Naye Samaj Ki Khoj #5

Yes—absolutely, exactly so. It will feel exactly like that, it will feel exactly like that. You are right; it is always so. And the truth is, a real talk can never be with a crowd; it is only with each individual, no matter how many people are present there.
Is it true that everything has its moment?
Most certainly it is.
Was it to be heard today?
Yes—often that is so.

Yes, yes, I certainly do want to meet.
And until now it wasn’t even clear to me why I wanted to meet! And in this industry, how many people are there who would want to flow in this stream? So yesterday itself we had thought of it; and today, when I returned from a shoot, I was told, “There is good news for you.” I had spoken with Mahipal-ji—he didn’t meet; he left yesterday. Otherwise, he too had this in mind, and your name had also come up. Then suddenly today Praveen mentioned it. So I said, “Call them today itself—if they are here, call them.” There is a great deal of work to be done. Because, in truth, every age has its medium of expression, and each age has a different one. The medium by which we can reach the popular mind keeps changing. There was a time we could reach only by speaking—there was no other way. And what enters through the ear is a thousand times weaker than what enters through the eye, if it can be made visible.
We usually ask, “Did you hear it, or did you see it?” Because there is no guarantee that what is heard is true; it is difficult to trust it. It is difficult to disbelieve even a lie that is seen. And the industry you mention has made it possible for things to be seen. A seen falsehood too is hard to doubt; such is the power of seeing. A heard truth is very hard to believe. Hearing has no such power.
Yes, but that power can belong to a lie as well. And a lie that is seen has great power. And the eye has no way of knowing whether it is seeing reality or an image on a screen. The eye only sees. And, with the habit of millions of years, it believes what it sees. It instinctively takes the seen to be true—this is all built in; we’re not aware of it. That’s why, in a film, you see a man suffering—and a person in the audience starts weeping. He forgets completely that it is only a screen—he simply forgets. Because the eye does not know; the eye only sees, and it believes what it sees. This is the eye’s habit of millions of years. And we never knew that we would someday make a false screen and see upon it.
So now what has happened... And it always happens: whenever a new invention comes along, the very first use of it is for our lowest needs. There is a saying in Arabia: when a new invention appears, the Devil grabs it first. God gets a chance with great difficulty to take hold of a new invention. New inventions keep appearing every day, and our lowest instincts seize them—and therefore the lowest instincts have gone completely mad. And having driven people mad, they can be exploited and are being exploited.
Now, at this moment, the whole world is exploiting human sexuality—exploiting it completely. We don’t even notice that we are doing the same through painting, through film, through music—we are going round and round exploiting human sex. And if sex is exploited to such an extent, then human beings will certainly go on falling into danger—because the energy that is thus exploited will no longer be available for conversion.
And the ironic thing is that less energy is spent in the sex act than in sexual imagination; for imagination is perversion. The act is nature; imagination is pure perversion. And imagination can be exploited.
So my point is: can this imagination not be “exploited” for the auspicious?
Much thought is needed in this direction—much thought. Consider the dervish dances.
There was a mystic, Gurdjieff—he died eight or ten years ago. He had evolved certain dervish dances which, if you simply watch for an hour, you will slip into meditation while watching. Just keep watching that dance—the steps, the rhythm, the music as a whole—and it will begin to lift you from within. In an hour you will experience a realm you have never known. And once even a small taste of it happens, its call will haunt you; it will summon you all day long: there is also a world there that has remained unknown. He had certain dervish dances...
Through dervish dance the Sufi fakirs have done great work. Those who can understand nothing else—cannot understand books, cannot grasp knowledge, cannot fathom philosophy—can at least watch a dance. And we are not asking them to understand anything; what the eye accomplishes by seeing, the effects it leaves upon the entire nervous system, the way it penetrates to the very consciousness—all that is completely natural. We are not asking them to do anything. And if the first experience happens naturally, the second experience a person wishes to undertake through sadhana.
Right now the difficulty we face is this—we are trying to make even the first experience happen through sadhana. If the first happens naturally, then the second you can undertake by enduring any amount of discipline and effort. Music is a marvel in this world... I am thinking that a few friends who think in different directions—those in music, in film, in painting, in poetry—could they not come together and consider how, from many directions, we could give man a vision that takes him toward height?
If by seeing a painting a person can become lustful, then why cannot a person, by seeing a painting, become Rama-intoxicated? And if by hearing one kind of music sexuality is aroused and man becomes sensate, why cannot it also happen that by hearing another kind of music sexuality dissolves and man becomes spiritual?
You ask, What work can be done? There is a great deal of work. In fact, I have always held that those who work in new media have the most to do. The old media are worn out. And what is worn out, what we have grown accustomed to, becomes incapable of breaking open any new door within. Perhaps it once did, when it was new. Now it is very difficult for it to break through.
And an odd thing has happened: all the old arts of the world were, in one sense, active—you had to participate. The complete joy of dance was in dancing. The full joy of music was in singing it yourself, in creating it. What has the modern world arranged? It has turned all active arts into passive arts. You need not dance; you need not sing. You only have to watch and listen—just sit. You become a passive entity. Sit like a corpse for three hours; everything else is being done by someone else.
The consequences have been very dangerous. The greatest consequence is this: from morning till night we are making man a passive entity. We tell him, “You need do nothing; we will do everything. Hirelings will do it; you just watch—enough for you, no need to be troubled.” A musician will labor a lifetime; he will sing—you just listen. Someone will dance—you just watch. Gradually everything becomes passivity... And it is curious: the more passive a person is, the more sexual he becomes; and the more active a person is, the more spiritual he becomes.
All these new media—how can we use them to raise the ancient human soul? If we don’t, they are being used thoroughly to pull man downward. And remember: all old things wear out; people get used to them; then they no longer even see them.
A man brings home a bride. Before marriage he must have looked at his wife. Then twenty years pass. If he reflects today, he will be startled to see that for twenty years he has not really looked at her—he has become habituated. Every day he goes out, embraces his wife, talks to her, quarrels with her morning and evening—but he does not look. There has been no occasion to look; no need arose. He has become accustomed. Yes, let him see a new woman on the street—today he truly sees for a moment—and because he sees, he becomes eager. And his own wife no longer attracts him, because he does not look at her. And someone who does look at his wife becomes curious about her—someone looks, and then yes! But we become accustomed to everything, and gradually all mediums become part of habit.
I was in Patna recently. The Jalan family has a very fine private museum in their home; I went there. There was a Tibetan gong. Have you seen one? We keep a bell in our temples; the Tibetan gong is like that—circular. There is a wooden stick. You rotate the stick vigorously three times along the inside of the gong, and then strike it the fourth time. By rotating three times and striking the fourth, it produces the complete sound of “Om mani padme hum.” Such an astounding sound you cannot imagine—the whole mantra is spoken by it. That strike gives the “hum,” and the resonance continues. In the pagodas where the gong hangs, the reverberation keeps going. It is used for meditation.
For thousands of years it has been used. And now no one listens; it rings all day long. No one cares; no one has a purpose with it. As we go to a temple and bang the bell and walk away, so a Tibetan will go, strike it, and return home. He does not listen; it no longer matters to him.
Once it was a device. And the consciousness that first heard it—even today the consciousness that hears it for the first time—will feel the sound of Om mani padme hum resonating through one’s entire being. And then, as it begins to fade, one is to meditate on that fading; and when, fading and fading, it dissolves into emptiness—one is to sink into that very emptiness.
Now it has become so mechanical; now it is a habit. They hear it day and night in the village; no one cares.
All things grow old. Therefore human consciousness must discover new mediums every day. The lowest tendencies discover new mediums every day; the highest tendencies keep insisting on the old—and so they lose. In this race the lower tendency always finds the new, brings new competition. The higher tendency keeps pleading the old and gets into difficulty—it loses.
The day we can discover daily something new for the higher as well—each day a new song, a new music, a new medium—on that day there will be a great revolution in human consciousness. And from all sides... You ask, what use? There can be immense use, tremendous use. And some people should be thinking about all this.
Sadhus and saints will not be able to win now; they have lost. Nothing can be done through them; they are standing on a completely dead board. Now saintliness will have to find entirely new doors and carry the battle there—only then will something happen. Otherwise it’s gone—gone completely. Excellence is losing so badly we cannot even imagine it. And we cannot even imagine how rapidly, year by year, everything is sliding downward! Gradually some things we will not even remember ever existed. Even today we cannot believe it.
(The question’s audio recording is not clear.)
Yes, it will go; it will go. It will go, because where are the levels of sadhana in consciousness that are needed to understand classical music?
(The question’s audio recording is not clear.)
Not merely... As I said, it was not only a matter of being passive. Even to listen to classical music, you need tuning. Listening, too, is an active participation; it is not passive—that you simply sit there and it happens. You can only actually hear what is at the level where everyone already is.
So a jazz band, or whatever else—the loud, thumping stuff—anyone can go and listen to that, because that happens to be where we all are. To understand it you need not learn anything, need not pass through anything first. We are already there!
Like fakirs themselves—the singers and dancers...
Singers and dancers, singers and dancers... Something must be done. And I say it is necessary from all sides—dance and song, and images and painting—blows must be struck from every direction. If this can happen, this losing game can still be saved; otherwise it is gone entirely.
And the oddity is: how are we to believe what we have not experienced?
I was just reading—one psychologist says that a hundred years from now civilization may be so stressed that some children might be born insomniac from birth. As soon as they are born they will have to be given sleeping pills. Those children will grow up. But if someone tells them, “A hundred years ago there were people who laid their head on a pillow and fell asleep,” those children will not believe it. And why should they! Why should they believe! They will say, “This is impossible; such lies have been written in some books.” How can it be that a person just lies down and sleeps, and does nothing? This cannot be.
Truly, for one who hasn’t slept since childhood, how will he believe that someone else merely closes his eyes and goes to sleep? And nothing needs to be done in between; he just sleeps. We too today cannot believe there was a time when people merely closed their eyes and went into samadhi. We cannot believe it. How can this be! We struggle as if we will die, and where is samadhi! Where is meditation! Nothing opens. How can we accept it! Either the person is lying, or it is some mythological tale—this cannot be! And we are right to say so; how else can we believe! Some things are being lost so completely that even the doors of their possibility seem to be closing—as if a door has been shut and we no longer even know it exists.
To break all this requires a great... And this effort is no longer within the capacity of the sadhu-sannyasi. First, because he himself knows little of it. And second, consciousness has been diverted through so many doors that you cannot bring it back through a single door; you will have to bring it back through many doors. And I hold that by the very doors through which the fall happens, through those very doors the rise can happen.
So today, by whatever routes consciousness is going downward, by those very routes we must call it back. We will have to discover that very methodology; within that very medium we can bring it back. And it can be done—there is not the slightest obstacle, except that if it is not done, it will not happen.
So I am thinking that some people in different media, who have given their whole lives in different directions—through those directions, and from all sides, how can we create a single impact...
And I hold that the medium of “explaining” has become the oldest. And even when we explained, ultimately—if you look closely—explaining is persuasion, nothing more. What can I really make you understand by explaining! I can only persuade you toward some possibility: that there is something there as well; come, let’s see. That is all I can do; what else can I explain? You will understand by seeing. I can persuade. The old routes of persuasion have all gone wrong now; they do not work. The new routes of persuasion are being used everywhere.
I was just looking at a research study. In a New York supermarket someone conducted research. Cameras were installed all over the store; they were recording the eyes of the women who entered—studying what attracts them. They calculated that boxes painted red attract seven women out of ten.
So they advised shopkeepers: paint your boxes red. Any other color will lose. The content is not the issue. But first the woman picks up the red box.
Then they examined at what height the box is placed—relative to the woman’s eye level. They found that if it is too high, the eye misses it; too low, it is missed. There is a particular band—a foot at the eye level—within which the boxes attract. So what is cheapest and most profitable should be placed at that height; and what is costly, or less profitable, or not worth selling should be placed higher.
They arranged the boxes accordingly—and the results came!
And they reached this conclusion: if there is a man at the counter asking, “What do you want to buy?” the store loses. Because when someone asks, “What do you want to buy?” the woman shopper has to decide at home what she intends to buy. The scope of persuasion becomes limited. She has to come prepared to say, “I want to buy a stove.”
So they removed the man from the counter. Only the cashier remains to take money at the end; you are given a bag, you stroll, and pick whatever you like. Their survey showed that of the items women purchased, seven out of ten were things they had not come to buy, and three were things they had decided upon at home.
What does this mean? It means: remove the counterman. The shopkeeper should not be at the counter asking what to buy. Let the woman be by herself. And the eye-recordings showed that as soon as a woman looks at the goods she becomes hypnotized; she is not fully aware. The visual field narrows—just as in hypnosis.
So they say to the shopkeeper: here is your route of persuasion.
Now what this means is that the buyer has no idea how he is being persuaded, for what he is being persuaded, and what he will end up buying—what book he will read, what toothpaste he will use, what cigarette he will smoke—he is being persuaded toward all of it. And the persuaders for God are using very old methods—very ancient ways. They will lose completely; they cannot stand. Their routes of persuasion are four or five thousand years old—very crude methods. They will appeal to no one.
All of religion will now have to be made scientific. As is being done for everything else, so it must be done for this. Then we can win this losing game; otherwise we are gone—we cannot win against the other; there is no possibility. If it can happen that by watching a film hundreds of people are filled with thoughts of suicide and some even commit suicide, why cannot it happen that by watching a film hundreds are filled with the idea of sadhana and some actually enter sadhana? Why should this not be possible? There is no contradiction in it—none at all.
But the difficulty is that the artist of the past, Anandji, stood with some vision to which people had to come. Today’s artist stands only in the marketplace; wherever the crowd is, he reaches there. He will perish—you understand, don’t you? The artist says, “Where the people go, I will go; what pictures they like, I will paint; what songs they like, I will sing.” The artist of this age is behind the common man. The artist of earlier ages was ahead of the common man. Yes—when he is behind the man, he is behind money. He used to be ahead of man. He had a message; he was fighting a battle. He was in trouble, in a sense. Even today, whoever fights will find himself in trouble. But some people should accept that struggle—wherever they are. If not in all things, then at least in some directions we should conduct a few experiments so that understanding begins to shift there.
So certainly, do introduce your friends to me. I would very much like to talk so that we can think along these lines and do something.
Osho, there was so much joy in listening to your words, I blurted out...
No, no, no, not at all.
As far as this little world is concerned... this world has become a strange world. As far as I am concerned, today, after twenty-five years, I have come to the conclusion that begging is futile.
That is fine, that is fine...

The purpose for which I came into this line—in that I have been defeated.
That too is fine.

It is not that God has not given me any fame. As an artist, whatever little service I could render, people appreciated it. But can I do what I want to do? Can they do what they want to do? Our producer who makes a picture does not have to lead people toward God; he has to make money. And if it were up to him, if there were no censor board, he would show a naked dance.
That much is true.
And when the Censor Board cuts their films, they rise up against it. For twelve years now, Osho, I have taken a vow—to serve the cine employees, who are the exploited class of my industry. Even today, in 1969, when inflation has risen so much, when actors and actresses who ride around in Mercedes earn lakhs of rupees, the poor man still earns only eighty rupees a month in the studio, which does not fit into any government scale. That is to say, today a mill worker earns more; today peons earn more; drivers earn more. But the laborers in my studios still get eighty rupees... A sound recordist gets one hundred and eighty rupees. While a water-server, due to the Seltex trade union, takes thirteen rupees a day. I have been standing up for thirteen years now to serve those poor people. Government committees were formed, wage boards were created and passed—everything—yet they are still not being implemented. Some day... please come with me; I will take you to the studio.
I will certainly come sometime.
You will be shocked at the filthy atmosphere in which we work. There is nowhere to sit, there are no bathrooms; we cannot even offer a guest a cup of tea—and we spend the whole day there from morning till evening. For the rich who make lakhs of rupees, air‑conditioned makeup rooms will be made. But the others, the poor people, have no place even to sit. And the moneyed producer or studio owner has no concern for this, because he does not consider them human; he considers them animals. He thinks, what need do they have!
All right, I understand.
So even after so many years, we are not able to secure even this much for them. Because in the next round, I go with them to talk. And if we call a strike, then it’s a bad thing—“you’re trying to shut down our business.” Just the day before yesterday I was telling them—the workers were sitting in Prakash Studio. No shade has been provided from the sun; no place to sit has been provided. They said, “Manmohan‑ji, you’ve been our president for eight years—nothing has happened.” I felt so pained. I said, “Go sit in the manager’s office and talk. When twenty men go and sit there, only then will it occur to him that yes, you too are persons, you too are human beings, you too should have a place to sit.” Only then will they come to their senses; otherwise they won’t. To bring a revolution—just as I submitted in that meeting—those who make the pictures are they.
I understood your point.
Even if we all, as an organization, decide that we will not work in dirty films...
No, no, I had understood that as well.
The fact is, that man has neither to educate the masses nor to give the masses any religious message. There are a few who make only good films, but they can be counted on fingers. Still, their aim too is how to turn two into ten. This thing never arises in their hearts. Educated people, coming into this line, become uneducated. And how to bring them onto the straight path—if you can show a way, we are all ready for it. That is, what should we do! Now, you say to Kalyanji, “Brother, the kind of music you...” He will say, “What can I do! That is the producer’s demand.”
This I do understand, Manmohan‑ji; I understand this point. This is not only your difficulty; it is everyone’s. Because no one here is alone; all are parts of a vast social net. No one is living alone, living by his own will; all are parts of a great mesh. But say this to anyone within that mesh, and he’ll say the same: we are only parts of this net. If you think the producer will not say this, you’re thinking wrongly. The producer will also say, “What can I do? The people who give the money—this is what they give money for.”
My meaning is: this argument would have meaning only if there were someone in such a position who could say, “Yes, for myself I am responsible.” There is no one like that. All together are responsible. There is an interdependence of all. That much has become evident; that is the problem—and we cannot stop there. In my view, Ananda‑ji does his work; what he does, he will have to do—just as it is—because he is a part of a big mesh. But there are some things he can do without that big mesh. That big mesh runs, and he runs as its part—that is fine. But there are some songs he can sing that he does not sing for money. Someone can dance in a way he does not dance for money...
What I mean is: somewhere we have to break it. And I do not accept at all that only if we break the entire net will anything happen. That cannot happen! Yes, we must try to break something within our own portion of it. And then the question is: no one is so strong as to be able to say, “I am absolutely independent,” nor is anyone so weak as to be able to say, “Nothing is in my hands.” Both statements, to me, are false. It is very difficult to act—but it is not at all the case that no one can do anything. And if one is willing to do even the little that one can, then too we begin to break the circle. And when ten people who are willing to do a little come together, we break the circle with greater force.
A curious thing is that the net is so vast that if one person stands alone before it and considers it, he will be defeated immediately—at once. Even to think of it is to be defeated: if he looks and sees such a huge net standing there, and imagines standing against it—where will I stand?—even to think it is impossible; then it’s as good as dead: “I shall be defeated.” That’s true. But if he thinks this way—that the net too has been made only by individuals, and no individual counts for more than one. The greatest person does not count for more than one, and the smallest is not less than that. It appears powerful only because it is in motion. And the day you find the link that can be broken—the day a single link is broken—then thousands of links begin to break in a rush. Thousands of links are waiting, Manmohan‑ji, for a voice to be raised so they can come. And thousands of links have fire in their hearts, but they wait for someone to ignite so that they may ignite.
In this world, one in a hundred thousand is the kind of person who does not wait for another. Most people wait. And we only ever need to find those few who do not wait and who can do something. And many times very small people bring about such a great rupture... But what happens is, we do not see it; because the moment they break through, they become the “great” people. All the breaking in this world is done by small people. But history never manages to record that small people do things. All work is done by small people. But by the time it is inscribed in history, they have become great, because they have done it. Then we say, “He was a great man.” He did it. He did not do it because he was great; he was great because he did it—and any small person...
So I feel that whatever we can do, even something very small, we should think of doing in this direction. Now, what you are talking about—the fight you are speaking of—is one kind of fight. The fight I am speaking of is quite another.
And I tell you: in the fight we are fighting—where we want to get a man of a hundred rupees an extra fifty—the fight, in the end, is about money. And from whom we want to wrest those fifty rupees—he too, for the very same reason, does not want to part with them. The basic fight, the basic fight... And my point is: you will make him part with those fifty rupees by fighting only when he has piled up another fifty lakhs. And the fight always... the gap remains just the same; the gap does not go.
You will be surprised: we fight small fights; countries like Russia fight big fights—but the gap does not end; the gap remains. It was thought that such a great revolution would wipe out the gap. But the gap did not go. He who was the owner yesterday is now the manager. But he has just as much swagger, just as much power, just as much grip. In fact, compared to yesterday, his grip has increased.
I heard a joke: when Khrushchev was in power he went to Tiflis. Among the top leaders of the Communist Party there, he said, “Now we have everything. All of you too—you all have cars, radios, everything?” Everyone nodded; only one man stood up and said, “No, I don’t have them.” Khrushchev said, “Give me your name—how is that possible!” The next day that man was missing; the next day he had disappeared. The next day Khrushchev asked, “That man who needed a car and so on—did he get it?” People said, “He must have, because there’s been no trace of him since.”
Another incident I heard... The man disappeared! Because how could he say such a thing! “Do you have a car?”—you were supposed to say yes. Whether there is a car or not is not the question.
You were supposed to say yes.
You were supposed to say yes.
I heard another incident: Khrushchev was speaking against Stalin in the Presidium. Someone said, “You were with Stalin all your life; why didn’t you speak then?” Khrushchev paused a moment and said, “The gentleman who is speaking—who is he? Please tell me your name.” No one gave his name. Khrushchev said, “For the very reason you are not giving your name now, I too kept silent.”
What change is this? Suppose the roof is provided, and suppose the salary is increased—but the price paid is very heavy: the whole soul has been sold. And the manager who had money in his hands yesterday—today the soul too has come into his hands.
The fight we are fighting, Manmohan‑ji—the issues we fight on—those very issues are the fight. Until values change, you will never win the fight of getting rupees for someone. As you keep getting him money, you will find that by the time your worker gets a roof over his head, the owner has gone far ahead—and the roof has lost its meaning. Now he needs something else, and the fight continues.
All this fighting—if we look very closely—it is not a fight about money. It is about whether society will remain one where a person finds satisfaction only by inflating his ego in some form. Is there no other path to fulfillment? The basic fight is this: can I find satisfaction only by gratifying my ego, and is there no other route to fulfillment?
If that is the case, then it is very difficult for me to let you have a car. Because the only pleasure I have in owning a car is that you do not have one. And the only pleasure I have in a big house is that you have a hut. And when I sit in the shade, my pleasure is this much—that some people are not sitting in the shade. And you are fighting to seat them in the shade. The quarrel is not about shade; our entire quarrel is that you are snatching away all my pleasure. You are giving them shade, but you are depriving me of all my pleasure. Because the one who is sitting in the shade does not get his joy from the shade as shade; his basic joy is that he is in the shade and others are not. And by the time you arrange shade for everyone, he will invent a new device by which he rises above again. He will say, “I have this which you do not.” And the trouble will start anew. He will move into air‑conditioning.
So what I am saying is: these fights we have been fighting—for three thousand years we have fought them—and we have not won. And we will never win, because you are fighting on the wrong issue. I am saying, we will win only when we find other paths to fulfillment in life. For instance, the person who feels any sense of fulfillment from sitting in the shade while another stands in the sun—such a person should feel instantly ashamed. Such a person should become instantly dishonored. There is nothing to be done—no need to fight, no need to strike. Such a person should become instantly dishonored by the whole society, instantly!
But those who are not under a roof, who are standing in the sun—they too honor him, because he has a roof. Now that is the great difficulty. This person should be instantly dishonored. His whole game should end.
It is a matter of changing social values. If a man is happy living in a big palace, the reason he is happy is social value. We should turn it into a disvalue. This is not a fight of high or low. In my view we must change values: what kind of person we will honor, why we will honor him—we must change all of that completely. If you honor the naked man, you will find a thousand men in Bombay standing naked. After all, why are sadhus and renunciates standing there—what other reason is there! Do you think they have found spirituality? It is only that there are people who honor them; there is no other reason. You start honoring it, and a thousand people will lie on beds of nails.
So where the matter is absolutely clear—in my view the fight is that we have been giving honor to the wrong things. We must change the whole manner of honoring. And once the value changes, you will be amazed: the issues this society is fighting over get resolved with such simplicity that we will not have to resolve them. Otherwise the fight will go on. Even if Communism comes, the fight will go on—because the basic values are the same; nothing changes, nothing at all.
Just recently, before he was ousted, Khrushchev said that in Russia too, boys who get educated—now that Russia has become an established society—they no longer want to do manual labor. Educated boys want to be clerks in Russia too. Then I ask, what was the point? The incident about Rahul is from 1930. Today, in 1965, if an educated boy goes and says, “I too will not go to work in the field,” then what difference is there between the values in the mind of a boy in India or America and in Russia? He too regards the white collar as honorable. Then fine; it has become the same thing again. The quarrel between China and Russia today is that Russia has slipped back into a capitalist mind. Because the basic values did not change. You tried forcibly; in fifty years it slid back.
There are great possibilities. And I also say: in a life in which one has to lose in any case, one should choose to lose for such a fight that even in losing there is joy. That is, in a life in which losing is inevitable, then pick a big fight. In my own view, where there is no assurance of winning, and where even by winning such things there is no assurance of gaining anything, there we should take up some other fight. And even if we fight and lose, it does not matter; at least there will be the satisfaction that we fought for something such that even in losing there was joy. And my own understanding is that those who win for the wrong things find no fulfillment. Victory does not bring fulfillment, Manmohan‑ji; what you are fighting for—its loss too...
Now, if we look closely, Jesus is a defeated man; Buddha is a defeated man. They are not men who have “won”; it will take thousands of years for them to win. And even whether they will win—that remains in doubt. It is doubtful; there is no victory as yet. Even so, how joyously they died, even as they were losing—far more joyously than those we call winners: Hitler, or Napoleon, or Alexander. Now this seems very paradoxical.
In this world, one who fights for God—even if he loses—in one sense he wins. And one who fights against God—even if he wins—he loses; because the fragrance of victory never comes. And it seems to me that if great things are won, even greater people will be born who will fight for even greater things and lose. Such people will keep being born.
Nietzsche wrote a sentence—very marvelous. Nietzsche wrote: that day will be worth dying when no such men are born who feel ashamed of man. That day will be worth dying when no such men are born who are ashamed of man. That day will be wasted when man’s bowstring—bowstring—when the arrow does not rise toward the unknown. That day will be shameful when people find no such great thing for which one could fight and lose.
It is very difficult. I think so too; I too think this will be very difficult. Such a thing will never happen. Ever greater skies keep opening for fighting. We should take up smaller fights—wherever we are, whatever we can do—whatever we can do, we should do.
And together, among ourselves...
Yes, by all means—arrange a small meeting of friends. In it we can speak in some detail. I understood—you arranged it, and I listened fully and spoke to you fully.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
I understand, I understand—only then will I have a sense of it; I have no connection otherwise.
Yes, since you have come, tell it—let us listen a little while.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
No, it is not uncertain, Kamal. In truth it is not a matter of ten years, not even of ten seconds. The difficulty is ours—the barriers we have erected.

Yes, yes, absolutely. Then it is very easy; it’s not a question of ten years anymore—there is no question at all. What takes time is that happening—the first experience. Once the first experience happens, it is exceedingly simple. The first experience itself...
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)

In fact there are two kinds of age. One is what we see outwardly: a man is fifty years old, a boy is fifteen—that age. And the other is the age that is coming from behind. It may be that the fifteen-year-old is exactly at the right inner age for the thing to work for him, and the fifty-year-old is not at the right inner age, so it won’t work for him. So this age that appears from the outside has no value. There is another age coming from behind, very long, and a child can be old and an old man can be a child. All these matters are with that age in view. And only at a particular inner age—upon reaching that—are these things useful and of value.

Only to him?
Yes, only to him. Therefore one can toss these things out with carefree abandon. Because the one who is outside that inner age will quietly return empty-handed. And the truth is, the one who is outside that age won’t even feel the urge; he won’t come, and if he comes once, he won’t come again. The blow lands only where something has ripened and is ready. You throw a stone: the ripe fruit falls at the slightest touch; the unripe fruit merely shakes and stays where it is, and the stone bounces back.

A great deal will happen, a great deal will happen.
Because the mind wants to hear more. “Say a little more,” it asks. When a little guidance is received, more paths open. And wherever you are—start from just there...
I understand, I understand—I have understood your point. And therefore nothing is left out. Because there are many kinds of growth. We put a seed into the earth, and the person who put it there goes away. And the seed must think, “Now what will become of me? He has left me and gone.” But in the meantime the seed will sprout, it will grow. Even while it lies in the soil it is growing. In truth, once something is within, it grows; it has its own growth. Once it is there, it begins to grow. And my own view is that whenever that growing state needs it, at the right time it receives help; it never really meets an obstruction. So many streams of assistance are flowing all around us; because we are not ready, we miss them. Who knows how many efforts are moving toward us, passing close by us, in our neighborhood; the very person we need is passing by—when the need arises, it will at once be of use. But since we have no need...
Look: whatever our need is, we draw to ourselves what accords with it; need draws it. The favorable does not come by itself. There is the same soil, and in it you have planted a chameli (jasmine) and a champa. The soil is the same, and the champa draws from that soil the fragrance it can draw, and the jasmine draws from it the fragrance it can draw. And the earth is one! The air is one! And the sun is one! Yet their needs for drawing are different. They become different flowers; they bloom as different flowers. Right where a mahatma stands, right beside him a bad man is also being born, and from that very same ground he is drawing his growth. That is to say, as I see it, whatever need is within us, the divine is continuously ready to fulfill it. It is ready even to fulfill our most base need—then what to say of our highest! Meaning, even if we are prepared to be as bad as can be, the divine never withholds assistance. If we are ready to become the worst, its help is present; all those roads are open.

Understood.
But the very first lecture of yours that I heard, six months ago at Poddar College—that lecture broke my fatalism; I cannot forget it. When you described the condition of India: one is young, one is old; some are behind, some are ahead—that day I said to myself, God, from where have You sent him today, to break my fatalism! I sat silently, listening. And every metaphor you gave—those Japanese trees whose roots are cut so they do not grow. But, Master, if we understand the roots as below, then as much as there is above there should be that much below. So I feel that the chances for a fallen man to rise—to rise that high—are greater, as with Valmiki.
Absolutely—always! The mediocre man has no chances of rising; the more in-the-middle a man is, the fewer chances he has, because he lacks the capacity to go down. And for capacity, direction is not the issue; capacity is simply the capacity to go. Whether you go east or west is not the question. There is the capacity to go. If a man goes downward, he has the strength to go downward. The day he decides to go upward, he has the strength to go upward. And the man who stands in the middle—who has never gone down, never gone up—he has no strength. Otherwise he would have gone somewhere; strength doesn’t stay put, it moves. Therefore I say, the man below is always better than the man in the middle, because the man below has some strength—there is proof. He has gone somewhere.
In the life of Buddha there is mention of a bandit, Angulimala.
Yes, we worked in that picture. I played Angulimala’s father.
That Angulimala—he transforms in a single moment. He is a man of such strength.
Strength itself has no direction; we give it direction. In one sense, the capacity to be bad is a good fortune, because at least there is capacity. You became bad—this was a mistake; but there is capacity. And the amusing thing is that being bad is always harder than being good. Usually it doesn’t appear so, but to be bad is much more difficult than to be good—exceedingly difficult.

Therefore those who are mediocre, who are in the middle, are always unfortunate, and they have no strength. If they do not steal, the reason is not that they do not want to steal; in ninety-nine out of a hundred cases the reason is that they cannot muster the strength to steal. And they take that to be some virtue. That is no virtue. And since they cannot even gather the strength to steal, they will certainly never be able to gather the strength to become a saint.

And you will be surprised: sadhus are losing in the world because all the mediocre have become sadhus, and all the powerful people are bad people—therefore the sadhus cannot win against the bad. The bad man is powerful, and the sadhu is absolutely bogus—he is mediocre. He could not steal, he could not be dishonest in a shop, so he sat down in the temple. Sitting in a temple is not a positive act for him; it is merely an escape—he saved himself. And that is precisely why the sadhu loses to the bad man. The bad man is very powerful. That is why Hitlers win, Napoleons win; their world goes on winning. And the good man proves absolutely impotent. He keeps on talking and talking; no one listens. When people with the strength of a Hitler or a Napoleon become good men, then the world changes—otherwise it does not. That much strength is needed.

Yes, there are happenings—certainly there are. In fact, even if you keep on becoming worse, the moment will arrive from which you will turn back. Wherever you go—everything that goes, returns; everything has a limit. But those who do not go to the limit never return. That is why I say: if a man drinks, I tell him, don’t go on drinking just a little—because then you may never be able to come back! If you must drink, then drink—and go to the very limit that seems to be the last to you. And surely you will return. For returning, the circle has to be completed. Yes, we can go to some boundary—and from there we can return.
That too is a way of returning.

No one ever returns from the middle. And one who returns from the middle can again fall back, because the one who turns back from the middle always returns incomplete; half of his experience remains. If even the experience of being bad is completed, what remains for a person except to be good? You will be surprised to know that we are never willing to be what we are; we want to be something else—continuously something else. And by “good” I mean only one thing—this is my definition of good and bad. I call “bad” that state with which you can never be content. A state you must continuously move away from—even if it means going into something worse—because you cannot be content with it; it keeps driving you—somewhere else, somewhere else, somewhere else. And I call “good” that state where you can be content, which does not drive you away, and which says: here, here, here.

So there is a dynamism with the bad; therefore the bad is not really worrisome. The bad is worrisome only in one situation—when it wears the garb of the good and self-deception begins. That is, he himself believes, “I am good,” while he is bad—then the danger starts. Otherwise there is no danger. There is no harm in a bad man, a plain, outrightly bad man. He will return. He is a genuine man. He will not be able to be content with the bad; he will have to come back—there will be a conversion.

But if it is a person who is bad and thinks himself good, then conversion will take a long time—even lifetimes may be needed. Because he has created such a deception that the real situation has been thrown into confusion. He is bad, which should have been changed; and he believes he is good—and one does not want to change the good. Now he is stuck in a fix: what he actually is should be changed, and what he believes he is he wants to keep unchanged.

Therefore many times what appears on the surface—that such-and-such a person is in a bad state and so-and-so is in a good state—often it is the reverse. Those who are in self-deception are in the worst state. Those who know that they are bad, recognize that they are bad, and are under no kind of illusion—their situation is quite wonderful; their return is near—they will come back. And they will return with the same speed with which they went; the deeper their roots have gone downward, the higher their peak is going to rise.

And it is also a curious thing that those who have never gone down—In one sense their life will be incomplete; the richness we speak of will not be there.

Yes, yes, often.
(The audio recording of the question is unclear.)
There is a richness that comes from experience; it is not found in a man who has become “good” cheaply—it simply cannot be. The one who has passed through the very depths of the bad, only his experience carries richness. And that very person who has gone through the worst becomes available to the flavor and the taste of the good as well.

In this sense the arrangement of life is deeply meaningful. Here one passes through darkness so that light can be seen; one passes through the bad so that someday the taste of the good becomes possible; and this long journey through matter exists so that the experience of the divine can happen.

These things that look like reversals are not reversals at all; they enrich a third entity from both sides. Like writing a white line on a blackboard. Now, if you write with white chalk on a white board, there is no harm—it will be written, but it cannot be read. And if what is written cannot be read, what meaning does its being written have? We write on the black, and we write with white—that white stands out against the black.

Therefore the bad has as much meaning and purpose in the arrangement of life as the good; the inauspicious has just as significant a meaning and purpose as the auspicious. Ravan is not useless, nor purposeless. And without Ravan, Ram has no meaning either. Hence those who know will neither sing only the praises of Ram nor condemn Ravan. They will say Ram and Ravan are two halves of the same story; without both, the story neither happens nor takes shape. And the fun is that whatever polish Ram gets, he gets because of Ravan.

In Jain stories, Ravan is called a future Tirthankara. This is a very meaningful tale. Why? Because he reached the ultimate limit of the bad; now the turn to the good must begin. He is a future Tirthankara—because the bad has been touched as far as it can be touched; now the return will start. The blackboard is ready; now it will be written on with white.

So if one looks very closely: someone is Ram first; someone is Ravan for a while and then Ram. There is only an interval of time, not a difference of state. And in this endless time what meaning is there in “two days earlier” or “two days later”? What does it matter in infinity if you arrive two days before and I two days after? It is foolishness.

In a past life, when he was not yet a Buddha, Buddha went to see an awakened one named Dipankara. He touched Dipankara’s feet. Dipankara laughed heartily. The monks around asked, “Why do you laugh?” And then Dipankara bent down and touched the feet of Buddha. Buddha was very startled! He said, “What are you doing? It is all right that I touch your feet; but you touching mine—what are you doing?”

Dipankara said, “You do not know time. Today I am a Buddha; tomorrow you will be. And for one who knows the whole stream of time, ‘before’ and ‘after’ have no meaning—because the stream is infinite. If the stream were limited, there could be a before and an after. If there is no shore here and no shore there, who is ahead and who behind? Today you are ignorant; tomorrow you will be enlightened—you must be. How can anyone ever stop short of becoming enlightened? This very journey of ignorance is the preliminary phase of the journey into knowing.”

The journey through the bad is the preliminary phase of the good. Therefore the danger is not for the one who goes into the bad. The danger is for the mediocres—who set out toward the bad but cannot even go fully, because they lack the courage—who head toward the bad yet go on hankering for the good. Then a split is created. They move on the path of the bad, they become bad, and they sit convinced that they are good. Then the trouble begins; then a double role is played.

Let there be a single role. Let Ravan know he has to be Ravan. All right—“I am Ravan.” And not a whit of worry about Ram and so on! What need is there to worry about Ram? If Ram is to arise, he will arise only from being Ravan. And if he is not to arise, then it is meaningless—if someone else becomes Ram, what has that to do with me? Whatever I can be, that I must be. If we could give each person that much strength and courage—to be what he is meant to be, to copy no one, to imitate no one, to follow no one—if he has to be bad, then he must be bad; that too is authentic. Authenticity is not reserved only for the good; the bad, too, can be authentic.

(The recording is unclear.)
Yes—this is a different matter: the authenticity of being bad means, for example, if I lie, then I will not tell the truth at all. For an authentic liar it is settled that truth will not come through him; and if someday he speaks truth, he will consider it dishonest—because he is a liar.

There was a fakir, Mulla Nasruddin. In his kingdom the emperor conceived a plan: to put an end to lying! He summoned Mulla, because he was a wise man. The townsfolk said, “Ask Mulla first—because it has never been heard that lying has been abolished. By law, falsehood has never ceased, not even for a moment. Still, ask Mulla!”

Mulla came. The emperor said, “I have decided to uproot lying! Not a token decision—if anyone lies, he will be caught and hanged at once. A few innocents may die; I do not mind. But every day, liars will be found hanging at my gate. And tomorrow, the new year begins; from tomorrow morning, the search at the gate will start—whoever is caught lying will be hanged right there. What do you say, Mulla? Shall we stop lying?” Mulla said, “We’ll meet at the gate tomorrow.” The king said, “I am asking you now!” Mulla said, “We’ll meet at the gate tomorrow—I will be the first man there. You be present beforehand. The gate will open and I will enter.” The emperor asked, “What do you mean?” Mulla said, “We will talk right there at the gate.”

In the morning the emperor stood at the gate. The gate opened, Mulla rode in on his donkey. The emperor asked, “Mulla, where have you come from, and where are you going?” Mulla said, “I am going to the gallows.” The emperor said, “What do you mean?” Mulla said, “I am going to be hanged.” The emperor said, “You are lying outright—we’ll have you hanged!” Mulla said, “Then hang me—that is exactly what I am saying, that I am going to be hanged. If you hang me, then what I said becomes true; and if you do not hang me, then a lie walks out free. What will you do now? Lie slips away.” The king said, “You have put me in great difficulty.” Mulla said, “Drop this nonsense. The very decision about what is truth and what is lie is difficult—who will decide? Another cannot decide for me. Let each person decide for himself—that is enough.”

And if a man decides and is authentic—even if it is in lying—there is no problem. I say his soul will be born even if he becomes authentic about his lying. Authenticity brings strength. It brings movement. And if a man moves wholly in one direction, then I say this: “Bad” means a place on which you cannot stand; you simply cannot. It is like standing on a hot griddle—you cannot stay on the bad; you will have to drop it, you will have to. He may grasp more and more of the bad and keep dropping it; ultimately he will have to drop the bad. And the day, after passing through the bad, he starts moving toward the good, the richness of experience he will have—the white writing that will come upon the line drawn by the bad—that glow is different.

Therefore that glow is never in the bland, bottle-fed saints who have never known the bad and have become “good” by reading books; they never have any shine—they cannot. That shine comes out of the experience of the bad. The script is of the good, but the shine arises from the experience of the bad. And that is the trouble: in a dishonest world, the bad man often looks more radiant; and the saint looks utterly dull, bogus. Because the saint is mediocre. The one who could not muster the courage to do bad appears to be a saint. And one who could not gather the courage to do bad can never become truly good; he can only stand there saying, “I do not do bad.” His is a negative state: he does not do bad, he does not steal, he does not lie.

There was a fakir, Gurdjieff. People would come to him—sadhus, fakirs—and he would ask, “What do you do?” A very great sadhu came to meet him, and he asked, “What do you do?” The man said, “I do not lie.” Gurdjieff said, “I understand you do not lie, but that is not doing—that is not-doing. I ask: what do you do?” The man said, “I do not eat meat; I do not commit violence.” “That is not-doing; I am asking what you do.” He said, “I do not steal; I do not hurt anyone.” Gurdjieff said, “Throw this man out! He keeps saying, ‘I do not do this, I do not do that.’ That is not the question at all—has anyone’s soul ever been born out of not-doing? What do you do? Better that you steal—at least that would be doing. Go steal!” Gurdjieff told him, “Do something—let there be action—only then will being be born.”

That is how I see it.

There is no other way. And judging is not very difficult. First, look at what you cannot come to rest upon. You are often more childish than a child. The body has an age; spiritual age is another matter entirely—and often it hasn’t grown at all. Then people go on doing childish things. An old man hoarding money—take him for a child, because the act is childish. What is he doing? Death stands before him, and the man is putting more locks on his safe. Pure child’s play. Little children play with dolls; a grown man carries a whole wedding procession of Lord Ram—with all the dolls arranged—parading and making a racket. He is still a child. He has made different kinds of dolls, given them big, respectable names. But his mental age has not grown.

Within us there are many ages, many layers of age. My quest, my appeal, is to that inner age.

And you ask, How to recognize the bad? Two points.

1) Call bad that where you cannot stop, where you can never come to a standstill. What is good, what is blissful, makes you want to stay: to pause, to rest; you feel, “Arrival, repose—this is the place.” The bad is where you reach and, the very moment you arrive, the mind says, “Move on, move on.” A man gathers a million rupees and the mind says, “More, more,” and he keeps going—and the mind keeps saying, “More.”

There was a Sufi fakir in Egypt, Zunnun. The emperor of Egypt used to visit him sometimes. For a long time the fakir had not come to the capital, so the emperor himself went unannounced to the hut. His wife was working in the garden; the fakir had gone to the fields. Seeing the emperor, she said, “Please sit, I’ll call him.” She pointed to the ridge under a tree: “Sit here.” The emperor said, “I’ll stroll; you go call him.” She said, “How long will you keep pacing? It will take time; he’s far. Come inside and sit.” Thinking perhaps the embankment was not fitting for an emperor, she took him in, spread a mat: “Sit here.” The emperor again began pacing in the verandah: “You go call him; I’ll walk here.”

She became annoyed. On the path, as her husband was returning, she said, “What sort of man is this emperor! I told him two or three times, ‘Sit down.’ Under the tree—he wouldn’t sit. Inside, I spread a mat—he still wouldn’t sit. What kind of man is he!”

The fakir said, “You don’t understand—he is an emperor; he won’t sit anywhere below a throne. Seat him on a throne and he will sit at once. So the places you offered, he will not sit.” And he added, “Keep this in mind: a man’s mind is like that. It is an emperor; until it gets the throne, it won’t sit. You tell it, ‘Sit here,’ and it goes on saying, ‘Not here—something more, something more, something more.’”

I call bad that where the mind says, “Further.” I call good that where the mind says, “Enough—here.” In whatever we are doing, when the mind says, “Here is the goal—stop here,” there are moments when you would be willing to die right there: “Enough—what more now?” You have gone so high that you say, “Here!” And there are stretches where you would keep running for eternity and would not want to stop. So the first recognition: wherever the mind does not want to halt—where, on arriving, it at once says, “Move on.”

2) People usually say: bad is what causes pain to the other. I don’t say so. You can never truly know the other’s pain. Bad is that which gives you suffering—and not in some next birth. To postpone it to the next life is, to me, bookkeeping trickery. How could it be next birth? If I put my hand in the fire, I burn now, not in the next life. Bad is that which gives pain right now—and bad gives a lot of pain. Good is that which gives joy right now—cash, not deferred—and good gives abundant joy. So small a good: a child has fallen on the road; you pick him up and set him aside, and you walk on—and see to what height you have leapt! Someone is ill; you pluck a flower and place it in their hand, and turn back—you are a different person. The one who went to give the flower is no more; another, an emperor, is returning.

A tiny act with no “use” to it. Many times you merely smile at someone, and you become something else. Glare at someone once, hurl an abuse, deliver a blow—and you will find you have fallen as if hurled from a mountain. The other is not the point. It may happen that you do something bad and the other benefits from it. But you cannot do a bad thing that benefits you. The other is far from you; there is a great distance.

So I keep two points in the definition of the bad: first, where you cannot come to rest, where the mind keeps saying, “Go on, go on”; and second, where the mind feels suffering. If you keep a little watch on these two, it is not difficult to recognize what is bad. And the exact opposite is the good: where the mind begins to stop—“Stay here; what is left to seek?”

Yes, yes—the mind will say so. It surely will—but only until it hasn’t got the thing. That is exactly how I define suffering, how I define the “bad.” The mind says, “Happiness is there,” where it has not yet been found. The moment it is found, the mind says, “Finished—move on.” The mind says, “If I get that woman, there will be great happiness.” But the woman is not yet found. The moment she is found, the mind says, “That other woman, the one next door—if only I could have her…”

Byron got married. Byron loved about sixty women and never married. The last one forced him to marry, so he had to. But he was what I call an authentically bad man—one of those whose very badness carries a certain grandeur and pride. There are many “good” men so bogus and leech-like—gobar-Ganeshas—that there is nothing truly good in them. And sometimes a bad man is so magnificent that his very sparkle fills you with joy.

Byron was among those splendidly bad ones. He was walking down the church steps holding his bride’s hand. The bells were still ringing, the wedding just over; they were descending the steps, guests were taking leave. On the road a woman was walking, holding a man’s hand. Byron said to his wife, “That’s it.” She asked, “What happened?” He said, “It’s all over.” She said, “What do you mean?” He seated her in the carriage and said, “I tell you, for a moment you vanished— that woman became everything. Until yesterday I thought, ‘If only I get you, what joy it will be!’ And now I’m just leaving the church after the wedding; I haven’t even descended the steps, haven’t reached home—yet you are in my fist, and you have become worthless! Your hand is in my hand, and it has gone flat! Now you are mine, and the whole thing is over.”

You understand what I mean, don’t you?
Got it!
Got it—and the matter is finished.

So the mind will keep saying, until it has not yet got it: “Get this; great happiness lies here.” And the very moment you get it, the mind says, “No, happiness is over there!” The mind always says, “Happiness is where you are not.” That is exactly what I am saying—that is its race. And wherever you arrive it says, “What’s here? Nothing! You came for nothing—hard work for no gain. Move on; there was nothing here. A mistake, a miss.”

But the mind never deceives; this is not deception. This is a straightforward matter. Where is the deception in it? The mind is simply saying, “There is no happiness here. It might be there—because we are not there. Go there and find out.”

One needs one’s own experience.
Yes! And experience means this: when you have passed through a thousand places and everywhere you see the same—before arriving it seemed there would be happiness; on arriving it is clear there is none, there is suffering—and the very moment you arrive, the mind says, “Move on; nothing here.”

It is only your compulsions that keep you from moving on; then there is much suffering. Only compulsions prevent the daily moving on; otherwise the mind would move you every day.

Now you say, “Get eight divorces.” Eight divorces won’t do. In one lifetime—one lifetime is very long—eight divorces won’t do. If we regularize divorce strictly according to the mind, one a day could also be possible. And even that may fall short. It may fall short—because the issue is not “how many.” There are many kinds of compulsions because of which you stop and suffer.

I say this: wherever the mind says, “Run—farther, farther,” and wherever you arrive it gives you suffering—that is the bad. And where the mind says, “Here— not there. Delay is fine, but here!”—here is bliss, where I am. Then where is the question of deception? Deception could be there, because I am not there; when I arrive, only then will I know. Here—this very moment!

If this distinction begins to become clear—so subtle—but if we keep experimenting a little, and through the twenty-four hours maintain a small inner inquiry—“This act I just did, did it give me happiness or suffering? At this place the mind brought me—did I want to stay here or move away?”—if such a small test keeps running, in two to four months it will become so clear, so clear that as an event begins you will know whether it is bad or good. When this awareness arises, life changes.

I do not say, “Drop the bad.” I don’t say that. I do not say, “Do the good.” I don’t say that either. I say: just recognize what is good and what is bad. And the bad will begin to drop, and the good will begin to happen. So the issue is not about “dropping.”

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)

Form is very easy to preserve. To keep its soul alive is very difficult. Form is the easiest thing—you can have celibates sit with their topknots grown, wrap themselves in shawls, live in the same old manner—this is all possible. But to preserve the soul is very difficult. For in truth, the very spirit of time has changed; the speed of time has changed, the speed of time has changed. And remember, Chaman-bhai: if you want to save that old soul, then the form cannot be preserved at all—only then can you save the soul. If that soul is to be saved, it can be saved only in an entirely new form. The difficulty is that the traditionalist mind insists heavily on the old form—an intense insistence. It is all makeup, with no value.

So what could be the scientific process to break that?
Yes—this is precisely our business.

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)

Many times it is very simple to recognize the old form— even a blind man can recognize it—and so we end up preserving the form. And in preserving the form, the soul dies.

Deception happens.
Yes, complete deception. Because form is entirely inert; there is no difficulty in preserving it. Utterly inert—no difficulty there. But the soul was very liquid, very fluid. The moment you hammer it and bind it, it is gone. In every age it has to take on a new form—every age, a new form.

There was an attempt to find a new form, but… yes, Gandhi made a little effort on one side, but in the same old way. In thirty-five years we are back here again.
No, nothing was done—nothing at all.

Now you do it.
Yes—I am doing it!

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)

The delight is this: there is no such thing as human nature. Whatever you make of a man, that he becomes. There is absolutely no such thing as human nature.

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No, no—everything can arise; but there is no such thing as human nature. That is precisely man’s freedom: he can become whatever he chooses. What we take to be “human nature” is not human nature; it is only the outcome of long conditioning. That is why you see twenty-five kinds of humans in the world.

There is no such thing as human nature—in the sense that a dog has a nature, a cat has a nature. In that sense, man has none. And this is the difference that has appeared in evolution: for the first time a creature has been born whose nature is not fixed, and who can be whatever he wishes.

For example, we cannot say to a dog, “You are half a dog.” But we can say to a man, “You are an incomplete man.” Why can’t you say to a dog, “You are half a dog”? All dogs are equally dog. Every dog is a complete dog. In dog-ness you cannot distinguish that this dog is a bit less a dog, that one a bit more. Why? The dog’s nature is fixed; there is nothing to be made—he is born made. And you are born utterly unmade; you have to make everything. This is freedom—and this is what causes anxiety. And therefore you can become anything; you can take any form; and even that form is never such that you cannot break it in a single instant—you can.

Seen closely, this human freedom is the astonishing thing. You work with astrology—that is great fun—on ninety-nine occasions out of a hundred, astrology will work; on one, it will not. And where it does not work—that is where you are. In all the other cases you are a machine. Wherever astrology works, you are not; you are not a man there. It means you are predictable—bound—one can say what you will do tomorrow.

There is a beautiful incident in Buddha’s life: there are marks on his feet which, astrologers say, indicate a universal monarch. And he became a beggar! Astrology went haywire. He passes along a riverbank—his footprints are on the sand. For twelve years a scholar has worked—and then, seeing those marks, thinks, “No—it can’t be wasted—let me find this man.” He tracks those footprints to a bush where Buddha is sitting. He is thrown into a dilemma—this man looks like an emperor, yet he is a beggar! Wearing torn robes, a begging bowl in hand. He sits by Buddha and says, “You have thrown me into confusion. I return after twelve years of labor. Shall I throw these scriptures into the river? Your feet bear the marks of a universal emperor, and you sit here with a begging bowl!”

Buddha said, “Your astrology speaks rightly—but I have gone beyond astrology; I have become a man. Your astrology will no longer work. Had I done nothing, I would indeed have become a universal emperor—that was a blind current in which what was to happen would have happened. I disturbed it. Now your astrology will not work upon me. No constellation can say anything about me. I have gone beyond; I have become a man.”

You understand, don’t you? With freedom, Buddha became unpredictable—now you cannot predict what he will say or do; what will happen tomorrow, even what will happen a moment later—nothing can be said.

Beyond calculation.
Yes—beyond calculation; beyond calculation.

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So our ultimate endeavor should be to dissolve into no-nature—where there is no nature, where there is perfect freedom. Nature is dependence—meaning, the compulsion to be tomorrow as we were yesterday. If I say, “My nature is anger,” it means I am compelled. Today you abused me and I got angry; tomorrow you abuse me and I will get angry in the same way—like pressing a button: today the fan ran; tomorrow it will run.

There is the possibility that today you abused me and I became angry, and tomorrow you come to abuse me and I embrace you. This very possibility is the indication that man has no mechanical nature. This is his freedom. And such a state should be cultivated that we live moment to moment in such a way that the coming moment is not bound by the previous moment. That is the meaning of being free; that is the meaning of jivan-mukti—liberation while living: that this moment is not tied to the one that has passed. What I am speaking of is discontinuous; it lies outside continuity. The continuity that existed till yesterday—I am not that. And what I shall be tomorrow will be something else, something that is not today. In such a state of consciousness there is supreme bliss, because there is supreme freedom. Otherwise, there is bondage.

A man says, “I am compelled to smoke because it is my habit.” Habit means you are not a man; habit means you are a machine. You call out at the appointed time: “It’s twelve o’clock—now I need a cigarette!” Then you have to insert the cigarette. This putting it in and taking it out at twelve o’clock every day—this is a purely mechanical act.

Yes. If you look very closely—very closely—you will see that hardly any of us eats when hunger actually arises. We eat out of habit, not out of hunger. And these are two entirely different things: hunger is one thing, habit is another. It’s eleven o’clock, and because you eat every day at eleven, right at eleven the stomach says, “It’s time—eat!” It could even be that someone has set the clock an hour ahead or behind and you don’t know it; it’s still only ten, but you see eleven, and you “feel hungry”: “It’s time, let’s go eat.” You get my point, don’t you? This is purely a mental association with eleven o’clock; no real hunger has arisen.

If we ate on hunger—if we waited until hunger actually came—we would discover a taste we do not even know. Eating at eleven is merely stuffing food in. The body’s real need has not arisen; the body has not asked. Under compulsion the body will even secrete saliva; under compulsion it will make room in the stomach. You are cramming it in, behaving like a box. You understand what I mean, don’t you?

That is why, though food has multiplied in the world, the very meaning of food has been lost. Hardly anyone is truly eating—hardly anyone is eating and experiencing it. The result is that we must arrange for all kinds of extras, because there is no juice left in the eating itself. So we concoct food that seems tasty—this, that. All this paraphernalia grows only in a society where eating has become a habit. Otherwise, there is no need.

But everything has become like this. You go to bed at a set time every day—because it’s twelve o’clock or ten o’clock. A mechanical routine: you lie down at ten whether sleep is there or not. And you get up at a fixed time—whether sleep has broken or not. We are fixing habits and imposing them from above. Then trouble begins. A man was young; he used to sleep eight hours. Now he is old; now only four hours of sleep come, but he wants to sleep eight. Then he says, “What a problem—my sleep is disturbed; sleep does not come.”

Not necessary.
Yes, now it is not necessary. But he has the habit of eight hours. And in trying to sleep eight he is losing even the pleasure of the four. He is spreading the intensity of four hours over eight. He has landed in difficulty; now he will keep suffering. And this will go on happening every day, every day...

(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)

This difficulty often arises: if you have a readymade answer, then there is no challenge, is there! Whenever a question comes, you have the answer ready and you give it. Then the mind’s struggle that should happen with a problem does not happen. When it doesn’t, insight does not sharpen. When it does not sharpen, it slowly gets clogged. What we use awakens; what we do not use gets clogged. And we feel no need—after all, we “know” everything.

This is the great difficulty: as knowledge has increased, insight has decreased; and the less insight there is, the more dangerous it becomes. Knowledge is not an eye. Even a blind man gropes with a stick and finds his way out. Insight is the eye. You do not grope; you see. You do not even think, “Where is the door?” It is seen, and you walk out.

Only if we do not think it out and prepare in advance will insight arise. And notice—this is very delightful.

Right now in America a small “happening,” a little movement among painters, is going on. The painters have hung all their paintings—an exhibition—and people come to see. Some empty canvases are hanging too. Paints, brushes and all are kept there. Some visitor arrives, feels a sudden urge, picks up a brush and starts painting. He has never learned painting; he doesn’t even know how to hold the brush. But seeing so many paintings, a happening happens in him! He has the chance, and he paints.

And it has been found that what such absolute novices paint is beyond compare. Even the greatest painter cannot match it. They call it a happening. They say, something occurred.

The Quakers hold meetings that are silent. In their meetinghouse they gather at the appointed time and sit quietly. There is no preacher—because a preacher will always come prepared. Friends sit; darkness deepens. Then a happening: if someone feels moved to say something, he says it. Many times months go by and no one says anything. People sit and depart—“today there was nothing to say, so nothing was said.” Then if someone feels there is something to say, he stands up. No introduction, no identity, no formalities. He simply stands and says, “This is what I feel; this I want to say.” There is only one condition: no one should ever come prepared.

What the Quakers have collected from three hundred years of such silent meetings is worth seeing—words that seem to come straight from God; from utterly ordinary people, sometimes such words arise.

But the more education and the more cultivated a mind we construct, the less insight there is. Everything becomes fixed and ready. I am a staunch enemy of this. I say: I am sitting before you; you say something; if a conversation begins, I say something. If it doesn’t, it doesn’t—finished; there is no need to insist that something must be said. Wherever the talk leads, we go. If it doesn’t lead and stops midway, what contract have we taken from anyone! We bow, the matter is over—today there was nothing to say.

But when you go with something thought out and prepared in advance, you are dead—you are a dead man. In that case a tape recorder would be better: load it and let it speak. Then there is no burden; then there is a flowering. Otherwise there is a great burden. When we speak to one person alone, we never feel burdened, but before a thousand we do. Why? We know how to talk—we talk day and night. So what difficulty arises before a thousand? Before a thousand we want to speak prepared—and the burden begins. If before a thousand we speak just as simply as before one, then there is no burden.

And I hold that if you speak to a thousand with the same simplicity with which you speak to one, the communication will be more inward and heartfelt. We all speak; we all converse every day. The only difference is: I am talking to you sitting at home; you talk to your wife, your friend, your son—you are unprepared, therefore there is no burden.

One simply speaks.
Yes—where speaking becomes a job and you have to prepare, from there the difficulty begins. And this is how we are pressing man down from all sides—whether speaking, singing, composing a song—everything has become a job; nowhere is it spontaneous, nowhere simple and natural. Then the authenticity that is needed is missing; it does not form. And it cannot reach very deep into one’s being; it does not go there. In India a great nuisance has arisen. India is all preacher— the whole country a preacher.

I often tell a joke. There was a girl here in Bombay; she went to America. She sent me a magazine from there. Someone had written a humorous piece: if an Englishman drinks, he is quiet anyway—he becomes even quieter; then he doesn’t speak at all. If a Frenchman drinks, he is noisy anyway—talking, dancing—then he begins to caper about even more. If a Dutchman drinks, he goes straight to the dining table and pounces on the food.

He wrote that under drink a nation’s characteristic reveals itself. So the girl wrote to me, “But there is nothing written there about the Indian.”

I said, that is obvious: if he drinks, he will preach! At once he will preach! The moment he has drunk, he starts giving a sermon. That is absolutely ours... and it’s all prepared—perfectly prepared.

The effort is very little—and in truth, all things, all arts, once carried a message behind them. Now there is no message. Now the concern is only this: how can man be exploited through the medium? For the first time everything has been put up in the marketplace—everything. There were a few things that always stood outside the market, and for thousands of years many people labored to keep some things outside. In this life at least, there should be something beyond the market; if everything is for sale, life becomes pitiable. With great effort, people tried for centuries to keep some things completely outside the market. But in these last hundred years, everything has been dragged into it—everything! Naturally, when you bring things into the market, they lose those heights that are possible only outside the market.

And for the first time… until now, art never worried whether you understood it or not, whether you liked it or not. Art used to say: if you don’t like it, the fault is in you. Become worthy of liking it! Art stood where it stood. Art stood in its own place. Man had to travel to it—you had to come. The temple was built where it was. It did not walk into the bazaar. You had to come: leave the marketplace and enter the temple.

The opposite has happened. The people of the market stopped going to the temple. The priest said, “We’ll bring the temple into the market. If you cannot come, we’ll bring the temple to you. We’ll build it right next to your shop. Bow as you pass. Or we’ll build it directly opposite your shop. Or if you wish, we’ll install it inside your shop. If you feel like it sometime, have a look—otherwise it’s fine.”

Whenever one begins to look toward the crowd, decay sets in. In some directions there must always be a few who keep the courage to say: “No one may understand us, no one may recognize us, no one may accept us—but we will call to people.” If not today, then tomorrow that call is heard.

Gurdjieff was a fakir; he died only recently. His talks were never like this: announced eight days in advance. No. Eight days earlier a note would go out: those interested in attending Gurdjieff’s talk should send their names. Then, one hour before the talk, they would be told the location: “The talk is here; reach by six.” Perhaps the talk would be twenty miles away, perhaps twenty-five. One hour before, the message arrives: “Kalyanji, the talk is here; please reach by six.” Now you have a thousand tasks, a thousand inconveniences; had you known before you could have arranged. Now you must run within the hour.

Gurdjieff’s friends protested: “This is such a mess—what are you doing?” Gurdjieff replied, “Whoever is to come must come with effort—only then will my words have meaning; only then will I be able to lift him up. Otherwise I cannot lift him.”

Once in Paris he announced he would speak. The first day, about three hundred people gathered. He came, looked, and said, “I will not speak today—I’ll speak tomorrow.” The next day about one hundred and fifty came. He stood again and said, “Not today either; I’ll speak tomorrow.” On the third day, only fifteen or twenty remained. He said, “Now I will speak—those who had just wandered in have left; those who can be spoken to have remained.”

This was the mind behind it. So whether it is music, poetry, literature, religion, philosophy—whatever it may be—the greatest necessity of the present time is that some people gather the courage to say: “You will have to come; you will have to make the journey.”

The irony is not that people are unwilling to travel far; they are eager! And because you have left them no far journeys of the right kind, they undertake futile travels. In summer they go to the Himalayas. You will be surprised: the same restlessness of the mind—a hunger for the far journey. In summer one man goes to America, another to Russia, just to see. Now man will go to the moon. A Japanese company is already selling tickets for 1975, and people will start booking now...

What for are they going to the moon? In my understanding, this surge in tourism—this great running here and there—has a root cause. The root cause is that the inner urge for a far journey remains, but you have left no inner journeys—neither music is a journey, nor religion, nor anything else. Only one journey remains: physical—sit in a train, a car, and run.

You will be astonished: the ancient world never had so much travel. There was another substitute. In older days a man sometimes lived and died in a single village. Lao Tzu wrote 2,500 years ago: “I have heard from my elders that once a river flowed between two villages. At night the people on this side could hear the dogs barking on the other side—they knew a village was there. Yet no one ever went across.” He was amazed: “How were they that they never went to find out?” The old man said, “What need was there? We were engaged in far greater journeys. Who goes to see small things? One who has found diamonds does not go about picking pebbles. But if you haven’t found diamonds, then the itch to pick will have you collecting pebbles too.”

In my view, there is a dimensional difference. One journey is vertical—going upward. The other is horizontal—going from me to you, from here to there, but the ground remains the same. Whether I live in New York, Bombay, or on the Himalayas—I will remain the same, on the same plane. Horizontal travel continues; height does not come.

Yes—height. And those things that bring height—music, literature, religion, yoga—are purely vertical journeys. They do not tell you to go here or there; from wherever you are, a path goes upward.

Like a helicopter.

Yes, like a helicopter. That whole dimension has been shut because you insist: “We will bring it to where you are.” You understand my meaning, don’t you?

So those friends working in any direction will have to do something: in the face of the market’s fierce current attraction, some must break it somewhere. They must say: “No—you will have to come. I am not the one who will come. We will not bring things to where you are; you will have to come to where they are.” And this alone is in your interest—truly in your interest. Otherwise, if the idea of transcendence does not operate, man remains stuck where he is—because you make everything available where he stands.

There was a Sufi fakir, Bahauddin Naqshband—the Naqshbandi order is named after him. A man came to him and said, “I have everything—wealth, all—but no joy. Tell me, who is the most blissful man in the world?” Naqshband said, “I know such a man, but you’ll have to undertake a very long journey.” The man said, “I’m ready for any journey—I can go any distance.” Naqshband said, “Distance is not the issue; you will have to go high. Distance you can travel; height is the question.” The man said, “I have the means to go far—ox-cart, camel, horse—all are at my disposal. But these are means for distance. What does it mean to go high?” The fakir said, “I’ll tell you the means—but remember: in every vehicle for going far, you sit comfortably; in the means for going high, you will have to cut yourself. It is your own mass that doesn’t let you rise; you will have to slice it off, piece by piece, as it keeps dragging you down. On the journey of distance you remain intact; here you will not remain intact—because you are the obstacle.”

Look closely: there is no other obstacle to height—I am the obstacle. It is my very “me” that blocks. The stones I have tied around myself are the hindrances; they must be cut away one by one. “You are the obstacle! You will have to be cut into pieces, many parts lost—only then can you go.” He said, “I want to travel—but I’m not willing to break myself.” The fakir said, “Then this journey cannot be. There is a journey from which you will return intact; but you will remain you—the journey wasted. And there is a journey in which you will be cut, die, rot, dissolve—you will be utterly transformed. But you will arrive at the place you ask about—the most blissful being. I can show you that.”

The man could not grasp it and left. Naqshband laughed. Other fakirs asked, “What did you mean?”

What you ask about—music or religion—all these are, in many directions, attempts to break and cut certain parts of man.

If you understand me: within man there is a twenty-four-hour disharmony—thousands of tones, thoughts, tensions. From every side, man is an anarchy. In my vision, music has a single meaning: create outside a harmony, a rhythm, such that, hearing it, the inner arrhythmia falls silent—even if only for a moment. Create such a situation outside that the inner being pauses, becomes still for a moment. If for a moment the lilt outside breaks the lawlessness inside—the work of music is done.

Do you follow? The real issue is not the musician’s own rhythm; the real issue is the disharmony within the listener. He suffers terribly from a lack of music. No one suffers so badly from lack of bread as from lack of music. Music too is nourishment, and wondrous—of the soul, not the body. There is a great deficiency there. He cannot make sense of it, but he seeks consonance. He longs for some unison to arrive, for a breeze to blow that calms the inner turmoil, until no voice remains within, all falls into silence.

In my view—and this may sound paradoxical—the very meaning of music is this. Music is an arrangement of sounds, but its entire endeavor is toward soundlessness. Music is sound, but its purpose is silence. If music creates silence in someone, it has fulfilled itself. Sound toward soundlessness—it must end in soundlessness. The whole architecture of sound should be such that it renders one soundless—so for a little while one reaches that space where there is no sound, no tone.

In China there was a great archer. His fame spread; the whole country believed no one could shoot a bow better. He asked his emperor to declare him the foremost archer, and to hold a contest for any challenger, so it could be decided once for all.

The emperor said, “You may be right, but I have seen a man in the forests who surpasses you. Go and see him once; then we shall announce. Even if we announce, he will not come to compete—for he who is supreme does not come to compete. Only the inferior mind thinks of competition. It is the sense of inferiority that whispers: compete, prove it. The one who is established says, ‘All right.’ The unestablished always strives; the inferior is always trying to prove, ‘I am first.’ So, you are not supreme—you are caught in the idea of competition. I know a man; I will not be able to declare with a whole heart. He won’t come to compete. Better that you go to him—learn for a few days.”

He went, searched the forest, and found an old man. “Are you the archer?” he asked. The old man said, “Whether I am or not others may know—but I can shoot a bow.”

He stayed with him and was stunned—he was nothing in comparison. He learned for three years, and then felt he was almost equal. The day he felt, “I’ve learned all he knows,” he thought, “I will return and make the announcement.” But the problem was: this man is alive! Even if no one else knows, I will know I learned from someone—and I will never be equal to my master. Better if he were dead. He decided to kill him.

The master was returning with firewood; the disciple shot an arrow. The master was unarmed; he plucked a stick from the bundle and struck the arrow—it turned back and pierced the disciple’s chest. The master ran up and pulled out the arrow. He said, “There was one more move I hadn’t taught you—because the competitive disciple is always dangerous; in the end he even wants to kill his master. It is inevitable. The competitive one can never be a disciple! I feared you; I knew sooner or later you would kill me. But today I have told you that too. And now consider me dead already—no need to kill me. I am not in your competition. But remember, my master is still alive—and before him I am nothing. I learned and learned and then grew tired, and returned; there, learning is always infinite. I went thinking I would someday complete it; the more I learned, the more I saw the unlearned was greater. I grew weary—how long could I go on? I returned exhausted; I never reached the other shore. That man is still alive. It would be good if you had his darshan.”

“Where is he?” “You will have to search—up in the mountains. I don’t know if he even lives, he is alone.” For there are heights where man can only be alone; only in the lowlands do we live together. The lower we are, the more people around; the higher we rise, the more alone we become. And there is a height where there is total aloneness.

He went in search. With great difficulty he found, on a high mountain with a sheer cliff dropping thousands of feet, an old man standing, his back bent. “Are you the archer I’ve heard of?” The old man lifted his eyes: “Who are you? And how did you come here? No one comes to such heights.” “I too am an archer,” he said, carrying bow and arrows. The old man laughed, “If you are an archer, what need have you of bow and arrows? Those are for learners.”

“When a musician is perfected,” the old man said, “he breaks his veena. The instrument is only for the practice of notes; the ultimate music is soundless—there the veena is of no use. Ultimately the means becomes a hindrance. The veena, which helps at the beginning, becomes an obstacle at the end—for it too causes the shock of sound, it disturbs. The final music is utterly without sound.”

“When an archer is complete he throws away his bow and arrows; he has no need of them. You still carry a bow—you are a child, a learner, calling yourself an archer!”

The visitor said, “This is difficult. What you say feels true—but without bow and arrows, what does an archer do?” The old man said, “Come closer to where I stand.” There was a thousand-foot drop, and the bent old man stood at the edge, the front of his toes over the abyss. A slightest breath would do… He said, “Come, closer.” From four feet away the visitor said, “I cannot—my body trembles.” The old man said, “If your mind and body still tremble, how can your aim be perfect? Why does the aim miss? Because we tremble here, it misses there. As long as the aim can miss, a bow is needed. When the mind becomes utterly unshakable…” He lifted his hand, and a line of birds flying across fell to the ground. An unshakable mind—if it wills, it happens. We tremble; therefore the connection breaks—otherwise there is no reason.

He returned from that old man and told the emperor, “Take back this bow and arrows. I will not compete, and I am no archer. I have seen archers who have neither bow nor arrow—only with them did I understand what archery is.”

All arts, in their ultimate meaning, long for their opposites. Music ultimately longs for soundlessness. Our compromise, in between, is that we cannot produce soundlessness—so we produce a coherence of sounds.

A German musician, Wagner, was asked, “What do you call music?” He said, “The least ugly noise.” It is still noise—yet the least ugly. If we must make sound, then let it be music. If we can leave sound, then there is no need for music.

And the purpose is only this: to make such sound outside that the non-sound inside may resonate. Whenever you are delighted by a song or a veena, you will be amazed to discover that your joy is not coming from the instrument. The collision of its notes renders you empty, and joy overflows from within that emptiness.

Joy always comes from within. The veena only creates a vacuum for a moment. By any means, if a vacuum appears in the mind, things within are ready to pour in—they rush to fill it.

We must think much about how music can become meditation in the lives of as many people as possible.

We will sit and talk about it some other time. For now, I must go. Good.

(The audio recording of the question is unclear.)

Someone made a painting of Ramakrishna and took it to him. Ramakrishna looked at it and then bowed at the feet of the painting. It was a portrait of Ramakrishna himself. When he bowed to it, everyone was puzzled. Someone nearby said, “Paramahansa Deva, what are you doing? The picture is yours! What will people say—that you bowed to your own picture?” Ramakrishna said, “Ah, I forgot! I bowed because I felt the state of samadhi. Whoever’s picture it is—he is in samadhi. Don’t tell anyone—my reputation will be ruined.”

This is the real meditation—only that much. There is nothing else to say about meditation. Whatever is within the man—that alone will be. One thing is a person’s outer outline; a picture has little to do with that. And another is the man himself—that is larger than the outline. The outline has meaning only because there is something within. If that is revealed, the outline is fine. If it cannot be revealed, then it is not a painting but a photograph. A photograph cannot capture the within. If it does capture it, then it is no longer merely a photograph—it has become a painting.

Only that much—only that much. And that is why new art goes on becoming incomprehensible: it is an attempt to catch the soul. Old art kept catching only the lines. The old painters are not great painters. The old poets are not great poets either. The old poet’s grip was on verse, the old painter’s grip was on line. New art has gone much deeper, and therefore it has become unintelligible. It is trying to grasp the soul; it is not much concerned with the body.

Someone once made my portrait. A person who saw it wrote to me, “When I look at it I don’t feel it is your picture; it doesn’t seem related to you at all.” Then we asked the painter what he had made. He said, “It is as he will remain in people’s memory fifty years from now.”

The way Buddha appears to you—there never was such a Buddha. The painter is standing in between. The way Mahavira appears to you—that man was not like that. Those people are gone. Their lines may not have been like that; it isn’t necessary. There must have been something within them that could be expressed through these lines. That is why you will see that in the Jain temples the statues of the twenty-four Tirthankaras are all the same! Can it be that twenty-four men are identical? But the same can be within the twenty-four, and so the outer line was rendered meaningless. They gave the line that reveals the inner.

All these pictures are “false”—neither the picture of Buddha is accurate, nor of Rama, nor of Krishna, nor of Mahavira, nor of Jesus. In the sense that the line has been made secondary and what is within has been made primary. And the line is cast according to that, so it can reveal what is inside. For the artist has only the line; from where will he bring the soul? He has to indicate it through the line alone.

Someone painted Moses while Moses was alive. He took the painting to an emperor who was a devotee of Moses and presented it. The emperor called his court painters and asked, “How is it?” They said, “Everything else is fine, but this cannot be Moses. There is too much anger in this man’s eyes, and he seems very fallen.” The emperor said, “The painting is very well done.” The court painters insisted, “It cannot be Moses.” The emperor replied, “I have seen Moses. This portrait is exactly Moses.” But the court painters said, “The line may match, but it is not Moses.”

Then they took the painting to Moses and asked, “What should we do? Our painters say this is not Moses because it shows anger and the signs of a low man. And yet it is your portrait, because it matches exactly—I have brought it with me.” Moses said, “Your painters are right, and you are right too. This picture is of me—but of the Moses who is no longer, thirty years ago. I was exactly the man who is in these lines—this low. And it may be that the marks on my eyes and so on have not changed, while within, everything has changed. What is the painter to do? The poor fellow drew the line.”