... be exploited. For example, if individuals become totally expressive, there will not be any war in the world. It is impossible. But if you suppress the individual, then the suppressed energy is there and it can be used for violence. The whole of politics, and the whole history of man, depends on war. The whole society has been based on war, but war is possible only if the individual is not allowed...

... moment you begin to do something positive with someone, you become disturbed. You begin to change your form, you become violent. Even to do good is a violence, a subtle violence. If I don't accept you as you are, I have to cut you somewhere: destroy something, change you like a sculpture, break you. Some pieces have to be thrown, something has to be rejected. I will hammer you. It is a violence, a very...

... subtle violence. The violence of good man, the moralist, the religious man. A real master will not even try to make you good. Only then is he a master. He is mirror-like, just a deep absence. But you cannot be helped by the mirror, by the no one, by the nothingness, if you are closed. You can sit with closed eyes, but then for you there is no mirror at all. By being a disciple I don't mean being a...

... it, if I begin to be too concerned with you changing, I have begun to be violent. If I am too concerned with making someone else good then I have begun to be violent. And the violence that happens with good intentions is more dangerous than ordinary violence. All your so-called mahatmas are very violent people. They will not allow you to be yourself. So what am I to do? It is a problem. I feel that...

... fifth, the "I" drops, the ego drops. Then there is no ego; you become one with the all. Now it is not your "anything" that comes in and goes out because the ego is not. Everything becomes cosmic, and because it becomes cosmic, the polarity takes the form of creation and destruction - srishti and pralaya. That is why it becomes more difficult with the sixth: the atmosphere is "...

...;the creative force and the destructive force." In Hindu mythology they call these forces Brahma and Shiva. Brahma is the deity of creation, Vishnu is the deity of maintenance, and Shiva is the deity of the great death - of destruction or dissolution, where everything goes back to its original source. The sixth body is in that vast sphere of creativity and destructivity: the force of Brahma and...

... cosmic experience; you are not there! The person who is in the sixth body - who has reached to the sixth body - will see everything that is dying as his own death. A Mahavira cannot kill an ant, not because of any principle of nonviolence, but because it is his death. Everything that dies is his death. When you become aware of this, of the creation and the destruction - of things coming into existence...

... must die. Hydrogen bombs will be created to destroy it. And the moment we create hydrogen bombs, the very next moment we create a longing to go to another planet, because the bomb means that the earth is near its death. Before this earth dies, life will begin to evolve somewhere else. The sixth body is the feeling of cosmic creation and destruction - creation/destruction... the breath coming in/the...

... destruction but, rather, being and nonbeing. In the seventh, creation is always of something else, it is not of you. Creation will be of something else and destruction will be of something else, not of you, while being is of you, and nonbeing is of you. In the seventh body, being and nonbeing - existence and nonexistence - are the two breaths. One should not be identified with either. All religions are...

... is bad to cut anybody's body, and then you become a surgeon and your hand shakes and you cannot hold the knife. You feel guilty about whether to do it or not. It happens in India many times. Many families in India are believers of non-violence, particularly one group, the Jains. They don't do any violence, any sort of violence. When they go to study medicine it becomes a trouble. You have to...

... dissect a frog. It is impossible for a Jain to even think of it! So for many days there were no jain doctors... impossible. Only lately, recently, a few doctors have come from that community, but they also feel guilty. Many jain doctors have talked to me and they feel very guilty that they are creating a hell for themselves. It is just an attitude - that this is violence, a sin. They have not killed...

... destruction can become part of the creative process... has to become a part. If you are making a new house, you have to demolish the old. One has continuously to demolish many things to create new things. Even while you are eating, you have to demolish the food. That's what you do when you are chewing; you destroy the food. You destroy the whole structure of the food and then it becomes possible for your...

... body to absorb it. Then it becomes a creative vitality in your being. Use destruction, negation, no, in the service of yes, creation. You felt good with the negative part because you have trained yourself for the negative, but you have to come to the positive part also. [A visitor says: I am very interested in learning indian music. It is something that frightens me, but I feel that maybe I can...

... on behavior. Meditation changes your consciousness. First, it destroys the barrier between your conscious and unconscious. You become more fluid, you begin to move in a less fixed way; you become one with your consciousness. So meditation first has to destroy the barrier inside; and the destruction of the barrier means the expansion of your consciousness. You must become more conscious. So the...

.... Do not change your behavior. Be conscious about your violence and you will find that you cannot be consciously violent, because the more you become conscious, the less is the possibility of being violent. Violence has a built-in process; it can exist only when you are not aware. Your very awareness changes the whole thing: you cannot be violent if you are aware. Unawareness is a must for violence...

... to exist, or for anger or for sex, or for anything that one wants to change in the behavior. The greater the built-in mechanism, the more you are unaware of what you are doing and the more you can do things that are evil. When I say a thing is evil, I do not mean the content of it. I say a thing is evil when it creates unconsciousness unnecessarily: that is my definition. I do not say violence is...

... bad because you will kill someone. I say violence is bad because you cannot be violent without unconsciousness. That unconsciousness is the evil, because that unconsciousness is the background, the basis, of all ignorance, of all dreams, of all illusions, of all the nonsense that we can create. Evil is nothing more than an unconscious mind. So for one who is a sannyasin - for one who has taken...

... not created the world, he is not even a partial incarnation of God. They will call Rama a partial incarnation of God, they will call Krishna a full incarnation of God, but for Jainas and Buddhists he doesn't exist as Bhagwan because Krishna's whole philosophy is violence. The Gita is the only book which teaches the philosophy of violence so clearly. In fact it shows that Mahatma Gandhi was almost...

... retarded. He talks about nonviolence and the philosophy of nonviolence; and he calls the Gita his mother. He never could conceive that the Gita is full of violence. Krishna's whole teaching to Arjuna is to go to war, to fight: "This is your religion. You are a warrior: to kill and to be killed is your life, and this is what God wants." I myself would not call Krishna Bhagwan, in my sense of the...

... a fear in the Mohammedans that this country was going to be ruled by the Hindu religion; secondly, because he was talking about nonviolence, he repressed the whole country's violence. And as the British moved out and the country was divided, all the violence that Mahatma Gandhi had been repressing for forty years exploded. One million people were killed - and I again point my finger towards...

... as our Bhagwatta is concerned, there is no difference. WHY DO YOU HAVE MORE NON-INDIAN SANNYASINS THAN INDIAN? In fact, I do not believe in nations. To me the whole earth is one and the whole humanity is one. The moment you start thinking of Indians and non-Indians, you create unnecessary divisions which ultimately lead to war and violence, hatred, inferiority, superiority and all kinds of ugly...

.... And then if you can manage to do this, the other thing is to choose physical food which does not help aggression and violence, which is not poisonous. Now even scientists agree with this, that when you kill an animal, out of fear he releases all kinds of poisons. Death is not easy. When you are killing an animal, out of fear a great trembling arises inside. The animal wants to survive; all kinds of...

... by anybody else from the outside; only you can be the judge. If there is a deliberate effort in your mind to offend somebody, to hurt somebody, if it is violence disguised as humor, avoid it. But if it is not violence but just a pure sense of humor, the sense of fun -- the sense of not taking life seriously, not taking it too seriously, then there is no problem. If I meet Atisha some day, I am...

... going to teach him a few jokes. And my feeling is he will enjoy it. Jokes can be just pure humor without any violence in them. Sometimes on the surface one may think there is some violence, but the point is not what others think, the point is what your intention is. It is a question of intention. You can smile with an intention to offend, then smiling becomes a sin. Anything can become a sin if deep...

... down the desire is to do violence. And anything can become virtue if deep down there is a desire to create more joy in life, more laughter in life. My own understanding is that there is nothing more valuable than laughter. Laughter brings you closest to prayer. In fact only laughter is left in you when you are total. In everything else you remain partial, even in lovemaking you remain partial. But...

... is a play of God, a cosmic joke. And unless you understand it as a cosmic joke you will never be able to understand the ultimate mystery. I am all for jokes, I am all for laughter. Atisha has been wrongly translated. What he actually means is: Don't be violent, even in your words. Even while joking, don't be violent, because violence breeds more violence, anger will bring more anger, and it creates...

... wrong views. What are wrong views? Views which are rooted in prejudice, hate, anger, greed, ambition, violence. The first thing is, don't have any kind of views. Live life without a philosophy to live by. No philosophy is needed to live life; in fact the best and most glorious life is the life which is lived without any philosophy -- simple, innocent, spontaneous. But if it is not possible right now...

... outer sheath of character, of morality and immorality, of acts and doings. Whatsoever you do is just on the periphery; whatsoever you are is never on the periphery. The quality of the act, not the act itself, is meaningful for tantra. For example, one butcher came to Nan-in. He was a butcher and Nan-in was a Buddhist monk who believed in non-violence. His whole profession was of violence. The whole...

... day he was killing animals. But when the butcher came to Nan-in, he asked him, "What am I to do? My profession is one of violence. So am I to leave my profession first and is it that only then I can be a new man, or is there some other way?" Nan-in said, "We are not concerned with what you do. We are concerned with what you are. So you go on doing whatsoever you are doing, but be more...

... alert. While killing, remain alert, meditative, and go on doing whatsoever you are doing. We are not concerned." Nan-in's followers became disturbed - because here was a person who was a follower of Buddha, a believer in non-violence, allowing a butcher to continue. One disciple said, "This is not good. And we never expected that a person like you would allow a butcher to remain a butcher...

... for others and for himself also. Go and look at your so-called saints. Many of them remain butchers. The quality, the attitude, the violence, their very look towards you, is condemning, violent. You are a sinner and they are saints. When they see you, the very look is such that you are condemned, you are thrown into hell. Nan-in said, "So it is not good to change his outer life; it is better to...

... bring a new quality to his mind. And it is good to let him remain a butcher, because he is disturbed by his butchery and violence. If he becomes a saint he will remain a butcher, but then he will not be disturbed. His ego will be strengthened. So this is good. He is disturbed that violence is there, and he has become at least this much aware - that this is not good. He is ready to change, but just...

... dead you will never be in contact with it. Just by being more alive, more vulnerable, more sensitive, less principled and more alert, you will reach it. Why do you seek principles? You may not have observed why. It is because with principles you need not be alert. You need not be alert! If you live through principles you need not be alert. Suppose I make a principle out of non-violence and then I...

.... Then they become incapable, really, of being otherwise. If a person becomes incapable, he is dead. Your truth can be alive only if it comes through alertness, not through principle. Each moment you have to be alert in order to be true. Truth is not a principle; it is something born out of your alertness. Non-violence is not a principle; if you are alert you cannot be violent. But that is difficult...

... the peon to the president, everyone is pulling the others down. In this process, if a peon somehow becomes a president, we tell him it is a matter of great pride and dignity for him. Actually there is no greater violence than that of pushing oneself ahead by pulling others back. But we are teaching this violence and calling it education. In a world based on this violence, if there are continuous...

... compete? The competitive mind will always be hard, violent and non- generous - he has to be. Our system is such that we don't realize that one who is pushing himself forward by pulling others back is a violent man. He is violent, and we are making him ready for violence. This way the factories of education are increasing. We call them schools and universities - this is a sheer lie. These are factories...

... where sick minds are created, and such sick minds are leading the world into a ditch. Violence is increasing and competition is increasing. Everyone's hand is at everyone else's throat. Those who are sitting before me will ask: On whose throats have we kept our hands? But if you look deeply, you will find that everybody's hand is at the throat of someone else, and that everybody's hand is in the...

... everything is unique and unparalleled. As long as we do not respect the uniqueness of every individual, rivalry, competition, murders and violence will remain. Until then, everyone will try to get ahead through dishonesty, and will try to be like someone else. If this happens, what sort of results do we expect? Will the flowers in a garden become mad? If great teachers go and explain to them that the...

... about such a revolution? It can be done by those rebellious people who can think and question what they have been doing so far. One thing should be clear in their minds, that whatsoever they have been doing so far is wrong because the results are wrong. We have to think: From where has the present man come? From where has the present society been born? All these wars, all this violence that goes on...

... about whom they have suspicions. These are dangerous trends, all over the world - more dangerous than the atom and hydrogen bombs. But will the teachers cooperate in such things? I would like to leave this question for your discussion: Are you in agreement with this world? Are you in agreement with man as he is today? In agreement with the wars, violence and dishonesty? If not, think and find out what...

... animal when he is killed? Of course, nobody wants to be killed. Life wants to prolong itself; the animal is not dying willingly. If somebody kills you, you will not die willingly. If a lion jumps on you and kills you, what will happen to your mind? The same happens when you kill a lion. Agony, fear, death, anguish, anxiety, anger, violence, sadness -- all these things happen to the animal. All over his...

... body -- violence, anguish, agony spreads. The whole body becomes full of toxins, poisons. All the body glands release poisons because the animal is dying very unwillingly. And then you eat the meat -- that meat carries all the poisons that the animal has released. The whole energy is poisonous. Then those poisons are carried in your body. And that meat which you are eating belonged to an animal body...

.... The need of a tiger is different; he has to be very violent. If you eat the meat of a tiger you will be violent, but where will your violence be expressed? You have to live in human society, not in a jungle. Then you will have to suppress the violence. Then a vicious circle starts. When you suppress violence, what happens? When you feel angry, violent, a certain poisonous energy is released, because...

... disappear by watching; love will grow. Hatred will disappear; compassion will grow. Violence will disappear; prayer will grow, gratitude will grow. So whatsoever disappears through watching is sin. Nothing else is needed to be done with it. Just watch it and it disappears. It disappears just as when you bring light to a dark room the darkness disappears. The room does not disappear; the darkness...

... surrender with hatred inside? How can you surrender with jealousy inside? How can you surrender with violence inside? Surrender is possible only when you are absolutely pure. How can you go to God and put your hatred, violence, jealousies at his feet? No, only when you are pure, a flower of purity -- then you enter the temple and surrender it. To surrender, one should become worthy of it, because...

... love and politics means hate, hatred. Politicians may smile but hidden behind that smile is a horrible face. They may show a beautiful face but behind it they are preparing for hell. They may talk about peace but they prepare for war. Their whole life depends on destruction. Love is creation; hate is destruction. Naturally the king was not interested in any kind of morality. He said, What pleases me...

... listen to this. This is nonsense. The politician cannot understand this language. He has his own language: the language of cunningness, calculation, hatred, domination, destruction. The politician lives on evil. How can he listen to morality? Remember, the language of politics is not the language of religion and the language of religion is not the language of politics. In fact, they are so far apart...

... the capability to kill and be killed, no, courage means the capacity to live and to live your own life according to your own heart. And strength does not mean the capacity of violence strength means the capacity to understand, the capacity to know, the capacity to love, the capacity to be open. When somebody hits you it is not strength to hit him back it is very simple, anybody can do it. Even a...

... religious man at all. When India was fighting with the Britishers. non-violence was fulfilling a purpose. When India became free then the ideology of non- violence became defunct, then it was not of much use. Even Gandhi approved of an Indian military army. And when it was getting ready to attack Pakistan he blessed it. When he saw aeroplanes flying over Delhi towards Pakistan he said, 'Good. With my...

... blessings.' Now what has happened? This is the same man who was against all violence but then violence was not possible, India was not in a situation to fight the British violently. So non-violence was in favour, and Gandhi used it. But when India became independent, then he forgot all his talk about non-violence. He did not then say, 'Dissolve the army now. Dissolve the police force. Let the country be...

... ruled by love.' He forgot all about non-violence. That's why I say he was a politician. If he had been a religious person then this was a real opportunity to be non-violent. The country has become free, now he should have dissolved the military, the army, the police force. In fact. he should have dropped government itself because a government is a violent organization. But he kept mum. A politician...