Upasana Ke Kshan #5

For twenty years a man worries and frets; he doesn’t sleep—money, money, how to earn, how to earn—and slowly, slowly, slowly his mind becomes a mechanism of worry; the nerves, the brain, all become habituated to worrying. Now he has managed to earn money. For this he worried for twenty years! And having earned it he finds there is neither happiness nor peace. It is not that money cannot give you any peace—money can give you order, arrangement—but in those twenty years your brain has been thrown out of balance.

So the man begins to say, “Ah, money—there is no happiness or peace in it! I’ve earned it and I’ve become even more restless and miserable! So there is no substance in money. It should be dropped.” Here the man is making a mistake. He is not able to understand that money is only a convenience, a means. If you have it, you can give your life a certain order. And through that order you can also be peaceful, live at ease, find rest.

My point is: if, along with earning money, he had also found a way to earn peace of mind, then on the very day money came to him he would have been as happy as he could never be by remaining poor. Because money would give him an outer order, and peace of mind would give him an inner order. And the day these two meet, that day he would experience the ultimate peace.

But this did not happen. In arranging the outer—which is absolutely necessary—he made no inner arrangement at all. And for the thing he labored so hard, when at last he got it and found he was not receiving anything from it, the opposite stance arose: there is no substance in it, all is insubstantial; it should be dropped and one should escape. People of this sort created a wind in the psyche of society. The poor man has no real idea about money—whether it brings peace or not. He does not know what money brings. The rich man has the experience that money did not bring peace. Buddha and Mahavira—these are sons of rich households. They created a breeze through the whole society. And when they renounced and left, the poor also saw that those who had everything are leaving; there must be nothing in it. So to cling to that in which there is nothing is foolishness.

But there is a difference between the mind of the poor and that of the rich. The rich, understanding that there is nothing in money, can go without any fear of money. Buddha and Mahavira have no fear of money at all; they have gone with the understanding that there is nothing in it. Ramakrishna was the son of a completely poor Brahmin. He had no experience of money. It was only hearsay that there is nothing in money—but in the mind there still remains the desire for money. In the son of the poor it is bound to be so; he does not know.

Now my task has become very difficult. My effort is this: I say that money has value. Not as much value as it has for the one who is mad after money. Nor as valueless as it is for the enemy of money. Money is a neutral instrument. It has its use. With understanding, it can be put to very good use. And if, while arranging for it, a person also arranges the inner order...

It certainly can. It just isn’t in our thinking. And society has not been given a vision of it till today. Never. The reason was that those who gave society its vision were the rich. The class that gave society its vision was the moneyed class.

He found there is nothing. And he handed down that vision. And then there is the second class, the poor. The poor do not know, but they do aspire: to have a good house, to live in peace, not to have to worry every day about food and drink—that is their idea. So their desire says: there should be money. And all the leaders of society—and these leaders are all moneyed people—their experience says that there is no substance in money. So the poor man falls into a dilemma. And that dilemma eats his very life: What should I do? What should I not do? If he takes to earning money, it feels as if he is committing a sin, as if there is no point to it. If he does not earn, he sees suffering piling up upon suffering. So we have put him into a conflict. And man is living in that conflict, with no way to break it occurring to him. If you want to be a leader of the poor, you too will have to abuse money. Because in the poor man’s mind there is the desire for money, craving for it. There is envy too. There is hatred toward the man with money. He himself wants to be wealthy, but toward the one who has it his mind carries hatred and envy.

If Gandhi kicks money, the poor will touch his feet. He will say, “Here is a man!” Because his own envy and hatred toward money—this man kicks it, treats it as worth two pennies. That appeals to him. So when Ramakrishna starts at the sight of money, the whole class of the poor is impressed. And the amusing thing is that the rich are impressed for a different reason: they have so much money, yet they have not been able to gather the strength to kick money away—and the one who has nothing is kicking it! Surely this man is extraordinary. This is how our mind works. The poor are impressed because they are envious of money. The rich are impressed because, “Look, the man who has nothing has the courage to kick it.” He seems to be endowed with wondrous power. And then the chain continues, and breaking that chain has become harder and harder.

Now, the big problem before me is that I am not in agreement with either. I am not satisfied with the man who goes on hoarding money like a madman and dies hoarding it. Nor am I satisfied with the one who runs away from money and screams as if a scorpion had stung him if he happens to touch it. These two are extremes of the same disease. Truth is always somewhere in the middle.

The truth is that if money is used intelligently—and it can be, because there is no contradiction between intelligence and money. What I am saying is: intelligence is one thing, money is another; there is no opposition between them. In fact, the truth is that if there is money, intelligence can flower more easily; if there is no money, it is very difficult for intelligence to arrive. Because even the arrangements required for intelligence to arise cannot come together without money.

All the arrangements that bring intelligence into being… Now, the food we eat—what kind of food we eat—affects our personality, our brain, everything. If a person keeps getting food that has no vitamins, nothing of strength, his brain will not develop. Where on earth will intelligence come from? The Adivasis, the people of jungle countries—why have they not developed culture? Their diet is defective. They simply cannot develop culture because they never received the kind of nourishment needed to build a healthy brain. It is not as if they have remained that way accidentally. For example, the Africans, or our people living in the forests—their diet is utterly unbalanced. What is essential in that food is next to nothing. So the body somehow carries on, but the brain cannot develop.

America is progressing so rapidly, its children are thinking so far ahead; the basic reason is that their diet is higher in calories, well provided, properly vitamin-enriched, orderly, scientific. If for two hundred years America keeps this diet and we keep ours, the distance between our children and American children will be like earth and sky. Because our child will be basically defective. That is, there is the possibility that if this situation continues for five hundred years, America will produce a superhuman base—people of an altogether different kind—whose thinking, understanding, insight will be very precise. We will not be able to compete at all; we will not be standing on any comparable plane. And here our fools keep saying that money is useless—and they are taking our very life.

Take the children of Russia: they are getting thoroughly scientific food. There is an exact accounting—how many calories, which vitamins how much, which minerals, how much salt—everything scientific. In two hundred years the child they will produce will be well-equipped on the side of the mind. What their minds will be able to bring forth—how will our children bring that!

So the whole question of arrangement is this: money is only a means which organizes the entire outer set-up of life. And the more harmonious that arrangement is, the more the inner possibility keeps increasing.

Now, a man has not even got proper food, and we tell him, “Make your mind silent.” This is sheer madness. A man is shivering in the cold, and we tell him, “Calm your mind.” He says, “Right now it is not a question of mind; right now the question is how to calm my body.”
And when the body is not at rest, how will the mind be at rest? The mind is only the messenger. The mind is reporting that the body is in disturbance. Put that right and the message will cease. As long as the body is in turmoil, the mind will go on reporting. It is just like this: from the airfield below a message is being sent to the plane above—“Do not land now; there are clouds here; if you try to land now you will die.” And the pilot does not listen and says, “I am going to land anyway.” That is the situation. The mind is reporting all the time: the body cannot withstand so much cold; if you do not arrange some clothing quickly, it will be finished. Now the mind is giving this message: arrange clothes. And you say, “What have clothes to do with anything? What has the body to do with anything? These are all outer things.” Then the body will break—and along with it the mind will break.

The mind of a poor nation is not able to develop. It cannot. Even in a poor nation, the two or four or ten minds that do get born are accidental—accidental in the sense that their development depends on many other factors. And if these minds had had fully organized support right from birth, we cannot even estimate how much they could have done, what they could have achieved.

As for us, we are four hundred, five hundred million people, and how much talent do we produce? Next to nothing. Russia is a nation of two hundred million; in fifty years how much talent have they produced? Let us look at the figures!

Basically, it’s food — and clothes. Now, one man is working while sitting in the sun and another is working in air-conditioning; there is bound to be a fundamental difference in their work. If you say that nothing comes from the outside, you’re talking foolishly. Everything is happening from the outside. And if the outside is set in order, then something happens within. In my view — and it has gotten me into great trouble — my view is that I am not agreeable here with either side. The one who is outer-oriented worries only about making this happen and that happen; he has no concern for the inner. The one who is inner-oriented talks so much about the inner that he drops all concern for the outer. And these two are joined and one. Only when both are absolutely in balance does a person come to a right state. And these two are unbalanced.

This attitude is becoming harder to convey to people because the poor man does not get from it the praise that Gandhi or Ramakrishna give him — “You are Daridra Narayan, you are the form of God.” I tell him, you are not some form of God. Poverty is a disease. This is not a matter of Narayan and all that; it is an illness. One must be free of it.

So my words do not gratify his ego. Gandhi says, “You are the form of God, you are Daridra Narayan.” Then he gets honor, respect. And he has no wealth; he has no avenue to gain respect — no position, no prestige. The only thing he has is poverty. If you honor poverty, he gets honor; otherwise, he is finished. And I say poverty is a disease. So his ego is hurt.

On the other side, I tell the rich: you keep accumulating money; nothing is going to come of it. You are engaged in sheer foolishness. Money is necessary, but money alone is not enough. Something else is needed within. He doesn’t like this either. He prefers someone to say, “You’ve built great palaces, you’ve done a very good job — that’s enough, sufficient. You’ve conquered the state, you’ve become prime minister — that is plenty.” He doesn’t like anyone to tell him, “No, that’s not enough; the essential thing has been missed.”

So there is difficulty with both. And those two are what constitute society. Hence, it has always been difficult to convey this kind of message.

The mind of the whole society has become diseased.
(The audio recording of the question is not clear.)
Two things should be kept in mind. First, it should be clear why we even worry about business—this must be explicit to us. We do it so that we can live with more peace and joy. What is the goal? Why are we worrying? Is anyone worrying about business for the sake of business? We worry so that we may live with more peace and joy. This basic motive must be absolutely clear.
This gets forgotten day after day. It slips out of our awareness. If it remains in our awareness, it means we should worry about business only up to the point where it does not destroy peace and joy. Because if it starts to destroy peace and joy, then the basic motive itself has gone wrong.
Suppose I come to Bombay, and I am going to Bombay so that, by reaching Bombay, my health improves. And on the way I am required to drink poison. Then I will say, I am not going. Because I was going so that on reaching Bombay I would be healthy. But you say, first you must drink poison, then you will reach Bombay. Then I turn back. At least I am alive. I was fine where I was. I will not go further than this.
If our fundamental vision of life is clear—that we want to attain a life of happiness, peace, and joy—and for that we also do business and earn money, then only up to that limit where our fundamental desire is not hurt. The moment the fundamental desire is hurt, we are always ready to turn back. Because we are not doing business for the sake of business. If this is in view, you will do the work of business, you will think, but you will not worry. And that is the difference between thought and worry.
Suppose you get into a dilemma: if you do this, you gain one million; if you do that, you gain five hundred thousand; if you don’t do it, you lose so much. So what does worry mean? Worry means that without arriving at any solution you keep running in your mind: Should I do this or that? What should I do, what should I not do? In this, this will happen; in that, that will happen. That is worry.
Thought means: pick up a piece of paper. There are three options. Write them down: this is one option—this alternative—this much benefit, this much difficulty. Second option—this much benefit, this much difficulty. Third option—this much benefit, this much difficulty. Always write it down—if you want to avoid worry. Write everything clearly and weigh which one is the most peaceful, convenient, and joyful—because that is our goal. Then if number two appears to be so, simply wipe out the rest and end the matter. Do number two. And all of this is thinking; there is no question of worrying. What question of worry? To start worrying means you have begun arranging to lose your peace.

Let it go. Let it go.

All right. Quite all right. When we had chosen and looked at four numbers, and Kakubhai made the decision, he chose number two with the intelligence he had. Kakubhai had no more intelligence than that. What was chosen was as much as our intelligence allowed. Now we went with number two and there was a loss. We should understand: I had only that much intelligence; with it I chose, and there was a loss. I don’t have more intelligence than that. So what is there to worry about?

The worry arises because Kakubhai is always under the illusion that he had more intelligence—had he thought a little more beforehand and worried a bit, he would have chosen number three. That is your mistake. Our ego is not willing to accept that our intelligence is limited. And everyone’s intelligence is limited, however great it may be. Our intelligence is limited, and I had used all of mine. After that there was no remedy. What I could do, I did. There was a loss. Fine. Otherwise I could not have done anything else; because my intelligence was only this much. And I did this; this much loss occurred. Fine. Now, in the future I will see that I do not choose wrongly again as with number two. The matter is finished. Because now there is no question of turning back. What has happened cannot be undone. That matter is over.

But what do we do? We sit back and think: if only we had chosen the earlier one, it would have been very good. Now we are talking foolishness. If we had chosen the fourth, it would have been very good; so much profit would have come. This is just making a fuss. A loss happened.

One thing we should know: what is done is done. It is now set in stone. There is no sense now in thinking this way and that about it.

So every mistake and slip in life should be turned into experience—and one should be free of it. What else can you do? And the person who does this, slowly, slowly—slowly, slowly—slowly, slowly begins to think in the right direction.
This is the difference between worry and thought.
A worried person never really thinks; he is just confused, always rushing about.

Only a thoughtful person makes progress. How will a worried person progress? A thoughtful person progresses greatly. So in the outer world, whatever progress there is, it all happens through thought. And in the inner world...

No, no, no. Not at all an opposition. Take it this way: we stay awake through the day. The more awake you are in the day, it’s not that sleep will be difficult at night; rather, sleep will come that much better. Yet the two are contraries. You might say, “If I stay awake all day, how will I sleep at night? Waking is the opposite; sleeping is the opposite.” And still we know: the more you exert, the deeper the rest; the more you wake, the deeper you sleep; the greater the hunger, the more you will eat. About these so-called opposites, the mind moves like the pendulum of a clock. If you go to the extreme on one side and then relax, in a flash it will reach the extreme on the other side.

Thought is for the outer world, and no-thought is for the inner world. Their relationship is like waking and sleeping. They are not enemies; they are two sides of the same coin.

So when you are in the office during the day, think thoroughly; I am not telling you to meditate in the office—think! Fix a time: from eleven to five I will remain in the world of thought. Then not even for a second should anything else come in—think completely. Put in your entire energy, all that you have. By five o’clock thinking will have worked so hard that it itself will say, “Now let’s relax.”

Come home and shut the office in your head—finished. Now enter the world of no-thought. Now we will lie down quietly and move into meditation. That matter is finished. And it will be finished if you have done it with your whole strength—because whatever could be done in those six hours you did totally. Then the mind itself will say, “Now relax, enough.” And then, fine—having come home from the office, till eleven tomorrow complete rest. Then when you go to the office at eleven tomorrow, leave meditation—leave no-thought—at home. And there is no conflict between them. And the clearer these compartments become—which is what I mean when I say both should be cultivated, the outer and the inner—the more they will grow in this way. When you are in the world of thought, think totally. When you are in the world of no-thought, be totally no-thought. And in both, be absolutely total, wholly immersed. And they are not in opposition.

For everything the measure is just this... The aim of our life is that we can live in joy and peace. So keep weighing everything against that criterion: as much social life as enhances my joy and peace—only that much, not an inch more. If you go an inch beyond, come back.

Social life is a utility. You are not alone. Life is vast, and there are many good people in it. There are many relationships; they have their use—share just that much relatedness. But if it becomes a burden—going and coming itself feels hard, and yet because it’s “social life” you still go, sit there gloomy, banging your head inside, “Where have I gotten stuck?” You don’t want to go to a movie, but your wife says, “Come,” so you sit there with her while inwardly you’re cursing, “Where has she dragged me?” No—there’s no sense in that.

So the criterion must always be clear: “This and this I’m fine with; up to this distance I am always ready to go.” You should tell your friends, your wife, your children, everyone: “This is my criterion. Up to here I’m willing. If you pull me beyond that, it becomes the cause of my suffering. I’m not ready to go further.” It should be that clear. And you should live by your own clarity. If it is truly clear, you will slowly find so much happiness in life that it’s beyond measure.

But we are all confused. We have made everything clumsy and mixed up. We don’t know how far to go in social life. Either we go completely, or we don’t go at all. In both cases there is harm. And then what happens? A strange situation arises: you plunge into a lot of social life and suffering begins; then you drop social life altogether and suffering begins again; then you swing back.

It’s like a man who smokes. Someone says, “You should quit completely,” so he quits completely. He suffers. Then he jumps back and smokes a lot. That causes suffering. Then someone explains that smoking will cause great trouble, so he quits again completely—and now he’s in a big mess.

Always look: if smoking gives me some pleasure, how far does it go? Only that far is fine. Then there’s no need to listen to the world’s talk. And from where does it begin to cause me pain? Up to that boundary is fine; from there I should turn back. If one takes such a clear decision with each thing, within six months to a year a person will become very clear. And when life is clear, it appears just that clearly, just that far.

But all these teachers and gurus don’t let a person get settled. Each pulls him in a different direction. And a person has to live amid all directions—and create a synthesis among them.

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

And if you keep your attention on “I must not think,” then in the end your attention is still on thought—and thought will continue. What is needed is that the focus of attention be removed from the centers of thought; its focus must shift to something else.

In our personality the focus gradually gets fixed on thought for a lifetime and never moves. For example, we are shining a torch and we see a window; we turn the torch elsewhere, the window disappears and a door appears. So attention, if rightly understood, is the focus of consciousness. We have fixed it on thought. And because from childhood our attention is tied to thought—reading, writing, school, college, then business, shop, wife, home—the focus slowly becomes fixed on a single center all the time.

The torch that was movable, that could turn anywhere, gradually became stationary. Then, if you want to shift it, you can’t move it while keeping it fixed there. Take that focus somewhere else. For example, when you are walking fast, bring your whole attention to walking: to the movements of the body, the motion, the feet moving, the hands swinging, the breath moving—bring all your attention to this. Instantly the focus will shift from mind to body and thoughts will stop. The focus should be shifted elsewhere, and thoughts will stop. The focus needs to change.

It will feel good—but let this focus drop from the mind. Because even when you look at the ocean, you will start thinking, “Ahh, how...!”

That will do. That will do.

If you think, “I am eating,” that is thought. No—let the whole focus be on the act that is going on, the act of eating. There is the act of eating. For example, here is my hand: I raise it. Now two things can happen. Either I think, “The hand is rising,” and then my focus is off to one side and the thought “the hand is rising” keeps running. But it is not a question of thought. This hand is rising; the movement that is happening—let all your attention be on that movement. Do not think, “The hand is rising”; the movement of the hand rising that is going on within—let your whole attention be on that. Then raise a hand and notice the difference between the two. The difference is subtle. Do not think that the hand is rising; experience the rising of the hand. Then thought will not form; the entire focus will shift to the hand’s rising.

So when I say that you are walking, it is not for you to think, “I am walking”; because if you think that, the focus gets stuck here and the walking is left far away. The motion of walking that is happening—the whole action of that movement—let the focus be on that whole action; no thinking and brooding. Then the focus will shift from the mind. It may even get pulled to the sea, but do not think. It is difficult because we have the habit of thinking about the sea: “This is the sea, waves are rising—very nice, very beautiful.” Our trouble is that all our training since childhood has been to convert everything into thought. A flower is seen, and instantly the mind says, “It is a rose—very nice.”

Since childhood the whole training of our life has been to turn things into words. Because of that we are caught in a lot of thinking. And it has become such a fixed habit that we do not even notice that we have turned it into words.

Now it is necessary to learn a second way: that we can see things, see actions, and not allow them to be converted into words. The farther away a thing is, the more difficult it will be. The nearer it is, and the more it is within your own body, the easier it will be. That is why Buddha put all the emphasis on the breath—because the nearest to our very life is the breath.

And that is why it happens that if right now a man comes and stands with a knife at your chest, your thinking stops instantly—because the entire focus goes to the knife. A second later the thought will arise: what should I do to save myself? But for that one second the whole consciousness breaks from the old sequence, because the shock is so great that the fixed pattern shatters at once and you are startled, standing alert.

You are driving a car and suddenly a child comes in front; you slam the brakes. For one second the focus will break completely from thought—within focus there will remain only the car and the child. Not even the thought will remain that the child came and might die—no, not even that. That comes later, as an after-effect. Later the thought will arise: the child could have died, this could have happened. But in that second there is only movement. And if you think, the child is dead. If there is anything other than pure movement, the child is going to die. Because in that much time the brake can no longer be applied. Any time that falls into thinking is lost.

And that is why whenever you are in a car or in any accident-like situation, afterward when you reflect you will find that the whole impact reached your navel. You slammed the brakes and the car stopped—you will find the place in your body where the flow surged the most was the navel. And that is because the whole focus suddenly went to the navel. For the activities of life are connected with the navel, and the activities of thought are connected with the brain.

Therefore in Japan they said, to cultivate concentration on the rising and falling of the navel, take the focus to the navel. Here too, on the path of practice, I have said: take the focus to the navel.

The mind has created a new center in the head. Animals and birds don’t have it; they live only from the navel. That’s why their movement is utterly pure, spontaneous.

A cat sits to catch a mouse; she is not thinking, “If the mouse comes, I’ll catch it.” The mouse comes—and she catches it. There is no thought there; it is pure movement. She is simply sitting; she is not thinking, “If the mouse comes out, I’ll catch him.” There is no question of thinking. All movement is happening from the navel. She is just sitting—totally ready. When the mouse comes, she won’t think, “Now that he has come, I should catch him”—there is no such leisure. The moment the mouse appears, the catching has already happened.

In Japan there is a very famous story the Zen fakirs tell—I may have told it sometime. In a certain house there was a great soldier, a master swordsman. There they greatly honor the soldier and the swordsman. He was such a brave warrior that he had conquered all; he fought many duels and in the end became the greatest swordsman in Japan. He returned from the capital, honored.

In the room where he slept he saw a mouse running about, disturbing his sleep. He jumped up in anger; the mouse would dart into its hole. His anger kept rising. He was no ordinary man. He drew his sword. “A tiny mouse, and he is teasing me!” When he lay down, the mouse would poke his face out. And he was the sort of man who, at the slightest provocation, would start a fight with his sword. “Such a little mouse, and he’s harassing me so much!” So he unsheathed his sword—the same sword with which he had fought warriors—and tried to fight a mouse. But a mouse moves by pure movement: seeing the sword, he slips inside. So the man hid and waited. When the mouse came out, he struck hard; the sword hit the floor, the mouse had already gone in, and the sword broke into four pieces.

Now his rage knew no bounds: “This is the limit!” He had never missed a blow; for any man, his stroke was the final one—and a mouse! He went almost mad. He rushed out and told his friends, “This is too much! My sword...!”

His friends said, “You’ve gone crazy—fighting a mouse. Every movement of a mouse is spontaneous. He doesn’t think, ‘Since you’ve swung your sword, I should escape.’ The man who stood before you with sword and shield would think, ‘If he strikes, I must save myself.’ In the time he was thinking, your sword would already be inside him.

“A mouse doesn’t think; he simply moves. The moment he sees the sword, he’s inside. He won’t be thinking, ‘A sword is coming.’ That gap—that distance—doesn’t exist. You cannot kill a mouse with a sword. If you want to kill a mouse, bring a cat. A man cannot kill a mouse; it’s very difficult. Because by the time he thinks and strikes, the mouse has already moved. For such movement there is no scope for thought; the impulses are direct and immediate. You made a mistake and broke your sword for nothing. Just bring a cat—she’ll finish him at once.”

So the next day he brought a cat—the strongest in the village, famous for killing many big mice. He brought her, but by force, with a chain around her neck. The cat was already afraid. Dragged in on a chain, she got flustered: “What is the matter?” And when they forced her inside and shut the door, then as soon as the door was opened, the cat bolted straight out. She hadn’t killed any mouse.

The warrior was astonished. He began to suspect the mouse was miraculous. He had broken the sword, and now he had driven the cat away—and the cat could do nothing. When he went back inside, the mouse was peeking out of the hole, looking. Then he thought, “This is no ordinary mouse,” and he became very nervous. He told his friends, and they said, “If it’s like that, the king has a master cat. She is the finest in the land—the cat of the royal palace; she has killed many formidable mice. The king has raised her. We’ll have to bring the master cat. This is no ordinary mouse; it’s beyond an ordinary cat. That poor cat only ran away because she was brought in bound; she panicked, ‘What is going on inside?’ She didn’t understand there was a mouse. She only got frightened. When she was shut in, she grew even more scared. The moment the door opened, she ran out—and you all assumed the mouse had scared her.”

They went to the king and said, “We are in great trouble. We brought a cat; she ran away. The mouse is very strange. And our great warrior—his sword the mouse has broken. He couldn’t sleep all night; his mind is completely upset. He says, ‘I will kill that mouse. He broke my sword! I have defeated great warriors!’”

The king understood and said, “I have the master cat. But don’t take her bound—one condition. And do not drop her inside the room; release her outside the house—second condition. This cat is such that, no matter how miraculous the mouse, she will finish him. But two conditions: you cannot take her bound, and release her outside, not in the room.”

They brought the cat and let her go outside the house. She prowled outside, then came in, then went into that room—and in a second or two came out with the mouse in her mouth.

There was much praise for the cat. The warrior asked the king, “This master cat looks quite ordinary; I didn’t see anything masterly about her.”

The king said, “A cat can tell from miles away where a mouse is. You don’t need to drop her at the spot. She will track the trail and find him. The whole being of a cat is in the search for the mouse. You need not leave her at the mouth of his hole; her entire soul is seeking the mouse. She is not engaged in any thought. To be a cat means the search for the mouse. As I said, her very being is the search for the mouse. If you leave her right at the hole, she’ll get flustered—and she may get frightened, even worried: ‘What kind of mouse is this that I’m being dropped right next to him?’ Let her loose outside the house. In a short while she will come in, sniff here and there, and she will arrive at the hole.”

Then the story goes further: all the village cats gathered to ask that cat, “We got scared, and our cat ran away. How did you kill him?”

She said, “What’s there to it? I am a cat, he is a mouse. ‘How I killed him’ is not a question. I am a cat, he is a mouse. He gets himself killed; I kill him. This is the very being of the two. There is no thinking involved—about how I killed him, what trick I used. The warrior lost precisely because he attacked after thinking. The other cat ran away because she fell into thought: ‘What is the matter?’ I am a cat; he is a mouse. He came out, and I caught him.”

Between these two there is no thought. Wherever thought comes in, the distance it creates is exactly how far apart we become. And when a person starts living in no-thought, then problems become for him just like the cat and the mouse: the problem appears—and he strikes it down. There is no thinking about it, no mulling over it that when you place a problem before him, he starts to think. Once he begins thinking, the thing is lost. The problem comes before him—and just as that cat said, “I am a cat”—and to be a cat means the search for the mouse, to catch the mouse.

Thought-free consciousness is consciousness; and consciousness means to seize the problem and resolve it. There is no question of thinking.

No-thought is absolute power. When a problem is faced and caught, it breaks—and in its breaking nothing needs to be done. It is as automatic as when a cat sees a mouse and the mouse is gone.

So let our whole focus slowly gather onto one thing, our entire personality into a single act. At that time, any act done at an intense speed is beneficial—and if it is of the body, so much the better. Walk fast; do not walk slowly, because if you walk slowly you cannot carry the focus. Walk so swiftly that the whole personality is transformed into walking. Only walking is happening. And now bring the entire focus to this walking. Do not think, “I am walking”; rather, what is this act of walking that is happening? Let the mind remain only on this. In a little while you will find—Jayantibhai is not here—only one thing is happening: a rapid movement. When only that movement remains in focus, all at once the mind becomes utterly silent. And that silence is of a very different kind. It has not come through your effort; it has come naturally. From this side the mind has withdrawn; it has come to that side. But most people fall into that very difficulty.

Yes.

Absolutely—we have developed it.

The mind is entirely a human invention. And because of it our personality has been sidetracked. In my understanding, animals and birds are more blissful than we are. Man has slipped from his center. The place from which his life should be moving is no longer his center; he has developed a new center, one very far from the center of life. It was needed—just as hands and feet are needed—and for certain reasons it developed. But slowly our whole life-energy got concentrated there; that was the mistake.

The brain is needed; thought is needed. But it is needed the way legs are needed. When I have to walk, the legs walk; when there is no need to walk, the legs are quiet. If a man is sitting and keeps moving his legs and says, “I have got into the habit of walking,” we will say he has gone mad—his whole life-energy has settled in his legs. Now the legs no longer serve the function of walking; now he can do nothing but walk—he sits and still keeps jerking his leg. A similar mistake has happened with the mind.

The mind should work when a problem is in front of you. When there is no problem, it should stop—just as legs stop when there is no need to walk. The center should always return to the navel. Come out, work through the mind, and then return. In the meantime the mind becomes fresh again, ready. And when needed it is summoned again—present, it runs, it fills the mind with energy—and then you withdraw and return.

For example, you ask a question, I speak to you; your question is over, I return. You go out of this room, I return; the work of the mind is finished, there is no need. But our mind has become diseased. Needed or not needed, it keeps on running. No one is there, no problem is there, no question is there—and it goes on and on. Then the result is: when a problem comes, the mind is so tired it cannot even grasp it; its power is lost. Like a man who has been walking for twenty-four hours: when the time to walk really comes, he says, “My legs hurt—I can’t walk; I’ve already walked enough.” He sits and still keeps moving his legs. When the time to run comes, he falls. And when it was time to sit, that fool was moving his legs!

We have brought the mind to the state that when it is not needed, you keep it running; and when it is needed, you find you no longer know what to do!

Energy should return again and again to the center. It should come back to the navel. When there is a need, it will be summoned. Just as when you need money you take it out of your pocket—you don’t go around tossing your cash in your hand; you put it back in your pocket. If a man starts walking along tossing his money in the air—that is how we are walking. Mind, mind—everything is boiling there.

And from childhood we do not develop the other centers, so trouble begins. The child is made to emphasize only one center. Schooling develops only one center. The child is barely born and only one effort begins. And yet there are so many alternatives within man. It’s as if a house had many doors but from childhood one is trained to go only through a single door—he doesn’t even know there are other exits; whenever there is a question of going out, it is always the same door. In our personality there are other centers too, but we have no habit of moving through them; we know only one center for connecting and acting—and it is a very artificial center.

It is needed—very much needed—but the less it runs, the more useful it is. Yet we have fallen into a trap. It is as if only the two hands of a man did all the work and slowly the strength of his entire personality kept concentrating into the two hands—he became nothing but two hands; he could do nothing except with his hands; the whole personality shrank and the hands became long and huge. He would look grotesque—and that is what we have become.

One instrument of the mind has become overdeveloped—too much functioning there—while all the other centers… This has had wide consequences, as it had to. The widest consequence is that we convert everything into words. So much so that even the essential processes of life we have converted into words.

For example, a man is eating; eating has nothing to do with the brain. The whole apparatus of eating is different. The brain has nothing to do with it except to inform you that you are hungry. With the brain, you rise and go to the kitchen or arrange food—that’s about it. The essential work is of the mouth, the tongue, the saliva, the throat, the stomach, the digestive organs. But because our habit is to convert everything into thought, we have converted food into thought.

When you are sitting you think about food: what should I eat, how much joy I will get—these are words. And when you sit to eat, the question of how absorbedly you should perform the act of eating does not even arise. Your brain is busy with other business, and you cannot eat fully; you do not chew as much as one should.

The more a man thinks while eating, the less he will chew, the faster he will gulp. The less he thinks, the more completely he will chew. An animal chews perfectly—without the slightest deficiency. It chews exactly as much as is needed. Only when it has chewed enough does it swallow; before that there is no question of gulping. Because it is not doing another job; it is only eating. So it never happens that a doctor says an animal has swallowed food insufficiently chewed. It never takes inside what has not been well chewed. The entire apparatus functions in perfect order. Only when it is completely chewed does it pass down the throat; only when it is fully mixed with saliva does it go down.

So the joy an animal gets from eating cannot come to us. Because the instrument that experiences the joy of eating is not functioning fully in us. We want to take joy by thinking—but thinking has nothing to do with eating. A man sits and thinks, “I will eat such delicious things, I will feel great pleasure.” But thinking has nothing to do with the taste of that food.

The same has happened with sex: man is thinking; he has converted sex into thought. He fantasizes—pornographic pictures in the mind. There is no relation with experience; it has nothing to do with it. So he is busy thinking. But at the time of the basic sexual act he finds he is not achieving anything, there is no joy, no meaning. A great difficulty. When he thinks, it feels juicy; when he enters the act, it is different—there is no juice. And when in the act he finds no juice, he tries to take pleasure by thinking even more, because the act did not give it—so he thinks and thinks. The more he thinks, the more he moves toward the act; and when he gets to the act, again he finds there is no juice.

Animals and birds are enjoying sex; man is not. Hence he invents other things. He hangs a nude picture in his house. He searches for substitutes. He looks at a nude, obscene picture. He reads an obscene story. He is seeking substitutes.

Just as he seeks substitutes in food. If one eats properly there is no need of chili or spices, because properly chewed and properly eaten food is so flavorful. But he is not eating properly, and he wants taste, so he brings in substitutes: “Add chili.” The chili forcibly stimulates the saliva—by force. What should have come through chewing is compelled by chili—its strong impact makes the mouth throw up saliva. When he eats without chili he says, “There is no taste,” because the saliva that would have come from chewing—had he chewed thirty or thirty-five times—would have come automatically, and flavor with it. But he has no such leisure, no concern; he is absorbed in thinking. So he enforces a compulsion. The same has happened with the sexual act: it is no longer blissful in itself. So he seeks substitutes and keeps on increasing them.

People think that where dirty films are made, dirty books are written, obscene posters and pictures are produced, obscene songs are sung—that society is very sexual. This is completely wrong. The increasing propaganda of all this is proof that the society has lost the basic act of sex. The juice that should have come from the sexual act is not coming; they are inventing substitutes.

Take a tribal living in the wild: put a nude picture of a woman in front of him and he will ask, “For what? What does it mean?” Because the basic sexual act has given him such taste that your nude picture has no meaning. It is as if you place a picture of food before one who has truly savored his meal—what joy will he get from a picture? A hungry man, show him the picture of fine food—he will look with great attention and say, “Lovely.” Do you understand my meaning?

If a man says, “It’s lovely, it looks so beautiful, so nice—I’ll hang it in my home,” the proof, the meaning is: the man is hungry. He has never enjoyed food. Otherwise he would say, “What is this for?”

Exactly the same with sex: if the act of sex is complete and full of joy, then nude pictures and obscene books—such a man will say, “What for? What’s the need?” They will appear so useless, so filled with stupidity, beyond measure.

But we understand the opposite. All over the world people think that the more nude pictures a society hangs, the more half-naked its women are paraded, the more sexual that society is. It is the reverse. The less sexual it is, the more basically impotent it becomes. On one hand it hangs nude pictures, writes obscene books, makes dirty films; on the other, it goes to the physician and asks, “I am experiencing impotence.”

Think about it: here he is doing all this—such a “fun” thing—and there he is going to the doctor: “What should I do? I feel completely impotent. With a woman I am impotent. Pictures and films give me great excitement. Dreams feel so good. In dreams I enjoy a woman. But when I go to a woman, I am utterly impotent.”

Across America today this is the situation for the young man, and for the young woman. The woman is frigid—she imagines; but when she goes to her lover she finds no juice. She is hard, tense; she is not relaxed—completely frigid, utterly impotent; nothing there. And it is increasing.

So my point is: if obscene books are being made, obscene pictures are being made, understand that the society is basically becoming impotent—not sexual. If a society is truly sexual, there is no need for these things.

Whenever a culture is potent, it relates to the reality of life: it loves women, not nude pictures. And when a society becomes impotent, it loves nude pictures. Or it loves women only when they resemble pictures, not when they resemble women. Its identity is with images—so that a woman appears like a picture, then she is pleasing. He sees a woman walking on the street and is very pleased, but the wife at home gives no joy. The woman on the street is a picture; the wife at home is a living woman—he finds no meaning in her.

The more I have contemplated this, the more astonished I have been—astonished that America, or a country like it, has in some fundamental way arrived at impotence.

Let it be clear in our memory: whatever we begin to search for in literature, in culture, in art, in the external world—that is exactly what we have stopped living in the real world. If we could live it in reality, we would never fall into its imaginary discussion.

If a man can truly enjoy a woman, he will never go to look at dirty pictures, dirty films, or read dirty books. They will appear so shadowy, so unsubstantial, that they will have no meaning. One who has known the real woman will not be ready to hang a nude picture of a woman in his house. He will say, “What madness. It is so nothing, so meaningless.”

A man hangs a nude picture at home and reads a dirty book, gawking at photos—this is proof that he has become incapable of knowing the real woman; or he has lost the art of knowing the real woman; or he no longer has the kind of living personality that is required to be acquainted with the real woman. Therefore he seeks substitutes.

Whenever a society ceases to be alive, it will seek the satisfaction of life in non-living forms. And this will happen in every direction.

If clothes grow very fine in a society and the search for ever more beautiful garments intensifies, the basic meaning is that the body is becoming ugly, unhealthy. When the body is healthy, when it has its own glow, its own movement and vitality, you don’t bother about clothes. Concern for clothes is a substitute. When the body becomes wretched and bony, when seeing oneself bare creates fear, we hide it in fine clothing. We want the clothes to do what a healthy, shining skin would have done. When faces become sad, pale, lifeless, we smear powder and rouge upon them. We seek to compensate for the glow which, if it were on the face, would make it beautiful—but it is not there. Then we buy color in the market and plaster it on the face. When someone applies color bought in the market, what does it signify? It signifies that the natural glow that should have been on the face has been lost. And the same is true in every sphere.

Therefore my fundamental idea is this: if people in a society become overly eager to wear fine clothes, don’t abuse them; fine clothing in itself is not the point. Worry rather that the body is growing sick; hence the excitement about fine clothing. Otherwise, a healthy body—like that of a wild animal—dress it up and it will look ridiculous. And our man, strip him naked, and he will look ridiculous.

A thousand years back, or even today among those truly living in a wild state, the body has its own glow, its own movement, its own vitality. To watch his movement is a joy—his rising, sitting, walking. We have lost that whole body. Now we need some supplement to cover it from above and give it an appearance.

This entire sickness of society arises from a single fact: that we are not where, in an essential sense, we ought to be—so we keep seeking compensations and substitutes in thought. That must break.

…If anything is causing the greatest harm to the human race today, it is this preoccupation with the socialist outlook. And the greatest harm can come from that which most directly appeals to us; what looks obviously right can harm us the most. Socialism, on the surface, looks so right that no reason appears why it should not be right. And capitalism, having taken such forms in the world, seems something to be gotten rid of as quickly as possible.

But socialism is the condensed form of capitalism; it does not end capitalism’s diseases, it concentrates them. No one sees this clearly. For socialism is not the enemy of capitalism; it is its by-product—born of it. And all the diseases of capitalism are in it, with all of capitalism’s virtues left out. Because with capitalism there is freedom, human dignity, the meaning of individuality—these will all be lost. And the dignity and individuality of a person exist only so long as each individual has the power of capital. The day the individual has no power over capital, he has no power at all. His strength is only as much as his strength over capital…

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…will not survive. Because a person’s individuality is made by being connected with certain things. And the most valuable thing in forming that individuality is that he has something of his own. Individuality is not an abstract thing. This house—if it is my own—then something is added to my individuality. These clothes I am wearing—if they are my own; this statement I am making—if it is my own—then it gives strength to my individuality. If it is borrowed, if it belongs to someone else, if it is taken from somewhere, my individuality becomes that much more impotent.

So they understood this very well—very clearly: if a man’s right to personal property is taken away, we have taken away almost everything he had. If everything is amassed in the hands of the Center or the State, then the State becomes the owner not only of your body but of your soul as well—of your mind, your intellect, your thought. Move an inch away from it and, except death, nothing remains for you; you cannot even stand—you are finished.

In our country there was the joint family; wherever the joint family existed, to that extent no single person could have dignity within it—it was impossible. A hundred people lived in a house, and one person held the ownership of all the property; the rest could live only by looking to him. A slight opposition to him and their very existence was gone. Across the land the panchayat, the village, were highly valued. No single individual had any status. If a person deviated a little from society, sect, or order, his hookah and water were cut off. He could not even live; living became impossible. He could not draw water from the well; he could not join the feast. As personal property increased, so the personal dignity of each individual arose.

The dignity of women has not arisen to this day precisely because women have had no personal property. The dignity of women can never be established until they too have personal property of their own. All over the world woman is a slave and has been—and she will remain so until she has status and personal property independent of her husband.

In the West, the freedom of women began when women began to have personal property. When she had her own wealth standing behind her, a personality started to form.

If we take wealth away from a human being, take away his dream, and hand everything over to the state, we depersonalize everyone; then we remain a crowd and cease to be human. And it is difficult even to imagine how many ill effects this will have on human beings. The effects on culture are equally hard to imagine. And the great irony is that whoever comes to dominate such a State becomes powerful in direct proportion to how much the individual is stripped of selfhood. Here the strength of each person is snatched away, and all that power is gathered into the hands of a few. Then they can do anything.

Stalin killed anywhere from five to eight million people in Russia. Mao will prove to be an even greater butcher, the day the figures are clear. As long as Stalin’s figures were not clear, there was no question. And the killing proceeded in such a way that murder became the rule, not the exception. There was no hindrance in killing any kind of person. No hindrance in wiping them out. Over there Mao is very forcefully arranging that whole system.

And the arguments that keep winning behind such an arrangement seem to appeal to us completely. Because the arguments are not about this relationship; they belong to an entirely different context. There is poverty; the poverty of the poor should end—no one can say it should not end. There are the rich; they have amassed too much wealth—no one can say that so much wealth should be concentrated in a few hands. There is exploitation; there should be no exploitation—for this, no one will deny it; this must end.

So all the arguments of socialism are meaningful, and all the results are disastrous. And this has placed man in such a tangle, because each argument is meaningful. And there is no way to stand on each argument and fight it. The arguments are all right.