Shiksha Main Kranti #5

Certainly we can. But right now you do not even know this life; to know past lives would be even more difficult. Certainly a human being can know his previous births, because whatever once becomes an imprint on consciousness is never destroyed. It remains forever in the deep layers of our consciousness, in the unconscious parts. Whatever we know we never truly forget. If I ask you what you did on the first of January, 1950, you probably cannot tell me anything. You will say, How would I remember? I don’t remember a thing. The first of January, 1950—nothing comes to mind that I did anything. But if you could be hypnotized—and it can be done quite easily—and, under hypnosis, you were asked what you did on the first of January, 1950, you would describe the day from morning to evening as if that first of January were passing before your eyes right now. You would even say, The tea I had that morning had a little less sugar. You would say, This man served me the tea; there was a smell of sweat from his body. You would recount such small details as, The shoe I was wearing was biting my foot. In a hypnotic state the memory within you can be brought out. I have conducted many experiments in that direction; that is why I tell you: whoever wishes to go into his past lives can be taken there. But first he will have to go back in this very life. He will have to move back through the memories of this life, back to the point where he was conceived in the mother’s womb, and after that one can enter the memories of previous births.

But remember, nature has not arranged the forgetting of past lives without reason. The reason is very significant. And leave aside past lives—even if you were to remember just everything from the past month, you would go mad. If after a single night’s sleep you remembered every single thing from morning to evening, you would not be able to live. The whole arrangement of nature is that only as much memory is left available in you as your mind can bear without strain. The rest is thrown into a dark abyss. Just as in a house there is a junk room—useless things are thrown into the storeroom and the door is shut—so too there is a collective house of memory, an unconscious storeroom, where what is unnecessary to keep in the conscious mind is deposited. There, memories from birth upon birth are stored. But if someone, unknowingly, without understanding, were to enter that house, he would instantly go mad. There are so many impressions.

A woman used to work with me in experiments. She very much wanted to know her past lives. I told her it is possible, but you must understand the responsibility ahead, because it may be that knowing a past life will make you very anxious and troubled. She said, Why would I be troubled? The past life is already over. What is there to worry about? The experiments began. She was a professor in a college—intelligent, sensible, courageous. She began just as I suggested, went into deeper and deeper meditation. Slowly she began peeling back the layers beneath memory. And the first day she gained entry into a past life she came running to me, trembling in hands and feet, tears streaming from her eyes. She began beating her chest and crying, saying, I want to forget what I have remembered. I don’t want to go any further into that past life. I said, Now it’s difficult—what has been remembered will take a long time to forget. But why such panic? She said, No, don’t even ask! I used to think I was so chaste, so virtuous, but in a past life I was a temple prostitute in the South, a devadasi. I had sexual relations with thousands of men; I sold my body. No, I want to forget it. I don’t want to remember it for even a moment. I said, It isn’t so easy now. To remember is very easy; to forget is very difficult.

One can go into past lives, and for those who wish there are ways, there is methodology. The greatest gift that Mahavira and Buddha gave to humanity is not their doctrine of nonviolence; their greatest gift is the principle of recollecting past births—the art of descending into the memory of previous lives. Mahavira and Buddha are the first men on earth who said to every seeker that you will not be acquainted with the soul until you descend into your past lives. And they took every seeker into his past lives. Once a person gathers the courage to go into the memories of his past lives, he becomes a different person. Because he will come to know: the very things I have done thousands of times, I am doing again! How foolish I am. How many times I have amassed wealth; how many times I have piled up millions; how many times I have built palaces; how many times I have chased honor, knowledge, position, how many times I have journeyed to the thrones of Delhi—how many times, countless times—and again I am doing the same! And every such journey turned out to be a failure. This one too will fail. Instantly his running after wealth will stop; instantly his infatuation with positions will dissolve. He will know: in thousands upon thousands of years how many women I have enjoyed; and women will know how many men they have enjoyed—and neither from any man came fulfillment nor from any woman. Yet even now I think, Let me possess this woman, that woman; this man, that man. This has happened millions of times.

Once that remembrance comes, it cannot happen again. When we have done something so many times and found no fruit, there is no point in repeating it. Both Buddha and Mahavira conducted profound experiments in recollection of past lives. And the seeker who once passed through that memory became a different man—transformed, changed. To the friend who has asked, I will certainly say: if you wish, you can be led into past memory. But only go into that experiment after careful thought. The anxieties of this life are enough; the troubles of this life are many already. To forget even this life people drink alcohol, go to the cinema, play cards, gamble. Just to forget this very life, to forget even the day that has passed, a man drinks at night.

One who cannot remember even the day that has just passed, who does not have the courage to take life with a laugh—how will he muster the courage to remember his past lives? It may surprise you to know that all religions have opposed alcohol, and these utterly uncomprehending leaders who go about telling the world that alcohol is opposed because it destroys character, because it ruins the household’s wealth, because a man starts quarrelling—these are foolish notions. Religions opposed alcohol for one reason only: the person who drinks is seeking a means to forget himself, and one who seeks to forget himself will never become acquainted with his soul. Because to know the soul you have to find a way to remember. Therefore alcohol and samadhi are two opposing things. It has nothing to do with those other reasons. In fact—and this is worth understanding: ordinarily people think a drunkard is a bad person. I know drinkers, and I know those who do not drink. In all my experience I have found that in many ways the one who drinks is better than the one who does not. I have seen more compassion and kindness among drinkers than among abstainers. I have seen more humility among drinkers than among non-drinkers. The stiffness, the arrogance I have seen in those who do not drink, I have not seen to that extent in those who do. But religion did not oppose alcohol for these kinds of reasons, nor for those that politicians parade. It opposed alcohol because the person who seeks to forget himself is abandoning the courage to remember.

And the person who is busy trying to forget even this very life—how will he remember past lives? And one who cannot remember past lives—how will he change this life? Then a blind repetition will continue. What we have done again and again, we will keep doing again and again. This process is endless, and until remembrance happens we will be born again and again and commit the same stupidities we have committed again and again—and there will be no end to it. This boredom, this chain has no meaning, because again and again we die, again we forget, again it all starts. Like a wheel, like the bullock at the oil-press, we keep circling. Those who called this life samsara—do you know what samsara means? It means: the wheel, a rotating wheel on which the spokes go up and then down, up again and then down again.

That wheel on India’s national flag—who knows for what reason India’s thinkers put it there. Perhaps they did not know what it signifies. Ashoka had that chakra carved on his stupas so that people would remember that life is a revolving wheel, like the bullock at the oil-press. In it, everything goes round and comes back to the same place, and starts turning again. That wheel is a symbol of samsara. It is not a symbol of a victory march; it is a symbol of losing every day. It symbolizes that life is repetitive boredom, a potter’s wheel that is turned again and again. But because we forget each time, we begin again with great relish.

A young man goes toward a young woman to love; he does not know how many times he has gone like this, how many women he has chased. Yet he goes again, thinking this is happening for the first time. This “extraordinary” event has happened many times. If he were to know it, his condition would become like that of a person who has seen the same film ten or twenty-five times. If you go to a film today, that is one thing. If you are taken the next day, you will tolerate it. On the third day you will say, Forgive me, I don’t want to go. But if you are forced—some policeman is after you, he will make you go—and for fifteen days it is the same film, then on the sixteenth day you will try to throttle yourself: I don’t want to see this film any more—this is the limit! I’ve seen it fifteen days; how long will it go on? But if after seeing the film each day you are given opium and forget that you saw it, then the next day you can buy a ticket for the same film and watch it with great enjoyment.

Each time a person changes the body, the gate to the memories stored in that body is closed. A new game begins—again the same game, the same things, the same that has happened so many times. Recollection of past births brings the remembrance: This has happened many times. This story has been seen many times. These songs have been sung many times. It has become unbearable. From jati-smarana, recollection of past lives, dispassion arises; from recollection, renunciation is born—and it arises in no other way. Vairagya arises from remembering the past, the remembrance of those lives that have gone by. And that is why dispassion has become rare in the world—because there is no remembrance of past births, no method.

To the friends who have asked, I say: I am fully prepared. Whatever I am saying, I am not saying as a mere theory. Every single word I am ready to test with stubborn persistence. If anyone is ready, it will make me very happy. Yesterday I gave an invitation to those who have the courage to make a resolve. Two or four letters came, and I was very happy. They informed me that they are eager and were waiting for someone to call them, and since I have called, they agree. If they agree, I am very happy. My door is open for them. However far I wish to take them—rather, however far they wish to go—they can be taken. The world now needs at least a few people to become enlightened. If even a few become enlightened, we can break the entire darkness of humanity.

In the last fifty years two kinds of experiments were underway in India—you may not even be aware of it—two opposing experiments. Gandhi conducted one; Sri Aurobindo conducted another. Gandhi attempted to raise the character of individuals one by one. It seemed he was succeeding. But he failed completely, and those who followed him—whom he thought he had elevated—turned out to be clay dolls. A little rain fell and all the paint washed away. In twenty years the paint was gone—we all saw it. Their naked bodies stand in Delhi; their paint has washed off; there is no paint left now. That which Gandhi had coated on them washed off in the rains. As long as the rain of power had not begun, they seemed splendid, their khadi clothes looked very clean, and their caps seemed as if they would lift the nation up. But today those very caps are fit to be burned in mockery in every village—because they have become a bourgeois symbol, a symbol of the country’s corruption. Gandhi conducted an experiment that seemed to be succeeding, but failed utterly. Experiments like Gandhi’s have been done many times, and each time they have failed.

Sri Aurobindo was conducting an experiment that did not seem to be succeeding, and in the end did not succeed visibly. But his direction was absolutely right. He was experimenting to see whether it is possible for a few souls to rise so high that their very presence begins to uplift others, to call to them, so that other souls start rising. Is it possible that if one person’s soul rises, then along with it the level of the soul of all humanity rises? Not only is it possible, today only that is possible; nothing else can succeed now.

Today human beings have fallen so low that if we concern ourselves with changing them one by one, perhaps change will never come. In fact, the one who goes to change them is more likely to be changed by their company—more likely to be corrupted along with them. You see it: those who go to serve the people, in a short time turn out to be picking the people’s pockets. They had gone to serve; they had gone to reform others; soon it is found that the people think of how to reform them! No, that cannot work.

The history of the world’s, of humanity’s consciousness tells us that at certain times the consciousness of the world suddenly rose very high. You may not have the sense of it—twenty-five hundred years ago Buddha was born in India; the enlightened Katyayana appeared; Makkhali Gosala appeared; Sanjaya Belatthiputta appeared. In Greece, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus. In China, Lao Tzu, Confucius, Chuang Tzu. Twenty-five hundred years ago, in the space of a hundred years, ten or fifteen people of such caliber appeared that the consciousness of the world suddenly seemed to touch the sky. The whole world entered a golden age, it seemed. Such radiant souls had never appeared before.

With Mahavira, fifty thousand people lit up like lamps and moved from village to village. With Buddha, ten thousand bhikkhus stood up, and their light and their flame began to awaken village after village. Wherever Buddha arrived with his ten thousand monks, within three days the very particles of the air in that village changed. Wherever those ten thousand bhikkhus sat, wherever they prayed, it was as if darkness vanished from that village, as if light spread through it, as if flowers began to bloom in its heart that had never bloomed before.

A few people rose, and with them the eyes of those below turned upward. The eyes of those below look up only when there is something above worth seeing. There is nothing to look up to; there is so much to look down at. The lower a person sinks, the bigger a safe he builds. The lower he sinks, the finer a Cadillac he buys. There is plenty to see below. Delhi has settled into a pit—right down below. If you want to reach Delhi, you must descend to the netherworld, keep going down. There is nothing to look up to. Whom will you look toward? Who is above? And what greater misfortune can there be than that there are no souls above to look to—souls whose very sight stirs a longing in your being; whose sight evokes a call from within; whose sight makes your life reproach itself: I too could have been such a lamp; such flowers could have blossomed in me; such songs I too could have sung. I too could have been this Buddha, this Mahavira, this Krishna, this Christ.

Once the thought arises that I too could be that—then, if there is someone to see by whom that thought arises, the life-breath begins the upward journey. And remember, the life-breath is always journeying. If it does not go upward, it goes downward. It never stops. Either it goes up or it goes down; there is no such thing as stopping. In the realm of consciousness there is no station where you can halt and rest—either up or down. Life is moving every moment. We must raise up presences of consciousness.

I want a movement around the world—not of crowds, but of a few courageous people who are ready to experiment. If a hundred people in India agree to experiment, if a hundred decide that we will now carry the soul to those heights that are possible for man, then in twenty years the entire face of India could change. Vivekananda said on his deathbed, I kept calling for a hundred people—come, a hundred people—but they did not come, and I am dying defeated. If just a hundred people had come, I would have changed the country. But Vivekananda kept calling; the hundred did not come.

And I have decided I will not just call; I will search from village to village, look into eyes, to find who that person is—if he does not come when called, he will have to be brought by the hand. If even a hundred people can be brought, then I assure you that a hundred souls rising will stand like an Everest, like a Gaurishankar. The life-breath of the whole country can move forward on that journey.

Those friends who feel my challenge is right, and who feel the courage and strength that they can dare to go on that path—which is very unfamiliar, that ocean for which we have no map—whoever has that courage should understand that such courage is there only because, very deep within, God has called him. Otherwise such courage and daring would not be possible.

In Egypt it used to be said that when someone calls to God, he should understand that long before that, God has called to him—otherwise the call would not arise. Whoever has the call within has a great responsibility today for the world. Today, the message must be carried to every corner that a few people step out and dedicate their whole lives to experiencing the heights.

All the truths of life, all the experiences up to today, are turning false. All the heights of life that were touched till now are becoming imaginary. They are turning into ancient stories. In a hundred or two hundred years children will deny that people like Buddha, Mahavira, and Christ ever existed—they will say these are all stories. In the West a man has written a book in which he says that no one like Christ ever was; it is merely an old drama. People slowly forgot it was a drama and began to think it was history. Even today we stage the Ramlila. We think Rama existed and therefore we stage the Ramlila. A hundred years later children will say that Ramlila was written and performed, and people were deluded into thinking that Rama existed—it must have been a play long performed. Because when before our eyes men like Rama, Buddha, Christ cease to appear, how will we believe they ever existed?

Moreover, the human mind is never ready to accept that there can be someone higher than itself. It is always willing to believe that I am the highest. It accepts someone higher only under great compulsion, otherwise never. It tries a thousand ways to find some fault, some flaw, so it can say, This man is low, too. Then it can be satisfied in its stupidity that I am perfectly fine. It searches for flaws; if it doesn’t find them, it invents them, so that it can relax. People will slowly deny everyone, because there are no living symbols anywhere. For how long will stone statues testify that Buddha and Mahavira were? For how long will words written on paper convince that Christ was? For how long will your Gita show that Krishna existed? Not for long. We need living men like Jesus, Krishna, Buddha, Mahavira. If in the coming fifty years we do not bring forth such men, humanity is about to enter a very dark age. It will have no future.

Whoever feels he can do something for life—there is a great challenge for him. And I will go village to village giving this challenge. Wherever I find eyes in which I feel a lamp can be lit, in which a flame can arise, I am ready to pour in my entire effort. From my side the preparation is complete. We shall see that at my dying moment I do not have to say, I searched for a hundred people and did not find them.

You have listened to my words with such love and peace—I am very obliged. And in the end I bow to the God seated within all. Please accept my pranam.