... childhood we start teaching children to discard certain qualities, and the only result of discarding these qualities will be that the child will suppress whatever we call bad, he will suppress it in himself. A suppressed heart will be weak and floppy, its strings will not be rightly tuned. And this suppression will happen in the brain, because our education does not go deeper than the brain. When you tell...

... that the qualities of the heart should be developed not destroyed. What is the second point? The second point is that there should be awareness but no suppression. The more we suppress the feelings of the heart, the more it becomes unconscious. We lose sight of whatever we suppress; it moves into darkness. All the energies of the heart should be clearly looked at. If you feel angry don't try to...

... attainment in life other than defeat. There cannot be. It is impossible. Do not fight. Know your own energies, recognize them, be acquainted with them. So the second point is not suppression but awareness. Do not suppress, whenever, whatever, energy may arise within you. We are a collection of unknown energies. We are the center of very unknown energies, with which we have no acquaintance, of which we have...

... suppress it by chanting 'Rama, Rama'. If you feel angry, sit alone in a room, close the door, and meditate on the anger. See the anger totally - "What is this anger? What is the energy of this anger? From where does this anger arise? Why does it arise? How does it surround my mind and influence me?" In aloneness meditate on anger. See the anger totally, understand it, recognize it. From where...

... are alight, they shine. Anger glows, hatred glows, love glows. We become afraid of what is happening because we do not know what all these energies are. Make your life an inner laboratory and start knowing all these powers within - watch them, recognize them. Never suppress even by mistake, never be afraid even by mistake, but try to know whatever is within. If anger comes, then feel fortunate and...

... be thankful to the person who has made you angry. He has given you an opportunity - some energy has arisen within you and now you can look at it. Look at it silently, in aloneness; search to see what it is. The more your knowing grows, the deeper your understanding will become. The more you become a master of your anger, the more you will find that it is under your control. The day you become a...

... more we become acquainted with the inner, the more our life-energy will develop and our soul will crystalize. The second sutra to keep in mind is that we should not suppress any of our energies - we should know them, recognize them, look into them and see them. From this you will have a very surprising experience: if you try to look at anger, if, sitting silently, you come to see it, then the anger...

... have no power over man. With watching, with awareness, they all disappear. I had a friend who had a problem with anger. He said, "I am very much disturbed by it and how much it is beyond my control. Show me a method to control it without me doing something myself - because I have almost given up, I don't think I can do anything about it. I don't think that I can get out of this anger by my own...

... some place big enough that we are far away from neighbors. Because I don't want to interfere in their life. And if they enjoy perfume then who am I to prevent them from enjoying it? And she has found the perfect place for me. Q:* WHAT HAPPENS TO RAJNEESH AND RAJNEESHPURAM WHEN YOU DIE? IT CONTINUES ON AS IT IS? A:* I cannot say anything, simply because I hate to dominate people. Even now what is...

... welcome him. Q:* YOU WERE IN INDIA AT THE TIME THAT INDIA GAINED HER INDEPENDENCE FROM BRITAIN. YOU WERE TEN, BETWEEN TEN AND TWENTY AT THAT TIME; IS THAT CORRECT? WHAT KIND OF AN AFFECT DID THAT HAVE ON YOU AFTER WHAT WAS GOING ON BEFORE... LIVING UNDER THE BRITISH RULE, AND THEN NOT TO HAVE THEM ANYMORE. IT MUST HAVE BEEN RATHER TRAUMATIC FOR MOST INDIANS. WAS IT? A:* I am a little eccentric. I was...

... more pro-British than pro-Indian. Because everything that has happened in India -- technology, science, education, colleges, universities, railway lines, roads, cars, airplanes -- everything has happened because of the British rule. If there was no British rule, India would have been the same as Ethiopia. Before the British rule, for thousands of years they were burning women alive if their husbands...

... died. Husbands were never burned when their wives died. I don't see ... a simple arithmetic that this is a male chauvinist society. The husband is trying to control even after his death. The wife was forced in such a ugly way that if you visualize the whole scene you could not believe it. And these are the Hindus who talk about great spirituality. It is obvious that to push a living person into a...

... raped. This is your independence. This is for what you had gone to jail and suffered." And after Britain left, in these forty years India's situation has been becoming worse and worse. The population goes on growing. Birth control, the pill, abortion, all are against the religions, against spirituality. When Britain left India, the whole India -- including Pakistan, Bangladesh -- was only four...

... problem at all. That birth control should be promulgated, helped in every possible way; no, that is not the problem. The problem is cows should not be killed. Such a country, which cannot even see the priority of things.... I am not saying that kill the cows, but I am saying first save humanity. Otherwise who is going to save the cows? They will be killed by themselves. My feeling is Britain has done...

... logic of it. I had written a letter to Lord Mountbatten that this is not the right time for this country to be independent. If everything is peaceful, it is simply cold war. Once the pressure of British control is gone then.... Q:* DID THE INDEPENDENCE OF INDIA HAVE ANY BEARING ON YOUR OUTLOOK IN LIFE? A:* No, because I am not interested in nations. I am interested in one world. Because my...

... weapons third world war has become almost an impossibility. They will go on talking about it, because that keeps them in power. People are afraid. People don't know the whole information, what is going on. The Americans are afraid of Russians. Russians are absolutely in darkness, and they think Americans are monsters or something. The Soviet clique that rules can rule only if it can maintain the idea...

... Machiavelli. He should read The Prince, but it is too late. The only way politicians know to dominate people is either keep the threat of war continuously alive through newspapers, televisions, radio, speeches.... Keep people frightened, so they need your direction, your leadership. Adolf Hitler in his autobiography writes that a nation can become strong, great, only under two conditions: either you go on...

..., because any government accepting that there are so many people suffering from AIDS, then two things are clear: that that government is declaring that its people are sexually perverts, homosexuals; secondly, to accept that AIDS is there, then the responsibility of the government, what you are doing about it? And there seems to be nothing that can be done. So the only way is suppress the information...

..., disappointed -- not a single case in the whole history of humanity that anybody who has reached the center of his being was disappointed, felt meaningless, was miserable, committed suicide -- not a single exception. That's why I say meditation is a scientific thing. That's how science works: if you can find something without any exception it becomes rule. Meditation is a scientific method, because in the...

... the starving people, with the dying people, and the same politicians go on throwing food into the sea. Ethiopia is dying, and Europe has thrown thousands of tons of fresh oranges into the ocean. And the political leaders go on talking about sympathy, compassion. The religious leaders go on talking about sympathy, and they are against birth control. They are against abortion: it should not be...

... great sympathy because these poor people are going to vote you. You are against birth control methods, because if birth control is applied, where Mother Teresa is going to find the orphans? It is such a complicated vested interest. Mother Teresa will die if there are no orphans. What she will do? And who is going to give her a Nobel prize? Orphans are needed, urgently needed, more the better. It is a...

.... If it was in our power we would not exhale at all, we would inhale and then control it within. No one emphasizes exhaling - inhaling is emphasized. Because we HAVE to do exhaling after inhaling, that is why we go on "suffering" it. We tolerate it because we cannot inhale without exhaling. So exhaling is accepted as a necessary evil, but basically we are not interested in exhaling. And...

... because we teach girls to be more suppressive than boys. So they have suppressed, and when a girl suppresses her sexual feelings up to the age of twenty, it has become a long habit - twenty years of suppression. Then when she will love, she will talk about love, but her body will not be open; the body will be closed. And then an opposite, a diametrically opposite phenomenon happens: two currents oppose...

... rectum and sometimes the rectum is released even without your consciousness. If you suddenly become afraid, the rectum is released. You may defecate in fear, you may urinate in fear. Then you cannot control it. If a sudden fear grips you, your bladder will relax, your rectum will relax. What happens? In fear, what happens? Fear is a mental thing, so why do you urinate in fear? Why is the control lost...

...? There must be some deep connecting root. Fear happens in the head, in the mind. When you are unafraid this never happens. The child really has no mental control over his body. No animal controls his urine, bladder or anything. Whenever the bladder is full it is released. No animal controls it, but man has to control it of necessity. So we force a child to control when he should go to the bathroom and...

... when not. We tell him he has to control; we give timings. So the mind takes over the control of a function which is non-voluntary. That is why it is so difficult to train the child for the toilet. And now psychologists say that if we stop toilet training, humanity will very much improve. Toilet training is the first repression of the child and its natural spontaneity, but it seems difficult to listen...

... mental. The body really has no built-in program for it. The body has NO built-in program for it! Man is an animal as far as body is concerned, and the body knows no culture, no society. That is why when you are in deep fear, the control mechanism that you have imposed on the body is relaxed. You are not in control; you are thrown off control. You can control only in normal conditions. In emergencies...

... you cannot control because for emergencies you have never been trained. You have only been trained for the normal, day-to-day, routine world. In an emergency the control is lost, your body starts functioning in its own animal way. But one relationship can be understood, that with a fearless man this will never happen. So this has become a sign of a coward. If in fear you urinate or defecate, this...

... have been burdened with a big stone or a rock? Why is so much weight felt? The reason is this: when you are aware, when you are awake, your mind and body are not correlated; the gap is there. You cannot feel the body and its sensitivity. While asleep, the control, the culture, the conditioning, dissolves; you have again become a child and your body has become sensitive. Because of that sensitivity, a...

.... You may not see yourself at that point, that is another thing. But it is there always in its pristine purity; it is there. This sutra says, "IN MOODS OF EXTREME DESIRE, BE UNDISTURBED." What can you do? This technique is not for suppression. This technique is not saying that when there is anger suppress it and remain undisturbed - no! If you suppress, you will create more disturbance. If...

... other cannot harm you, you will express the anger. If it is dangerous, if the other can harm you more, if your boss or whoever you are angry at is more strong, you will suppress it. Expression and suppression are easy, witnessing is difficult. Witnessing is neither; it is not suppressing, it is not expressing. It is not expressing because you are not expressing it to the object of anger. It is not...

... the anger is there and an effort to suppress is there, it will double the disturbance. When anger is there, close your doors, meditate on the anger, allow the anger to be. You remain undisturbed, and don't suppress it. It is easy to suppress; it is easy to express. We do both. We express if the situation allows, and if it is convenient and not dangerous for you. If you can harm the other and the...

... world is just a play. So try this, and do everything in a very festive way, celebrating, doing an "act" - not a real thing. If you are a husband, play, be a play husband; if you are a wife, be a play wife. Make it just a game. And there are rules, of course; any game to be played needs rules. Marriage is a rule and divorce is a rule, but don't be serious about them. They are rules, and one...

... rule begets another. Divorce is bad; because marriage is bad: one rule begets another! But don't take them seriously, and then look how the quality of your life immediately changes. Go to your home this night, and behave with your wife or husband or your children as if you are doing a part in a drama, and see the beauty of it. If you are playing a part you will try to be efficient, but you will not...

... it now because you are not even conscious of it. Acceptance brings everything up. There is no need to suppress. You know you are greedy, you know you have anger, you know you are sexual, and you accept them as natural facts without any condemnation. There is no need to suppress them. They come to the surface of the mind, and from the surface of the mind they can be thrown very easily. From the deep...

... aware of it. Greed is there; don't try to make it non-greed. You cannot. And if you try to make it non-greed, you will simply suppress it. Your non- greed will simply be another form of greed and nothing else. Don't try to change it into the other; you cannot change it. If you want to try to change greed, what will you do? And a greedy mind can be attracted only towards the ideal of non-greed if some...

..., you cannot put your hand in it. The more your "knowingness" grows, the more greed becomes a fire and anger becomes poison. They simply become impossible. Without any suppression, they disappear. And when greed disappears without any ideal of non-greed, it has a beauty of its own. When violence disappears without making you non-violent, it has a beauty of its own. Otherwise a non-violent...

... suppressed will create inner complexities. It will even be more perverted. So to be natural is better than to be perverted. Perversion is disease; to be natural is healthy. Of course, just to be healthy is not the end. One can go even beyond health. So these are three things - suppression, being natural and transcendence. Just being natural is just being healthy. If you suppress and there is no positive...

... will become so much afraid that you will just hide within yourself, and everywhere around will be all the enemies. You have created them because you became negative. This is suppression, and you will end in a madhouse. Everything that you have suppressed you will have to suppress continuously. The fight will be so continuous that you will not be able to do anything else. If you are fighting sex, then...

... Archive Code: N.A. Short Title: N.A. Audio Available: N.A. Video Available: N.A. Length: N.A. Question 1: OSHO, YOU SAID LAST NIGHT THAT TO HAVE AN UPWARD FLOW OF THE MIND ONE HAS TO MAKE A CONSTANT EFFORT AGAINST PAST ANIMAL HABITS. PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT THE DIFFERENCE IS BETWEEN EFFORT AGAINST HABITS, AND SUPPRESSION. TRANSFORMATION of the mind is a positive effort. Suppression of the mind is negative...

.... The difference is that when you are suppressing your mind, you are positively concerned with being against something. When you are transforming your mind, you are not directly concerned with being against something. You are positively concerned for something: the effort is for something, not against something. For example, if you are fighting directly with sex, then it will be suppression. But if...

... your positive effort is for transformation of sex energy, your positive effort is for something else, then it will not be suppression. Suppression means you have blocked the natural door for the energy, you have blocked the natural outflow, and you have not opened anything else. It is just a blockage. You are against anger, so you block anger - but where will the energy go? The energy that you have...

... flow through it. Whenever you can create something which is better than nature itself, then there is no suppression. This difference must be understood. Only man can fall below nature; no animal can fall below nature. There are no abnormal animals. Sometimes animals also become abnormal, but only when they are with men - never alone. A dog can go abnormal, a horse can go abnormal, but never alone...

... is gained, nothing creative is achieved. You become self-destructive. So always remember never to be negative; then there will be no suppression. But I have told you that to go against the current is the way for the mind to flow upward. What do I mean by going against the current? The difference is very subtle, but once felt, you can never lose the track. For example, you are swimming in a river...

... because it pushes. He will begin to love the river! The difference will be inner, qualitative. Suppression is a serious disease. Transforming oneself is a play - it is not serious at all. It is sincere. but never serious. It is authentic, but never serious. The quality of playfulness always remains there. It is the very spirit. With positivity you are creating something inside. The outward is just an...

... suppression is in the world. No one has taught it - everyone has understood it. No one has taught it - neither a Buddha nor a Mahavir nor a Jesus nor a Krishna. This is a miracle. No one has taught suppression because no one can. It is absolute nonsense! But everyone has suppressed and everyone is suppressing - because the difference is so subtle that whenever transformation starts, suppression is...

... understood. Whenever a teacher is born who begins to talk about transformation, followers gather who begin to understand about suppression - because it is so delicate, so delicate that unless you experience it there is every possibility you will misunderstand it. So try to experience it. The primary requirement: Don't be against anything - be for! Be for something! Don't be against something! Really, when...

..., HE WHO POSSESSES LITTLE IS SO MUCH THE LESS POSSESSED: PRAISED BE A MODERATE POVERTY! ONLY THERE, WHERE THE STATE CEASES, DOES THE MAN WHO IS NOT SUPERFLUOUS BEGIN: DOES THE SONG OF THE NECESSARY MAN, THE UNIQUE AND IRREPLACEABLE MELODY, BEGIN. OF THE FLIES OF THE MARKETPLACE FLEE, MY FRIEND, INTO YOUR SOLITUDE: I SEE YOU STUNG BY POISONOUS FLIES. FLEE TO WHERE THE RAW, ROUGH BREEZE BLOWS! FLEE...

... AND HATE IT AS THE EVIL EYE, AND SIN AGAINST CUSTOM AND LAW... A FREE LIFE STILL REMAINS FOR GREAT SOULS. TRULY, HE WHO POSSESSES LITTLE IS SO MUCH THE LESS POSSESSED. PRAISED BE A MODERATE POVERTY! This is significant to understand. The more you possess, the more you are possessed, because you become a slave of your own possessions. Use things, but don't possess them. There is no need to possess...

... humanity. Zarathustra does not praise poverty. He is very particular about his words, he says, PRAISED BE A MODERATE POVERTY. What is moderate poverty? All the religions are for poverty. The poor are the blessed. They are hungry and starving, and you are saying that they should inherit the Kingdom of God. Zarathustra says, PRAISED BE A MODERATE POVERTY! Not a poverty that destroys you, not a poverty that...

... keeps you starved, hungry. And if everyone is willing to be happy with the moderate things necessary for life, there will be no poverty and there will be no richness. They exist together. Many of my sannyasins when they come for the first time to India are surprised, seeing that on the one hand there are so many rich people.... Perhaps the richest man in the world was the Nizam of Hyderabad. He had so...

... palace now, told me that when the diamonds were spread on the terraces all the terraces were full and the diamonds were almost two feet thick on the terraces. Nobody has ever calculated how rich he was. So on the one hand you will find very rich people, and on the other hand you will find beggars, who have nothing. "A moderate poverty" is a beautiful concept. Nobody should be so rich that...

... money lies unnecessarily in his basement; he cannot use it. And nobody should be so poor that he has to die because of his poverty. A moderate poverty will bring, without enforcement, a certain equality as far as money is concerned. Zarathustra, perhaps, is the first man in history who is talking about communism and about anarchism. There should not be classes of the rich and the poor, and there is no...

... poet does not claim domination over anybody; he simply shares his heart, his melody, his songs. He is really an emperor. He may be nobody as far as the power elites are concerned, but he reaches to the very heart of humanity. The presidents will be forgotten, the prime ministers will be forgotten, but the song of a poet, the music of a musician, will go on echoing down the corridors of time. It...

... competition and a desire to be powerful and a desire to have some name, some fame, a desire to dominate; these are the poisons. Zarathustra says, FLEE, MY FRIEND, INTO YOUR SOLITUDE: I SEE YOU STUNG BY POISONOUS FLIES. FLEE TO WHERE THE RAW, ROUGH, BREEZE BLOWS! Flee to the natural, flee to the spontaneous. FLEE INTO SOLITUDE. YOU HAVE LIVED TOO NEAR THE SMALL AND PITIABLE MEN. FLEE FROM THEIR HIDDEN...

.... My people were so much engaged in creating the commune, enjoying their life - it was moderate poverty, there was no hope that we will become super-rich, even to survive was enough. But we managed to make even the desert yield something for us to survive. We were producing enough for 5,000 people there and thousands of others who were coming every month, and going, and for 20,000 people on every...

... have to be free, as totally free as possible because suppression has created the barriers. So do not suppress. If you feel like screaming, scream. The very scream will bring your conscious and unconscious nearer. If you feel like dancing, dance. The very dance will bring your conscious and unconscious nearer. Really, dance can be very helpful, because in dance your body and your mind are in a deep...

.... You have moments of feminineness, you have moments of masculineness; everyone does. A woman can become ferocious, a male, in some moods, in some moments. But then she will suppress. She will say, "This is not womanlike." We go on creating a separation, a distance. That distance has to be thrown away; your conscious and unconscious must come nearer. Only then can they meet, only then can...

.... Nothing is denied. You cry and you weep and you laugh and you dance, and you sit in silence. You do all the things that your inner being happens to do; you do not force it to do anything. You do not say, "This is not good; I should not do it." You allow a spontaneous flow. Then the unconscious will come nearer and nearer to the conscious. We have created the gap through suppression: "...

... do or think, the basic color will remain sexual. So much fantasy about sex is because you have denied your inner other. So now this is a compensation. Now you are compensating for something which you have denied to yourself. And look at the absurdity: the more you get obsessed with the other sex the more you feel afraid; the more you deny the inner the more you suppress it; and the more you...

... suppress it the more you become obsessed. Your so-called BRAHMACHARIS are totally obsessed with sex for twenty-four hours a day; they are bound to be. It is natural: nature takes revenge. To me, BRAHMACHARYA - celibacy - means you have come so near to your own feminine or your own masculine, so near that there is no substitution for it. You are not obsessed with it; you do not think about it. It...

... become mirrors to each other. They reveal the unconscious of the other and each helps the other to know himself or herself. Now there is no pathology, no dependence. Remember one thing more: if you deny your unconscious, if you hate your unconscious, if you suppress your woman or man within, then you can go on saying that you love the outer woman but deep down you will hate her also. If you deny your...

... fear? The fear is that the other can reveal the unconscious and you do not want to know anything about it. But not knowing will not help, suppression will not help. It will remain there. It will become a cancer and by and by it will assert itself more and more, and ultimately you will come to feel that you have been a failure and that whatsoever you have suppressed has become victorious and you are...

... emotions full play and enjoy the play, because many new things will be revealed to you. You have not been screaming. You have not screamed; you cannot remember when you last screamed. When the scream comes to you and takes possession of you, you will become afraid of what is happening because then you are losing control. But lose control: your control is the poison. Lose control completely. Allow your...

... Contents Notes What are you going to do about it? Sensational interview with rabbi Abe Finkelstein about Jewish control of the world Contents Physical Aspects of the Local Universe 1. The Nebadon Power Centers 2. The Satania Physical Controllers 3. Our Starry Associates 4. Sun Density 5. Solar Radiation 6. Calcium — The Wanderer of Space 7. Sources of Solar Energy 8. Solar-Energy Reactions 9. Sun...

... relay the down-stepped and modified circuits to the power centers of our constellations and systems. These power centers, in association, function to produce the living system of control and equalization which operates to maintain the balance and distribution of otherwise fluctuating and variable energies. Power centers are not, however, concerned with transient and local energy upheavals, such as sun...

... methods which make them quite independent of the suns of space. These spheres were constructed — made to order — by the power centers and physical controllers and were designed to exert a powerful influence over energy distribution. Basing their activities on such focal points of energy control, the power centers, by their living presences, directionize and channelize the physical energies of space. And...

... complete and perfect control of a majority of the basic energies of space, including the emanations of highly heated orbs and the dark energy-charged spheres. This group of living entities can mobilize, transform, transmute, manipulate, and transmit nearly all of the physical energies of organized space. (457.4) 41:2.5 Life has inherent capacity for the mobilization and transmutation of universal energy...

... systems which may serve as the physical vehicles for the living energies of elementary material organisms. In a way the physical controllers are related to the preliving manifestations of material energy as the adjutant mind-spirits are concerned with the prespiritual functions of material mind. (457.6) 41:2.7 These intelligent creatures of power control and energy direction must adjust their technique...

... beyond the domain and control of the physical custodians. Urantia is in the lines of tremendous energies, a small planet in the circuit of enormous masses, and the local controllers sometimes employ enormous numbers of their order in an effort to equalize these lines of energy. They do fairly well with regard to the physical circuits of Satania but have trouble insulating against the powerful...

... the basic material units closer and closer together until they now closely approach the status of electronic condensation. This process of cooling and contraction may continue to the limiting and critical explosion point of ultimatonic condensation. (459.1) 41:3.7 Most of the giant suns are relatively young; most of the dwarf stars are old, but not all. The collisional dwarfs may be very young and...

... may glow with an intense white light, never having known an initial red stage of youthful shining. Both very young and very old suns usually shine with a reddish glow. The yellow tinge indicates moderate youth or approaching old age, but the brilliant white light signifies robust and extended adult life. (459.2) 41:3.8 While all adolescent suns do not pass through a pulsating stage, at least not...

... interassociated activities of the personal and nonpersonal control of the master universe — the presences, the performances, and the co-ordination of the Conjoint Actor and the Unqualified Absolute. 6. Calcium — The Wanderer of Space (461.5) 41:6.1 In deciphering spectral phenomena, it should be remembered that space is not empty; that light, in traversing space, is sometimes slightly modified by the various...

... hydrogen particles come forth as a helium atom. (464.4) 41:8.2 Reduction of hydrogen content increases the luminosity of a sun. In the suns destined to burn out, the height of luminosity is attained at the point of hydrogen exhaustion. Subsequent to this point, brilliance is maintained by the resultant process of gravity contraction. Eventually, such a star will become a so-called white dwarf, a highly...

... readily escape from the solar interior, thus bringing about the collapse of a gigantic sun within a few days. It was such an emigration of these “runaway particles” that occasioned the collapse of the giant nova of the Andromeda nebula about fifty years ago. This vast stellar body collapsed in forty minutes of Urantia time. (464.6) 41:8.4 As a rule, the vast extrusion of matter continues to exist about...

... the residual cooling sun as extensive clouds of nebular gases. And all this explains the origin of many types of irregular nebulae, such as the Crab nebula, which had its origin about nine hundred years ago, and which still exhibits the mother sphere as a lone star near the center of this irregular nebular mass. 9. Sun Stability (465.1) 41:9.1 The larger suns maintain such a gravity control over...

... among the Hebrews Book Contents Notes What are you going to do about it? Sensational interview with rabbi Abe Finkelstein about Jewish control of the world Contents 1. Samuel — First of the Hebrew Prophets 2. Elijah and Elisha 3. Yahweh and Baal 4. Amos and Hosea 5. The First Isaiah 6. Jeremiah the Fearless 7. The Second Isaiah 8. Sacred and Profane History 9. Hebrew History 10. The Hebrew Religion...

... Naboths in the intrigue to get possession of their land, Elijah made a moral issue out of the olden land mores and launched his vigorous campaign against the Baalites. This was also a fight of the country folk against domination by the cities. It was chiefly under Elijah that Yahweh became Elohim. The prophet began as an agrarian reformer and ended up by exalting Deity. Baals were many, Yahweh was one...

... devotion, and Ezra promised prosperity by adherence to the law. But in spite of all this they lingered on in bondage, and deliverance was deferred. Then Daniel presented the drama of the impending “crisis” — the smiting of the great image and the immediate establishment of the everlasting reign of righteousness, the Messianic kingdom. (1071.2) 97:8.4 And all of this false hope led to such a degree of...

... human history. While it is true that God has many times thrust a Father’s hand of providential intervention into the stream of human affairs, it is a mistake to regard theologic dogmas and religious superstition as a supernatural sedimentation appearing by miraculous action in this stream of human history. The fact that the “Most Highs rule in the kingdoms of men” does not convert secular history into...

... Hebrew mores and presently gained control of the caravan tariffs formerly collected by the Philistines. And then came a series of atrocities climaxed by the murder of Uriah. All judicial appeals were adjudicated at Jerusalem; no longer could “the elders” mete out justice. No wonder rebellion broke out. Today, Absalom might be called a demagogue; his mother was a Canaanite. There were a half dozen...

... to the worship of Elohim. They enjoyed the favor of the Pharaohs, who later enslaved Judah, putting the southern kingdom under tribute. (1073.8) 97:9.18 There were ups and downs — wars between Israel and Judah. After four years of civil war and three dynasties, Israel fell under the rule of city despots who began to trade in land. Even King Omri attempted to buy Shemer’s estate. But the end drew on...

... apace when Shalmaneser III decided to control the Mediterranean coast. King Ahab of Ephraim gathered ten other groups and resisted at Karkar; the battle was a draw. The Assyrian was stopped but the allies were decimated. This great fight is not even mentioned in the Old Testament. (1074.1) 97:9.19 New trouble started when King Ahab tried to buy land from Naboth. His Phoenician wife forged Ahab’s name...

... the Baalim, against the attempt of the cities to dominate the country. But the reform did not succeed until the country landlord Jehu joined forces with the gypsy chieftain Jehonadab to destroy the prophets (real estate agents) of Baal at Samaria. (1074.2) 97:9.20 New life appeared as Jehoash and his son Jeroboam delivered Israel from its enemies. But by this time there ruled in Samaria a gangster...

...-nobility whose depredations rivaled those of the Davidic dynasty of olden days. State and church went along hand in hand. The attempt to suppress freedom of speech led Elijah, Amos, and Hosea to begin their secret writing, and this was the real beginning of the Jewish and Christian Bibles. (1074.3) 97:9.21 But the northern kingdom did not vanish from history until the king of Israel conspired with the...

... alongside the temple of Yahweh. This reign of terror was ended by a monotheistic revolt led by the boy king Joash, who crusaded for Yahweh for thirty-five years. (1074.4) 97:9.22 The next king, Amaziah, had trouble with the revolting tax-paying Edomites and their neighbors. After a signal victory he turned to attack his northern neighbors and was just as signally defeated. Then the rural folk revolted...

... The real undoing of Judah was effected by a corrupt and rich ring of politicians operating under the rule of a boy king, Manasseh. The changing economy favored the return of the worship of Baal, whose private land dealings were against the ideology of Yahweh. The fall of Assyria and the ascendancy of Egypt brought deliverance to Judah for a time, and the country folk took over. Under Josiah they...

... bondage. Then ensued a period in which the Baalim politicians controlled both the courts and the priesthood. Baal worship was an economic and social system dealing with property rights as well as having to do with soil fertility. (1075.1) 97:9.25 With the overthrow of Necho by Nebuchadnezzar, Judah fell under the rule of Babylon and was given ten years of grace, but soon rebelled. When Nebuchadnezzar...

... destroyed, and the people were carried away into Babylon. The Yahweh-Baal struggle ended with the captivity. And the captivity shocked the remnant of Israel into monotheism. (1075.3) 97:9.27 In Babylon the Jews arrived at the conclusion that they could not exist as a small group in Palestine, having their own peculiar social and economic customs, and that, if their ideologies were to prevail, they must...

... they would fulfill this destiny, they would become the spiritual leaders of all peoples, and that the coming Messiah would reign over them and all the world as the Prince of Peace. (1075.7) 97:10.2 When the Jews had been freed by the Persians, they returned to Palestine only to fall into bondage to their own priest-ridden code of laws, sacrifices, and rituals. And as the Hebrew clans rejected the...

... is a question of relaxing into your being, not doing. The greatest thing will happen to you only when you are not there. And if you are doing something you are bound to be there. Sleep comes when you are not there. Enlightenment also follows the same rule - it comes when you are not there. But when you are doing, how will you be absent at the same time? If you are doing something you will be there...

... others that because of them you are in anguish. Nobody is here in anguish because of others. You are in anguish because of your nonunderstanding or your misunderstanding. For example, somebody came to me - a husband, a father of five children - and he said that he was very much disturbed because the wife goes on quarreling, tries to dominate him and the children don't listen to him.... "The mother...

... miss the whole point. Why does the wife look dominating? She looks dominating because you are also struggling for domination. If you are not struggling for domination she will not look dominating. It is a struggle, because you are after the same goal. And what is wrong if the children follow the mother? But you would like the children to follow you - hence the struggle." Try to understand...

...! Everybody is trying to dominate. That is the nature of the ego: to make every effort to dominate the other - whether the other is husband, wife, or children, or friends, makes no difference - to dominate, to find ways and means to dominate. And if everybody is trying to dominate and you are also trying to dominate there will be struggle. The struggle is not because others are trying to dominate; the...

... struggle is because you are not trying to understand how the ego functions. You drop out of it! The others cannot be changed, and you will be unnecessarily wasting your life if you try to change the others. That is THEIR problem. They will suffer if they are not understanding, why should you suffer? You simply understand that everybody is trying to dominate, "I drop out of it, I will not try to...

... dominate"... your struggle disappears. And a very beautiful thing happens. If you don't try to dominate, the wife starts feeling foolish, and by and by she starts looking silly to herself - because the other is no more there to fight. When you fight you strengthen the other's ego, and this is a vicious circle. When you don't fight then the other feels he is fighting alone, in a vacuum: fighting with...

... become a dropout. Not that you drop out of the society, not that you become a hippie and go and make a commune - that is not the point. Psychologically you are no more in these trips of egos, domination, aggression, violence, anger. You are no more part of it. Then a distance is created, a detachedness. Now you can look at things and you can laugh... how foolish man is! And you can laugh... how...