... good hearty laugh. The society does not allow you that much. It seems there is a fear running in the society from generation to generation that allowing all man's energies to be expressed is dangerous, because there is anger, there is violence, there is jealousy, there is a suicidal instinct, and so many things. If all these are allowed, everybody will go mad - he will not be able to control them. So...

... their faces violence, murder, rape - no signs. Outside you can stand on the road and you can see on people's faces all kinds of crimes that they are repressing. The thing was clear: these people did not repress. They simply did whatever came to their mind; they simply did it. They did not bother about law and society; naturally society cannot tolerate these people. They have to be criminals, they have...

... right society, they will be used creatively. The same violence which kills a man can sculpt a beautiful Gautam Buddha, because as far as the hand is concerned, it releases energy whether you cut off somebody's head or you cut stones or you cut wood. It doesn't matter to the hand and to the energy - the energy is released. I have known many hunters in India - accidentally, because I was touring all...

... over India, and I was often a guest in a maharaja's palace. And all these maharajas - and there were hundreds in India - and their sons and their brothers, they were all hunters. They had their own forests reserved for their hunting. But I found them very human. Their hunting was taking all their violence. You could see from their faces that there was no tension. But hunting animals is also violence...

... collecting violence and he was repressing it. The fracture released the energy. I was condemned all over the world by the newspapers, that in my therapy groups violence is being used. But I was amazed: not a single journalist had the sense to have an interview with the man and enquire what had been his experience. His experience was totally different. He was feeling fortunate that it happened, because a...

... defeated continuously because of its affluence. Tartars, Berbers, Huns, Moghuls, Turks, they were all uncivilized societies - poor, poverty-stricken, sexually suppressed. They had much violence in them. You can see this in a modern phenomenon: in Vietnam. Americans can never win. Their youth is sexually free, and they are less violent. Thus, they cannot win in Vietnam. No affluent society can really win...

... will begin to harm themselves or they will create some substitutes. We have created many. Someone is just smoking: we think it is a simple thing. It is not! Now psychologists say it is a deep violence You take the smoke in and then throw it out, you take the smoke in and then throw it out: it helps to release hunger, violence, sex. We have many, many devices. Persons who are violent will eat more...

.... Just by destroying the food they are releasing violence. You may not have observed it, but when you are loving you cannot eat much, when you are happy you cannot eat much, when you feel blissful, you cannot eat too much. Ordinarily it should not be so. It looks opposite to what we think should be the case. We think that when one is happy he should eat more. No, a happy person will not eat more. He...

... cannot eat more because eating is part of violence. A happy person is not violent; hence. when you are in love you cannot eat very much. Two persons, when in love, unmarried, will not eat much. But when married they will begin to eat more because love has disappeared. Now it is a violence, and it is related with many deep things. In animals violence is expressed through teeth, and we are related to...

... which is chewed), because you need something to crush. So there are people who are the whole day crushing pan. Their violence is thus released. Even by continuously talking, violence is released. Women talk more than men because men can be violent in other ways while women cannot be. That is the only reason. They talk more! They talk continuously, they talk madly, because man has other possibilities...

... for expressing violence - in the office, with the car, etc. Have you observed a man who is angry driving his car? He is releasing his anger through the accelerator. The car will speed up He is releasing anger, and the car is just a medium. Fifty percent of car accidents are not because of cars but because of drivers. not because of traffic but because of mental tension. But women cannot release...

... limited to the body and nothing more. This identification with the body, this illusion of being one with the body does not allow us to know our real selves, and we look upon the gradual process of dying that is taking place over a period of time as life. This is the same kind of mistake you would make if you looked upon the construction and destruction of your house as your own birth and death. This...

... knowledge. He who fights with ignorance fights with a shadow. He is walking the path of failure from the very beginning. This concept of self-war for self-conquest comes from the reflection of conflicts between enemies in the world outside. We want to commit violence in our inner world just as we commit violence against our enemies in the outer world. What madness is this! Even in the outside world...

... violence has never conquered anyone. Conquering and defeating are two very different things. But in the inner world we cannot even use violence to defeat our so-called enemy because there is no such person to be defeated. Self-knowledge is not the result of conflict, it is the result of knowing. So I say: don't fight, know. Forget war and choose knowledge. And let this be your maxim: discover and know...

... time is the best thing because nothing needs to be given up. Don't forget that even truth can be abused, and even the most noble truth can be used to hide the meanest ones. This has happened in the past and it happens every day. Cowardice can be hidden by non-violence, sin can be hidden under the philosophy of the purity and enlightenment of the soul, and no-action under the garb of sannyas. I want...

...? This same lack of sanity can be found in religious life. Outward indications are mistaken for the enemy and, taking the symptoms for the disease, we begin to fight. This does not help to eliminate the disease. One the contrary it is the patient, the diseased, who will surely be eliminated. Egoism, untruth, violence, lust, greed, passion are all indications, all symptoms. They are the temperature...

.... They are not the diseases. Our fight is not to be directed against them but through them we need only learn there is a culprit within. This culprit is ignorance of th self. It is this ignorance of the self that is expressed in a variety of ways, like egoism, lust, fear, anger, violence, lies and so on. And since these are mere indication, just expressions, they cannot be done away with by striking at...

... them. Then what do we have to do? Do we have to try to hide them by exhibiting the artificial flowers of truth, non-violence, benevolence, bravery? You as well must have decorated yourselves with such flowers at some point. Beware. Be sure you are not deceived by them, even though you may have succeeded in misleading others. The question is not to get rid of untruth, violence and fear, but to rise...

... above this ignorance of the self. They are all there because of this ignorance. Without it they cannot exist. If there is no ignorance of the self all these will automatically disappear and their places will as automatically be taken by truth, humility, desirelessness, freedom from anger, non-violence, non-possessiveness. They too are signs. They are indications of self knowledge. Generated by...

... luminosity of its own. Certainly there will arise great perfume, but it will not be something cultivated; it will not be something painted from the outside. That's the difference between a saint and a sage. A saint follows the path of self- cultivation. He practices non-violence, like Mahatma Gandhi; he practices truth, truthfulness; he practices sincerity, honesty. But these are all practices. And...

... whenever you are practicing non-violence, what are you doing? What is really happening inside you? You must be repressing violence. When you are practicing -- when you HAVE to practice -- truth, what does it mean? It simply means untruth arises in you and you repress it and you go against it, and you say the truth. But the untruth has not disappeared from your being. You can push it downwards into the...

... you were not so much in its grip. Now the enemy has become hidden. That's my observation of Mahatma Gandhi. He observed, cultivated non-violence; but I have looked deeply into his life and he is one of the most violent men this century has known. But his violence is very polished; his violence is so sophisticated that it looks almost like non-violence. And his violence has such subtle ways that you...

... eye in the ashram. Everybody is looking at you as a great sinner: "It is because of YOU that the Master is suffering. And just for a cup of tea? How low you have fallen!" And the person would go and touch his feet and cry and weep, but Gandhi wouldn't listen. He had to purify himself. This is all violence; I don't call it non-violence. It is violence with a vengeance, but in such a subtle...

... way that it is very difficult to detect. Even Gandhi may not have been aware at all of what he was doing -- because he was not practicing awareness, he was practicing non-violence. You can go on practicing...then there are a thousand and one things to be practiced. And when will you be able to get out of all that is wrong in your life? It will take an unimaginable time. And then, too, do you think...

... you observed? - no creation is possible without destruction; no destruction is meaningful unless it is for creation. So now: you can destroy if you are going to create, then there is no problem. You can demolish a house if you are going to create a better house - nobody will say that you are destructive. You can destroy a society if a better society is possible, you can destroy a morality for a...

... better morality - nobody will say that you are destructive because you are destroying to create, and no creation is possible without destruction. Destruction is absorbed by the creation; then it is beautiful, then it is part of the creative process. But you destroy. You destroy a society with no idea what you are going to do next, with no creative idea in mind. You simply enjoy destruction. You...

... demolish a house, you destroy a thing, and if somebody asks, "Why are you doing that?" then you say simply, "I like to destroy" - then you are mad, something has gone wrong in you. Destruction has become whole in itself, it is trying to claim that it is the whole. When destruction claims that it is the whole then it is the devil; when destruction is part of a greater whole, creation...

... you live on one pole. That pole they call God, compassion, love - all that is good, all goodie-goodie. The other pole they call the devil, all that is bad. Lao Tzu or I - we are not in favor of this division, this dichotomy, this schizophrenia. We are for both. And then a sudden transformation happens: destruction becomes part of creation - it is! - and hate becomes part of love. Love is bigger than...

... hate, creation is bigger than destruction. Life is bigger than death, and death should be a part of it. And if death is part of it, it is beautiful. Remember this, and then by and by you will see that even your hate has taken the color of love; your destruction has taken the shape of construction, creation, creativity; your anger has a compassion in it. Jesus was angry. Christians have not been able...

... would have had to be given to her. Because this is no argument, to say that your head will fall off. This is no argument. Anger is no argument, violence is no argument; this way you can keep somebody silent but you have not won the debate. This woman became enlightened but she must have been a male type. Otherwise no woman bothers to argue about such things. Once I asked Mulla Nasruddin, "How are...

... remembered because many people have used these five vows to cut themselves from life. They are not meant for that -- they are meant for just the opposite. For example, the first is ahimsa, nonviolence. People have used it to cut themselves from life because they think if you are in life there will be some violence or other. There are Jains in India; they believe in nonviolence. That is their whole religion...

.... You see a Jain monk: he escapes from everything because everywhere he finds there is a possibility of violence. Jains stopped cultivation -- gardening, farming -- because if you are doing farming, gardening, cultivating, then there will be violence because you will have to cut many plants and every plant has a life. So Jains completely dropped but of agriculture. They could not go to war, because...

... there will be violence. All their teachers were warriors; they came from the kshatriya clan. Mahavir and all other teerthankeras, they all came from the kshatriyas, but their followers are all merchants, businessmen. What has happened? To war they cannot go; the army they cannot join. So they cannot be warriors because there is violence; they cannot be agriculturists because there is violence. And...

... because in breathing many lives are killed. Very small lifes are moving in the air. It is full of germs, very minute germs; you cannot see them with the naked eye. When you breathe in, they die; when you breathe out, your hot air coming out kills them. So they have even become afraid of breathing. They cannot walk in the night because maybe some insect in the dark... then there is violence. They cannot...

... extreme. This is moving to absurdity. So remember, people have used nonviolence against life. And nonviolence means such a deep love of life that you cannot kill: you love life so much that you will not like to hurt anybody. It is deep love, not rejection. Of course, in being alive a little violence is a must, but that is not violence, because you are not doing it willfully. So remember, only that is...

... violence which you do willfully. If I am breathing, I am not breathing willfully. Breathing is going automatically -- you are not breathing; you are not the doer. You try to stop it and then you will know. Just for a single second you can stop, and it comes rushing out or rushing in. It happens you are not responsible for it. Food, you will have to eat. Whatsoever you eat will be a sort of violence. Even...

... negative thing; it is a positive feeling of love. The word is negative, "nonviolence." The word is negative because people are violent, and violence has become such a positive force in their being that a negative word is needed to negate it. Only the word is negative: the phenomenon is positive: it is love. "Nonviolence, truthfulness...." Truthfulness means authenticity, to be true...

... going to kill some people, he is sad because he is going to have to kill his own family and relatives. If they were not his own people, Arjuna would have killed them like flies. He grieves not because of war, not because of violence, but because of his attach ments to those on the opposite side. He does not think killing is bad, although he says so. It is just a rationalization. His basic grief is...

... that he has to fight with those who are so closely related to him. Most of them are his relatives. The eldest of Arjuna's family, Bhisma, and his teacher Dronacharya are on the other side of the battlefield. The Kauravas are cousins, with whom he has grown up since childhood. Never did he imagine he would have to kill them. Violence is not the real cause of his resistance to war; he has been...

... indulging in violence, in lots of violence, for a long time. This is not his first contact with war and violence. He is not a man to be scared of killing. He is, however, scared of killing his own people. And he is scared because of the bonds of his attachment to them. It is wrong to say Arjuna is trying to become a brahman, because to be a brahmin means to be non-attached. In fact, it is Krishna who is...

... telling him to shed his attachments. If Arjuna had said straightaway that he is against violence, Krishna would not have tried to persuade him to fight. He would not try to persuade Mahavira, who is also a kshatriya, a warrior. He would not try to change Buddha, who is a warrior too. It is amazing that all the twenty-four tirthankaras of the Jainas are kshatriyas. Not one of them thought of being born...

... in any other varna than that of the kshatriyas. What is really amazing is that the philosophy of non-violence is the kshatriya's gift to the world. And there is a reason for it. The idea of non-violence could only take root in a soil deeply steeped in violence. People who had lived with violence for generations were the right vehicles for non-violence, and the kshatriyas became the vehicle. Krishna...

... could not have persuaded Mahavira to take to violence, because Mahavira did not say he would not kill his family and relatives, he was not grieving for them. In fact, he had renounced them, he had renounced the whole world of relationships. His stand was altogether different: he had totally denied violence as inhuman and meaningless. He would have said, "Violence is irreligious." If Krishna...

.... The Geeta would not have cut any ice with Mahavira. But the Geeta had appeal for Arjuna; he was impressed and changed by it. The Geeta appealed to him not because Krishna succeeded with him, it changed his mind because he was intrinsically a warrior, because fighting was in his blood and bones. And all his distractions from war and its attendant violence, and his grief and sorrow, were passing...

... yourself again. Then it is your life: then you move on your own.... But in the beginning everybody finds a little negative mood arising. And when you start growing then all the repressed violence will come up, all the anger will come up; these are the problems. And they have to be thrown out - hence in the groups sometimes violence erupts. Now, rather than following my suggestion, you tried to kill your...

... girlfriend. That may not have happened at all if you had gone through some groups. Your violence would have been dissipated, and it would have been dissipated under guidance, under care. Now, it exploded on your girlfriend - with no guidance, with nobody caring. You could have killed her and then you would have repented your whole life; you could have killed her and you could have killed yourself too in it...

.... Then you would have remained stuck with guilt. Then with no other woman would you have ever been able to connect really deeply. Forever you would have lived in a kind of loneliness. Even if you loved another woman you would have always remained afraid of yourself: you can do it again! This need not have happened if you had gone through a few groups. People are so much against violence and ask why...

... violence is allowed in Encounter or in Leela or in Primal Therapy. It is allowed because people are carrying it, and it is better to release it, cathart it, in a certain structured atmosphere, rather than letting it erupt in some moment of unawareness. Once it is released you are unburdened; once it is released you become more loving, more compassionate. So next time you come, do a few groups. Things are...

... India Mahavira was so much attached to the idea of nonviolence that even cultivation -- gardening -- was prohibited to his followers, because if you cultivate you will have to cut plants... and plants have life, and that will be violence. His followers were mostly coming from the warrior race, the Kshatriyas; he himself was a warrior king. Now they could not fight because fighting was violence; they...

... could not be cultivators because cultivation was violence. They could not be teachers because that was the monopoly of the brahmins, and a brahmin is born; you cannot enter into the brahmin fold, howsoever wise you are. You may be wiser than all those brahmins, but you cannot become a teacher of the people -- that is the birthright of a brahmin. So they could not be accepted by the brahmins. They...

... would not like to become the sudras, the untouchables, making shoes, cleaning streets and toilets. Now the only way possible for them was to become businessmen; all other possibilities were closed. So all the Jainas in India became businessmen, and a strange phenomenon happened: all their violence... because just by not being a fighter or a hunter or a cultivator makes no difference; you are the same...

... person. All their violence became exploitation: they cannot cut off your head, but they can suck your blood. And they became the richest people in the country, for the simple reason that all their violence became concentrated only on one thing, and that was money. This was not evolution. These people were not better people. The teaching of nonviolence has not helped them to become better -- they have...

... Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. Question 1: BELOVED MASTER, WHAT IS REBELLION? AND WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN REACTION AND THE ACTION OF THE REBELLIOUS MAN? The first thing to be understood is the difference between rebellion and revolution. Revolution is an organized effort to change the society forcibly, violently. But the trouble is, you cannot change the society through violence...

..., because it is violence that is the very life current of the society. That's why all the revolutions have failed. And there is no possibility of any revolution succeeding, ever. Rebellion is individual, nonviolent, peaceful. It is out of love. Rebellion is not against something, but for something. Revolution is against something, but not for something. Revolution is so much engaged in being against, it...

...: the reflection in the mirror is your reflection, although it is opposed to you. So just being opposed does not mean that you are really different; the methods are the same. The old society depends on violence; the revolutionaries depend on violence. The old society depends on enslaving people; the revolutionaries depend on the same. The old society depends on beliefs; revolutionaries also depend on...

... belief. It makes no difference whether your belief is in THE HOLY BIBLE or in DAS KAPITAL. And one thing very significant to remember: if the revolutionaries are going to win they have to be more violent than the old society, more cunning, more clever, more political, more cruel; otherwise they cannot win. So, in fact, in the name of revolution more violence is becoming victorious, more cruelty is...

... against its political way. He is against so many things - his whole life is negative. It depends on being against this, against that, against thousands of things - there are so many no's in his life. But you cannot live a life of benediction, bliss, out of thousands of no's. A single yes is far more powerful than a thousand no's. The no is empty. It shows your anger, it shows your violence, it shows...

... actualization. Action means the process of actualization. Reaction is simply hate, anger, jealousy, violence, destructiveness. Those are not the qualities to be valued. So, in my vision, the revolutionary has no value, only the rebel. And you can see.... Socrates is not a revolutionary, he is a rebel. Gautam Buddha is not a revolutionary, he is a rebel. Heraclitus is not a revolutionary, he is a rebel. And...