Mahaveer Vani #8

Ahimsa is the Atman, sanyam is the prana, tapas is the body. Naturally, there have been mistakes about ahimsa, wrong interpretations; but those mistakes and interpretations belong to unfamiliarity. About sanyam too there have been mistakes, wrong interpretations; yet those mistakes also arise from unfamiliarity. More mistakes than this are difficult. What we are unfamiliar with is hard even to misinterpret; even a wrong interpretation demands some acquaintance. And our greatest acquaintance is with tapas, because it is the most outer contour. It is the body.

Of all, the most mistakes and the most wrong interpretations have happened around tapas. And no other thing has harmed as much as those wrong interpretations have. There is a difference: the wrong interpretations about tapas arise from our familiarity. We are familiar with tapas and we become familiar with it easily. In fact, to reach tapas we need not change ourselves at all. As we are, we enter tapas just like that. Since tapas is a doorway, if we walk into it as we are, tapas cannot change us; we change tapas.

So first we must understand the wrong interpretations that continuously occur about tapas; only then can we take a step toward the right vision. We are acquainted with bhoga — with the craving for pleasure. All cravings for pleasure lead into pain. All cravings for pleasure finally leave us in pain — sad, dejected, devastated. From this, naturally, a mistake arises. We think: if by desiring pleasure we arrive in pain, can we not, by desiring pain, arrive in pleasure? If the desire for pleasure brings pain, then why not desire pain and obtain pleasure! So the first error about tapas springs from a hedonistic mind. The hedonist has seen that pleasure leads into pain. If we do the opposite, perhaps we will reach pleasure. Everyone tries to give himself pleasure; we should try to give ourselves pain. If the pursuit of pleasure brings pain, then the pursuit of pain will bring pleasure — it looks like a straightforward mathematics. But life is not so straightforward, nor its mathematics so clear. Life is very tangled. If the paths were so straight, everything would already be solved.

I have heard that a great Russian psychologist, Pavlov — who birthed the theory of the conditioned reflex, who said that experiences become associated — had a case brought to him: an old man so tormented by alcoholism that doctors said alcohol had spread through his blood. His life was in danger; if he did not stop drinking, he could not be saved. But he had been drinking for thirty years. Such long practice! Doctors feared that even to break it abruptly could kill him. So he was taken to Pavlov. Pavlov handed him to an adept disciple and said: give this man alcohol, and the moment he takes the glass in his hand, give him an electric shock. By doing this continuously, drinking and the electric jolt and the pain will become associated. Alcohol will become pain-laden, conditioned. No one wants pain. To drop pain will become to drop alcohol. And once it settles deep in his mind that alcohol brings pain, brings suffering, then it will not be difficult to let it go.

The experiment continued for a month. The man stayed in Pavlov’s laboratory for a month. He drank all day; whenever he took the glass in his hand, at that very moment the chair would shock him. The psychologist sitting in front pressed the button. Sometimes his hand would tremble, sometimes the glass would fall from his hand.

After a month Pavlov called his young disciple: Has anything happened? The disciple said: Much has happened. Pavlov was pleased. He said: I told you, with conditioning everything can be done. But the disciple said: Do not be overly happy, because almost the opposite has happened.

Pavlov said: Opposite! What do you mean?

The young man said: He is now so conditioned that when he drinks, the first thing he does is to put his finger into whatever socket is nearby. He is conditioned. Now he cannot drink without a shock. Drink has not dropped; shock has been captured. Now please, whether drink drops or not, get him rid of the shock. For alcohol will kill someday; this business of shock can kill any time. Now he cannot drink at all. With one hand he takes the glass, with the other he inserts his finger into the socket.

Life is this tangled. Life is not so easy. So the mathematics of life is not clear that things will happen simply as you think. The desire for pain will not bring pleasure. Why? Because if we look deeply, the first thing is this: you desired pleasure and you got pain. Now you think, Desire pain and we will get pleasure. But look deep — you are still desiring pleasure. You desire pain so that pleasure will arrive; the desire remains for pleasure. And no desire for pleasure can bring pleasure. On the surface it appears one is giving oneself pain — but he gives himself pain in order to gain pleasure. Earlier he pampered himself so that pleasure might come, and he found pain. Now he torments himself so that pleasure may come — and he will find pain again. For the thread of desire remains the same in the depths. Outside everything has changed; inside the man is the same.

The truth is: pain cannot be desired. You cannot desire it — impossible. If we say it rightly: desire is only for pleasure; toward pain there is only non-desire, not desire. Yes, if someone ever desires pain, it is for the sake of pleasure — but then the desire is for pleasure alone. Pain cannot be desired — impossible. So we can say: whatever is desired is pleasure; whatever is not desired is pain. Therefore desire cannot be joined to pain. And whoever joins desire to pain and calls it tapas — our formula: pain plus desire equals tapas — whoever does this will never understand tapas. Pain cannot be desired. Only pleasure is pursued. Desire is only for pleasure. Yes, there is one way: if pain also starts to feel pleasurable to you, then you can desire pain. Pain too can begin to feel like pleasure. Hence the second wrong interpretation must be understood. Pain can feel pleasurable by association, by conditioning. Just as in Pavlov’s example, in the same way you can be deluded into feeling pleasure in pain.

In Europe there was a Christian sect of ascetics — the flagellants, who whipped themselves. Their doctrine was: whenever lust arises, whip yourself. But a great surprise was discovered. Those who know, or those who tried it, gradually found that whenever lust arises, whip yourself — the hope was that lust would drop under the lash; but slowly the flagellants discovered that the lash itself began to taste like lust. To such an extent that those who had practiced whipping for the sake of suppressing lust could no longer enter intercourse without whipping themselves first. First the lash, then lovemaking. Until welts rose on the body, lust would not rise in full relish. Such is the maze of the mind.

So the man lashes himself every morning, and the neighbors bow to him: What a great renunciate! In the Middle Ages there were hundreds of thousands of such people across Europe. The mark of a sadhu became how many lashes he took. The more lashes, the greater the saint. So they stood in the squares and whipped themselves. They would be bloodied. People were astonished: what tapascharya! For when blood flowed from their bodies, a rapturous expression appeared on their faces which one sees only in couples lost in intercourse. People touched their feet: wondrous man! But what was happening within, they did not know. Inside the man was entering lust in full. Whipping now gave him relish. Because whipping had become associated with lust. The same thing as in Pavlov’s experiment.

We can join a certain aura of pleasure to our pain. And if pleasure’s aura gets linked to pain, we can happily gather pain around ourselves. But that is not the meaning of tapas. Tapas is not the outlook of a pain-worshiper. This pain-ism is, deep down, still pleasure. If this web around tapas becomes visible to you, you will be able to break the shells of the ascetics and see inside what their real relish is. And once you begin to see, you will understand: whenever anything is desired, it is pleasure that is desired. If someone is desiring pain, then somewhere in the mind pleasure and pain have been associated. Apart from this, no one can desire pain. There can be enjoyment even in starving, in lying on thorns, in standing under the blazing sun — once some inner vasana becomes associated with a certain pain. And a man gives himself pain because he wishes to be free of some vasana. Precisely the vasana from which he seeks freedom becomes associated with the pain.

One man has great enjoyment in adorning the body. He wants to be free of the body, free from this desire to decorate. He stands naked, or smears his body with ash, or renders his body ugly. But he does not know that to smear ash, to be naked, to make the body ugly, are all still related to the body. This too is decoration. It does not look like adornment, but it is. If you have ever been to the Kumbh, you will be astonished to see: the sadhus who sit smeared in ash also keep a small mirror in their box, and after bathing in the morning, when they smear the ash, they look into the mirror as they go. Man is astonishing. If only ash is to be smeared, what is the use of a mirror! But smearing ash too is adornment, is shringara. Even one making himself ugly will check in the mirror whether it has been done properly or not!

It appears opposite; it is not. The tapasvi does not become an enemy of the body in the way the bhogi is the greedy friend of the body. The tapasvi does not become the opposite of the bhogi, for even through the opposite, enjoyment remains associated. For the one who beautifies the body a mirror is needed — and for the one who uglifies the body a mirror too becomes necessary. The one who beautifies does not alone depend on the gaze of others — the one who uglifies depends on it equally: someone must look at me. The one who wears fine clothes and walks the road does not alone wait for onlookers; the one who walks naked waits just as much. It is necessary to understand that even opposites can be branches of the same disease. It is easy to shift from bodily enjoyment to bodily tapas. To turn the desire to please the body into the desire to hurt the body is very easy and simple.

Another point is to be noted. When the instrument through which we seek pleasure fails to give it, we become its enemy. You are writing with a pen — all who write will have experienced — if the pen does not flow well, you might curse it and smash it on the floor. To curse a pen is absolute foolishness. What could be greater foolishness! And by breaking the pen nothing is broken of the pen — something breaks in you. The pen suffers no loss; you do. Yet there are people who hurl their shoes in anger, who slam doors and curse them. These very people become ascetics. The body has not given pleasure — experience leads them to breaking the instrument: torment the body. But behind tormenting the body is the same frustration, the same melancholy, that pleasure was sought from the body and not found; now we will punish the medium through which we sought it.

But you have not changed. Your gaze still clings to the body. Whether you seek to please it or now to hurt it, your mind’s orbit still circles the body. Your consciousness remains body-centered. The body does not leave your vision. The bond between you and the body remains as it was. Note well: between the bhogi and the so-called tapasvi, in relation to the body, there is no difference. Their relation to the body stays the same.

Imagine: if we tell the bhogi, Your body will be taken away, will it trouble you? He will say: Trouble! I will be ruined, for the body is the medium of my enjoyment. Ask the tapasvi: If your body is taken, will you face difficulty? He too will say: I will be in trouble, because the instrument of my tapascharya is the body. Whatever I do, I do with the body. If there is no body, how will tapas be? If there is no body, how will bhoga be? Therefore I say: both are fixated on the body and both live by means of the body. Tapas that is body-centered is only a distorted form of bhoga. Tapas that is body-centered is merely another name for bhoga. It is the reaction of pleasure that has fallen into despondency — revenge upon the body for the failure of enjoyment.

Understand this, then we can raise our eyes toward the true direction of tapas. For these reasons tapas has become self-violence. Whoever can torment himself more can become the greater ascetic. But has tapas anything to do with torment? Torture, self-torment — has that anything to do with tapas? And remember: one who can torment himself cannot refrain from tormenting others. For the one who can torture himself can torture anyone. Yes, his styles of torment will differ. The bhogi’s way is direct. The renouncer’s way becomes indirect. If a bhogi has to hurt you, he attacks openly. If the renouncer has to hurt you, he attacks from far behind, and it does not occur to you that you are being attacked. Go to a so‑called renunciate — a pretender to austerity; if you wear fine clothes and he sits smeared in ash, he will look at your clothes as an enemy looks. There will be condemnation in his eyes; you will appear like worms. Such clothes! In his eyes there will be an arrow pointing toward hell: you are gone to hell. He will say: Still not come to your senses! Still tangled in clothes — you will wander in hell.

I have heard: a priest in a church was frightening people with descriptions of hell, detailing what torments would befall; when the Day of Judgment comes, such cold will fall upon sinners that their teeth will chatter. Mulla Nasruddin was also in that gathering; he stood and said: But my teeth have fallen out!

The preacher said: Do not worry — false teeth will be provided; but they will chatter.

All so‑called ascetics are busy sending you to hell. Their minds are engaged in arranging your torments. The truth is: all the arrangements for suffering in hell are the fantasies of the so‑called false tapasvi. He cannot even conceive that you too might have joy! He knows you are taking enough pleasure here. He knows it as pleasure. He is taking enough pain here. Somewhere the balance must be set — some accounting must be done. He has borne much pain here; he will enjoy much pleasure in heaven. You are enjoying pleasure here; you will rot in hell and suffer.

And the amusing thing is that his pleasures in heaven are your very pleasures magnified. The pleasures you taste here, he will taste there, expanded and inflated. And the pains he endures here… It is curious: the tapasvi sits surrounded by fire here — and he will roast you in fire there. Beware of the tapasvi who sits amidst fire; in his hell a fire will be ready for you, a terrible fire from which you cannot escape. You will be thrown into cauldrons, fried — yet you will not be allowed to die, for if you die, the fun is over. If you are killed and die, who will bear the pain? Therefore in hell there is no way to die. Remember: in hell the ascetics have not allowed the facility of suicide. You cannot die in hell, whatever you do. And whatever you do, one thing does not happen in hell — you cannot die. For if you could die, you could be free of pain. So that facility has not been given.

Out of whose imagination does this arise? Who thinks these things? The true tapasvi cannot even think a thought of suffering for anyone — anywhere, not even in hell. But the so‑called tapasvi delights in it. If you read the scriptures of the religions of the world, you will encounter a very strange phenomenon: in what the so‑called ascetics have written, their descriptions and depictions of hells seem like very perverted imagination. That they can conceive such things brings us great news about them.

Another thing you will see: the ascetic condemns the very pleasures you enjoy — yet in that condemnation he takes great relish. The relish is very evident. It is a curious thing that Vatsyayana, in his Kama Sutra, has not described the limbs of a woman with as much lusciousness as the ascetics have described them in order to condemn them. Vatsyayana could not have had that much relish — because to generate that amount of relish one must go to the opposite. Thus it is a funny thing that naked apsaras never come to dance around the hedonists; they come only around the ascetics. The ascetics think they come to corrupt their tapas. But anyone with even a little psychological sense knows: nowhere in existence is there an arrangement of apsaras sent to corrupt ascetics. Why would existence want to corrupt them? If there is Paramatma, why would he be interested in corrupting ascetics? And will these apsaras eternally do one job only — to corrupt ascetics? Have they no other work, no relish of their own life?

No — the psychologists say the ascetic fights so hard with a certain relish that that very relish intensifies and appears around him. If an ascetic is fighting sex, then around him kama takes form and stands visible; it surrounds him. He projects precisely what he fights. Those apsaras do not descend from some heaven; they descend from the striving mind of the ascetic. They are the outward reveal of what is hidden in his mind. That which he desires and from which he flees — the apsaras are its embodied form. What he asks for and against which he battles, what he both calls and drives away — the apsaras are the gratification of that very distorted psyche. They do not come from elsewhere to corrupt him; they arise from his repressed mind.

When tapas turns distorted, repression happens. And repression makes a man sick, not whole. Therefore I say: in Mahavira’s tapas there is no cause for repression. And if somewhere Mahavira uses a word like daman — repression — let me tell you, twenty-five centuries ago daman meant something else. It did not mean what it means now. Dam meant to become quiet. It did not mean to press down, not in Mahavira’s time. Dam meant to become silent. Not to silence something, but to become silent. Language changes every day; words shift meaning every day. So if somewhere in Mahavira’s utterance you find the word daman, remember, it does not mean suppression. It means to become quiet. When something has brought you suffering, going to its opposite breeds repression. When something has brought you sorrow, becoming established in the understanding of it brings peace. Understand this difference clearly.

If kamavasana has given me sorrow and I go to its opposite and fight sex, then repression will be born. If sex has brought me sorrow and this fact penetrates my understanding, my prajna, in such a way that sex quiets down — and within me nothing opposite to sex arises — then there is peace. For as long as the opposite arises, quietude has not happened. The opposite arises precisely because quietude is not there.

A friend’s wife told me: there is no love left between me and my husband, but the quarrels continue. I said: If no love at all remains, quarrels cannot continue. Even for quarrels, love is needed. There must be at least a little. I told her: There must be a little. And if quarrels are a lot, then love is a lot.

She said: You speak upside down. I am thinking of a divorce.

I said: We think of divorcing only the one to whom we are still bound. If there is no bond, whom will you divorce? The matter ends by itself.

That was two years ago. Recently I asked: What news? She said: Perhaps you were right. Now even quarrels do not happen. Perhaps you were right — I did not understand it then. Now even quarrels do not happen.

What about the divorce?

She said: What to take, what to give? The matter has become quiet. There is no relationship left between us. If there is a relationship, it can be broken. If none remains, what will you break?

If you are fighting a vasana, your relish in it is still alive. Life is so tangled.

Therefore, after fifty years of experience, Freud said — and perhaps he alone, on this earth, went so deep into human relations — he said: as long as there is love, quarrels will remain. If you wish to be free of quarrels, you must be free of love. If a husband and wife have love — we do not know of their love because it manifests in privacy; but we do know of their quarrels because they manifest in public. You cannot seek privacy for quarrels. And Freud says: if quarrels continue in public, we can assume that love continues in private. The husband and wife who fought by day will enter love by night. One has to make up, balance, keep the scales.

The day there is a fight, that day some gift is brought home. If the husband fought and went to market, returning he will bring something for the wife. If you see the husband coming with flowers, do not assume it is his wife’s birthday; understand that the uproar in the morning was bigger today. This is balancing — he will now make up. So Freud says: I regard sex as a form of war. He connects sex and war. He says: war and sex are forms of the same thing; as long as the mind is full of sex, the tendency toward war cannot end. This is a deep insight. And if we understand it, understanding Mahavira becomes easy.

Mahavira says: If you are to be free of what is bad — the so‑called bad — then you must also be free of what appears good. If you are to be free of hatred, be free of attachment as well. If you are to be safe from the enemy, be safe from the friend as well. If you do not long to go into darkness, then bow to light also and let it go. It appears inverted; it is not. For the one whose mind longs for light will again and again fall into darkness. Life is dual, and every form of life is bound to its opposite, tied to its reverse. This means: whoever fights anything, goes to the opposite of it — will remain bound to it. He can never be free of it. If you fight wealth and go to its opposite, wealth will forever encircle your mind. If you fight ego and go to its opposite, your ego will remain standing within you, ever subtler. Be careful what you fight; whatever we fight, with that we become bound.

Tapas, falling into these very errors, became diseased. Of those whom we regard as ascetics, ninety-nine percent are candidates for psychiatric treatment. They need therapy. And note: to be free of sex is easier because sex is prakriti. To be free of the one who is bound by opposition to sex is difficult — for that is a step away from nature.

Understand this in three words. One I call prakriti — that which we have done nothing to, that which is given. The given is prakriti. If we do something wrong, what we produce is vikriti — distortion. If we do something and it is right, what is born is samskriti — culture. On prakriti we stand. A small mistake and we fall into vikriti. To enter samskriti is very difficult, because to go into it one must avoid vikriti and rise above prakriti — two things: avoid distortion and rise above nature. If someone only tries to fight prakriti, he will fall into vikriti. And vikriti is a step farther from samskriti. Nature is not that far; nature stands in the middle. With distortion, you have moved away even from nature. That is why animals do not show such distortions as man shows — because animals do not fight nature; hence distortion is not seen in them.

Imagine: only now, on the streets of New York and Washington and elsewhere, homosexuals have taken out processions and said: this is our birthright. This past year at least a hundred homosexuals have married — unimaginable: a man marrying a man, a woman marrying a woman — same-sex marriage. At least a hundred cases have been recorded in America this year. And they have declared: We proclaim our birthright to love whom we wish. Why should any government stop us? A man wants to love a man, marry him, demand the right to sexual relations. There are at least one and a half hundred clubs across America, and in Europe — Sweden, Switzerland — they are spreading. At least two hundred magazines are published today for homosexuals — journals in which they give news and proclamations.

You will be surprised: recently they staged a display in California, like a beauty competition in which women are stood up naked — the homosexuals stood fifty naked youths and displayed them: We see beauty here, not in women. Could you imagine this among animals? No! Yes, sometimes it happens — circus animals become homosexual; or creatures in the zoo become homosexual.

Desmond Morris wrote a book: The Human Zoo. He wrote that what happens to animals in zoos is happening to humans in society. This is a zoo, not a society. Because no animal goes mad in the forest; in the zoo they go mad. No animal has been seen to commit suicide in the jungle; in the zoo sometimes they do. The animal is not distorted because he stays with nature. Man can attempt two things: either fight nature — then today or tomorrow he will descend into distortion; or transcend nature — then he will enter culture.

Transcendence is tapas. Not opposition, not suppression, not struggle — transcendence. Buddha used a beautiful word: paramita. He says: Do not fight. Go from this shore to the other shore — go beyond. Do not fight with the shore you stand upon, because if you fight you will still remain on this shore. With whom we have to fight, we must stand near. To move away from the enemy is dangerous; enemies stand opposite with bayonets fixed. See them on the borders of India-Pakistan, India-China — they stand bayonets in hand. If you fight from this shore — Buddha says — if you fight from the bank of bhoga, how will you reach the other shore? Do not fight; simply reach the other shore. This shore will drop, be forgotten, dissolve. Tapascharya is transcendence — not duality, not struggle.

If we go a little deeper into the form of this transcendence, many things will become clear. First, what does transcendence mean? You stand in a valley; there is great darkness. You do not fight the darkness; you begin to climb toward the sunlit peak. After a while you find yourself nearing the summit wreathed in light. There is no darkness there. Darkness was in the valley; you did not remain in the valley, you moved toward the sun-bathed peak. You reached light; there was transcendence, and not even a trace of struggle.

Where you are, there are two things: you, and the darkness of the valley surrounding you. Two are there — you and the darkness. If you fight the darkness of the valley, you will have to remain in the valley. If you do not fight darkness — you lift what you are upward, take the upward path — you need not pay any attention to the darkness below. Where we stand, there are drives all around — of enjoyment; they are there, and you are there. The wrong renunciate focuses on the drives: How can I erase this drive? The true renunciate focuses on himself: How can I rise above this drive?

Understand this distinction clearly, for the journeys of these two will differ. Their rule will differ, their practice will differ, their direction will differ, their attention will differ. The one who fights drives will keep his attention on the drives — his attention will be outward. The one who raises himself upward will keep his attention on himself — his attention will be inward. And a curious thing: attention is food. Whatever you attend to, you feed with strength. Wherever you place attention, you supply power.

I was speaking of Pavlita — the Czech thinker and experimenter. He has small devices. He says: fix your gaze for five minutes on this device, and it gathers your energy. In America there was a very remarkable man whom the government sentenced to two years. It seems human intelligence does not grow; whether two thousand years earlier or later, it does the same thing. The man was Wilhelm Reich. Among those in this century who had deep insight, he was one. He had to serve two years; finally the American government legally declared him insane and sent him to an asylum. He was tried for a very strange thing. Now, after his death, scientists say perhaps he was right.

He built a remarkable box which he called the orgone box. He said: if a person lies inside it and thinks sexual thoughts, his sexual energy is gathered into the box. But what scientific proof could there be that energy is stored there? He said: the only proof is that if you lay anyone inside, who does not know anything about it, after a minute he will begin to think sexual thoughts. He said: this is the proof. He could cite thousands. But scientists said: we do not consider this proof; the man might be deluded, it might be his habit. He said: in this box, whatever thought you entertain, wherever your attention goes, there energy gets collected. He used to cure many who had formed the mental idea that they were impotent — by laying them in these boxes — because he said they were charged with orgone energy. Pavlita says: your attention can gather any of your energies.

You may not have noticed: when people give you attention you feel well; when people do not give you attention you feel unwell. Hence a strange phenomenon: when you want attention, you fall ill. Children learn this trick very quickly. Ninety out of a hundred of your illnesses are born from the craving for attention, because at home no one attends to you unless you are ill. If the wife falls ill the husband sits with a hand upon her head; otherwise he does not even look. The wife understands this secret — not deliberately, but unconsciously — that when she wants attention she must be ill. Therefore no woman is as ill as she appears to be. Or as much as she enacts being. Or as much as she groans and moans when her husband is in the room; those sounds are not there when he is not. This deserves a little observation. What is the cause? Children learn quickly that when they are ill the whole house’s attention turns to them. Once this is understood — that illness is a delightful way to attract attention — illness becomes a foundation for life.

Psychologists advise, though the wise advice seems inverted: when someone is ill, deliberately give the least attention; otherwise you will be the cause of his illnesses. When someone is ill, do serve him, but do not give attention — with a very detached mind. To give any relish to illness is dangerous; then the person will be ill less often and remain healthier. For him, attention and illness will not be linked.

But attention gives energy. That is why there is so much seeking of attention in the world. What relish does a political leader get? He is showered with shoes, abused, suffers turmoil — what relish? But when he stands before a crowd, all eyes turn toward him. Pavlita says: he feeds on the energy of all. No wonder Nehru might have lived longer had the China war not happened; suddenly his food lessened — attention dissolved. Rarely does a political leader die while in office — hence no leader wants to resign; to resign and to die are near. They must die in the end, that is different; but they try their best not to lose office while alive, because once power goes, life shortens. People retire and soon die. A man who was a police officer retires — at least ten years are lopped off his life.

Much work is being done on this. It will not be long before people refuse to retire once they know what is happening. Until retirement, a man seems healthy; upon retiring, he falls ill. The food of attention he was getting — he went to the office and people stood up; on the street people saluted him; even children were afraid because father held the purse strings — the bank balance was in father’s name; even the wife was cautious. Then he retires, and everything slips from his hands. Now he sits in a corner; people pass as if he were not. So he coughs and clears his throat, making noises: I am also here. He obstructs everything — the habit of the old to obstruct is for no other cause — he puts a spoke in every wheel, because by doing so he can still say: I am, and he attracts a little attention. It is a very pitiable state — very sick and sad — but it is so. He will not allow anything to proceed without his counsel, though he knows no one heeds him. All day he says: No one listens to me. Then why does he keep advising the whole day? All day he says: No one hears me.

Gandhi said he would live one hundred twenty-five years. He might have. If India had not become free, he might have lived that long. India’s freedom became part of his dying, because after freedom those who used to listen stopped listening — they themselves became powerful, themselves took positions. Gandhi said: I have become counterfeit coin; no one listens. Perhaps even he did not know that whenever he said: No one listens to me, I have become counterfeit, I keep speaking and no one cares, no one follows my counsel — he began, before his death, to say: Now I have no desire to live one hundred twenty-five years. God, take me quickly. Why? Because he had become counterfeit; no one listened; no one gave attention. Those who used to give attention did so only because without giving attention to Gandhi no one gave attention to them. Now they themselves became the rightful recipients of attention; people paid them directly. Why should they then pay attention to Gandhi! He was pushed to the corner. No one can say that seeing Godse’s bullet, gratitude did not arise in his heart: the messenger of God has arrived — trouble ended — let us depart.

Attention is food — very subtle food. You can live on attention alone. That is why when someone falls in love, hunger diminishes. You know: if someone loves you, hunger reduces. Why? What is love except that someone is giving you attention? And when no one pays attention — psychologists say — people eat more. When someone pays attention, they eat less. Because attention acts as nourishment deep within, on a very subtle plane. I am saying: whatever we attend to, we give it power. Now there is scientific basis for this, and even ways to measure it.

Earlier I mentioned Nikolaev and Kaminyev. These two are at present the earth’s most adept in telepathic communication. Nikolaev broadcasts a thought, and thousands of miles away Kaminyev captures it. Instruments astonish scientists: when Nikolaev sends, his energy weakens — meters show his surrounding field dwindles. And when Kaminyev receives the thought thousands of miles away, his instruments show his energy increases. Astonishing! Thousands of miles. When asked: What do you do when you send a thought to Kaminyev? Nikolaev says: I close my eyes and meditate that Kaminyev is present before me — not far, here. I place my entire attention on him. I forget all else; only Kaminyev remains. And when he alone remains and appears vivid before me, then I speak to him.

He gives attention. His energy then becomes available to the man sitting thousands of miles away. Whatever drive you attend to in yourself, there power accumulates; and from where you attend, power departs. When you think sexual thoughts, the sex center begins to gather energy. The center you attend to collects power. Then when it is filled, it seeks discharge; it is burdened. This is man’s inner web.

But attention to sex can be given in two ways. One, in relish — then the natural sexual energy thickens in you, becomes powerful. Another is distorted attention: a man attends to sex thinking, I must fight it; I will not let it enter. He too gives attention. His sex center also gathers energy. Now a big difficulty arises. The one who attends in a natural way discharges naturally. But this one does not wish to discharge; and yet he attends. What will happen? His energy will take distorted forms; it cannot discharge. It will enter other organs and distort them; enter other nerves and distort them. The man will become entangled within, trapped in a net woven by his own energy — the very energy he himself has supplied through attention. It is as if we water a tree and pray that it not grow. We pray: do not grow — and water it.

Whatever drive you attend to — in favor or in opposition — you give it water and food. The root formula of tapas is: give attention elsewhere. Do not give it where you do not want energy to collect. Raise attention upward. If you wish to be free of sex, do not attend to sex — neither for nor against. But attention you must give, for attention is your energy; it seeks work.

So the root formula of tapas is: create new centers for attention. New centers exist within man; bring your attention to them. As soon as attention finds a new center, it begins to pour energy there; simultaneously it begins to release from the old. The climb up the mountain begins. The sex center is our lowest center — there we are tied to nature. Sahasrara is our highest center — there we connect with Paramatma’s energy, with the divine, the glorious, the godliness. Have you noticed: when you think sexual thoughts in your brain, your sex center instantly becomes active! The thought runs in the brain, and the sex center — far away — becomes active at once.

Exactly the same method is used. The tapasvi turns his attention toward the sahasrara. As soon as he gives attention to sahasrara, it becomes active. And when energy ascends upward, it does not flow downward. When it finds a path to climb to the summit, it leaves the valleys. When it begins to enter the realm of light, it quietly rises from the realm of darkness. There is no condemnation of darkness in his mind, no opposition to darkness, not even a thought of darkness — there is simply no attention on darkness. Tapas is the transformation of attention.

If we understand it like this, I can give you a second meaning of tapas. Tapas means fire. Tapas means the inner fire. The life-fire within man — to lead it upward is the work of the tapasvi; to lead it downward is the work of the bhogi. The bhogi is one who flows this fire downward — into descent. The tapasvi is one who flows it upward — toward Paramatma, toward siddhahood.

This fire can go both ways. And the curious thing is: it goes upward easily, and downward with great difficulty, for the nature of fire is to rise. You have seen: you light fire and it climbs upward! That is why it is called tapas, agni, yajna — to keep in mind that the nature of fire is to rise. To take it downward requires great contrivance.

Water flows downward. To take it upward you must labor. Stop the pumping, and water again flows down. If you wish to lift it, pump, exert, toil. To flow downward, water seeks no one’s effort — it goes by itself. That is its nature.

If you wish to lead fire downward, you must make arrangements. By itself, fire rises — it is upward-moving. It is called tapas because the inner fire, the life-fire, is naturally upward. Once you experience its upwardness, you will need no effort to lead it up. It will continue rising. Once the tapasvi’s attention turns to sahasrara, he need not strive. The fire flows on its own. Gradually he forgets what is below, what above. He forgets — for the fire rises easily. Once fire has taken the path, rising is its nature. To take it downward requires great organization. But we have the long habit of taking it downward — births upon births of conditioning — so what is actually difficult appears easy to us; what is actually easy appears difficult.

The difficulty lies in our habit. Habits become hard. And sometimes our habits sit so heavily upon the very nature of a thing — upon dharma — that they suppress it. All our natures lie suppressed under habits. What Mahavira calls the chain of karma is the chain of our habits. We have made habits; they press upon us. They are long, old, deep. We cannot be free of them this very moment. So we begin to fight them and make reverse habits. But a habit remains a habit.

The false tapasvi only manufactures habits of austerity. The true tapasvi seeks nature, not habit. Understand the difference between habit and nature. We all enforce habits. We tell the child: do not be angry; anger is a bad habit. Make a habit of not being angry. He makes the habit of not showing anger; but anger is not destroyed — it goes inside. When kamavasana catches hold, we say: make the habit of brahmacharya. The habit forms — but the sex-energy slips underground, flows downward. It makes no difference. The tapasvi searches for the thread of nature — Tao, Dharma. What is my nature? He searches it. By removing all habits he contemplates his nature. And there is only one way to remove habits: do not give attention to them. Do not attend to the habit.

A friend came a few days ago. He said: You say that even in Bombay meditation is possible. What about the street, the horns? The train goes by, the whistle blows — what to do?

I said: Do not attend.

He said: How not attend! The horn blasts on the skull; someone keeps leaning on the horn — how not attend!

I said: Try one thing. Someone below is honking; let him. You sit. Do not react: horn is good, horn is bad; the honker an enemy or a friend; I will break his head if he honks again. No reaction. Sit, listen. Just listen. In a little while you will find that even if the horn sounds, for you it has ceased to sound. Accept it. Accept.

Whatever habit you want to change, accept it. Do not fight it. Accept it; what we accept, we cease attending to. Do you know? When you are in love with a woman, there is attention. Then you marry her, she is accepted; attention stops. Whatever is accepted — a car you do not have, gleaming on the road, draws your attention. When you get it and sit in it, after a few days you no longer even notice that there is a car — that which used to pull your attention from all around is now accepted.

What is accepted no longer attracts attention. Accept what is. Accept even your worst part. Stop giving attention — do not feed it. Energy will stop reaching it; slowly it will wither, shrink, fall away. The energy that remains will begin to flow inward by itself.

The false ascetic attends to the very things the bhogi attends to. The true ascetic — the right process of tapas — is a transformation of attention. He gives attention to those places where neither the bhogi nor the so‑called renunciate gives it. He changes attention itself. And attention is in our hands. We give it where we choose.

We are sitting here; you are listening. If a fire breaks out in the building, you will forget you were listening, that someone was speaking — all forgotten. Attention will rush to the fire; you will run out. There will be no question of listening. Attention can change every moment; it only needs new points to grasp. Fire appears — more urgent for life — attention runs there. In the process of tapas within you, such new points and centers must be found where attention runs and new centers become empowered. Therefore the true tapasvi does not become weak; he becomes powerful. The false ascetic grows weak and imagines conquest, a hallucination of victory.

If a man is denied food for thirty days, sex diminishes — not because sex has vanished, but because the body does not produce the juices that make it possible. Then, if food is given, what was gone in thirty days returns in three. Food comes, the body gets juice, the center is active again, attention runs again. Therefore one who has achieved a so‑called victory over sex by fasting stays afraid and tries to remain hungry lifelong: the moment he eats, desire rises. But this is sheer madness. He has not gone beyond desire; only through weakness desire has no energy.

In fact, the energy a man produces daily — some portion is needed for routine work: getting up, sitting, bathing, eating, digesting, going to the shop, coming and going, sleeping. What remains goes to the center upon which your attention rests — the surplus, the extra. Suppose a thousand calories are spent in routine work and your food and regimen produce two thousand — then the remaining thousand will rush to the center you attend to. It has no other path; attention is the arrow by which it travels. It knows nothing else. Your attention tells it where to go; it goes there.

If you want to enter false tapas, then eat so little that no more than a thousand calories are produced in you. Then brahmacharya will seem established — because no extra energy remains to reach the sex center. A thousand are produced and a thousand are spent. Thus the ascetic eats less, walks on foot, labors more and eats less and less — twofold processes so that less energy is produced and more is expended. He lives at the minimum. No extra energy — no desire.

But this does not free him from desire. Desire stands where it always stood. The sex center will wait — it can wait for endless births: The day there is energy, I am ready. This is only living in fear. Nothing is gained from such living. Nature is missed, culture is not attained. Only distortion is produced, and a frightened consciousness remains.

No, this is not the way. The path of true, positive austerity is: generate power, transform attention. Take attention to new centers so that energy goes there. As we go deeper into the transformation of attention, this process will become clear. But first know this much: from which center is my surplus energy being used up? Then, the attention must be placed on the opposite center.

A small story, and I will finish for today. A conference of religious leaders was held. The great heads of the four religions of that country gathered in a private talk. The grand talks were done, the public was addressed. Now they sat for real gossip. A seventy-five-year-old elder said: Enough of the lofty things — the people have heard. But before you I will not hide, and I hope you also will not hide. Let us say what our real life is. I have been troubled by one thing only: money. Day and night I speak against wealth; but money has a hold on me. If even a single coin of mine is lost, I cannot sleep all night; and if there is hope of getting a coin, I am excited all night and cannot sleep. Money is my weakness. It is very difficult. I cannot get beyond it. Has any of you gone beyond? Tell us.

The second said: We have not gone beyond either. Each of us has his own trouble.

One said: My trouble is ego. I live for it, rise for it, sit for it. I speak against ego for the sake of it — but it is this. I cannot get beyond it.

The third said: My weakness is sex. Women are my weakness. Day and night I lecture, preach celibacy in the church. But on the day women do not come, I do not enjoy speaking. The day women come, my fervor is worth seeing. That day when I speak, it is another thing. But I know well it is my sex. I cannot get beyond it.

The fourth was Mulla Nasruddin. He stood up and said: Forgive me, I am leaving.

They said: But you have not told us your weakness.

He said: I have only one weakness: slander. Now I cannot stay another moment. The whole town will be waiting for me. What I have heard here, I must go and tell. Forgive me — my only weakness is rumor. And now it is impossible for me to stay.

The three tried to hold him: Stay, brother! If this is your weakness, why did you not say so first? Why did you sit so long?

Mulla said: I sat until I heard everything; once I heard, my energy awakened. I cannot sleep tonight until I spread the news to each and every one. My energy has risen! Our weakness is the point of the expenditure of our energy. There our energy runs out. Mulla had been sitting sluggish, as if lifeless; suddenly light came, life came, a sparkle appeared!

He said: Amazing! Never had I thought that a conference would bring such delight.

Our weakness is the point where our strength is wasted. Whether bhoga or its opposite tyaga, the point remains the same. Attention remains concentrated there; energy is discharged there, evaporates there. Tapas is the process of changing the centers of attention. I will speak on this process tomorrow. Perhaps it will take long, because Mahavira has divided tapas into twelve parts, and each is a scientific process. So tomorrow we will understand the scientific process, and then we will speak of Mahavira’s individual parts of tapas.

Do not leave yet — though the mind’s weakness will be saying: Run. So wait a little. Have as much patience as the sannyasins have for kirtan.