Naye Manushya Ka Dharam #4

In many ways. First, what you call the Upanishads’ “intellectual tradition” was not really very intellectual. If you pick up the 108 Upanishads, you won’t even find 108 lines you could say are substantial: repetition, repetition—the same, the same. And even those statements are not intellectual, because the entire territory of the Upanishads is beyond the intellect. They are saying that truth lies beyond buddhi, beyond reason.

So, as long as they have to persuade someone, they are ready to argue. But the moment an argument appears that undermines the belief, they label it “kutarka,” sophistry. Do you see my point? For thousands of years in India there has been this unbroken habit: arguments that negate are called “kutarka,” while arguments that establish are called “tarka.” This is dangerous and dishonest: what proves me right is “proper argument,” and what shows me wrong is “bad argument.” The result has been that, slowly, argument itself became kutarka. And secondly, the whole Upanishadic and later tradition is not intellectual; it is mystic. India’s deep current is mystic, and a mystic tradition is always irrational, not rational.

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Socrates—Socrates is a purely purified intellect. There is no talk of a mystic approach there. Although when reason makes its utmost effort, it does reach a point where mysticism begins. But reason will not speak about it; it remains silent.

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Yes, yes, it’s possible. Possible. Just as in India with Gautam Buddha: Buddha’s approach is tightly rational. And precisely for that reason Buddhism could not survive in India, because the Indian tradition is irrational. Buddha could not take root here, since the main current is irrational.

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Yes—so when it went abroad Buddhism became entirely irrational, and therefore it survived. Do you see my point? As soon as Buddhism left India—Burma, Ceylon, China—there it became irrational. Had it become that here, it would have survived here too. There Buddha became secondary; heavens and hells were created, worship of him began. Everything Buddhism had fought against in India it accepted in China and Burma, and so it survived—those were irrational traditions as well. Buddhism survived there because it agreed to become irrational. In its motherland it did not agree to that. The air of Buddha’s reason still held; he tried to fight here and he lost. Defeated, the Buddhist monk went outside India; there he consented. He said, “We cannot fight; we should agree with what is being said.” I call Buddha a man of an absolutely rational approach—like, in our age, Wittgenstein; that kind of approach.

They worked hard. They worked very hard. But it seems to me the Charvakas never had a truly great mind among them. So the discussion they set in motion remained on a very low plane. That is, it never became metaphysical. They could never produce, even once, someone of the stature of a Hume—Hume’s advocacy of atheism still carries a powerful argument, a profound thought. With Charvaka the case seems very simple: hedonism—eat, drink, be merry. But there isn’t any compelling argument in it that you...
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Epicurus is truly extraordinary. The Charvakas have nothing comparable to Epicurus. Epicurus is a rare phenomenon in the entire history of humankind. To find a man to match Epicurus is difficult; such a lovable man he is. Had the Charvakas produced even one Epicurus, their tradition would have endured in that era. It could not happen. And the basic reason is simply this: the whole Indian tradition is so irrational—how could an Epicurus be born here? Epicurus is a very rational man. This matter ... is. Epicurus’ case is far more endearing than theirs. And then, gradually, gradually—by repeating for three thousand years, “Believe, believe; don’t doubt, you will go astray”—there arose a vested interest in getting people to believe; it benefits the gurus. So fine, they keep persuading. And India slowly became a land of gurus.
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A few things—two or three—are in my mind. First, that the kind of thing I am saying, perhaps for the first time India has become ready to hear it, through contact with the West. The mental atmosphere of India stands at the edge of a great transformation—such as never happened before. India had a certain advantage: the Mughals came, the Huns came, but they all had less vision than we did. Everyone India met before the English was culturally and intellectually on a lower plane than we were. So they had no impact on us; rather, they changed under our impact.

For the first time, upon coming into contact with the English, we encountered a diametrically opposite kind of intellect. Hence a crisis was born—and it continues. In this crisis I feel hopeful that the Indian mind can be given a complete turn. Because the old mind has lost its roots; it is close to dying. A new mind is preparing to be born. If now, for fifteen or twenty years, we make a sustained effort to bring forth this new mind, then certainly India will never again become what it was. And if we do not make this effort, India will turn back and resume its former condition in reverse.
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I understand. No—this will happen in the West. There is a reason; there is a reason. In the West, over the last one hundred fifty to two hundred years, so much labor has been done with the intellect that the intellect is exhausted and needs rest. So any kind of rest seems fine. Thus when India’s Maharshi so-and-so—Mahesh, etc.—arrive there, they all seem convenient in teaching the West tricks to sleep. Their appeal is not any mysticism-wysticism. It is simply that the Western intellect is tired—badly tired. Two world wars have exhausted it, and it has become so nervous: “What we were doing—was it right or not? Everything has gone awry.” The self-confidence the West had forty years ago has been lost—in two world wars. Anyone would lose it. We haven’t even seen any wars; we have no self-confidence.
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First, that you are not happy—that is one thing. And second,...

No, no—what makes you happy? You are already doing ganja, bhang, opium—all that; it is all marijuana in an old form. What difference does it make? Even marijuana they are learning from us.
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And even philosophically, the technique we invented of chanting Ram-Ram while turning the rosary beads—that too is like marijuana; there is no difference in it. There is no difference.
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What you are saying—this needs to be asked and understood: if they are tired and troubled, then why should we also go the same way and get troubled? My point is that the reason they got tired and troubled was not that they took that road; the only reason was that even they could not go fully on that road. And the mind kept falling into conflict; that is why they got tired. Conflict exhausts. The entire tradition of Christianity is even more irrational than ours.
So what happened is: the reason that came to the West did not enter the whole Western mind; it came into only a small fragment. And the rest of the mind remained lethargic. The mind as a whole is a thousand years old. Only a small intellectual class—scientists, intellectuals, literary people—rebelled. That small class fought against it; and fighting, it got tired. And this class was always dragged along by force; it never went willingly in that direction. Deep down it always wished that, given any chance, we should turn back. Gradually, it was given the chance: “You were wrong. Your entire progress was messed up. We were better off behind.”
My own point is that in India this story need not be repeated. If the entire Indian mind is persuaded—and it can be persuaded. Because the West was never in the kind of conflict in which we are caught; it is very different. In the West, intellect arose from within; no crisis arrived from outside. Before us stands a truly phenomenal event: a crisis has come from the West and is standing at our door. All education is Western, the whole milieu is Western, the very air is Western. In the next twenty-five years we will be Western; we cannot escape it. And if our mind consents within this whole crisis...
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And if we turn our faces the other way and walk, we are fools. And if all of India takes full advantage of this opportunity, then in my understanding, in the coming fifty years India can produce the greatest intellectual explosion in the world—greater than any people have ever produced. There are reasons for this: for two, two-and-a-half thousand years the mind has been dormant; the energy of two thousand years lies completely unused. If once it catches ignition, the explosion will be so great—just as if a field had not been sown for two thousand years while the neighboring fields were being sown, and after two thousand years seeds are cast into that field—the crop that will come...
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Yes, I am romantic. Without being romantic, living itself is difficult.
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Yes, the individual mind is not entirely individual. Only a very small part of the individual mind is individual; a very large part is asleep, collective. The ignition will begin from the individual mind; but once enough individuals catch fire, it falls into the collective mind. And that collective mind—this is entirely romantic, because all good things are romantic. And the people who stop being romantic are destroyed.
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Yes, one should dream. Nietzsche has said somewhere: that nation is impotent whose bowstring no longer receives the arrow. That nation is impotent which has stopped dreaming. That nation is impotent which has stopped despising itself—because when you hate, you go beyond. So I like this. Since you mentioned Nietzsche, keep in mind, that man is also very dear to me.

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Not in the least. As for me, I don’t accept that, though such disciples may exist. I never accept disciples.
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It takes a great deal of effort. A great deal of effort.
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First of all—first of all—the qualifications that define a guru, I dismantle all of those in myself.

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Yes. Secondly, to be a guru—there is not much you have to do to not be a guru—to be a guru you have to do a great deal. Being a guru is a wholly positive effort. Because fundamentally no one in the world wants to be a disciple.
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All that becomes possible only through the guru’s endeavor. For thousands of years gurus have been explaining that without the guru there is no knowledge, without the guru there is no knowledge. Only by holding the master’s feet will you cross over. All this has to be inculcated; one has to become a guru. To be a guru you have to create an entire positive system. So I do not lay down any positive system...
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That too is necessary, isn’t it—being fake is very necessary for being a guru. To be a guru, being fake is necessary. Being a guru is very difficult. And secondly, even after so much effort, disciples still arrive. Even after discouraging them in every way, they still come. In fact there is a danger: the more you disappoint them, the more they feel the guru must have more. This danger is there all the time. Because the guru who refuses must surely have something.

He is right. He is right.
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To a great extent he is right, to a great extent he is right. But I have a small difference. My point is that even while playing football one can meditate. There is no need to separate meditation from football.
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No, no—because Vivekananda is, for one, a believer in gurudom, which is an utterly dangerous thing. A very dangerous thing. He is a believer in gurudom, a believer in traditions. His mind has an excessive insistence on the old scriptures. And whatever he is saying—whatever he is saying—he is saying all of it in an effort to prove and validate the old.
In my view, the movement of life always happens by breaking the old continuity. So the old should die every day. We should not keep sitting on its chest. It should be bid farewell.

No. This whole matter of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis is a matter of continuity. The thesis continues into the antithesis, continues into the synthesis. Then the synthesis becomes the new thesis. That is a process of continuity. What I am saying is: I believe in the discontinuous mind. My point is that continuity should break every day.
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Yes—hypothesis. For now it will only be a hypothesis. But my point is this: nothing in the world is continuous; continuity is an appearance. And if we cling to that appearance, then the mind becomes static, miscreative. A mind rea—
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Of course! Every moment you have to die—every moment, death—then you can attain every moment’s living. That is right, because only when we die do we live. The more totally we die, the more totally we live. Out of total death comes total life. And since we never really die, we are never truly alive.

So what Vivekananda says is not a matter of rajas and tamas. It is not about rajas–tamas. They think if you eat fish, some rajas will arise. This is not a rajas–tamas issue. The issue is desire—caught in continuity and not becoming discontinuous. In a discontinuous moment, so much energy is released that it defies all accounting. All our energy gets entangled in the net of continuity; it gets blocked. There is so much continuity in our mind—in the Indian mind—that Patanjali, the Vedas, Buddha, Nagarjuna, Ramanuja, Gandhi, all are sitting there in such a way that they do not give me any chance at all to be—to happen.
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Yes, yes—just as soon as it is formed, it becomes dangerous; the moment it forms, I become the enemy. A revolutionary sees: the revolution should not become dead. The moment I begin to turn dead, I should be thrown away at once. And those who believe in me and love me should be the very first to throw me away—right then.

I remember an incident of a Zen fakir. A Zen fakir is dying—he is eighty. His disciples have begged him a thousand times to write something. He laughs and says, “So much has already been written; I tell you to burn it—how can I write?” But they say, “You have known so much; at least write something—what will we do?”

At the time of his death about a hundred thousand people are gathered. He is lying there; from under his pillow he takes out a book and says to his chief disciple—the one he considered his principal disciple—“Take this. Since you wouldn’t listen, I have written. Keep it carefully; it will be useful for thousands of years. I have written the sutras that will be useful for millions of years.” The disciple takes it, bows to the book—and without opening it throws it into the fire burning in front. The master rises and embraces him. A hue and cry breaks out: “What happened!” People start weeping: “Why did you throw the book? It burned in the fire.”

And the master says, “If you had saved the book, I would have died in vain, and I would have understood that not even one person was born who understood me. And there was nothing written in the book—it was blank. If you had even opened it, I would have been pained. I am dying happy because there is one person who understands me—because he is ready to set me on fire.”

So they are absolutely right—absolutely right. The moment an old thing is removed, our mind—addicted to grasping—will cling; it will crystallize it. So the fight will continue. I will not tell them to keep the fight going—it will have to continue. I will make every effort that they do not cling to me; but despite my effort, as you say, they will cling. So their friends will have to be prepared to free them from me.

Revolutionaries should die; the revolution should continue. The revolution should never stop. And I look at this “quantum” very carefully—very carefully.

There’s too much talk. In Arvind’s case, he is a system-maker—not a thinker, a system-maker. And system-making is a simple affair: how to keep spreading words, plastering them on the walls of the house. So with Arvind there is very little truth. He is an old-style systematizer—like Shankara, Ramanuja, Vallabha—the same kind of man.

In my view, truth always comes in fragments; it never comes as any system. That is the shortcoming. Make a system out of truth, and the moment the system is made, truth dies. A system is always dead, because a system means a structure. Truth is always living, so it goes beyond any system.

In the world, these systems that have been made—the Jains’, the Buddhists’, the Hindus’—the moment a system is made, truth dies. Truth should never become a system; only then can that discontinuity remain alive. And Arvind is a system-maker. Compared to him, Ramana is a very wondrous man; there is something in Ramana. In Arvind, not much of that—nothing of great worth; quite ordinary. But he has become a genius—the genius of a system-maker. Like Plato; there are many such people. But that is not the genuine, authentic thing that comes as fragrance.

Truth… fragments. It never comes in such a way that the whole is obtained and you have explained the entire world: this is like this, that is like that, this goes this way, that goes that way. At most, there is a glimpse—and even a glimpse is much. And from that glimpse you won’t be able to figure it out. But what happens is: once a system-maker finds a single device, he goes on spreading it and builds whole systems.

The moment we say “yes,” the system has begun.
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Exactly—that fear is there. That fear is always the fear of the traditional mind: the old is familiar; if we destroy it, who knows whether the new will be there? The old mind is security-loving; that is why it is old. And I say: whoever prefers security, safety, convenience—who believes one should stop with the familiar—that person is dead; that person is not alive. Life is insecurity. I am not saying the new will necessarily be better than the old. I am saying that the courage to break the old is so much better, to erase the old is so much better—and from one who can break the old, who can gather the courage to break it, something will certainly be born. And it is not necessary to worry that it must be better than the old. I say its very newness is immensely valuable: its novelty, the dance, the thrill of the new—to move on unknown and unfamiliar paths.
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Absolutely. Absolutely.
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I understand. If every time you have to force it, to think it through, it becomes a fabrication. If you plan it, think, reflect, and will it, and then construct it—then of course it will be so. But if it becomes your very living, then it is not will. Then it is the only thing that is not will. Because the old becomes boring. A chair placed in this room—it was there yesterday, it is there today, it will be there tomorrow—this going on becomes boring. The mind that constantly creates the new does not will; it creates. That is spontaneity.

This thing we keep saying—that you should keep making little changes—out of that very thing boredom will be born. From that, boredom will be born. Because boredom means that we are standing within the familiar, where there is nothing unfamiliar. The familiar bores; only the unfamiliar brings juice. So when you make a few small alterations, the boredom will lessen a little, because a little bit has changed. But if everything changes, life becomes a thrill, an adventure, a throb, and a dance. And that dance of life, which keeps changing every day...
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An ideal situation. If that were to happen—many times one feels that if man is not willing to leave the old—a third world war should happen. And it will happen if we do not muster the courage to change the old. Because then only one way to change remains. The boredom will become so great. My own belief is that out of boredom, war is created.
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If boredom remains, then war is necessary—because only war gives a little juice, a little excitement. As when an India–Pakistan war broke out, there was great excitement. From early morning people were up, turning on the radio at five, looking at the newspapers. On their faces there was a thrill and color, and their eyes were worth seeing: something had happened.

They do—indeed, they drop completely. Suicide declines, murder declines, theft goes down, robberies go down. Because war brings so much thrill, so much “juice,” who would bother with these? These too are done to bring a little excitement; they too are born out of boredom. So I hold that boredom goes with “the old”; as long as the old remains, boredom will remain.

Adolf Hitler was an utterly dead man—no life at all. He was a dead man all the time, and that’s why he appealed in the West. At this moment the West is drawn to dead men. The West is tired of fighting. So... it just goes on.

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Change. Thinking comes to a stop; one man after another makes people stop thinking. He gives you the chance: “You don’t think; I’ll think. We will tell you everything; we will do the thinking.” People agree: “All right, I’ve become frightened of thinking.” Any act—“we’ll do the work for you, we’ll hold your feet.” The West is tired of thinking; that’s why fascism and Stalin and Hitler, and these kinds of systems—the dead system of communism—are all arising.

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He wanted to destroy—precisely so; in the name of an Aryan, old tradition, he wanted to destroy this. That is, he wanted to preserve the old, and he wanted to destroy people. But what he took to be the old was not really close to it. He wanted to wipe out the Jews so that the Aryans would be saved. But for the sake of the old he was going to destroy the new. I want to destroy the old for the sake of the new. So there is a fundamental difference—an opposite difference. Hitler had a very primitive mind. We cannot call that man contemporary.

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To be contemporary is very difficult. I mean, only a living man can be contemporary. We all fall behind. We all fall behind.

Worth welcoming. Worth welcoming. They are very good people. It will be India’s good fortune the day we, too, can give birth to hippies and the like. It is a sign of consciousness that some people are rebellious, courageous, break the old currents, and say, “We will live with the girl, but why marry? Love is enough.” A very fine thing. The day this happens all over the world, it will be very good. They are courageous people.
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One day, when a man like Buddha left the royal palace, in my view he was exactly like a hippie. Now the word may sound a bit odd, but a man like Buddha who left the palace—he is a hippie. Mahavira is an even bigger hippie than the hippies; he stood naked, leaving the palace. In those days people must have said, “He’s mad.” Then it became tradition. Now the monk of Mahavira is a dead man; he also stands naked—but because of tradition. That’s where the whole difficulty begins. Everything becomes tradition. And it should not become so; we should be careful about that. For that, some…
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I just live poetry—I don’t write it. Those who don’t live it write to console the mind. What’s the point of writing poetry? Life should be poetry. Morning and evening—everything should be poetry.
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Absolutely, absolutely—this is how it is, this is how it is.
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No—the very life is poetry. If you know how to live, the whole of life as such becomes poetry. The very being becomes poetry. The very existence becomes poetic. And those whom you call poets, and what you call poetry—that too is not complete poetry. In ten or twenty-five lines, if there is even a single line of poetry, that is a lot. And that line always comes from where it connects with living poetry. That line always comes from there. The rest is patchwork, construction, not creation. Open the entire Ramayana—you will hardly find two or four lines that are poetry; the rest is all nonsense, nothing more than patching and joining. Any fellow who is a bit of a fool can sit and produce “poetry.”
But what I am saying is: out of living poetry, poetry is born. Sometimes in a certain moment a single line descends when you are fully alive; sometimes poetry happens. But even that urge—to make it, to write poetry—arises because I saw the morning sun; in that moment something flashed in me; afterward the flash was gone. Now I want to bind this memory in words, on paper, in pictures. And if the next moment were just as poetic, who would have the leisure to bind it? Because poetry only glimmers now and then, we try to capture it afterward. Someone paints it, someone sculpts it. These are all dead poets—who were poets for a moment and then were no longer; now only the memory remains, and they want to transcribe and arrange that memory. And if every moment were poetry, where would there be time?
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Reflection is memory.
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They want to communicate for the same reason.
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I don’t create any income. There is no income at all. Today I am staying at Jayanti-bhai’s house; they give me food. Tomorrow I will stay at Bakul-ji’s house; they will give me food. If some friend sees my clothes torn, he brings clothes; they get stitched. And if someday nothing is available, I climb a tree and sleep—finished. No income and all that—nothing at all. Not a single coin in the name of money. I believe that…
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You simply cannot stop it. Stopping it is not easy at all, Bakul-ji. The movement of the mind, that tension—it keeps itself engaged in making something or other. It is necessary for the mind. The mind can stop making only when the mind becomes primarily inward; only then can it stop making…
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No, no, no. How will that be possible? How will it happen? Something will have to be done. And I am also producing something. I am also producing something. It’s true, I am the one even putting the chair in place.
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Background must come through understanding, not through cultivation. Then discipline is not dictatorial. A discipline imposed becomes a mere continuity. Discipline being born moment to moment from your inner understanding—then it is not continuity; it is itself a discontinuous process. Discipline coming as understanding. Operation must be a part of understanding.
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Man generally lives in imagination. But my own understanding is that in imagination…
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Mankind has not shown any creative imagination, has not shown any sensitivity even. But a few human beings have shown it. And because of those few human beings the whole world has not become a madhouse. It is a madhouse—but still it has not entirely become one, because of those few human beings.

If... by coming into being a few become true individuals, then this will no longer remain a madhouse. There may be more people. Because in the very becoming of those few individuals a new bliss is hidden. So much bliss is concealed in them that there is no reason why a man should not become so blissful...