Chapter: 12
Balancing the Rational and the Irrational

Osho,
What factors do you attribute the Western youth revolt to, and why are so many young people from the West now becoming interested in Eastern religion and philosophy?
Do you have any particular message for the West?

Mind is a very contradictory system. Mind works in polar opposites. But our thinking, our logical way of thinking, always chooses one part of it and denies the other. So logic proceeds in a non-contradictory way, and mind works in a contradictory way. Life works in opposites, and logic works in a linear way – not in opposites.

For example, you have both possibilities in the mind: to be angry to the extreme and to be silent also, to the extreme. If you can be angry it doesn’t mean that you cannot be non-angry to the other extreme also. If you can be disturbed, it doesn’t mean that you cannot be silent. The mind goes on working in both ways. If you can be loving, you can be full of hatred also. One doesn’t deny the other.

But in logic, in thinking, if we think that someone is loving, then we begin to think that he cannot be capable of hate. And we even begin to think about ourselves in this way also. This is a part. So if you go on loving then you begin to think that “I am incapable of hate,” and then hate goes on accumulating inside. Then when you reach to a peak of your loving attitude, everything shatters and you fall down into hate. The individual mind not only works like that, the society’s mind also.

For example, the West has come to the peak of rational thinking. Now the irrational part of the mind will take revenge. The irrational part of the mind has been denied expression, so for these last fifty years that irrational part of the mind has been taking revenge in so many ways: through art, through poetry, through drama, through literature, through philosophy, and now through living. So the revolt of the youth is really a revolt of the irrational part of the mind against too much rationality.

The East can be helpful because the East has lived the other part, the irrational. And the East has also reached to its peak. So now the Eastern youth is more interested in communism than in religion; the Eastern youth is more interested in rational thinking than in irrational living.

So as I see it, now the whole pendulum will turn. The East will become the West, and the West will become the East.

Whenever you reach to a peak of any part of the mind, you have to swing back. That’s how history works. So in the West, now meditation will be more meaningful. Poetry will gain a new hold and science is bound to decline. So the modern youth will be anti-technological and ultimately anti-scientific. And the modern youth of the West will be anti-culture also, and anti-civilization. This is just a natural working.

And we have not yet been able to develop a personality which is comprehensive of both parts – neither in the East nor in the West. We have always chosen parts – part of the mind – and then we go and develop in that part and the other remains hungry, starved. And then there is bound to be rebellion and the whole thing will shatter, and the mind will move to the other side. This has been the whole working of our history, in both the West and in the East; this has been the dialectics.

So now, for the West, meditation is more meaningful than thinking because meditation means no-thinking. So Zen will be more appealing, Buddhism will be more appealing, yoga will be more appealing. These are all irrational attitudes toward life. They don’t emphasize conceptualizations, they don’t emphasize theories, theologies. They emphasize a zest to go deep into existence, not into thinking. So I think that the more technology develops and the more the hold of the mind begins to become a grip on the neck, the more the other will be coming.

So in the West, the revolt of the younger generation is very meaningful and very significant – very significant. It is a historical point of a change, a change of the whole consciousness. Now the West cannot continue as it has been. It cannot continue; a point of deep crisis has come, a cul-de-sac. You cannot go further. You have to move in some other direction because now for the first time a society is affluent.

Individuals have been affluent, never a whole society. Now a whole society is affluent. And whenever a society becomes affluent, riches lose meaning. Riches are only meaningful in a poor society. Affluence is significant in a poor society. Even there, whenever someone becomes really affluent he is bored. A Buddha is bored because of his family affluence; he is just bored. The more sensitive a person is, the sooner he becomes bored. A Buddha is bored; he leaves everything.

Now Buddha appeals to the West and the whole attitude of the modern youth is just of empty affluence. They are leaving, and they will go on leaving unless the whole society becomes poor. They will go on leaving unless the whole society becomes poor, because this leaving movement, this renunciation, can exist only in an affluent society. But if it goes to the extreme, then the society declines. Then technology will have no progress, and if this goes on, then in the West you will create the East.

And in the East now they are turning to the other extreme; they will create a West. Really, if we can read the future, then the East is just turning into the West. It is difficult to see the future, but the footsteps can be heard – and the West is turning toward the East. But the disease remains the same because as I see it, the disease is the bifurcation of the mind.

We have never allowed the human mind to flower in its totality. We have always chosen one part against the other, at the cost of the other. This has been the whole misery. We have not accepted the totality of the human mind.

So I am neither Eastern nor Western. I am against both. I am against both because I say that these are partial attitudes – so sometimes one may appeal to you but the appeal is partial and it cannot, cannot help to grow a totality, a total mind.

So to me neither the East is the choice nor the West; they both have failed. The East has failed by choosing religion and the West is failing by choosing science. Unless we choose both, now there is no going out of this vicious circle.

We can change, we can change – and this is strange. If you talk about Buddhism in Japan no young one is ready to listen. They are after technology and the Western youth is after Zen Buddhism. In India, the newer generation is not in the least interested in religion. They are more interested in economics, more interested in politics, more interested in technology, engineering, science – everything except religion.

And the Western youth is not really interested in technology now. They are not interested in science, in progress. They are interested in living here and now. They are not interested in future utopias – socialism, etcetera – not interested. The avante-garde of the youth in the West is interested in religion; the avante-garde of the youth in the East is interested in science. And this is just changing the burden – and then again the same fallacy.

My interest is with the total mind. I am interested in the total mind – how a human mind is possible; a mind which is neither Eastern nor Western, but just human – a global mind. And this is a very difficult problem, because it is very easy to live with one part of the mind. You can live neatly, cleanly, mathematically. If you want to live with both parts of the mind, then you have to live a very inconsistent life. Inconsistent, of course, superficially, but on a deeper layer you have a consistency, a spiritual harmony.

And as I see it, a man remains poor spiritually unless he has the opposite polarity also. Then you become rich.

For example, if you are simply an artist and you have no scientific mind, your art is bound to be poor. It cannot have the richness, because the richness comes only with the opposite in it. Just like right now we have only males in this room – then the room lacks something. The moment females enter, the room becomes spiritually rich. Now the polar opposites are here, and the polar opposites make a greater whole.

So to me the mind must be able to move in a liquidity. It must not be fixed anywhere. A mathematician can be a rich mathematician if he can move into the worlds of art. These worlds are quite non-mathematical, even anti-mathematical. But if the mathematician can move, if his mind has a freedom to move from fixations, then back to mathematics, he will be a richer mathematician – because through the opposite, a cross-breeding happens, and through the opposite you begin to look at things in so many different dimensions, that the total perspective is bound to be richer.

So to me a person must have a religious mind with a scientific training, or a scientific mind with religious discipline. And I see no inherent impossibility in it. Rather on the contrary, I think the mind will become more alive if you can move. So to me, meditation means a deep movement: a freedom from fixations.

For example, if I become too logical then I become incapable of understanding poetry. Logic becomes a fixation. Then when I read poetry, or listen to poetry, the fixation begins to work. Then the poetry looks absurd, not because it is, but because I have a fixation with logic. And from the viewpoint of logic, poetry is absurd. If I become fixated with poetry then logic becomes just a utilitarian thing, with no depth in it, and I become closed.

And this has been happening all through history – every period, every nation, every part of the world, every culture and society has always chosen a part and emphasized the part, and created a personality around it. The personality has been poor, lacking much. Neither the East has been rich spiritually nor the West. They cannot be. Richness comes through the opposite – an inner dialogue, an inner dialectics. So to me, neither the East is worth choosing nor the West. To me, a different mind, an altogether different quality of mind, has to be chosen – and that quality means one has to be at ease with oneself, without choosing.

For example a tree grows: we can choose; we can cut down all the branches and we can allow the tree to grow in only one direction, one branch growing. It will be a poor tree, very poor and very ugly, and ultimately the tree is bound to be in very deep difficulty because this branch cannot grow. It can grow only in a deep relationship with other branches. It can grow when in a family of branches. And a moment is bound to come when this branch will feel in a cul-de-sac. It cannot grow anymore. A tree, to be really rich and growing, must grow in all the directions, opposite directions. It must grow toward every direction. Only then will this tree be rich, strong, multidimensional.

To me, the human spirit must grow like a tree, in all directions. And the old conception must be dropped that we cannot grow in opposite directions. We can grow; really we can only grow when we grow in opposite directions. But up until now this has not been the case. Up until now we have tried a specialization in the human mind also – one should grow in one specific direction. Then something ugly happens. One grows in a specific direction, but then he lacks everything. He becomes one branch, not a tree, not a tree. And this branch is also bound to be poor, bound to be poor.

Not only have we been cutting the branches of the mind, we have been cutting the roots. We allow only one root and one branch, so a very starved human being has come up all over the world. In the East, in the West, everywhere – very starved. And the East is always attracted toward the West and the West is attracted toward the East, because I am attracted to something which I lack, you are attracted to something which you lack. If you lack religion, whenever you feel starved you are attracted to the East. When the East begins to feel poor, poverty-stricken, diseased, ill, the East begins to be attracted toward the West, because of science, technology, affluence, medicine, everything.

Because of the body, the East begins to be attracted toward the West. And because of the spirit, the West begins to be attracted toward the East. But we can change positions and the disease remains the same. So it is not a question now of changing positions. It is now a question of changing the whole perspective. It is not a question of changing the East to the West. Now it is a question of changing the whole past into a new future.

The whole past has been a fragmentary choice of human possibilities. We have never accepted the whole being. Somewhere sex is not accepted; then we deny something. Somewhere, the world is not accepted; then we deny something. Somewhere, emotion is not accepted; then we deny something.

This denial has been the problem and we have never been so strong that we can accept everything that is human with no condemnation, and allow the human being to grow in every direction. And the more you grow in opposite directions, the greater will be the growth, and the richness, and the inner affluence. And abundance is bound to result.

So I have nothing specifically to say to the West or to the East. Whatsoever I have to say is to the human mind as such, to change the total perspective. The change is from the past to the future – not from this present to that present. And unless we see this it is difficult to have a new man, and the problem is how to have a new man.

The problem is colossal, arduous, because this fragmentation has become so deep-rooted. I cannot accept my anger, I cannot accept my sex, I cannot accept my body, I cannot accept myself in my totality. Somewhere something has to be denied and thrown away. Something is evil, something is bad, something is a sin. So I go on cutting branches and ultimately I am not a tree, not an alive thing, just dead, because this fear of growing into branches which I have denied…they can again come up. So I become fearful; everywhere suppressed and fearful. Then, a disease sets in: a sadness, a death.

So we go on living partial lives which are more near to death than to life. This acceptability of the total human potentiality, and bringing everything in it to its peak without feeling any inconsistency, any contradiction – really, if I cannot be authentically angry, I cannot be loving. But this has not been the attitude up to now. We have been thinking that a person is more loving if he is incapable of anger.

 

Supposing the tree is growing next to a wall. The wall is there. The branches cannot grow in all directions because a wall is there. The wall may be an existing society, may be an existing condition. How can that tree grow?

Yes I understand. There are many walls. But those walls have been created by the trees, by no one else. There are walls, but those walls have not been imposed by someone else; by the trees, and the trees have been supporting those walls. So it is through their cooperation that the walls exist. The moment the trees are ready not to support them, not to build them, the walls will drop, they will shatter, they will just evaporate.

These walls that exist around the human race are our creation and we have created them because of some conceptions, some philosophic attitudes. We have created these walls because of the attitudes of our human mind. For example, I must teach my child not to be angry because of a conception that if he becomes angry or if he goes on feeling more anger, he will not be a loving child. So I create walls that he should not be angry – must suppress his anger – without knowing that if he suppresses his anger, simultaneously the capacity to love is destroyed. They are not opposite. They are two branches. If you cut one, the other becomes poor, because the same sap runs through all these branches.

So if I am to train my child for a better life, I will train him to be authentically angry. I will not say, “Don’t be angry.” I will say, “When you are angry, then be authentically and totally angry, and don’t feel any guilt about anger.” Rather than to say to him don’t be angry, I will train him to be rightly angry. And whenever the moment is right, be angry authentically. Don’t be angry when the wrong moment is there. And in the same way I will tell him when the right moment for love is there, be authentically in love; but when the wrong moment is there don’t be in love.

So the question is not what to choose between anger and love. The question is between right and wrong. The anger must be given an expression. And a child is beautiful when really angry. An ardor comes to him, a beauty, a sudden flush of energy and life. If you kill the anger, then you are killing life. Then he will be just impotent his whole life. He cannot move, alive; he will move as a dead corpse.

So we say – we go on creating concepts which create the walls. We go on giving notions, ideologies which create the walls. These walls are not imposed on us; they are our creations. And the moment we become aware, the walls will disappear. They exist because of us.

 

But supposing that the tree, or the person is handicapped because of biological conditions? He cannot change, not because he doesn’t want, but he can’t. Or for instance, a mad person. How would you see the position of such a person?

Really, these are exceptions; they are not problems. The problem is the non-exceptional common man. These exceptions are not problems. We can treat them. When the whole society is alive, when the whole society is alive we can treat them. We can analyze them. We can help them; they have to be helped. They cannot do anything by themselves, but even in their helplessness our society has a part. That part must be taken out.

For example, a son of a prostitute can never feel really free because of your society: the moral conception. He goes on feeling a deep guilt for which he is not responsible at all. Your society is responsible, because it was not his responsibility that his mother was a prostitute. How can he help it? What can he do about it? But your society will go on behaving with the boy in a different way. His mother being a prostitute is not his responsibility at all. But unless we have a different attitude about sex, this prostitute guilt is bound to be there; it will continue, it will continue.

This prostitution becomes a guilt phenomenon because we have made marriage something sacred. If marriage is something sacred, then prostitution is bound to be something sinful. Unless marriage is brought down from the pedestal of sacredness, you cannot do anything. That is only a part, a part. And prostitution has existed because of your marriage system, and it will continue unless the whole marriage system changes. So prostitution is just a part of the whole marriage system.

Really, as the human mind is, a permanent relationship is unnatural. And a forced permanent relationship is really criminal. If I want to live with someone I can continue, but that must be my choice. That must not be the law. If it is a law, if it is forced on me, that if today I love someone – it is not in nature; there is no intrinsic necessity that the love will be there tomorrow also. It has no intrinsic naturalness about it. It may be; it may not be. And when you force it to be there, the more it becomes impossible. It will not be. Then prostitution comes from the back door. Unless we have a society with a free relationship, we cannot drop prostitution.

And if it continues, then you feel good because you are in a permanent relationship, and you have to feel good otherwise it may be difficult to be in a permanent relationship; your ego must be fulfilled. To fulfill your ego – that you are a faithful husband or a faithful wife – the prostitute has to be condemned. Then the son has to be condemned, and then it becomes a disease.

But these are exceptional cases – that someone is medically, physically wrong. Then we have to help him, then we have to treat him medically, psychologically. But the whole society is not like that. Ninety-nine percent of society is our creation; the one percent is the exception, that is not the problem at all. And it may dissolve if this ninety-nine percent of society changes – the one percent will be affected by it.

We cannot yet decide to what extent your physiology is determined by your mind. We are yet not certain and the more we know, the more we become uncertain. Many diseases in the body may be just because of a wrong mind. With a wrong mind you become more vulnerable, with a wrong mind you become more receptive to diseases. And we cannot know unless we have a free mind.

Really, so many diseases are really a human phenomenon. In animals they are not. Animals are more healthy; less diseased, less ugly. There is no reason why man cannot be more alive, more beautiful, more healthy. This training for ten thousand years, a wrong training of the mind, may be the root cause, may be the root cause.

And when you are in the pattern, you cannot even conceive, you cannot even conceive… Many physical diseases are just because of a wrong mind, of a crippled mind, and we are crippling everybody’s mind. And now psychologists say that it becomes difficult if in the beginning – the first seven years of the child are the most significant. If you cripple the mind, then it becomes more and more difficult to change it. But we go on crippling, we go on killing and cutting, and with a very good conscience. And when you do something wrong with a very good conscience, then it is a problem, then it is a problem.

The more psychology penetrates deep into the roots of the mind, the more parents seem to be criminals, but unknowingly; the more teachers and the whole educational system seem to be a criminality, but unknowingly – because they have also suffered from older generations and they are only passing on the diseases.

But now a possibility opens because for the first time in many parts of the world, particularly in the West, man is free from day-to-day needs; man is free from a long millennia of poverty. So now we can think, we can plan, we can change. We can experiment with the new possibilities of the mind. It was impossible in the past, impossible, because bodily needs were so heavy. There was no possibility, there was no possibility. But now the possibility opens and we live on a threshold of a very deep revolution – such a revolution as human history has never encountered. A revolution in consciousness is possible now. With more facilities to know and understand, we can change, we can change. It will take time, much time will be needed, but the possibility is open. And if we dare and if we have some courage, it can become an actuality.

Now the whole humanity is at stake. Either we will go back to the past or to a new future. So to me it is not a question of a third world war, not a question of communism and capitalism. Those problems are now just out of date. A new crisis, a very vital crisis is nearby. Either we will have to decide to have a new consciousness, and to work for it, or we have to fall back, regress to the old patterns.

This is also possible, that we may regress, because whenever – this is a tendency with the mind – whenever you face something which you cannot face, you regress. If we are here and suddenly the house is on fire, we begin to behave like children. We regress. We cannot do anything. We cannot do anything so we regress. We begin to behave like children. That may be dangerous because when the house is on fire you need more maturity. You need more understanding. You need to behave in a more aware way. But when the house is on fire you will regress to the age of five and you will begin to run in such a way that you may create more danger for yourself than the fire itself can create.

So that is also a very sad possibility, that because of facing such a new phenomenon – to create a new human being – we may regress, we may regress. And there are prophets who go on preaching regression. They always want the past, to go back: “It was better.” Always, there are prophets who are the prophets of the dead past, who’ll always say, “The golden age has been in the past so go back. Go back!” But to me that is suicidal. We must go toward the future, howsoever hazardous, and howsoever difficult and arduous.

Life must go toward the future. We must find new modes of existence. And I am hopeful that this can happen. And the West has to be the ground for its happening, not the East, because the East is just the West three hundred years back. So the East will have to follow the West – so many earthly problems so heavy upon it, but the West is free in a way.

So when hippies come to me, I am always aware that they can do both. They can just regress. In a way they are regressing, they are behaving like children, they are falling back. That is not good. They are falling back; they are behaving like primitives. That’s not good. The revolt is good, but they must behave like new men, not like primitives. And they must create possibilities for a new consciousness.

But they are just drugging themselves, and through drugs the primitive mind has always been enchanted. The primitive mind has always been magically hypnotized by drugs. So if the new generation in the West begins to behave like primitives, it is not then rebellion, but a reaction and a regression. They must behave like the new humanity. And they must proceed toward a new consciousness which is total, global – an accepting of all the inconsistent potentialities within the being.

Really, that is the difference between animals and man. Animals have fixed potentialities, consistent. That is what they call their instincts. Man has no fixed potentiality – infinite possibilities, only possibilities. He can grow in many directions simultaneously. This growth must be helped, and we must create centers where this growth is helped with everything.

The mind must be trained in a logical, rational way. It must be trained simultaneously in the irrational, non-rational meditation. Their reason must be trained, and at the same time their emotion also. The reason must not be trained now at the cost of emotion. Their doubt must be healthy, but their faith also. This is the problem.

It is easy to be faithful without any doubt. It is easy. To be doubtful without any faith – it is easy, it is simple. But these simple formulas will not do now. We must create a healthy doubt, a persistent doubt, a skeptical mind simultaneously with a trusting, with a faithful mind. And the inner being must be capable of moving from doubt to faith. If something is – for example with any objective research – then the new man must be doubtful, skeptical, questioning, enquiring. But there is also another dimension of existence where trust gives the clues, not doubt. But both are needed.

So this is the problem: how to create the contradictory polarities simultaneously. And I am interested in this. So I go on creating doubt and go on creating faith. And I don’t see any inner inconsistency in it, because to me the movement is meaningful, the movement from one pole to another.

But the more we are fixed to one pole, the more the movement becomes difficult. If we emphasize – for example, in the East we have never emphasized too much activity, so lethargy has been a part of the Eastern consciousness. So the East could sleep very well. Even when the East was not sleeping, it was sleepy. But in the West you have cultivated activity. Now the mind has become fixed. You cannot sleep, so sleep has to be drugged, forced, through tranquillizers or through something else. But still that forced sleep cannot give you sleep. It is not natural. It is just chemical and superficial, and deep down the turmoil goes on. So sleep has become just a nightmare: a chemical force surfaces there, but on the inside the split goes on. Why? You have emphasized activity too much so the mind becomes fixed. So when you go to sleep, it needs to move from activity to inactivity. It cannot move, becomes fixed. So you go on turning in your bed, but the mind cannot move from activities. It goes on being active.

And the opposite has happened in the East. The East can sleep very well but cannot be active. In the morning the Eastern mind also feels lethargic, sleepy. For centuries they have been sleeping well but not doing anything else. Now the West has done much, but now you have created an unease, a dis-ease. And because of that dis-ease, everything is useless, whatsoever you have done is useless. You cannot even sleep honestly!

So this is why my emphasis is always to train the mind for activity, at the same time for inactivity, and thirdly, the most significant, trained for the movement – so you can move and the mind can be trained. You can move, I can move, from any activity, in a single moment to inactivity. I can move: I can talk with you for hours and then I can move in a single moment to an inner, deep silence with no talk, going in. Unless this is created you have stunted growth.

So to me the future has to be a deep harmony between inner polarities. Unless this movement is created human query is exhausted. You cannot go on. You cannot go further. The East is exhausted; the West is exhausted. You can change but then, within two centuries, again the same problem comes on. Then we begin to move in a circle.

 

I am fascinated by your dialectic view of human history but I don’t quite follow when you see that complete dichotomy between rational thought and irrational thought.
Look at traditional society. In both the West and the East the normal picture would be that there were plenty of scientists and people who were, in their professional work, active in the rational pursuit of thinking, who at the same time were deeply religious people and active in this irrational aspect, operating on two different planes and not necessarily harming one another. And there could be, and sometimes was, the kind of harmony or interplay between the two sides which you have talked about so eloquently.
I don’t think it’s really the rational thinking which got us into trouble. I think it’s the application of the result of our rational thinking. It’s the goal of our society, the image of “progress,” which is very much what the young people do not accept anymore, and I think they may be right there. But I would not equate that with rational thinking. I would rather think that there is a mistake somewhere along the line. The goals of our society have become so deformed…

I understand, I understand. But really, the very search for goals is part of the rational process. Really, the future exists for reason. That’s why for animals there is no future and there is no goal. They live, but there is no goal. Reason creates the ideals, reason creates the goals, reason creates the future. So the real problem is not whether to have right goals or wrong goals. The real question is whether to have goals or not.

The new generation is asking whether to have goals or not. The moment you have a goal, you begin to distort life because then you begin to mold it according to the goal. Then the present becomes less meaningful. The future takes the meaning and the present has to be molded, adjusted with the future.

So this goal-oriented mind is the reason, and the life-oriented mind is the irreason.

 

On one hand you say that all human potentialities have to be realized, and that one is practically as good as the other, and the more we press anything we create an imbalance and trouble. At the same time you are also talking about the hippies, you say that they are behaving like children, or they are in a state of regression, if I have understood rightly. So you have a certain image of what the human being should be like, a specific goal.

I have – what I am saying… I have: what I am saying is that it is not a question of reason having the “right” goals. The question is of reason not being the alone phenomena, the lonely phenomena of the human mind.

Reason has to have goals; reason cannot exist without goals. But this must not become dictatorial. So reason has to have goals. It cannot work, reason cannot work without the space created by the future. Reason cannot work without a goal somewhere, to reach, to be reached. Reason has to work with goals, but reason must not be the dominant thing. It must not be dictatorial. It must not be the only branch growing.

What I am saying is reason has to have goals; it cannot exist without them, and reason must exist, it is a potentiality. Then there is the anti-reason part of the human mind which cannot have goals, which is just like animals, just like children. Just like children it can only exist here and now. And really it is that part which experiences the deeper realms of life, of love, of beauty, of art. That part, that irrational part, experiences the deeper realms, because it can go deep in the present. It has no need to go into the future. It can go deep just here and now, in this very moment. This part must be grown simultaneously, and you can do this in two ways.

You said rightly, there have been scientists with a very deep religious personality, but as I see it, this can be done in two ways. Either it can be a deep harmony, or it can just be a closing of one aperture and an opening of another, without any harmony. Without any harmony, I can be a scientist and then I can close my scientific world and I can go to a church and pray. Then the scientist is not praying there, then the scientist is not praying – the scientist has been left out. It is not really a harmony. It is just a deep bifurcation. There is no harmony, there is no inner dialogue between the scientist and the worshipper. There is no dialogue. The scientist has not come to the church at all. And when this man goes to his lab, the worshipper is left out; it has not come in.

So this is really a deep division and a closed division. They don’t overlap. They don’t overlap, so in such a person you will feel a dichotomy, not a harmony, not a harmony. He will be saying things which he himself will feel guilty to have said. He will be making statements as a scientist which go quite against his mind as a worshipper, and he cannot make any harmonious whole within the two.

So many scientists have really lived very schizophrenic lives. One part of them is something, and another part is something else. This is not what I mean by harmony. By harmony I mean with no closing. You are capable of moving – with no closing. The scientist goes to pray and the religious man comes to the lab. There is no division. There is no gap.

Otherwise, you can have two persons inside, you can have many. You can have many, and we do ordinarily. We have multi-personalities, and we become identified with one. Then we move into a different gear, then we change the gear, we become something else. This gear changing is there. This is not really a harmony, and this will create a very deep tension in your being because you cannot be at ease with so many divisions.

An undivided consciousness, capable of movement to the polar opposite, is possible only when we have a total conception of the human being as intrinsically with opposites – naturally with opposites, no denial of the opposites. For example, if I go to pray I won’t feel any tension about it – then what am I doing? Is it logical? Is it rational? Is there any God?

If I work in the lab then doubt works. Can I conceive of my being with doubt as an instrument of worth, not as a fixation? Faith is also an instrument of worth. They are just two aspects, to look into different dimensions. So when you have to see far you change your aspect; nearer you change your aspect. You are not faced with your aspects, no fixation, and there is no inherent dichotomy felt. The person must not feel any dichotomy, any division, and must easily, smoothly move. Even the movement should not be felt. And when there is really a deep harmony the movement is not felt. You move, but the movement is not felt because movement is only felt against obstacles.

And one thing more. I know when I say “East” and “West” I don’t mean that in the West there have been no Eastern minds, and I don’t mean that in the East there have been no Western minds. Really the East and the West is less geographical, more psychological. There are minds in the West who are Eastern and there are minds in the East who are Western. But the main current – I am talking about the main current.

For example, an Eckhart or Bonheim; they belong to the East. They belong to the East; they must not be included in the history of the West. They belong to the East. And really sometime we must have a psychological history of the world in which the East will have many faces from the West, and the West will have many faces from the East, and many names. Whatsoever we have been doing is geographical history. We must conceive of a psychological history – a more developed form of history in which the world is divided not geographically, but psychologically.

So I don’t mean that they are not, but the main current, the main current in the West has been a rational growth, even religiously also. That’s why the church became so dominant. Hinduism really has no church, or a very anarchic phenomenon – because with an irrational religion how can you have a theology, argumentative, with proof of God, and a church, and a representative, a pope? You cannot have it.

Even in the West religion developed through the lines of reason. Jesus himself is an irrational man, but Saint Paul is not. Saint Paul had a very scientific mind, very scientific, very rational. So really Christianity belongs to Saint Paul, not to Jesus at all. With Jesus there can be no Christianity. It is impossible. Such an anarchic man, no possibility of such a big organization, such a big kingdom. He was talking of something else when he was talking about kingdoms. But such a big kingdom of the church – just “churchdom” – is impossible with Jesus. He was Eastern, but Saint Paul was not.

So even the church has gone, and that’s why there was a conflict between science and church, because both were rational. And both were trying to rationalize a phenomenon. The church had to be defeated, because it could not be so rational, because its center was religion. The church tried to be rational but it could not be, because the phenomenon itself was irrational. Reason is something foreign to religion; that’s why the church had to go down and science could win.

But in the East there is no fight between science and religion because religion has never claimed any reason, so there is no fight. They don’t belong to the same realm at all. The whole progress has been Aristotelian; Aristotle remains yet the center of the West.

 

What is the point of the quest of the human individual, of the image of the human being both in the East and in the West, and in religious thought as well as in atheist philosophy? All of these always had a certain ideal image of a human being, of his potentialities which should be developed, realized, which always included a certain preference for certain features of the human being, in contrast to what you said. And now whether you do that by repression or by sublimation or by some other process, makes no difference. But basically the idea always is that the human image is something greater than I am and toward which I must trial. How do you reconcile this with the image of a human being whose potentialities all have equal value – the positive and the negative, or the animal and the non-animal, etcetera, etcetera?

This strange phenomena happens not because of religion, but whenever religion has to be systematized, this phenomena happens. For example, a Buddha is not after any ideal. A Buddha himself is not after any ideal, or a Jesus himself is not after any ideal. They live very spontaneous lives, but they become ideals – they become ideals. They live very spontaneous lives and they grow in their own way, whatsoever way and whatsoever ultimate shape the pattern takes. They grow, they grow like a wild tree, but for the followers that wild tree becomes an ideal. And then the followers begin to have patterns, preferences, choices, condemnations.

So really religion has two parts. One, a deeply religious personality, is a phenomena, a spontaneous phenomena. It happens, and the followers who create the creed, who create the dogmas, who create the disciplines, they create according to the ideal. Then a Buddhist has an ideal – “One must be like Buddha.” Then preferences have to be met because Buddha was never seen to be angry. It may have been a spontaneous growth for him, but then the follower must not be angry; it becomes a “must not.” Then you have to suppress or sublimate, or howsoever you name it, it means the same. Then you have to destroy yourself in many ways, because only then you can create the image. Then you have to become an imitation.

And to me, this is criminal. A religious personality is a beautiful phenomena, but a religious creed is a rationalized thing again. This is reason coming in and encountering a non-rational phenomenon.

 

Buddha incidentally was a very rational person…

He was very rational, but with very irrational gaps. And he was very at ease with irrational gaps also. And the concept of Buddha that we have is not really of the Buddha, but the rationalist tradition that followed and created the whole concept.

Really, to encounter Buddha is a different thing. But we cannot do otherwise. We have to go through the Buddhists, a long tradition of two thousand years, and they have created, they have made him very rational. He was not so. Really you cannot be if you are deep in existence. You cannot be. You have to be many times very irrational – and a Buddha is. But then we have to put aside the whole tradition and go directly. It is difficult, very difficult.

 

We can never meet a Buddha or a Lao Tzu, the direct meeting is impossible.

It is impossible in a way, but we can make some effort and that effort pays; that effort is paying. New realms become – you have new glimpses. Because, for example – this happens, this is daily happening – if I am talking to a rational person, he chooses. He leaves all that even unconsciously was not rational. And if I am talking with a poet he chooses something else. When I talk to a rational man even the same sentence, the same words, signify something else, because he cannot look at the poetry of the words. He can only look at the logic, at the argument of the words. That argument has a different dimension. A poet, a painter, can have a different dimension of the word. The word has a shade, a color. The word has a rhythm, a poetry. This is not at all connected with argument.

So Buddha – the faces of Buddha we must say, not face – the faces of Buddha are different, are different. They are according to the person who has seen him. And in India, the Buddhist phenomena happened in such a period when the whole country was going through a rational crisis. It was going against the irrational; a crisis of the whole irrational Vedas, Upanishads, of the whole mysticism – it was going against it. The movement was such that the whole mind of the country, and particularly of Bihar, was concerned…was against mysticism.

And Buddha was charismatic, and Buddha was hypnotic. People were impressed by him. But the interpretation of the Buddhist face is bound to be rational – is bound to be. Buddha happening in another part of history, in a world that was not against mysticism, would have been taken as a great mystic, not as a great intellectual. So it happens. It happens that the face belongs to the history of a particular time.

But as I see it, Buddha is not, he cannot be. The whole concept of nirvana is just mystical, and he is even more mystical than the Upanishads, because the Upanishads, howsoever mystical they will look, they have their own rationality. They talk about transmigration, but they talk about transmigration with a soul. It is rational. Buddha talks about transmigration without a soul. It is more mystical. It is more mystical – transmigration without a soul. The Upanishads talk about liberation, but you will be there. This is rational, otherwise the whole thing becomes nonsense. If I cannot be in that ultimate state of existence, then the whole effort is useless, illogical. Buddha says the effort has to be made – and then you will not be there; it will be just nothingness.

It is more mystical.

 

Coming back to the hippies, when you say that they are regressing, they are behaving like children, or they are behaving like savages, I quite agree with you. But in saying this do you not judge, compare their behavior to a different kind of behavior, to a superior kind of behavior? So you do have an image there which you might call an ideal image.

Not really an image, not really an image, but a different thing. When I say they are behaving like children, I mean they are not growing. Regressing. I don’t have any image that they should confirm. I have a concept of growth, not of image, not of image. I don’t want that they should be attuned, adjusted, to a particular image. What I am saying is only that they are regressing into the past, not growing into the future. I have no image of the tree that is to grow – but it must grow without any image. It must not regress. So it is a question of growth and regression, not of any image.

Secondly, when I say they are regressing, I mean they are reacting against a too rational society. They are reacting, but the reaction is going to the other extreme, with the same fallacy. Reason must be absorbed, must not be left out. If you leave it out, then you are doing the same, the same error that left the irreason out.

The Victorian culture created a man like a facade, like a face. Not as a living being inside, but a pattern of behavior, a pattern of mannerisms – a face more and a being less. That was possible because we chose only reason to be the criterion of everything. So the irrational, the anarchic, the chaotic inside, was pushed out, suppressed. Now that the anarchic side is taking revenge, it can do two things. It can be destructive, then it will be regressive.

If it is destructive then it will take revenge on the same coin. It will deny the rational part. It will deny the rational part, and then you become just like children, immature. You fall down.

If it is to be creative, it must not commit the same error. It must absorb the reason with the irrational. It must absorb both. Then it will be growing, growing in comparison to both – the one who has denied the irrational and the one who has denied the rational. They are both not growing.

They are both not growing because you cannot grow unless you grow totally. There is no growth unless you grow totally. So I have no image to compare to.

 

One small question. In the West we’ve especially been very formed or deformed by the concept of sin and the concept of guilt. They are concepts which are absent as you know in the East. Consequently the young people here in the East do not have the same kind of problems. In which way is that reflected amongst your followers? Are there really different needs, and different problems between your Western followers and your Eastern followers?

Yes, bound to be, bound to be, because the concept of sin creates a very different consciousness around it. The same concept is lacking in the Eastern mind. Rather, it is substituted by the concept of ignorance. In the Eastern consciousness, the root of all evil is ignorance not sin. The root is because you are ignorant. So the problem is not of guilt but of discipline. You have to be more aware, more knowing. So in the East, knowledge is transformation – so meditation becomes the source, the very instrument.

In the West with Christianity, sin became the center. It is not because you are ignorant that you commit sin. You sin; that’s why you are ignorant. The sin takes a primary significance – and not only is it your sin, it is the original sin of humanity. So you are burdened with a concept of sin. It creates guilt, it creates tension. That’s why Christianity could really not develop meditative techniques. It developed only prayer – because against sin what can you do? You can be moral and prayerful.

So really nothing exists in the East like the Ten Commandments. Nothing exists like that in the East; there is not a too-moralistic concept there, so the problems are different. From the West, for people coming from the West, guilt is their problem. Deep down they feel guilty. Even those who have revolted, deep down they feel guilt. So it is more a psychological problem, concerned with the mind and less concerned with the being.

So their guilt has to be released. That’s why the West had to develop psychoanalysis, or confession. They were not developed in the East because they were never needed. You have to confess, only then can you be free from the guilt deep down. Or you have to go through psychoanalysis, a long process of thought association, so the guilt is thrown out. But it is never thrown out permanently. It will come again because the concept of sin remains. It will be created again; it will accumulate again.

So psychoanalysis can only be a temporary help, and confession is also a temporary help. You have to confess again and again. These are temporary helps against something that has been accepted; the root of the disease has been accepted.

In the East, it is not a question of psychology. It is a question of being. So it is not a question of mental health. Rather, it is a question of spiritual growth. You have to grow spiritually, to be more aware of things. You have not to change your basic behavior, but to change your basic consciousness. Then the behavior follows.

So Christianity is more behavioristic, and in that way it is defective, because behavior is just the periphery. The question is not of what you do; the question is of what you are. So if you go on changing your doings, you are not changing. And you can remain the same in a quite contrary doing. You can be a saint and still with the same being, because doing can be changed very easily. It can be forced.

So whosoever is coming from the West, their problem is of behavior, guilt. And I struggle with them just to make them aware of a deeper problem – which is of being, not of the psyche.

 

Behavior is also important in the Buddhist world. Behavior, ethical behavior, is very important, very much like in Christianity, without a feeling of guilt. There is a lot of emphasis on it, but not in Hindu thought. That’s true, you’re right.

Yes, in Buddhism – and in Jainism – it is too much, but without the concept of sin, without the concept of sin. It is too much. But they have also created – not the same guilt feeling – but in a different way they have created it. Particularly Jainas have created a very deep inferiority. Guilt is not there because there is no question of sin, but a deep inferiority complex, that a person is inferior. Unless one goes beyond all the sins, one cannot be superior, one cannot be superior. A very deep inferiority is there, and this deep inferiority works in the same way. It creates problems.

That’s why Jainas have not created any meditative techniques. They have created only ethical formulas: do this, do this, don’t do that. And the whole concept is centered around the behavior. That’s why Jainism has become just a dead thing. You go to a Jaina monk; he is an ideal as far as behavior is concerned, but as far as the inner being is concerned he is poor – just poor with no inner being. He goes on behaving just like a puppet.

So Jainism is dead. Buddhism is not dead in the same way because a different emphasis is there. In Buddhism a different emphasis is there. The ethical part of Buddha is just a consequence of the meditative part, and if behavior has to be changed, it is just a part of meditation. It is just a part of meditation, as a help to meditation. In itself, it is meaningless. In itself, it is meaningless. In Christianity, it is meaningful in itself; in Jainism, it is meaningful in itself. If you are doing good, then you are good. For Buddha it is not the case. You have to be transformed inwardly. Doing good can help it, can become a part, can become a part, can become a part, but meditation is the center.

So only Buddhists have developed deep meditations. Deep meditations. Everything else is just a help – not significant. You can even discard it. It remains on your strength. The question is of your strength; you can discard it. If you can meditate without the help, then you can discard it.

But Hinduism is still more complex and deeper, deeper. That’s why Hinduism could develop a different dimension of Tantra, so that whatsoever you call sin, even that can be used. Hinduism is in a way very healthy – chaotic, of course, because anything healthy is bound to be chaotic, bound to be. It cannot be systematized. It cannot be systematized.