book recently. A very clever man wrote it—and yet very unwise, because it is hard to find anyone more unwise than the clever. He wrote: There is no need to exercise; people have no time. So he offered a trick: close your eyes and lie down, and imagine that you are running fast. Do not run—just imagine, so fast that sweat begins to appear—and keep running, keep running, while lying on the sofa. He claims this will exercise you. Exercise will indeed happen—not of the body but of the skull. While what is needed is exercise for the body. The skull gets enough—better reduce its exercise.
We have shrunk the whole personality to a point. The body has become almost useless. So if I were to ask you, If we cut off your leg, would you be cut? You would say, No—if a leg is cut, I am not cut. If we cut off your hand, would you be cut? You would say, No. But if someone says, We will cut off your head—then you will say, Then I am cut. It seems you have made your center only in the head. The whole being, the entire self, has gathered in the head. The rest of the personality has become lifeless. You are not cut by the cutting of the legs, but by the head you are!
Man has turned upside down. Because of the load on the head he has entered headstand. And each day we increase that load. We send children to school and they return only with heavier heads. They do not get to learn anything else. They do not learn love, they do not learn how to be angry, nor any other secrets of life. They only return with heavy heads. They learn what can be stuffed into the head and become computer-like machines. The blood of the whole body is sucked up into the head; the strength of the whole body flows into the head. Where all strength is drawn away, the whole personality becomes crippled and ugly.
Have you noticed—why do you feel sleepy after eating? Because immediately the stomach needs energy. It calls all power to itself, so the head becomes drowsy. If the head remains awake it will continue its work. Hence the nodding after food. Drowsiness means the stomach is saying to the head, Please stop your work; let us complete digestion. But after eating we still keep working from the head. And now even sleeping is hard—at night too we keep working from the head; all night the head runs on. Everything is in disorder.
I have heard of a scientist doing an experiment. He fed a cat, then with an x‑ray machine watched what happened in her stomach: food entered, juices were released, digestion began. Then he brought a dog into the room. The moment the cat saw the dog, her brain became ‘heavy’, for seeing a dog cannot be done by the stomach. The head grew active; the cat shrank; the intestines contracted and stopped releasing juices; the food lay there undigested, for the body no longer had the facility to digest—it had sent all energy to the head. The dog was removed after a minute, but it took six hours for the cat’s stomach to become active again. By then the food had gone cold; when juices released, they were unable to digest it. After repeating this for three months, the cat developed ulcers. Of course—cold food, undigested, juices out of time—the stomach was wounded. The cat developed ulcers because her brain remained in constant tension.
If our stomachs are full of ulcers and a thousand diseases, ninety percent of the reason is that the brain draws all energy and leaves none for the rest of the body. It does not allow power to flow to other dimensions of life. The head becomes heavy; the personality inverted.
We must learn things that are not centered only on the head. We must learn practices that distribute the personality throughout the body, that let the Atman spread into every limb—not remain trapped in the head. If the Atman permeates the whole life of a person, then even touching his hand you will sense the soul; touching his feet you will sense the soul. In every atom of his body there will be the diffused presence of his Atman; it will not have shrunk. He will not say, I am not the feet, I am the head. He will say, I am all this—the sum of this whole. And he will live this sum. But we have never lived so.
Have you ever noticed, when you wash your feet, do you wash them in such a way that you feel there is an Atman in the feet too? When you wash your hands, have you ever allowed your hands to receive the joy of water? No. Even while washing, the skull keeps working. The hands will be washed like a machine and you will move on. Have you ever allowed your whole body to enjoy bathing? Where is the time? The water will fall, soap applied and washed away, and all the while your head will be at work. You return from the bath, yet the body has not tasted the joy of bathing.
Try an experiment tomorrow. While bathing, allow your whole body to enjoy the touch of water. Let the freshness of water caress your whole body. Let every pore bathe—and give the skull a little holiday. For a while spread through the body and tell the head, You are not all—this whole body am I. In this whole body I am. Then you will emerge from the bath with a freshness you have never felt. When you eat, let the whole body enjoy the food. When you walk, let the whole body relish the wind. When you love, press the other to your heart with your whole body. Try to live with the whole body—do not live only in the skull.
The body needs to be reborn. Our body has almost disappeared—only one part lives. Hence all tension amasses there. Tensions arise we cannot even imagine. Wherever we stop living, the head is forced to live in its place. Man’s sexuality too has moved into the head—an ugly affair. If ever we could converse with animals, they would be astonished: What is this? Everything has shrunk into the head—even sex.
Food too has gone into the head. When you actually eat, you do not get as much taste as when you sit on a chair and think of eating. Have you noticed the difference? The friend you are eager to meet—meeting him does not bring the joy you felt in thinking about meeting. Strange! The woman you love—the fantasy of one day meeting her brings more pleasure than when she is actually met—then suddenly all turns flat. Has living become less blissful and thinking more? Look carefully and you will see.
You see a long car pass by and your mind delights: If only I had this car! In your imagination you have sat in it many times—because those who actually sit in it get no joy; and if tomorrow you sit, you too will not get it. We have stopped taking joy from life; we enjoy only the idea. Therefore we take more delight in things we can only think about and never get. What we do get yields little joy.
I have heard of two madmen in an asylum. Both were friends, professors at a university. A third professor friend came to visit. Standing by one cell, he asked the superintendent, Why has this friend gone mad? I was abroad two years. Why is he insane? The superintendent said, Strange story. He wanted a certain woman and did not get her—so he went mad. But he is happy. He has drawn her pictures with charcoal all over the walls, holds a photo to his chest, hums songs. He did not get the woman—hence he is mad. The friend asked, But he is happy? The superintendent said, Exactly because he did not get her.
They walked to the next cell—the other friend was there, tearing his hair, banging his head on the bars. Why is he mad? the visitor asked. The superintendent said, Stranger still: the same woman—she he did not get, this one did get. And because he got her, he went mad!
One did not get her—went mad, yet his madness had a certain sweetness, because still he meets her in imagination, clasping her picture to his chest. In this crazy world, those who never get their beloveds are blessed; those who do—there is no end to their trouble. They pull their hair, for she is obtained—and now there is nothing left to imagine.
How strange: life so sorrowful and thought so sweet! It should be the other way. Thought should be bland; life should be dense, rich. But it has happened that what you think feels more pleasurable.
You rush to a hotel: I’ll eat this, I’ll eat that—you look delighted. Sitting at the table, the delight is gone. Perhaps even then you are enjoying imagining another hotel for tomorrow. But what you are eating—there the joy has departed.
Recently some friends went with me to Kashmir. One of them used to say in the capital again and again, I must go with you to the mountains—Pahalgam, Dal Lake—what joy it will be! Whenever he spoke, a sparkle came to his eyes. For twenty days he was with me there—on Dal Lake—but in his eyes I did not see a single glimpse of Dal. He was with me in Pahalgam, yet I did not see that any beauty touched him. Twenty days later, back in Delhi, he said, What a beautiful place—what joy! I said, Do not puzzle me. I was with you for twenty days. I never once saw you embrace a tree, touch a stone as a friend, place your hands or feet in a stream and sit awhile. I never saw you taste even a little juice there. Yes, earlier, you used to enjoy; now again you are saying there is great joy there!
Is this not happening to all of us? It is. The reason is only this: we have begun to live from the head, not from the whole body, the whole being, the whole Atman. Man has turned upside down. Humanity has inverted. If we are to set it right, the greatest compassion will be to help man become upright. The greatest revolution will be that man no longer lives from the head but begins to live from the whole body and total personality; that his life spreads in all directions. We have no inkling how we have blocked things.
Do you know an aspect of a blind person? The way a blind man listens—you have never listened that way. Your ear is as powerful as his, yet the blind hears so much. I was traveling by train one night, boarded around midnight. I did not see who was on the upper berth. As I prepared my bed on the lower, someone peeped from above, called my name and asked, Are you not so‑and‑so? I said, I am. Do you recognize me? I turned on the light and saw a blind man. I asked, How did you recognize me? He said, I heard you once six years ago—your voice remained in memory. When you spoke with the porter, I felt you must be he. Six years ago? I asked. He said, I am blind; I live by the voice; the ear is my recognition. I have no eyes, so my ears do their work. I even recognize footsteps: who is entering the house, who is leaving—I know by the tread; everyone’s footfall is different.
Have you noticed? Personality is so wondrous that no two people make the same sound when walking. Each has a different rhythm, a different spacing—each a different song. That blind man said, By the sound of footsteps I know who goes out and who comes in. Our ears are just as marvelous, yet we perceive nothing—we have never used them. If we could use them fully, the music of life would bring news of God. But we cannot experience music because we have never trained our ears; no education has been given for hearing.
Very few among us truly smell. You will say, You are wrong—we all smell. But you sense fragrance only when it is very strong. That is why there are French perfumes and others. To a sensitive nose they may seem disturbing—so aggressive, violent, sharp. Even then we barely notice them; dab some and we feel, yes, something is there, it is nice. But do we sense each other’s natural scent? Every person has a scent; each has its meaning, its rhythm, its quality. Some psychologists even say: if two people marry whose scents do not harmonize—whether they know it or not—they will never truly harmonize in life. Only if their scents match somewhere deep can they harmonize. Otherwise it is very difficult. But we have no sense of scent; we were never trained. We have no sense of touch either.
Helen Keller traveled the world. She touched faces with her hands. When she met Nehru, she felt his face with both hands—his nose, eyes, his whole face. She said, I have seen few as beautiful. Someone asked, How did you know—how did you see? She said, Touching his face, I felt exactly as when I caress marble statues in Greece—mystery, beauty, the same sharpness of line. From the touch of his nose, of his face, I felt he must be a very sharp man. Can we tell so by touch? Our hands have the same power, but Helen Keller had no eyes, no ears—no other senses. So the hand had to do everything—and it became exquisitely sensitive, capable of knowing by touch what the eye knows.
What does this mean?
It means our whole body is such a sensitive instrument that if we try to live with the whole body, countless realms of bliss will be revealed. By a fragrance, the coming of God may be felt; by a sound, the arrival of the divine may be sensed; by someone’s touch, the joy of God may be experienced. But at present we do not. That is why we call our sages drashta—seers, visionaries. Our philosophy we call darshan—vision. These are concepts of eye‑centered people.
If we were to call a sage a shrota—a listener—no one would accept it. They would say, Call him a seer. What is the meaning of listener? And if we called a sage a toucher, we would be laughed at. We have made a culture centered in the eyes; within the skull thoughts are centered and the eye has become their gate. Living by the eyes, living in the skull, the life of the whole personality has shrunk above. We are not living anywhere else. Thus we have no full contact with life, nor any sense of how many doors there are to its joy.
I call religious that person who lives integrally—totally—one who lives with all the limbs of life in their fullness. Only such a person can experience the divine. One who lives in fragments cannot—there are reasons.
Suppose I try to see a vast house through a tiny hole—what will I see? A corner of a doorway, a patch of wall, a small fragment of a painting, a corner of a photograph—and nothing more. I must enter the room and see it whole; only then will I be acquainted with it.
We cannot be acquainted with the divine because we do not see through the whole of life. We look through tiny apertures—and they become so burdened that even they cannot see.
The head’s work is small. If my legs walk and I need to come to your house, I will walk with my legs. When I sit at home I will not keep my legs moving. But if, while sitting at home, I move my legs twenty‑four hours a day, then when the day comes to go to your house, the legs will fail. They can walk only because they also rest.
But the brain is never resting! All work has fallen upon it. The work of the legs it does; the work of love it does; the work of weeping and laughing; the work of thinking, of sex, of religion; prayer, God, shop, market—everything! No rest at all. The result is that it has become incapable of doing anything—everything is a mess, chaos, anarchy within. It can do nothing; all is disordered. This load has inverted man.
When I looked closely at man, I felt this story is not about some other planet—it is about the people of this Earth. The head has grown heavy. The opposite of the Daruma doll has happened: throw a man any way, he falls inverted—into headstand.
This must change. The headstand condition has left so many wounds upon man that his whole life‑breath is filled with pain and sorrow.
Remember, if we do not fill with bliss, we will inevitably fill with misery. There is no in‑between—either bliss or sorrow. It is not that if we fail to attain bliss we will remain without sorrow somewhere in the middle. There is no middle. If bliss is not attained, sorrow is attained. If we are not healthy, we will be ill. Between health and illness there is no space. If someone says, I am neither ill nor healthy, know that he is wrong or unaware. One is either ill or healthy. And only if healthy are we free of disease.
We have all become miserable; our souls are riddled with a thousand wounds—blood oozes from every one, pus collects, filth and stench everywhere. Yet we do not know how to move toward joy. And if we try, there are always advisors: Sit and chant Om; chant Ram; read the Gita; read the Quran; sit before a statue of God and fold your hands. But no one tells us to change our life.
And if someone does, he speaks great madness: Change your life—drop greed, drop anger, drop sex, drop this and that—and all will be well.
This is like telling a man burning with fever—sweating, one‑hundred‑and‑four degrees—Drop your fever. Why are you clinging to it? And he says, You speak rightly—I too want to drop it, but it does not leave. We say, Why do you hold it? Let go, enjoy, be healthy.
Fever cannot be dropped. One can become healthy, and then fever disappears. No one can drop greed, anger, hatred. Yes—become blissful and they will drop. Because a blissful person will not be angry—not because he lacks the ability to be angry, but because he is no longer willing to lose his bliss by anger. He is not ready to throw away his joy by becoming angry.
Buddha has said: When I was a child I had toys of diamonds and jewels—worth lakhs. But if some child snatched a piece of bread from me while we played, I would throw the jewel‑toy at him. Sometimes pearls would scatter and toys break. The elders would say, For a two‑paisa piece of bread you have ruined a toy worth lakhs. But at that time I did not know the value of bread or of toys. Later I understood. Now if someone says, A child has taken your piece of bread—throw a toy worth a lakh at him—I will not. Not because I have ‘dropped anger’, but because I have understood that the arithmetic of anger is foolish. For two paisa bread I will not throw a toy worth a lakh. Now I know the value of things.
Only when bliss is attained does the value of things become clear.
But the religious preachers keep saying: Drop anger, drop greed—and all will be well. The poor man listens, thinks anger and greed should drop—but they do not. And the preachers are strange—they even make him greedy. They say, Drop greed and you will attain heaven. They do not see that if he drops greed in order to attain heaven, greed has not dropped—it remains as the desire for heaven. They tell him, Leave this, then you will get that—without seeing that the desire to get that is also greed. They are saying, Drop one rupee here and you will get a crore there.
I was once on the banks of the Ganga where sannyasins were teaching people: Give one paisa in charity here and you will get it back a crore‑fold. Drop greed; give charity. And the poor fellow parts with a paisa in the very greed that it will return a crore! They exploit his greed while preaching its renunciation. No one ever drops greed. Yes—greed drops away when such a wealth is found that greed becomes an obstacle to it. That wealth can be found—but by a transformation of life.
What does transformation of life mean?
Today I wanted to share three sutras.
First: for transformation, understand clearly what is foundation and what is spire. Do not, by mistake, make the spire into the foundation. Otherwise transformation will never happen. Never try to set the spire into the ground. I said, guard the roots, for flowers come from roots. Do not cut the roots; it is the roots that become the flowers. Root and flower are two ends of the same reality—what is below and what is above are not two; they are one continuum. This is the first thing to be remembered.
Second: do not allow the head to become heavy. If the head becomes heavy, headstand will set in—whether it is visible or not. If the head is heavy, the feet will go up and the head will go down. Do not become the inverted Daruma doll. We already have. Decentralize the head—spread it out into all the limbs. Gradually let each organ do its own work, so that not all work accumulates at one center. Otherwise that center will go insane, break under the burden, turn to stone; so much weight will lie upon it that all functioning will be disordered. Let the head do its own share; let the rest be left to the body. But we have put all work on the head. This is the second point.
Third: all the doors of our personality—the senses—need training. We must make our ears capable of listening deeper and deeper—so that when even a leaf stirs we hear its music. We must make taste so subtle that when we eat, not only the gross food appears, but the vast, the subtle hidden in the gross is also sensed.
An Upanishadic rishi has said: Food is Brahman. How much savor he must have taken to know that food is Brahman! This is not a doctrine—this is the utterance of a wonder‑filled taster who ate with such bliss that a glimpse of Brahman appeared in food.
Those who spoke of anahad nada—the unstruck sound—cannot be like us, for they must have trained the ear to very subtle planes, listened so delicately that the subtle sound became audible: the music that surrounds the whole cosmos. There is a music that enfolds the universe, but we do not hear it because we have never developed the capacity to listen.
Have you noticed—you walk the road, a painter walks the road. You see all trees as the same green. The truth is no two trees are the same green—there are a thousand greens within green. A painter sees the thousand shades. Green is not one color—there are innumerable shades of green. Each leaf is its own green. We see only one, because our eyes have never been trained to subtleties of color.
I call that education basic—not what Gandhi called basic. That is very non‑basic: teaching someone spinning, mat‑weaving, the alphabet, letter writing—and think education is done. Basic education I call that which makes the ear capable of catching the music of life; which makes the eye capable not only of form but of glimpsing the formless; which makes touch so capable that while touching the body, the touch reaches the soul; which makes taste so capable that one can say, ‘Food is Brahman’; and which makes all the senses so capable that doors open on all sides and through every door the divine is glimpsed. The whole cannot be known otherwise.
We will know the whole only when all the doors of our house are open. We are like those who lock every door and sit inside. Education will be true and revolutionary the day we teach each child not a headstand of the skull, but the opening of all the senses.
Children are more capable than us. If a child loves you, he wants to touch your face. If he loves you, he wants to press his lips to your body. If he loves you, he wants to cling around your neck, to touch your whole body. He is trying to know you with his whole body. But we do not. If children are rightly educated, all the doors of their senses can open.
A revolution can happen in this world—one that can transform all of humanity—if we understand the causes of our sicknesses. And let it arise from karuna, not daya. Remember, ‘daya’ is an insulting word; karuna is altogether different.
Karuna means a shared suffering—a pain we experience together. Daya means, We are above and someone is below upon whom we bestow pity. Daya is not a good word. From daya some alms may come, a dharmashala may be built—but no revolution ever. Revolution comes from karuna.
Karuna means: I too am included; I stand exactly where you stand. Your suffering is my suffering; my suffering is yours. Our pain is collective. Together we have pushed man onto the path of misery; together we can bring him to the way of bliss.
Only the revolution born of karuna will bear fruit. And a revolution has become utterly necessary: the man we knew is close to dying. If a new man is not born, the old will die and humankind may end. The birth of the new is needed. The old will go—is going, has gone. If we do not bring forth the new, a great darkness may come.
Many questions have gathered. Tomorrow I will speak of them all.
You have listened to my words with such peace and love—I am deeply obliged. In the end I bow to the Lord seated within each of you. Please accept my pranam.