Mahaveer Meri Drishti Mein #10

First, the higher the power, the harder it is to fight lower powers. However intelligent a person may be, a single blow on the head can scatter all his intelligence. Even a man as precious as Gandhi can be ended with a single bullet.

In truth, the higher the power, the subtler and finer it is; the lower the power, the cruder and more manifest it is. It is very easy for the gross to crush the subtle. That is why it has often happened that superior civilizations have lost to inferior ones: absorbed in subtle refinements, they forget that there are also crude matters that must be provided for. Whenever crude forces, peoples, or civilizations have attacked, the superior civilization has lost and the inferior has won. Even now, the unintelligent has a greater chance of defeating the intelligent. Even a buffalo could hoist a Buddha on its horns and finish him.

Two things are worth keeping in mind:
1) The higher the power, the more it is like a peak; the lower the power, the more it is like a foundation. If the foundation below weakens, the peak above will collapse, however magnificent or golden it may be. The base is made of solid stones; the summit is made of gold.
2) Tibet possessed a profound inner civilization, but it had virtually no gross, external means. And it often happens that when people come upon inner peace and bliss, they drop concern for outer means. They do not build big cannons; they do not build big atoms. So absorbed do they become in inner bliss and peace that they never get around to arranging the outer apparatus.

In one sense, Tibet was among the most superior civilizations; in another, among the weakest—if an atom were dropped on it, Tibetan wisdom would be of no use. India, too, was repeatedly defeated by barbarians in earlier times for the same reason: we were busy building an inner world.

Take a painter: he is creating the finest painting at home—Picasso, Monet, whoever—and someone comes and plunges a knife into his chest. No one would say, “Such a great painter—so great a mastery—and he could not prevail against a knife!” We would say he was so absorbed in painting that he never arranged for clubs, exercise, swords—never even imagined such a thing would happen.

In the pursuit of the higher, the lower is often forgotten. Tibet was isolated, far from the world, living unto itself. Within that self-contained sphere it developed certain excellences. But any physical, tamasic (inert, brute) civilization—what you are calling “asuric,” demonic—attacking it would inevitably defeat Tibet; its loss was certain. That is one point.

The second point: It is true that Tibet had—and still has—people who can give intimations of the future. But the future is a very strange thing. Information about the future is never carved in stone; it consists of possibilities. A possibility means: “This can happen if these conditions remain; it may not happen if those conditions change.”

Let me illustrate. An astrologer, after twelve years of study in Kashi, returns to his village with tomes of astrology, now adept at prediction. As he nears the village, he sees footprints on the river sand bearing the marks that belong to a chakravarti—a universal emperor! It is blazing noon, a simple village, a small river, dirty sand—there seems no chance a universal emperor would walk here barefoot in the open sun. He is shaken. “If an emperor is roaming barefoot on this filthy sand at high noon, then what of my scriptures?” He almost feels he should drown his books in the river and go home, thinking he has studied a false science. But first he decides to see whose prints these are.

Following the footprints, he finds Buddha sitting under a tree. He looks and is baffled: the face has the emperor’s aura, the eyes are an emperor’s; the body is that of a beggar, a begging bowl by his side, bare feet! He says, “Master, you have put me in great difficulty. My twelve years of practice are going to waste. Your feet bear the mark of the emperor, and yet you are a mendicant. Should I drown my scriptures in the river?”

Buddha says, “There is no need to drown your scriptures. I could have been a chakravarti—that was my possibility—but I renounced it. When I was born, the astrologer said: this boy will either be an emperor or a renunciate. My father asked, ‘Why do you say either-or? Say he will be an emperor or say he will be a renunciate.’ The astrologer replied, ‘Astrology conveys possibilities about the future. It is never as certain as two and two make four. It only says: this may be so; otherwise, it may be otherwise.’”

Vision of the future deals with countless possibilities. What has already happened is certain—out of a thousand possibilities, one became actual; hence the past is dead. The future stands with many doors open and infinite causes at play. One can and does give intimations that “this may happen,” but even that only becomes definite when it happens.

Moreover, a whole nation does not possess such insight—only a few individuals do. They may say something will happen, but the nation at large, which is in darkness and hears nothing, does not listen. It is very difficult for us to listen to and understand the person of inner vision. Yes, after the event we say, “So-and-so had said exactly this.” Until then, he appears to us a foolish man talking idly. This has happened again and again. Regarding Hitler, Stalin, Nehru, Gandhi—astrologers have spoken. You only come to know of it when the event occurs. And there is another difficulty: an astrologer says a thousand things. A thousand do not occur; what does occur you say, “He was right,” and the rest you forget.

Astrology is one thing. What is called the “third eye” can see the future more deeply than astrology. Yet that vision too is symbolic, not a direct showing of facts. Symbols appear, and one must interpret them. In interpretation mistakes often occur. Even if they do not, people are rarely willing to listen—because they themselves do not see. And the number of the blind is vast; in that multitude, the voice of the one-eyed is easily lost. Still, efforts at preparation were made; but arranging things at the last moment is very difficult.

Tibet had an extraordinary wealth of scriptures, and the Dalai Lama managed to bring away almost all the precious texts. Tibet also had a number of precious people; nearly all of them could be rescued. Preparations had been underway for the last thirty–thirty-five years. The danger was imminent, and because of those preparations it became possible for the Dalai Lama to escape; otherwise, even that might not have been possible.

You are right to say it—but who listens! Buddha said, “My dhamma will not last more than five hundred years,” but no one listened. He said it plainly; arrangements should have been made. None were. When calamity struck, Buddhist scriptures had to be saved and carried out of this land. No arrangements were made beforehand. Our lethargy, our tamas, is so great that even if the future is told, it makes little difference. We think being told will change things—nothing changes.

An American economist has made a prediction—based purely on mathematics, so it is very likely to be accurate—that around 1978 India will face a great famine in which between one hundred and two hundred million people may die. But in India no one is concerned. I mentioned it to a prominent leader in Delhi; he said, “1978 is still far away—what can we do?” The claim is grounded entirely in mathematics—world food arrangements, population trends—everything. He says such a famine has never occurred before and likely never will again, but India may have to face it. Yet what difference does it make? He has written an entire book, not a casual statement, with full mathematical detail—still, there is no impact in India: no reviews in the press, no discussion among leaders, no talk among thinkers. Yes, when the famine comes in 1978, then we will say, “That man predicted it exactly.”

Our tamas is that deep. We all know we will die—no one needs to prophesy that. One thing is certain: we will die. Yet we live as if we will never die. Even a man who will die tomorrow morning lives this evening as though he will live forever. Our blindness toward the future is profound.

In the Mahabharata there is the episode of the Yaksha’s questions. Nakula and Sahadeva go to fetch water; the Yaksha questions them, they fail to answer and fall unconscious. Then Yudhishthira goes. One of the questions is: “What is the most wondrous thing in the world of men?” Yudhishthira says, “This: that death is certain, and yet no one is willing to accept it.”

Nothing is more astonishing. What is most certain, we keep the most uncertain; everything else is uncertain. Even if the whole future were told to you, you would still live just as you are living; it would make little difference—because you do not see it.

Tamas means lethargy; it is utter heedlessness.

If we accept that death is certain—whether ten years from now, twenty, or fifty, what difference does it make—if it becomes clear and firm in our consciousness that death is inevitable, then we will have to do something. We cannot go on living the way we are; we will have to make a change. And there is so much laziness about making that change that we say, “All right, we’ll see tomorrow; whatever happens, happens.”
And this is what I call tamas. Tamas means a dense burden of darkness upon the mind that doesn’t let us do anything. Even if it is explained to us, it doesn’t let us act; even if we are warned, it doesn’t let us act. And our inclination not to act is such that, as things are going, we quietly keep moving along in the same rut.
So it isn’t that there is no understanding of things. There is understanding, but the masses cannot take hold of it. A few individuals do have awareness. They have made efforts on their part; whatever is excellent, they have managed to save. And even there they have put in place every possible means so that the best might somehow be preserved; they have done all that can be done for that as well.
But the situation is like this: suppose a village is going to be submerged in ten days, ten thousand people live there, and ten people get the sense that the village will drown. They run around shouting through the village, but no one listens; people laugh at them. How big a boat can ten people build to save anyone? Even if they set to work, in ten days ten people might put together a boat or two, in which they could take away a little that can be saved; but the whole village will not be saved. It could be saved only if all ten thousand became eager and involved.
And it may also be that those who can see ahead can also see how much can be saved and how much is bound to be lost. That isn’t difficult either. How much will inevitably be lost is already certain. When that, too, is seen clearly, there is no point in laboring over it. Whatever can be saved has been saved; and what is destined to be lost has been accepted.

No—if agreement happens, it will be total; if it doesn’t, it won’t happen at all. Because I completely disagree with the received notion of character. And I say this as well: that notion was not Mahavira’s either.

There is one approach that tries to regiment outer behavior. In truth, only one who lacks inner discernment tries to regiment the outer. Where there is inner discernment, the outer arranges itself; it does not have to be forced. If it has to be forced, that itself reveals the absence of inner discernment. In the absence of inward discernment, whatever the outer behavior—whether we call it good or bad, moral or immoral—if the inner light is not there, all behavior is blind, in darkness.

Of course, it makes a difference to society. Society calls one kind of conduct good, another bad. Society calls that conduct good which makes social life convenient, and that bad which creates inconvenience.

Society has nothing to do with the individual’s soul; it has to do with the individual’s behavior. Society is made of behaviors, not of souls. So society’s concern is that you speak truthfully, not that you be truth. Be false inside—no matter; but speak the truth. Fabricate lies in your mind—no matter; but present the truth outwardly.

Society cares about the face you show; it does not care about the soul that remains unseen. Therefore society does not even inquire how you are within. Society says: how you are outside—that is all that concerns us. Behave outwardly in ways favorable to society, convenient for social life, bringing order and not disorder. Society’s concern is with your conduct; religion’s concern is with your soul.

So society worries only enough to make the outer form correct—and then drops the matter. To correct the outer, the tools it employs are those of fear: the police, the courts, the law—or fear of sin and merit, heaven and hell. It uses all these forms of fear.

Now, the strange thing is that society’s system for conduct is fear-based and ends at the outer layer. In the end society can only produce hypocrites or immoralists—never truly moral persons. Hypocrites, or immoral people. Hypocrites in the sense that inwardly a person is one thing and outwardly becomes something else.

And once a person becomes a hypocrite, his chances of becoming religious are even less than those of an immoral person. Grasp this well. In society’s eyes he will be honored—revered as a sadhu, a renunciate—but because he has become a hypocrite, his condition is worse than the immoral person’s. For the immoral person is at least direct, simple, transparent. If abuse arises within, he abuses; if anger comes, he gets angry. In a sense he is clear and spontaneous—as he is, so he appears. There is no gap between his inside and outside.

In the enlightened one too, there is no gap between inside and outside. The enlightened is as he is within, so he is without. The ignorant person is as he is without, so he is within. In between is the hypocrite: inside he is one thing, outside another. A hypocrite means he is outwardly like a knower and inwardly like an ignoramus. Inside he is ignorant—abuse, anger, violence arise in him; outside he appears like a knower—nonviolent, with a placard reading “Ahimsa paramo dharmah,” seeming virtuous, keeping all the rules, disciplined. His outer persona is borrowed from the wise, while his inner remains that of the ignorant.

This hypocrite—whom society calls moral—will never, ever reach the dimension where religion is. The immoral person may. That is why it often happens that sinners arrive, and the so-called virtuous go astray. The sinner has two reasons to arrive: first, sin is painful—manifest sin brings suffering, and that very pain catalyzes transformation. Second, sin requires courage; going against society requires courage.

Hypocrites are mediocre; they have no courage at all. Lacking courage, they put on the face society demands—out of fear of society—and inside they remain as they are. The immoral person has a certain grit, a courage.

Courage is a great spiritual quality. Sin carries a sting and he has courage—these two assets are his. Sin leads him into pain, into suffering; continuously it throws him into distress. And no one wants to remain in pain. And because he has courage, the day he musters it, that day he steps out.

Let me explain with a small story. A Christian priest was teaching in a school, explaining what moral courage is. A child asked for an example. The priest said: Imagine there are thirty of you children; you’ve gone on a picnic to the hills. You’re tired after the day, drowsy; it’s a cold night. Twenty-nine children quickly get into bed, pull up their blankets, and fall asleep. But one child kneels in a corner and says his nightly prayer before God. The priest said: That boy has moral courage—that when twenty-nine have gone to bed on a cold night, with every temptation to sleep, he musters the will to stand in a corner, pray to God in the cold, and only then goes to sleep.

A month later the priest returned, spoke again about moral courage, and then said, Now I would like you to give examples of moral courage. One boy said: Like the example you gave, I’ll give one too. Thirty priests go on a picnic to the hills. They return tired at night; it’s cold. Twenty-nine priests sit down to pray, and one priest pulls up his blanket and goes to sleep. I call that one priest an example of moral courage. And, compared to your example, this shows even greater moral courage: when twenty-nine priests are praying and condemning that you’ll go to hell if you sleep in bed—yet one man quietly goes to sleep.

Those whom we call moral rarely have moral courage. Their morality is in fact born of lack of courage, not of courage.

A man does not steal—we commonly think he is non-stealing. That is false. Not stealing is not by itself evidence of non-stealing. The only reason may be that the man is a thief at heart but cannot muster the courage to steal. In ninety-nine out of a hundred cases, everyone wants to steal but cannot muster the courage. Stealing is not a matter of ordinary courage: in the dark of night to behave in another’s house as if it were your own is no small thing.

So those we call moral are often the courage-less. And religion is a journey of supreme courage. These timid ones, moral only because they lack courage, never set out on the religious quest. But those we call bad have one obvious virtue—they are courageous, courageous enough to stand against the whole society. When the twenty-nine are praying, they go to sleep. When the whole society is praying, they go to sleep. Their courage is remarkable.

Now the question is: how can that courage turn from the side of sin toward virtue? You don’t have to take him anywhere. The pain of sin itself is so intense that it compels a person to rise out of it. Today or tomorrow, he rises.

So in my view, the sinner’s chances of approaching religion are greater than those of the so-called moral person. And the day the sinner enters the world of religion, he enters with the same intensity with which he had gone into sin.

Nietzsche wrote a most remarkable sentence. His insight is deep—few have such a vision. He wrote: When I saw trees touching the sky, I investigated and found that the tree that would touch the sky must have roots that touch the netherworld. Then it occurred to me: whoever would touch the heights of virtue must have within the capacity for his roots to touch the depths of sin. If someone is incapable of touching the underworld of sin, he will not touch the sky of virtue either—because the summit rises only as deep as the roots go. It is always in proportion. Grass whose roots do not go deep within will rise only as high above.

So the sinner’s movement is toward the bad—but the day it turns toward the good, he has momentum; he can go toward the good as well.

Therefore my view is that teaching a false, imposed morality has resulted in less and less religion in the world. Better that a person be straightforward—even if a sinner—clear and honest, instead of layering himself with false, useless pretenses. Such a person has great potential to change. If as he is, it proves painful, he will change—what else can he do?

But the hypocrite has arranged it thus: what he truly is, he hides; and what he is not, he arranges outwardly. So he receives respect, comfort, honor from society—and remains as he is. Therefore he never even suffers the pain of being wrong. That very pain is liberating.

In my eyes, a frankly sensual society is better than a hypocritical one. That is why I say there is a likelihood of religion arising in the West, not now in the East. I can call this a kind of prophecy: in the coming hundred years religion will arise in the West, and in the East it will decline day by day—because the East is hypocritical and the West is clear. The East has become thoroughly hypocritical; the West is clear—even if bad, it is clear.

This clarity of being frankly bad will become suffering for the West. It already has become suffering, and from that suffering it will have to come out. Our false goodness does not even become suffering; so we never come out of it.

The hypocrite lives in a lukewarm state—never steam, never ice. A sinner can become ice, and a sinner can become steam—because he is never lukewarm. He lives on the edges. He has the courage to go to the extremes.

So I hold that by giving moral education society may have somehow arranged society, but it has caused immense harm to the individual soul. And I also hold: society only appears orderly. If individuals are false, how can the order be true? The person who is false will do through the back door what he refrains from doing at the front. At most, society can manage this much: every house gets two doors—one at the front, where prayers and hymns are sung; one at the back, where abuse and rage storm.

That back door too is part of society—where will it go? It keeps bubbling up. Those back-alley curses echo onto the main road as well—where else could they go?

How long can one live with a false face? And when everyone wears a false face—and everyone knows the faces are false—society becomes a fiction and nothing more. That is why it has so often happened that a religious person had to be antisocial, because he could not consent to this false society.

Thus, the name the Buddha gave his monks was anagarika—one who has renounced citizenship. He had to abandon the conventions of a spurious society. A monk’s very name is anagarika—no longer a citizen.

In truth, a bhikshu, a sannyasin, a sadhu—these mean that in some sense he has become antisocial; he has broken his ties with society, because society is a fortress of hypocrisy.

And this false morality has its cycles. When false morality becomes too strong, a reaction gathers force—elements arise that break it. When elements that break false morality become active, anarchy and license appear. When license grows strong, those who support false morality rise up again, saying: this license is bad—bring back morality.

In other words, society’s history so far swings between false morality—that is, false order—and anarchy. False morality is as dangerous as license. And the truth is: false morality itself is the cause of license. We have swung between these two long enough. Now we should care about this: either true morality—or else let us frankly accept that man is immoral, and then arrange how to live as immoral without becoming false. Rather than making man a liar, at least lay the first foundation of truthfulness. And if an ethic that says truth is precious still contrives to make man false, what kind of ethic is that?

So I say: if man is in fact immoral, then let us accept it and arrange how an immoral man may live. That would be better—and it will lead more simply toward religion, because immorality will bring suffering. Sin cannot bring joy.

I am leading him towards myself. I am leading him towards myself, because sexual desire is not as dangerous as hypocrisy is. Hypocrisy is man’s invention, whereas sexual desire is God’s. So the man who is a hypocritical celibate—you think I am taking him away from celibacy. But there is no such thing as hypocritical celibacy being celibacy at all. It is only hypocrisy; inside, there is deep sexuality.

How can one reach truth directly from hypocrisy? Only truth can lead to truth. If sexuality is a fact, then from sexuality one can arrive at brahmacharya, because brahmacharya is the supreme truth. It is the final realization born of understanding sexuality. But a hypocritical brahmacharya that has been imposed beforehand—there has never been a way from hypocrisy to truth. Drop hypocrisy; only then can you come to truth.

Now, two points need to be understood. Sexuality is a fact of human life; it is not false. By understanding this fact, we can become available to a greater truth. That is, brahmacharya is the outcome of the ultimate understanding of desire; it is not something achieved by fighting against desire. One who has understood desire rightly, lived it, recognized it, gradually becomes available to brahmacharya.

But a person who refuses to live, know, or recognize desire, and from above imposes a false celibacy—first that false celibacy has to be removed, and he must be told honestly where he actually is. Any journey can begin only when we first know where we stand. If I am under the illusion that I am in Srinagar, that I am sitting on the Himalayas, the journey cannot even begin, because it cannot start from the Himalayas where I am not. The journey will start from where I actually am.

So with a person whose celibacy is hypocritical, first he must be made to see through the illusion of sham celibacy and recognize truthfully where he is. From that point the journey can begin. But if in his imagination he believes he has already reached celibacy, then what method remains to reach it further? Hypocrisy means believing you have arrived where you have not, and denying where you actually are.

When I meet monks and renunciates, I am astonished. In public they speak of soul and God and sing the praises of celibacy; in private they ask how to get rid of sex! I have not yet met a single monk or nun who, in private, has not asked how to be free of sex—that they are being burned by this fire. Yet they lecture on celibacy and instruct others in it; and what they preach, they cannot touch from anywhere.

There is a reason for this: first we must catch hold of the truth of our personality, understand it—only from there can a journey begin. One who understands sex rightly cannot help but become a brahmachari; he will have to move toward brahmacharya. No one will take him there; his own understanding becomes the journey.

So when you say I am taking him on a reverse path—no, I am not; he is going in reverse. And whoever is instructing him in celibacy in that way is leading him backward. He will never be allowed to come toward true brahmacharya. If you want to bring him toward brahmacharya, you will have to give him a thorough understanding of sexuality, uncover all the inherent, hidden facts of sex. He must break the spell that sexuality casts. If that hypnosis does not break, nothing will change. At most, outwardly he will become a celibate, and inwardly his lust will become a thousand times more condensed.

It may surprise you: an ordinary sensual person is not as lustful; his sexual urge comes and goes—there are moments. But one who imposes celibacy from above becomes lustful twenty-four hours a day. He cannot be free of sex even for a moment, because what he has repressed looks for a thousand outlets from within; it surrounds his entire mind and enters every fiber of his being.

Note this: sex has its own definite center. If a person passes through sex in a natural way, sex never enters his brain; it remains centered around its own center. But one who adopts hypocritical celibacy places such repression on the sex center that the sexual impulse invades other centers—it enters the mind and even consciousness.

It is as if there is a kitchen in your house; smoke rises and you have made arrangements for it to escape. Now someone becomes an opponent of letting smoke out and blocks the chimney. Will the smoke stop rising? If there is a kitchen, there will be smoke. Now that smoke will spread into the sitting room and the other rooms of the house, because you blocked its outlet in the kitchen. The result is, the whole house becomes like a kitchen—walls blackened, rooms filled with smoke. And the more the smoke increases, the more he panics and blocks the chimney still further, believing he must suppress it because it keeps increasing—unaware that it increases because of suppression.

Animals are not as lustful as humans. Interestingly, an animal’s sexuality is periodic: at certain times it is sexual, at other times it completely forgets—it has no sex. The sole reason is: in an animal’s mind there is no repression of sex. So when it indulges, it indulges totally; then it relaxes and becomes quiet.

Humans who are sexually active—who have children—yet hold shallow notions of celibacy in their minds cannot even enjoy sex completely. What remains unexperienced keeps demanding fulfillment. Thus only man is sexual twenty-four hours a day, year-round; no animal is! Those who are sexually active do relax for some hours after intercourse—at least for twenty-four or forty-eight hours they forget. But monks and renunciates cannot forget even in those hours; they are immersed in the same flavor all the time.

So what I am saying is: I am only talking of leading them toward brahmacharya. I am saying: understand this fact—do not run from it, do not be afraid. Recognize it, wake up to it. In awakening, recognition, and understanding, it will thin out. And a moment comes when, in the state of total understanding, sex is transformed; all its energy begins to rise along new pathways. And when it rises through new channels, that very energy becomes the cause of the supreme experiences. The sexual energy’s lowest outlet is at the bottom; above it are other centers. If the energy rises center by center, the brahmarandhra (the crown center) is the final outlet for the sublimated sexual energy—the highest.

When sex is discharged from below, it leads into nature; when it is released through the brahmarandhra, it leads into the Divine. The journey between the two can be made only by one who, with profound understanding, undertakes the experiment of raising sexual energy upward. That is, in the discipline of brahmacharya the first step is understanding sex, not opposing it. The energy we want to raise cannot be raised by fighting it; only by understanding and by a loving invitation can it be lifted. If we fight, we split in two—and once split, we are lost.

A hypocritical person becomes fragmented—many fragments. I want a person to be integrated, whole, because only a whole person can bring about transformation. Brahmacharya is simple if it is not imposed; it is extremely difficult if it is imposed.

So I say: teach society sexuality rightly; teach society right desire, right sex.

Of course he would. There is no other way. There is no other way. Because the celibacy that Mahavira attained is itself the outcome of understanding desire over many, many lifetimes.

It cannot come without indulgence—never. Only through indulgence will it come.

Whatever we know in life, we know only by going into it; without going, we never know. And if someone stops without going, then someday only the going will...

Absolutely he can; there is no question about it. It’s not even a question. While indulging, we can do so with understanding or without understanding. If we indulge with understanding, we move toward brahmacharya; if we indulge without understanding, we keep revolving in the same circle. So the issue is not indulgence; the issue is indulging while awake. Whatever we are enjoying—are we enjoying it awake or asleep?

Sex has this particular twist: for lifetimes people indulge in it, but asleep. That’s why no real experience ever comes into our hands. In the moment of sex a person becomes almost unconscious, loses awareness. When he comes out and awareness returns, the moment is gone; then the craving for that moment begins again. The key formula of the discipline of brahmacharya is: how to remain awake at the moment of sex. And you can remain awake in that moment only if you are practicing wakefulness in other moments.

Exactly the same is the case with death. We have died many times, yet we have no idea that we have died before. The reason is that every time, just before dying, we become unconscious. The fear of death is so great that we cannot undergo death while awake. And if once someone were to pass through death awake, death would be finished—because he would know: I have become immortal; nothing died, only the body dropped and that’s all. But we die many times, and each time we pass out. By the time we come back to awareness, a new birth has already taken place.

So that interval of passing through death leaves no memory in us. Memory forms only when we are awake. Imagine a man is taken around Srinagar while unconscious, laid on a stretcher, chloroformed; we show him all of Srinagar, fly him back to Delhi, and he wakes up in Delhi. We tell him, You’ve been to Srinagar. He says, What madness! I slept here and woke up here. Merely passing through Srinagar isn’t enough; you must pass through it with awareness. Otherwise that person, having toured Srinagar under chloroform, will reach Delhi and say, I want to see Srinagar. The longing remains: I didn’t see it—what is it like?

We pass through death in a swoon, so we remain unfamiliar with death. One who becomes acquainted with death knows the soul’s immortal nature.
We pass through sex in a swoon, so we remain unfamiliar with sex. One who becomes acquainted with sex comes to know brahmacharya.

My point is only this: if we pass through any state awake, everything changes—because what we truly know transforms us. If once you have held someone’s hand and kissed it and felt great delight, then do it again—but this time remain aware: From where is the pleasure arising? What kind of pleasure? Is it arising at all or not? Then kiss the hand consciously.

One day Buddha was walking along a road. A fly alighted on his shoulder. Talking with Ananda, he brushed it away—then suddenly stopped. The fly had flown; Ananda, startled, stood still: Why did he stop? Then very slowly Buddha brought his hand back to his shoulder. Ananda said, What are you doing now? The fly has flown away. Buddha said, I brushed it away in the wrong way. I was absorbed in your talk and, in unawareness, brushed the fly off. Now I am brushing it away awake, as it should have been brushed. That was ill-treatment of the fly—an unconscious ill-treatment. Now I am doing it awake.

So if you once kissed someone’s hand and felt much delight, take the hand again and now kiss it with full awareness; watch from where the delight arises. You will be amazed. You will find: there is the hand, the lips, the kiss—but where is the bliss? With such wakeful seeing, the mad attraction to the hand can dissolve—utterly dissolve.

Once you pass through any experience consciously, its grip on you can never be what it was in your unconsciousness. And nature’s clever device is that she arranges for all the precious experiences to make you pass through them in unconsciousness—otherwise you would not pass through them again. Sex is a deep necessity of nature, the mechanism for reproduction; she doesn’t want you to interfere with it. So when she takes you there, she puts you into deep unawareness. What you ordinarily call love and so on are simply techniques of becoming unconscious—hypnotic devices, methods of mutual hypnosis.

And when you become fully hypnotized, completely unconscious… That is why with a prostitute you do not find the same satisfaction that you find with a beloved. With a prostitute your trance never becomes that deep—it’s business, a transaction; you throw down ten rupees and have relations; there is little scope for hypnosis. Hence a prostitute cannot give the same gratification a beloved can; nor can a wife give as much as a beloved. With a wife, through daily repetition, there remains little cause to become unconscious; it becomes routine, mechanical. But with a beloved, first you have to become unconscious yourself and make her unconscious too.

What we call foreplay—the whole rigmarole of love before the sexual act: kissing, licking, embracing, reciting poems, singing songs, saying sweet things, praising each other—that entire rigmarole is a method of creating mutual hypnosis. When both have entered hypnosis, then it’s fine; then they can pass through it unconscious.

My point is only this: in regard to any act from which we wish to be free, we can never be free while we are unconscious. Hypocrisy does not break unconsciousness; it creates more delusion and hands us wrong substitutes—which we grasp in such a way that we don’t even notice.

Take Mahavira, for example. We keep asking, about Mahavira… If Mahavira left women and went to the forest, we conclude that if we want to practice brahmacharya we too should leave women and go to the forest. We miss Mahavira’s fundamental point. Mahavira did not go to the forest to leave women; he went because women had become tasteless to him. He was not renouncing them; they had lost all savor and meaning. When Mahavira goes to the forest, there is no memory of women in his mind. But you go to the forest “leaving” women behind, and memories of women surround you more than ever. You think you are doing what Mahavira did! You sit in the forest and Mahavira sits in the forest: Mahavira loses himself in himself; you close your eyes and lose yourself in women. And you will argue that you are doing exactly what Mahavira did. Our whole difficulty is that we see only the outer form: Mahavira goes to the forest. What happened within Mahavira we do not see. If we could see that, it would be an entirely different matter.

There is no liberation without experience. Even from sin there is no liberation without experiencing it. One who has held back from sin out of fear will not be free of sin; he is only accumulating the power to commit it. Today or tomorrow he will commit it; then he will repent; after repenting he will again suppress himself; by suppressing he will again commit; and again he will repent. It is a vicious circle—sin, repentance; sin, repentance—turning endlessly.

I say: forget repentance; never do it. Repentance means the sin has already happened and afterwards you are repenting. I say: if you must sin, do it knowingly, with awareness, fully awake. Whatever you do, do it fully awake. Even if you have to hurl an abuse, do it fully awake. Then perhaps there will never be a second chance to abuse, and there will be no need to repent.

A fakir wrote that his father was dying. The boy—he was fifteen or sixteen—was sitting by the old man’s side. As he was dying, the father whispered in his ear: Keep only this in mind—never give an answer to anything before twenty-four hours have passed. The experience of my whole life I give you in a single maxim: do not answer anything before twenty-four hours. Remember only this.

When that fakir attained great peace and people asked him, What is your secret? he said: The secret is wonderful. My father was dying and told me: Don’t give anyone an answer before twenty-four hours. If some woman said to me, I love you very much, I kept silent for twenty-four hours. When I went after twenty-four hours, it was already over; the woman had vanished from the mind. She said, What is this! When I told you, you said nothing; now you come when the intoxication is gone. If someone abused me, I went after twenty-four hours to give my reply: Brother, you abused me; I have come to answer you. The man said, But the matter is over; what now? What answer now?

That man wrote: whenever I went after twenty-four hours, I found I always arrived late—the train had already left. It could only have happened at that very moment; and if it had happened then, it would have been unconscious. After twenty-four hours of reflection, when it happened it was very awake. Many times I went to say, Brother, your abuse was absolutely right. In those twenty-four hours I saw that what you said—You are dishonest—was perfectly right. I am dishonest.

No.

These twenty-four hours...

And it’s a very interesting thing that no bad act can be done after an interval; it can only be done immediately. Because in the interval, understanding dawns, awareness comes, reflection arises.

Dale Carnegie wrote of an experience. He said that once he gave a speech on the radio and stated Lincoln’s birth date incorrectly. Many angry letters reached him: “If you don’t even know the birth date, why did you give a speech?” And a woman from some American village wrote him a very harsh letter, pouring out every abuse she could. Carnegie became very angry. That very night he got up and wrote her a reply—matching her abuses and doubling their weight. But it was late, the servant had gone, and the mail couldn’t be sent. He tucked the letter away.

In the morning, as he was putting it in an envelope, he thought, “Let me read it once.” But now twelve hours had made a difference. He read the letter and felt there was a bit of excess in it. He reread her letter; it no longer seemed as harsh as it had twelve hours earlier—because now he was reading it again. And reading his own letter, he felt the reply was a bit too severe; better write another.

He wrote a second reply, more courteous than the first. While writing, it occurred to him: “Let me wait another twelve hours and see if it makes any difference.” For in twelve hours so much had already changed. So he tore up the first letter and put the second aside.

In the evening, when he returned from the office, he read that letter and said, “Still there is some sting left in it.” Then he wrote a third letter. But he said, “What is the hurry? That woman has made no demand. Let’s wait till tomorrow morning.” He continued like this for seven days.

On the seventh day, the letter he wrote was the exact opposite of the first. The first letter was of hard enmity; the seventh was pure friendship. He sent that letter. By return post came her reply. The woman apologized profusely: “I made a great mistake.” Because time had passed for her as well. Had he sent abuses, she would not have had any chance to ask forgiveness; she would have abused again.

And then Dale Carnegie wrote that from then on he made a rule: never reply to any letter before seven days.

You understand what I mean, don’t you? What happens is this: in that much time the intensity—the madness of your mind—dissipates, and you get many more chances to think. Bernard Shaw used to say he never answered any letter before fifteen days.

No, no. The point is not that you will do it for only seven days. That’s not the point; a gap is needed in between.

Yes, a chance to think is needed. Otherwise what happens is, we end up answering without thinking. It's not that you too should adopt a seven-day rule.

It seemed to him that in seven days his mind relaxes.

It is possible; it will differ from person to person—differ from person to person.

Yes, it can—certainly it can.

No-no! About rigidity... in seven days nothing is really getting harmed. There isn’t going to be any harm at all.

Yes, yes. Of course it’s possible, of course it’s possible. There’s no harm in it at all. The idea behind delaying is simply to decide on an interval—don’t answer immediately—because an immediate answer can come out of a kind of stupor, from unconsciousness. It isn’t necessary that it will. If a person is awake, even an immediate answer won’t come from stupor—then the question doesn’t arise. But since we are not awake, the question does arise.

I was speaking of Bernard Shaw: he wouldn’t reply to letters for fifteen days. And he said that by not replying for fifteen days, some letters answer themselves; there’s no need to reply. If he had had to respond on the first day, he would have had to; but in fifteen days they answer themselves—the absence of a reply is the reply. So one is rid of many; only a very few remain that actually need an answer.

My only point is that any of our experiences should be as aware as possible, as thoughtful as possible, as understanding as possible; it’s not a matter of repression. Therefore my constant emphasis is: the way the “immoral” person has been condemned—that is wrong; and the way the “moral” person has been praised—that too is wrong. My understanding is that life should be arranged so that a person has the means and opportunity to be simple and natural. Let there be neither condemnation nor repression, nor any attempt to force him into a mold. But society should give him the science and structure of understanding. Education should give him the opportunity to understand.

A child goes to school and we tell him, “Don’t be angry; anger is bad.” We are teaching repression. A true and good school would teach him: “If anger arises, be angry—but do it awake; here is the method.” Be angry, but be angry consciously, knowingly, recognizing anger. We don’t make you the enemy of anger; we teach you how to be intelligently angry. In such an arrangement a person will, slowly, move beyond anger—because no one can be angry in full awareness.

So, many times my words seem upside-down. It often looks as if what I say will spread licentiousness and anarchy. But licentiousness is already spread, anarchy is already spread. It is precisely through what I am saying that licentiousness will end, anarchy will end.

And as you said yesterday, my words could sometimes confuse the ordinary person and lead him astray. In all this you’ve already assumed that the ordinary person is on the right path. If you assume that, then perhaps. I say the ordinary person is ordinary precisely because he is on the wrong path; otherwise, why should anyone not become extraordinary? He remains ordinary because the paths he is walking make him ordinary. People usually think an ordinary person is walking a certain path; I say paths make one ordinary or extraordinary. The paths we are on are those that make us ordinary. And there are paths that can make us extraordinary—if only we walked them!

Society does not want extraordinary individuals. Society wants the ordinary—because ordinary people are not dangerous, not rebellious, not unique. Ordinary people are not even persons; they are merely a crowd. Society wants a crowd in which no one has a voice of his own. Leaders want a crowd, gurus want a crowd, exploiters want a crowd. They say, “We need a crowd without individuality.” Only then can it be exploited to the utmost.

And I say we need individuals, because a crowd never gives birth to a soul. We need to create a world, a society, where there are individuals. And individuals will be different, they will walk different paths. But precisely that should be the arrangement: that people walking different paths, with different personalities, can still be loving toward one another.

There was a man against Voltaire who abused him so much and wrote so many books against him that Voltaire ought to have been angry. One day they met on the road, and the man said, “Sir, you must want my head cut off, because I speak such things against you.” Voltaire said, “What are you saying—cut off your head? No. If you ask me, you have the right to say what you are saying, and if to defend that right I have to give my life, I will give my life. You have the right to say what you say, and to protect that right, if needed, I will lay down my life. Though what you say is wrong—and I will protect my right to call it wrong—and I would wish you to be ready to give your life to protect my right as well.”

You understand my point, don’t you? Our issue is not our being different; the issue is the acceptance of our differences. The society we have created does not accept difference. It either dishonors and insults difference, or it worships and glorifies it; it does not accept it. Either it declares difference absolutely wrong; and if someone refuses to surrender his difference and stays different, then they call him a god. But they will never accept that he is among us, as one of us.

A good world will be one where difference is accepted; where each person’s uniqueness is accepted. And we will learn to honor each other’s differences. What do we do now? We say: whoever agrees with me is right; whoever does not agree with me is wrong. How strange! This is a very violent attitude: the one who agrees with me—meaning, the one with no personality of his own, whom I have swallowed completely—is right; and the one who does not agree with me is wrong. This is a deeply exploitative, possessive tendency. I call it violence.

Therefore I hold that gurus who go about collecting followers are people of a violent tendency. They say, “A thousand people agree with me, a thousand people believe in me”—meaning they have erased a thousand people. They are sitting on top of a thousand people. If there are ten thousand, they enjoy it more; if there are millions, even more. Because they have wiped so many people clean. These are dangerous people.

A good man does not want you to agree with him; a good man wants you to begin to think. It may be that thinking will take you far away from me.

And my continual emphasis is not “believe what I say,” but “begin to think in this way.” It may be that by thinking you arrive at a place where I may never agree with you, or you may never agree with me—but begin to think.

If thinking begins in life, awakening begins; repression ends, following ends; then each person begins to gain a soul. And the soul makes everyone extraordinary. Right now we have no soul; that is why we are ordinary.

Nor am I worried that the ordinary person will go astray, because I say the ordinary person is already astray; how much more can he go astray? Where is the ordinary man, anyway? If now we “lead him astray,” he may well come to the right path—because when a lost man loses his way again, perhaps he lands on the right road. Double negation, isn’t it!

Following—going behind.

Yes, yes, go ahead and ask your question.

No—there is never any possibility. In fact, one who keeps vows can never avoid being a hypocrite. A vow-taker will inevitably be a hypocrite. There is a reason for it. And the reason is not whether it has been twenty-five hundred years or twenty-five thousand—that is not the question. The point is: only one who is asleep within clings to vows. One who has awakened within does not cling to vows; vows come into his life on their own.

It is impossible, isn’t it! It’s like someone asking, “If a man gouges out his eyes, will he then be able to see?” Understand my point. I would say that whether he gouges his eyes for twenty-five hundred years or twenty-five thousand years, after gouging them out he will not be able to see. And only the one who has become afraid of seeing, who does not want to see, gouges out his eyes.

What does a vow mean? A vow means your state of mind is one thing, and you take a vow that is the opposite of it. A vow is a rule of suppression. I am full of lust, I take the vow of celibacy; full of violence, I take the vow of nonviolence; full of possessiveness, I take the vow of non-possessiveness.

No one has to take a vow of possessiveness, nor of violence, nor of lust. Because we never have to take a vow for what we already are; we take vows for what we are not. So a vow means that what I am is inverted, and I am taking a vow exactly opposite to it. By binding myself to that vow I will try to change myself.

Certainly a vow will bring repression, suppression. My mind is greedy—it wants to earn ten million rupees—and I take a vow to limit myself to one hundred thousand rupees. But my mind is of the ten-million kind. So I will try to squeeze my ten-million-rupee mind into a one-hundred-thousand limit. The only result of this effort can be that my greed will start manifesting elsewhere. For example, my mind says, “If you stop at one hundred thousand, you will get a place in heaven.”

This is a new form of greed. The greed was for ten million; when you tried to bind it to one hundred thousand, its currents broke apart. Now it begins to demand in heaven: what kind of celestial nymphs will be there, what kind of wish-fulfilling tree will be obtained, what kind of house will it be—will it be near God or far!

No, no. In fact, one who lives by vows cannot be without thorns, because the vow itself is a thorn. There is no thorn bigger than a vow. The vowless can be without thorns; the vowed can never be. The splinter is already lodged inside—the thorn is stuck in the heart.

A woman is passing by; she is not your wife, so you must not look—no matter how she may be. Now this… The one who just looks, quietly, may actually be less full of thorns, less pierced within. But the one who shuts his eyes out of fear, because he has taken a vow not to look at any face except his wife’s, lives with a thorn pricking him twenty-four hours a day.

So the vowed can never be thornless; the vowless can be. But I am not saying that merely being vowless will make one thornless. Being without vows is our existential condition; awakening within that condition is our sadhana. In the vowless state there are two options:
1) Try to break that state by imposing a vow—but then there is no need to awaken within.
2) Or become aware of the vowless state so that it dissolves on its own. Then what you were trying to obtain through a vow will come by itself; you won’t have to force it.

For example, as I just said: sex is our condition; celibacy is our vow. Becoming aware of sex is the sadhana. The person who rejects the fact of sex by taking the vow of celibacy will never be free of sex. The vow will stand at the door, and sex will stand inside. Repression will happen. But the person who takes no vow of celibacy, who simply undertakes the discipline of understanding sex—experimenting, meditating to understand sex—slowly, slowly sex departs, and celibacy arrives. Celibacy never comes as your vow; it comes like the shadow of your understanding. And when it comes, you don’t need to go to a temple and swear, “I will remain celibate.” There is no question—it has happened. No oath is needed. Whatever you have to swear an oath about, you are always going against; whatever you already are, you never need to swear.

Yes, that is a completely different matter; I would not call such a one a vow-bound ascetic. Like Kundakunda...

No, no. That makes the question entirely different. When you say that in twenty-five hundred years the vow-bound—no, the vow-bound never arrives; whether it is twenty-five hundred or even twenty-five thousand years, that raises no question. The vow-bound never arrives. The one who arrives is always vowless, a person of prajna.

Yes, Like Kundakunda.

And keeping vows is easy; growing in understanding is difficult. Keeping vows is absolutely simple. What difficulty is there? Because it is only suppression. But by keeping vows no one has ever reached anywhere.
I even call Mahavira avratī. So Kundakunda is avratī; so is Umasvati, and a few others. There are a few such people. But when you say “Jain layman, Jain monk,” then neither Kundakunda is a Jain, nor is Umasvati a Jain.
By “Jain” I mean they have no obsession with being Jain; they have no madness about being Jain. Those who are mad to be Jain never arrive—because their very notion of being Jain is born from vows and the like: “I don’t eat at night, therefore I am a Jain; I drink only filtered water, therefore I am a Jain; I have taken the minor vows, therefore I am a Jain; I do samayik, therefore I am a Jain.” That is, his being Jain, too, depends only on vows. If he is a layman, then there are the layman’s vows; if a monk, then the monk’s vows.
But the avratī—the avratī is a different matter altogether. Everyone is avratī, but the one who, in the state of non-vows, awakens wisdom becomes avratī with right vision.

That is further on, further on; but the one who binds himself with vows will never get there—never. When understanding dawns, things dissolve. For example, when understanding arises, violence disappears; what remains is nonviolence. What else could remain? Only nonviolence remains when violence has vanished.

But in the vow-taker, violence is inside, and he imposes nonviolence from above. So the vow-taker’s nonviolence has to be fabricated in opposition to violence. In the wise, violence takes its leave; what remains is nonviolence. The wise one’s nonviolence is not opposition to violence; it is the absence of violence. The vow-taker’s nonviolence is opposition to violence, not its absence. And whatever you oppose remains present; it never really goes.

Yes, you certainly will—and quite a lot...

Yes, yes. Absolutely—absolutely—you will know it. And the ascetics feel it far more intensely; you do not feel it to that extent.

The difficulty is: are they even trying to wake up to this very “coming to know”? Or are they, as with sex, moving in a stupor—every morning trudging to the temple in a daze, never once waking up to ask, “I’ve been going to the temple for forty years—what has come of it?” If this question itself is never asked, they will go on observing vows for lives on end. If it is asked, the vow will break this very moment. If a vow-observer understands what I am saying, he will grasp it quicker than you—because he also has the experience of the futility of vows.

But he doesn’t want to look at that experience; like a trance, he just goes on. He says, “If not today, tomorrow; if not tomorrow, the day after—something is happening.” People come to me and say, “I’ve been reciting the Namokar mantra for so many days.” I ask, “What is happening?” He says, “It feels very good, I feel peace.” Then a little later he asks me, “Please give me some method for peace!” I say, “How can I tell you now? You’re already getting peace.” He says, “No, nothing special yet—just a little, a little.”

I say, “Tell me plainly. If it’s a little, keep doing it; gradually it will become more—then don’t ask me. Speak with total honesty: has anything really happened?” He says, “Nothing has happened.” Which means he wasn’t even aware of what he himself was saying!

He says, “I go to the temple every day,” and then still asks, “I want peace!” And if you ask him, he says, “Great peace comes from going to the temple.” If it comes, then what more peace do you want? Fine—go. He has never awakened to what he is saying or doing. He is parroting hearsay. He has heard that going to the temple brings peace, and he goes; so now he too says, “Great peace is coming!”

If a vow-taker truly wakes up, he will be free of the vow at once. And even one who thinks he is vow-less can understand. Because whether or not we have ever formally sworn vows, in some form we all are vow-takers—we just don’t notice. You marry, and without realizing it you’ve taken a “wife-vow” or a “husband-vow.” Vows aren’t taken only in temples; in whatever we do, twenty-four hours a day, we are grabbing at vows. And if we wake up to that as well, we will see that nothing has happened because of those vows. Nothing has changed anywhere. The mind remains as it was—the same rushing, the same chasing.

All this is seen only in experience, and in life vows keep running twenty-four hours. For example, someone says, “He’s my father, so I am serving him.” He is taking the vow of service. There is no joy for him in serving his father; he says, “It is duty.” This is a vow-bound man. He serves his father and is filled with anger the whole time—“When will I be free? When will I get a chance to slip away from pressing his legs? How can I get out?” But he does it vow-wise, rule-wise—“He is my father, so I do it.”

The truth is, he will never find joy like this. “Because he is my father, I will press his legs”—if this is the feeling of duty, joy will never arise. And if joy is arising in pressing the legs, then it is no longer a vow; then there is understanding, there is love—something altogether different.

A nurse raises a child—she does it vow-wise and behaves like a mother vow-wise. A mother raises her child—there is no vow there; a mother’s joy itself raises the child. And if, when the child grows up, someone asks that mother, “You did so much for your son,” she will say, “I could do nothing. I couldn’t give him the clothes I wanted to give. I couldn’t give him the food I wanted to give. I could do nothing.”

But ask the nurse, “You did a lot for that boy!” She will say, “I did a lot. I used to go on duty at five in the morning and return at five in the evening. I did a lot.”

Duty is the language of vows; love is the language of vow-lessness. But vow-lessness alone is not enough. Vow-lessness plus awakening—then right vision (samyaktva) arises. And that is the revolutionary formula. Whoever does it, it has nothing to do with being a Jain. A Muslim may do it, a Christian may do it, a Zoroastrian may do it. The event happens by doing it.

But what happens is that traditions slowly become dead rules. And the tendency to impose dead rules begins. When dead rules are imposed and people accept them, those dead rules make people dead too—they do not make them conscious. Hence the vow-bound person becomes more and more insensate, more and more dead.

Awakening is what bears fruit.

Awareness bears fruit. Wherever you are, wake up right there. It is awareness that bears fruit—whatever state you are in.

We are always in some situation, bound by certain limits, and doing something or other—someone is running a shop, someone worshipping in a temple, someone building a house, someone having a temple built—we are doing something. Someone is fasting; someone is eating.

Whatever we are doing, awareness toward it bears fruit. What you are doing—it doesn’t matter. One man is stealing and another is worshipping—when one awakens to the doing, the fruit begins to come. If the thief becomes aware in his stealing, the same fruit will come.

Yes.

No, no. The real question is… now, this is a big point. Big—because: which vow? Which vow? One man has taken a vow to do five rounds on his rosary—what force will there be in that? Another man is going to steal—there will be a lot of force in that. It will depend, case by case: what kind of vow, and what kind of non-vow.

But in the final reckoning, only this matters: whatever a person is doing, he must do it with awareness. If he is going to a temple, he must be awake; if he is going to a brothel, he must be awake too. Whatever he does, let him do it consciously. When it is done consciously, whatever remains is dharma; whatever falls away is adharma.

Only this. There is no greater manliness than this. There is no manliness greater than breaking the slumber.

No, no, no. The sleep will break by entirely different routes. If the one who surrenders carries even a little of masculine will, it will not break. Because surrender demands a purely feminine attitude, sheer passivity. That is to say, in surrender the only “manliness” is that there is none at all—and in the one of will, the “manliness” is precisely that there is not even the slightest trace of surrender in him.

You cannot get Mahavira to fold his hands before anyone. You cannot even imagine Mahavira standing anywhere with folded hands.

No, no. There is no inner enemy except sleep. There is no inner enemy at all except sleep, stupor, heedlessness. There is no other inner enemy.

So if someone asks Mahavira, “What is religion?” he will say, “Vigilance.” And “What is irreligion?” he will say, “Heedlessness.” If someone asks him, “What is saintliness?” he says, “Freedom from stupor.” “What is un-saintliness?” he says, “Stupor.” And the whole key of practice is discernment, awareness—how to awaken, how to be filled with alertness.

Mahavira’s heroism is not in fighting lust, anger, greed, because these are only symptoms. A madman will fight these; a Mahavira cannot.

Stupor is the root. Lust, anger, greed—all are born from it. It is like having a fever. If you meet a foolish physician, he will fight the heat of your body—pour cold water over you to reduce the heat, thinking the heat itself is the fever. But a wise physician will say: the heat is not the fever; it only gives notice that there is some illness within. It is a signal, a symptom. Fight the symptom and the patient will die. Fight the disease so the symptom departs.

If the disease leaves from within, the body’s heat will go of itself. But if you try to drive away the heat, the disease need not leave; the person may even die.

So lust, anger, greed are signs that inside a person there is stupor—they are only messages. When the stupor breaks, these will depart. And if, while preserving the stupor, you take vows to eradicate them, they will never end. Because the stupor continues within, it will keep producing them in ever-new forms. At most, only the forms will change. Stop the stream at one corner and it will gush from another doorway.

Mahavira is very clear: practice means freedom from stupor; struggle means freedom from stupor; resolve means awakening. Beyond this, for him, there is simply no other question.

I don’t bother about sutras, the Acharang and so on. I don’t bother at all. Because the people who compile them are not particularly understanding people. I don’t bother about them. There is no question of adjusting myself to them. If something happens to fit, that’s accidental; if it doesn’t, there is no need that it should.

“Fight the inner enemies”—somewhere a basic mistake has crept in here, because “enemies” is in the plural. “Fight the inner enemy”—that would have been right, because “enemy” is singular. The inner enemy is only moorcha—stupor, unconsciousness. Mahavira has said this a thousand times over. So there are not many enemies within; the enemy is one. And the friend too is one, not many friends within—awakening is the friend and stupor is the enemy.

So the listener has made a mistake somewhere. In saying “fight the inner enemies,” he has again descended into the world of lust, anger, greed—he is talking about these. Because he has used “enemies” in the plural. Had it been in the singular, I would have agreed that it is exactly right. A basic error has occurred. He has begun to take these as the enemies.

These are not the enemies; the enemy is something else. These can only be his armies. Which means there is no point in fighting them. The master is someone else; that master will go on sending new troops. Even if you have removed the old ones, new armies will keep arriving. You have to fight the inner enemy, not “enemies.” Often it happens that our so‑called understanding gets busy fighting enemies. It never occurs to us that the enemy is one. Our idea is that the enemies are many. But the enemy is only one.

And therefore the person who fights many enemies is making a basic mistake; because the irony is that if sex goes, greed goes. Have you ever noticed? If sex goes, anger goes. If sex goes, attachment goes. If you dismiss one of these and keep the other three, then I would concede they are separate. But to this day such a thing is impossible. If someone says, “I have dropped anger, but sex has not gone”—that is impossible. It cannot happen. If someone says, “I have dropped greed, but lust is still there”—that cannot be, because greed is inseparable from lust. Those four that you see—lust, anger, greed, attachment—are not four different things; they are all conjoined. And the common trunk beneath them is unconsciousness. From there the branches keep sprouting.

Now everyone gets engaged in this upside‑down work. Someone is fighting anger—“I must conquer anger.” People come to me and say, “We have too much anger, tell us a way to get rid of it.”

They suppose anger is their enemy. Anger is not the enemy, because if they are not concerned about the other three, nothing will be solved by tackling anger. And if they want to take on all four at once, it is as if a tree is growing with many branches: one man is cutting one branch, another man is cutting another branch, and every morning they all water the trunk below. They water the trunk daily and then climb the tree to cut branches. Cut one branch and two appear; cut two and four appear. And below they keep pouring water. The irony is that we fight anger, greed, attachment while continuing to water moorcha. And from moorcha all of them are born.

So anyone who goes even a little into the depths of man—a person like Mahavira—cannot say, “Fight lust, anger, greed.” Whoever goes within will say, “Fight moorcha.” And what is fighting? It is to wake up. Fighting means awakening. Yes: an awakened man has never been found to be greedy or lustful. And a sleeping man has never been found to be non‑greedy or non‑lustful.

Therefore, in my understanding lust, anger, greed are symptoms of a sleeping man. When they are visible on the outside, it means the man is asleep within; when they cease to appear on the outside, know that the man has awakened. But if someone takes the reverse approach—“Make them not appear”—nothing changes.

That is what the man of vows is doing. He tries to ensure that anger is not seen. Then let it not be seen. He may suppress it by techniques. But even then it can be recognized. And inside it will remain. If someone prods him in the right way, anger can be brought out. His anger will take new forms. And it may happen that many times we cannot provoke him because we don’t know the trick of provoking him. But if someone grasps the trick, he can be provoked at once; it cannot be erased.

Nothing is ever erased by vows, because vows are a fight with the branches.

Absolutely. There is no other way. Whenever a person has become free, it has never been through repression. Whenever freedom has happened, it has happened through awakening. It’s another matter that in those days the language was not clear, the expression not so refined. Expression keeps becoming clearer over time.

Consider Newton. He told us that things fall because the earth has gravity. Now someone may ask: before Newton, did things that kept falling also fall because of gravity? Newton, only three hundred years ago, said that things fall from above to below because the earth pulls—because of gravity. Someone could ask: before Newton, did things not fall? And if they did, did they fall due to gravity? We would say: they too fell because of gravity. Whenever anything has fallen, it has fallen due to gravity; Newton merely brought the news to light. He only formulated it. Things have been falling forever, and they have always fallen due to gravitation. But the term “gravitation” was clarified for the first time by Newton.

Whether Mahavira became liberated or Krishna became liberated—none attained through repression; always through awakening. Freud was the first to make this explicit. He stated this principle precisely, in a scientific manner. That is why those who try to understand Mahavira using pre-Freudian language will never allow him to be truly useful in today’s age, because they will keep using fundamentally wrong notions and wrong words.

This mistake keeps recurring, because with Mahavira there is inevitably a terminology two and a half thousand years old—when there was no Freud, no Marx, no Einstein. So the vocabulary is two and a half millennia old. If one clings to that—and followers do tend to cling to it and make a lot of noise—then they can never make him relevant today.

As words change and new terms arise, we should use them intelligently. In any case, whenever the phenomenon has happened, it could never have happened through repression. That is a scientific impossibility; it is not about Mahavira specifically.

There are only two possibilities: if someone says Mahavira attained through repression, then Mahavira did not attain. Or, if he did attain, then he did not repress. There is no other way. I hold that he did attain—because the kind of peace, bliss, and radiance that came into his being can never be found in a repressed person. A repressed person carries tension and stress on the face, in the mind, everywhere—because what has been pushed down keeps causing trouble. Such peace as is in Mahavira’s mind exists only in one who is truly free, who has suppressed nothing, in whom everything has been released.

We fail to notice that liberation and repression are opposite words. Repression means something has been pressed down inside; liberation means it has been let go, dissolved, dispersed—not suppressed. Anger has dispersed; it has taken its leave, it has gone—not been pushed down.

One question from Pungaliya-ji remained from last night; I should take up his point.

No, no. Avrat is what we already are. That is, a vrati is one who lives by binding himself in rules; an avrati is one who does not live by binding himself in rules. We are already avrati, understand? There is no question of bringing it. We are already avrati. Some among us are vrati—temple-goers, mosque-goers, those who perform worship and rituals, who live by rules and religion—they are vrati; the rest are avrati. The vrati should become aware with regard to their vows; the avrati with regard to their non-vow. One has to become aware of exactly what one is doing. Then, with awakening, that which the vrati is trying to bring through vows will come. It will come—on its own.

No, an undiscerning awakening is not possible. Awakening is intrinsically discerning. In fact, awakening and vivek mean the same. Just as we cannot speak of a living corpse, we cannot speak of an undiscerning awakening; they are opposing terms. Vivek means awakening.

What commonly comes to mind with the word vivek is discrimination—hence your question: the idea of sorting out, “this is wrong and this is right.” But so long as you are making such discriminations—so long as you are saying, “let me take this as right and that as wrong”—you do not yet have vivek. Up to that point you have merely picked up what the truly discerning have lived as right and what they have regarded as wrong.

The day real vivek dawns, there is no need to decide, “this is wrong, this is right.” What is right simply happens; what is wrong does not happen. From one who is awake, only the right happens. From one who is asleep, only the wrong happens. The awakened does not do the wrong; the asleep does not do the right.

So it is impossible that there be an undiscerning awakening. If awakening has happened, where would non-discernment remain? It could only persist in stupor, could only linger in darkness.

Ask it tomorrow. Well, let’s take it up now. She asks: “What is the difference between license and freedom?”

There is a great difference. We should take three words: dependence, freedom, and license. Dependence means that what we are doing is not really our doing; it is being made to be done through us. License means that even what we are doing is not our own; we are doing the opposite of what was being made to be done—that is what license means. In dependence we do what is being imposed upon us. In license we simply refuse what was imposed and do the reverse of it. License is the other side of dependence—it is dependence gone into rebellion. It is still dependence. Dependence that has become revolt. Reactionary slavery. It remains slavery.

For example, the father says, “Go to the temple!” One son goes to the temple because the father says so. Another says, “We cannot go to the temple because the father says ‘Go’.” One is dependent; the other is licentious. But the licentious one is only against dependence; he is tied to it.

Freedom means he neither goes to the temple because the father says so, nor does he refrain because the father says so. He reflects, understands; if it seems right, he goes; if it does not, he does not. He is neither dependent nor licentious.

And I want free people to grow in the world. Because dependence is imposed in the world, license increases. When a guru says, “Obey my command!” then children are born who break commands. The reaction to dependence becomes license. But when a guru says, “Follow what feels right to you; what does not feel right, do not follow,” then indiscipline does not arise, because there is no way to create it. When you impose discipline, indiscipline is born. When you make a person free—give him the discipline of his own understanding—then there is no way for indiscipline to arise.

So those who impose dependence will usher in license. And wherever you see license, understand that dependence must have been imposed. Freedom is something else entirely; it is intelligent, discerning.

Pungliya-ji raised a very fine question yesterday. Earlier I said that gods or spirits have no voice of their own. And yesterday I said that when Armstrong and his companions were returning, for ten minutes the receiving stations below picked up sounds as if thousands of spirits were crying, laughing, shouting—such noises were recorded that no one could explain how they arose. So Pungliya-ji asks: if spirits have no voice, how could those sounds be produced?

This needs a little understanding. In the last world war a man’s big toe was injured by a bomb. He was brought to the hospital almost unconscious. Whenever he came to, he would cry out, “My big toe is burning, there’s fire in my toe.” That night they put him under and amputated the whole leg below the knee, because the leg had been ruined; there was no way to save it, and the pain was so unbearable that there was danger of poison spreading through the body.

In the morning, when he regained consciousness, he again began to scream that his big toe hurt terribly. The doctors around him looked closely, because there was no toe anymore. How could there be pain in a toe that was no longer there? People said, “You’re not out of your mind, are you? Think carefully before you speak.” They had not yet told him that his leg had been amputated. He said, “Think carefully? My toe is burning, it’s on fire.” They pulled back the blanket and said, “Your leg was removed last night—there is no toe.”

He saw it and said, “I can see there’s no toe, but the pain is in my big toe—how can I deny that?” Then he was examined. And from that examination a very new truth came to light, something no one had really considered.

It was discovered that when there is pain in the toe, the nerve fibers that carry the news to the head are what move. The toe is not in the head; it is far away—six feet away. The pain is in the toe, but it is known in the head. The informing fibers in between—the nerves—vibrate in a particular pattern, and from that specific vibration pain is recognized. The toe had been cut off, yet those fibers were still vibrating in that specific pattern. The fibers further up were trembling just as they would in pain; therefore the sensation of pain was registered—felt as if in the toe that was no longer there—because those were the very fibers dedicated to bringing news of pain from the toe.

What am I explaining by this? After this, many very useful things were discovered. It then became clear that by applying a particular kind of stimulus to the nerves behind your ear, specific sounds can be produced within you. For example, I say “Ram,” and a certain auditory fiber in your ear vibrates in a particular way. If no one outside says “Ram,” but someone makes that fiber behind your ear vibrate exactly as it vibrates when “Ram” is spoken, you will hear “Ram” inside. Likewise, with your eyes: light enters and certain fibers vibrate in a particular manner. If your eyes are closed and electrodes are placed in the head to make the optic nerves vibrate as they do in the presence of light, you will see light within while sitting in darkness.

I say this because for gods or spirits there are two ways to produce “voice.” One way is to use a human body, as they commonly do; then they can speak, because they make use of your throat and the instruments of speech. The second way is at your receiving center—your radio station—where you are receiving. What do you receive? You receive only waves. If those waves can be produced, your receiving center will declare that sounds are occurring.

That is why, in those ten minutes, what was caught were no words—only cries, laughter, and commotion. No clear words were recorded. To produce articulate words is very difficult. But waves of this kind can be generated in the field so that they produce the effect of crying, shouting, noise.

It is the waves that were produced. To produce such waves, there is no need of a voice. Generating those waves is a different kind of method. They can be produced.

So there are only two ways: either generate the waves directly, or use a human instrument. Usually, the human instrument is used. But waves can also be created—there is no need of a speaker there; if the waves that speech creates in the field are generated, then…

And as I said, the most extraordinary capacity in the deva or spirit realms is that whatever they intend is produced. If they intend noise, noise will be created. There is no need of a throat, no need of speech—mere intention is sufficient.