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‌CHAPTER 26

29 December 1977 pm in Chuang Tzu Auditorium

[Mother and six-year-old son are at darshan. The mother says: I worry about him and since he’s been at the ashram he’s doing the sorts of things I don’t like, things be didn’t do before like fighting and begging and lying... ]

Don’t worry, mm? – he will not need any Encounter groups later on! It is perfectly good. This is the time when they should fight and scream and say things and be true; that will create the authenticity. These things will disappear; if they are repressed they remain. They only remain because they are repressed, otherwise when their season is past they will go.

Everybody looks childish because the childhood has not been allowed. So even a man of forty or fifty or even seventy can go into a tantrum. Just a small thing upsets him and he can become very very juvenile. Just a small shock, some sadness, and he is not capable of bearing it. He has not been allowed to live his childhood; that unlived childhood goes on lingering.

Remember always, as a basic rule: we are finished with that which is lived; that which remains unlived goes on persisting, it wants to be lived. There are things which are good in childhood. The same things will be very very dangerous when the childhood is gone. For example, if he screams it can be understood, if he shouts it can be understood, but when he is forty or fifty and he shouts and screams it becomes difficult to understand; then he himself feels embarrassed.

That’s why so many groups are growing in the world. They are needed, particularly because of Christianity. Christianity has been teaching repression, two thousand years of repression and ideas of Christian dignity. So nobody is allowed... Those things remain deep inside you, they wait: if some opportunity arises they will explode and if no opportunity arises, the person goes on seeking some opportunity. He may become drunk and then he will do things. He is forgiven; people say he is drunk. He can also say ‘I was drunk, sorry.’

People go to war, people go to see murder films. What is the joy in seeing a murder film? What is the joy in reading a detective story? It is a vicarious joy: that which you cannot do, you are doing through others, vicariously. Mm? you become identified with the murderer or the murdered, and you are thrilled. Why should people go to see a bullfight? Why should people be fighting with animals and go hunting? That seems to be so cruel and unnecessary. But there is a need; something wants to be expressed, some way has to be found.

Have you not seen a football match? – how a fight breaks out, there is a riot. The two parties and the friends of both the parties start fighting. Somebody is murdered, killed, and there is chaos. Just in a football match! It is so stupid... but it goes on. See a football match and people are so excited; that is their childhood unlived.

Allow him, don’t be afraid.… Your fear comes from your repression; it is not because of him. Your fear comes from your repression. You have been repressed; you have never been allowed these things and he is being allowed. You must be feeling a little jealous deep down and the fear is, if you have not been allowed, how can you allow him? something may go wrong. You have been taught that these things are wrong.

Just allow him. with this he will grow and he will grow beyond childhood. When he become mature, he will be really mature. He will never need anything like Encounter, Gestalt, Psychodrama. He has lived all that himself, and when you can really live then it goes very deep. A group is a created, artificial situation; it is only a substitute, a poor substitute.

Don’t be worried – let him enjoy. Good!

Deva means god. Gayyum means self-subsisting, self-evident. God simply means that which needs no proof. Everything else needs proof but God is self-evident, because God is the substratum. Everything needs some support but the ultimate cannot have any support. It has to be its own support. And by God I don’t mean a person. By God I mean the totality of existence. Gayyum is a Sufi word.…

[A teacher, who came for a short visit, is unsure whether to return to her job in the West or stay here for ever.]

Just do a few groups and enjoy these days. This is how the mind goes on destroying all possibilities; it goes on sacrificing today for tomorrow. When tomorrow comes, we will see. There is no need to decide right now, mm? – you can have twenty-four hours to decide. Start deciding on the night of the twenty-fourth. Up to the twenty-fourth be completely unworried; that thing can be decided easily. Live these few days as totally as possible.

Out of that totality will come the decision. Decision is good when it comes out of life; it is bad when it comes only out of the head. And when it comes only out of the head it is never decisive; it is always a conflict. The alternatives remain open and the mind goes on and on, from this side to that. That’s how the mind creates conflict. The body is always herenow, the mind is never herenow; that is the whole conflict. You breathe here and now, you cannot breathe tomorrow and you cannot breathe yesterday. You have to breathe this moment, but you can think about tomorrow and you can think about yesterday. So the body remains in the present and the mind goes on hopping between past

and future, and there is a split between body and mind. The body is in the present and the mind is never in the present; they never meet, they never come across each other. And because of that split, anxiety, anguish and tension arise; one is tense – this tension is worry. The mind has to be brought to the present, because there is no other time.

So whenever you start thinking of the future and the past too much, just relax and pay attention to your breathing. Every day at least for one hour, just sit in a chair, relaxed, make yourself comfortable, and close your eyes. Just start looking at the breathing. Don’t change it; just look, watch. By watching it, it will become slower and slower and slower. If ordinarily you take eight breaths in one minute, you will start taking six, five, four, three, two.…

Within two, three weeks you will be taking one breath per minute. When you are taking one breath per minute the mind is coming closer to the body. Out of this small meditation a time comes when for minutes the breathing stops. Three, four minutes pass and then one breath. Then you are in tune with the body and you will know for the first time what the present is. Otherwise it is just a word; the mind has never known it, the mind has never experienced it. It knows past, it knows future, so when you say present, the mind understands something in between past and future, in between something, but the mind has no experience of it.

So for these twenty-four days, for one hour every day, relax into breathing and let the breathing go.… It goes automatically. When you walk it goes automatically. Slowly, slowly there will be gaps and those gaps will give you the first experience of the present. Out of these twenty-four, twenty-five days, suddenly the decision will arise, whatsoever it is; if the decision says go back then go back... and you will be happy in going. If the decision says stay you will be happy in staying.

It is not material what decision comes up. The most important thing is from where it comes, not what it is, but from where. If it comes from the head it will create misery. You can decide to go, and the head, half of the head, will go on saying, ‘You are doing nonsense. You should have stayed.’ You can decide to stay and half of the mind will say, ‘What are you doing? You are losing your job, you will suffer later on you will get into trouble. It is better to go.’

But if some decision arises from your totality then you never never repent for a single moment. A man who lives in the present knows nothing of repentance; he never looks back, he never changes his past and his memories and he never arranges his future.

Decision from the head is an ugly thing. The very word ‘decision’ means ‘de-cision’; it cuts you off. It is not a good word. It simply means it cuts you off from reality. The head continuously cuts you off from reality.

Right now put it aside and do a few groups. If the decision comes to stay then I will give you a few more, mm? If the decision comes to go, that’s perfectly good; I will say good-bye! Good!

[Someone who is leaving says: I love the love that you give to us so much, and I feel the love I have is borrowed from you; I want to develop it myself... but I don’t know howI’m so greedy. I

discovered in Poona that I’m so selfish and so ugly and.]

You have been discovering great things! No need to make any distinction between me and you... and don’t feel that the love is borrowed. It is yourssincerely yours! (laughter)

Love is simply love; it is no one’s. When it is somebody’s, it is not real love; it has the bitterness of the ego in it. Love is simply love. How can it be mine and yours? Your ego is creating the problem, that it should be yours, that you should be in possession. But if you remain there it will never happen. That ‘I’ has to be dropped, then you will not see any distinction. Then mine and yours disappear; only love is. There is no ‘I’, no ‘thou’; only love is!

Something beautiful is happening to you but the ego wants to destroy it. Don’t be a victim of the ego; just put the ego aside. Don’t think in terms of ‘mine’. Just forget all about that ‘me’ and ‘my’ and suddenly you will see that love is like the sky: it is nobody’s, although countries claim that this is their sky! And you can also claim that the sky above your house is yours, the sky in your courtyard is yours, but whose...? The sky cannot be anybody’s. We are all in it and it is in all of us. It is nobody’s, nobody can claim. So is the case with love.

Just forget that idea. And the second thing.…

Remember the ego always wants to have something through which to condemn you. It lives out of condemnation, because it needs conflict. If there is no conflict the ego cannot survive. Conflict is its food, nourishment, so it has to fight with something or other – either fight with somebody or fight with yourself; call yourself ugly and start fighting. When you call yourself ugly the fight has started. Then the ego is happy; there is war going on between you and you. It has divided you into two.

Who is this who says you are ugly? It must be something separate from you. You have divided yourself into two parts; one has become your ‘I’, the super-ego, and the other has become the condemned part, the ugliness. Now you are two and you can fight.

Never condemn, and if you don’t condemn, if the acceptance is total, whatsoever you are, whosoever you are, this is the way you are. Relax into it, and in that very relaxation the ego dies because it cannot get any nourishment any more.

The ego has to be dropped.That is the only barrier, the only problem, the only disease. But you

are moving on the right track; just be more alert. The closer you come to truth, the more alertness will be needed because the mind will try to distract you in all ways, to take you away.

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