... now just a remembering, a memory. It may not even be a conscious memory; it may be unconscious. It may be waiting like a seed somewhere deep within you. This seed will become the source of a quest, and you will go on searching for something that you do not know. What are you searching for? You do not know. But still, somewhere, even unknown to you, some experience, some blissful moment, has become...

... in the unconscious. It may be a blissful moment of satori in your mother's womb, a blissful existence with no worry, with no tension, with a completely relaxed state of mind. It may be a deep, unconscious feeling, a feeling that you have not known consciously, that is pushing you. Psychologists agree that the whole concept of spiritual seeking comes from the blissful experience in the mother's womb...

... has to be done to achieve this state; it just is. So it may be that there is a deep, unconscious seed inside you that has experienced total relaxation. It may be some childhood experience of aesthetic blissfulness, a childhood satori. Every childhood is satori-full, but we have lost it. Paradise is lost, and Adam is thrown out of paradise. But the remembrance is there, the unknown remembrance that...

... is why there is suffering. There is an unconscious resistance. If something begins to happen to the brahma randhra, it just begins to make ego death come nearer. It seems so painful that there is inner resistance. This resistance can take two forms: either you will stop doing meditation or you will ask what can be done to transcend it, to go beyond it. Nothing should be done. This asking, too, is a...

.... The brahma randhra has its own wisdom, every center has its own wisdom, and if we become attentive to it a disturbance will be created. The moment you become aware of any of the inner workings of your body you create a disturbance because you create tension. The whole working of the body, the inner working, is unconscious. For example, once you have taken your food you must not be attentive to it...

... you talk about your surgery, or hitting people hard, I can sense what you mean by it." Only people who are so unconscious that unless you hit them they cannot wake up... everybody is not so asleep, so unconscious. There are so many categories. A few people are just on the verge, where a small push by a loving hand will do the whole surgery; a small push and the bird is on the wing. There was a...

... people who have never lived, who don't have the courage to relax peacefully in moments of death without any fear -- because no accident, no disease, nothing can make even a dent in your consciousness; you are always intact. But the problem with people is, they live their whole lives unconsciously -- in such misery, anguish, anxiety, that it is almost necessary for them to remain unconscious. They find...

... new ways to be unconscious: drugs... anything that makes them unconscious. But then when death comes, they fall into a deep coma. The very fear of death, the very presence of death makes them absolutely unconscious, without any anesthesia. Only for these people does death happen. Otherwise, death is a fiction. It is just moving the house; your old house has become such that renovating it is more...

... little consciousness of what you are doing: This is not life. This is only a slow death which will be completed in seventy or seventy-five years' time. You are dying every day, every moment. The great masses of the world only know slow death. Only very few people who have become awakened have known the tremendous tidal wave of life. Just as the unconscious goes on dying, the conscious goes on becoming...

... only difference. Instead of resistance, there is a tremendous willingness, a longing, a passionate welcome. You want it; you desire it from the very depth of your heart. The experience is the same -- the separation between the false and the real -- but because of your resistance in death, you become unconscious, you fall into a coma. You cling too much in death; you don't allow it to happen, you...

... mistakes. It is a beginning of an adventure. But because you cling to life and you don't want to leave it -- and it has to happen by the very nature of things -- you fall unconscious. Almost everyone, except those few people who have become enlightened, dies unconsciously; hence they don't know what death is, they don't know its new beginning, the new dawn. Meditation is your own exploration. You are...

... experience of death, surprised that you are still alive; death was like a cloud that has passed; it has not even scratched you. Hence the fascination, and the fear. The fascination is to know the mysterious experience everybody has to pass through, has passed through many times, but became unconscious. And the fear -- that perhaps death is only the end and not another beginning. It happened, just in the...

... beginning of this century, that the King of Varanasi was to be operated on; the operation was major. But the King was very stubborn and he wouldn't take any kind of anesthesia. He said, "You can do the operation, but I want to see it happen; I don't want to be unconscious." The doctors were puzzled. It was against medical practice... such a major operation was going to be too painful; the man...

... might die because of the pain. Surgery needs you to be unconscious. Perhaps the science of surgery has learned the art of anesthesia from the experience of death, because death is the greatest surgery. It separates you from your body, from your heart, and you have remained identified with all this for seventy years, eighty years. They have become almost your real self. The separation is going to be...

... very painful, and there is a limit to pain. Have you ever noticed? -- there is no unbearable pain. The words"unbearable pain" exist only in language -- all pain is bearable. The moment it becomes unbearable, you fall unconscious. Your unconsciousness is a way to bear it. If he had been an ordinary man, the doctors would not have listened to him -- but he was a king, and a very well-known...

... question of carrying a certain consciousness into the next life does not arise; they don't have it in the first place. What they have, they will carry into the next life. They will become greater geniuses, they will become better singers, they will become more talented in their field, but it has nothing to do with meditation or consciousness. They will remain as unconscious as you are, as anybody else is...

... life. But the desire for power, which was unconscious up to now, and perhaps to her it remained unconscious.... But bugging your own master's room.... On the one hand trusting me totally - but bugging my room is not trust. She was afraid that I might be preparing somebody - in case someone could take better care of the commune. She tried to poison Vivek, because she was the one who was taking care of...

... beings are living so unconsciously that when they come to power all their unconscious instincts have a chance to be fulfilled. Then they don't care whether it kills people, whether it poisons people.... You are asking me about the misuse of power. Power is misused because you have desires which are ugly, which are an inheritance from the animals. In a better world the first things should be.... We...

... waste almost one third of life in educating our children. In that one third of life, some time should be given to cleanse their unconscious; so by the time they graduate from their university, and they have some power somewhere - somebody will become a police commissioner, somebody will become a governor, somebody will become a prime minister - if they do not have anything in their unconscious that is...

... that we can reply to you about your conditions." These people are not corrupted by power. These people are corrupted; power simply brings their corruption into action. Power in itself is neutral. In a good man's hand it will be a blessing. In an unconscious man's hand it is going to be a curse. But for thousands of years we have condemned power, without thinking that power has not to be...

... in the house. He has almost become like an animal. He cannot stand up, he can only move on all fours; and because he was forced to live in darkness, he has lost his eyesight. Even parents use power. Teachers use power, husbands use power, wives use power. It does not matter where you are. If mankind comes to understand the deep psychological roots and changes man's unconscious so that there are no...

... seeds, power can go on raining but there will be no flowers of corruption. Otherwise power is going to be misused always. And you cannot take power from people's hands; somebody must be a mother, somebody must be a father, somebody must be a teacher. The only way is, to cleanse people's unconscious with meditation, fill their inner being with light. It is only meditation that gives you a clean heart...

... GIVE NOW SO THAT HISTORY WILL NOT REPEAT ITSELF THIS TIME? The unconscious human mind is the cause of the whole trouble. There have been people around me who were doing all kinds of things -- there were doctors, there were dentists, there were plumbers, there were carpenters -- but none of them got such an ego as the people who were working as therapists. Therapy basically has nothing to do with...

..., THRILL ME SO MUCH THAT I OFTEN START SHAKING. WHAT IS REALLY PREVENTING ME FROM WAKING UP? IS THE UNCONSCIOUS REALLY SO MIGHTY? DO I NEED MORE AND MORE DRY CLEANING? The unconscious is certainly very powerful and immense. It is your whole past, from the very beginning. All that has happened in existence is part of your unconscious. It is as long and infinite as your past -- but so is your...

... superconscious. It is as long and as infinite as your future. You are just in the middle -- you are always in the middle. The past is very powerful because it has already happened, so it has left its marks on you. The future is not so powerful because it has not happened yet; it is only a possibility. The past is a reality; it is a history. Your unconscious is your history, and tremendously vast; your...

..., "Wake up!" something in your superconscious gets stirred and a thrill goes through you. The unconscious is a very thick wall, but it cannot prevent you from waking; it can only postpone it -- and that too depends how deeply you are listening to me, whether you are only hearing or listening. And remember the distinction between these two words. Hearing is simple, everybody who has ears can...

... hear, but listening is something more than hearing. Listening means hearing without your mind coming in between, interpreting, meddling, giving colors of its own to what you have listened to, bringing connotations, associations from your past -- that is, from your unconscious. When I say, "Wake up!" I have one meaning. If you hear it you may have a different meaning, but if you listen to it...

... a different man. The master can only do one thing: he can go on spinning around you meanings of a thousand kinds. Perhaps one of them may trigger the process, but nothing can be said about what was the trigger; it depends on so many things that it is unpredictable. But howsoever big the unconscious may be, its value is nothing. Waking up, even for a single moment, has tremendous value, and...

..., alert, and capable of using the opportunity that may be cut any moment. Make it a point that it is good that reality, which to others is hidden, to us is no longer hidden; it is clear and open. Face it! And the only way to face it is to live moment to moment as totally and intensively as possible. You cannot afford to be sleepy and unconscious, just dragging on. You have to become alert. You have to...

.... Marx says that even consciousness depends on economical situations; it is a by-product. Consciousness is a by- product of economic situations, the structure of the society. Marx is the perfect Jew. You cannot find a better specimen. Then there is Freud who tried to invent the idea that the whole of life moves according to unconscious laws, instincts. There is no conscious event in human life...

...; everything is dominated by the unconscious. He was a fatalist; fatalism is another idea that the world is run by dead rules. To Marx, it is economics which rules everything. To Freud, it is unconscious instinct which rules everything. Then there is Einstein who tried to invent the idea that the whole of life is nothing but a combination of atoms. All three are calculators. To be a Jew has nothing to do...

... unconsciousness. One has to transcend both to know that which was in the beginning - which is God. "Would you define and discuss the nature of consciousness? How does consciousness relate to ego? " One part of you is conscious, one-tenth. Nine- tenths of you is unconscious. If the conscious part thinks itself to be the whole, it becomes the ego. Then it forgets about the unconscious; then the part...

... imagines itself to be the whole. Then it is the ego. If the conscious becomes aware of the unconscious also.... That is the whole effort of religion, that is the whole effort of meditation. If the conscious turns back, looks back, and becomes aware of the unconscious also - the dark night within - then the conscious knows that "I am conscious, I am unconscious also. My consciousness is just a wave...

... on the ocean. The unconscious is vast." Then the ego disappears. Ego is the part, thinking itself to be the whole. Non-ego is the part, becoming aware of the whole. Then the ego disappears. How to define the nature of consciousness? It has never been defined, it never will be defined. Who will define it? To define it you have to be away from it. To define anything you have to stand out of it...

... ORGASM WHICH HAPPENS BETWEEN THE OUTER MALE BODY AND THE INNER FEMALE UNCONSCIOUS, AND VICE VERSA. PLEASE EXPLAIN HOW THIS HAPPENS IN THE ACTIVE MEDITATION WE ARE PRACTICING HERE. It happens in the active meditation you are doing here because all that is hidden and suppressed is brought out by it. It is a catharsis, an expression. It is just the reverse process of suppression. So you will have to...

... to be expressed and something has to be repressed. That repressed part becomes the unconscious. Really, there exists no unconscious. You repress something and you repress it very deeply because you yourself do not want to be aware of it, you do not want to be conscious of it. It will be a heavy burden on the mind, so you go on forgetting it. You go on being unconscious about the fact that it exists...

... there. You forget its existence, and you yourself create an unconsciousness within. This is the way you become divided, you become two. The rejected part becomes the unconscious and the accepted part becomes the conscious. If you are a man, then you are rejecting the woman, because no culture has yet existed on earth which accepts the bisexuality. All the cultures that have existed up to now were not...

... live according to logic, and life is illogical. Life is both man and woman together, and logic is always either feminine or masculine. Your logic says you are a man, so cut all those qualities which do not belong to a man. And that suppressed part becomes your unconscious. You are a woman, so everyone says you must be kind, loving, sympathetic. You must not be cruel, you must not hate, you must not...

... laughter, your sadness, back to life; throwing everything out of your system so that your system becomes purified, so that your system becomes innocent again. With that innocent system you can contact the divine. This poisoned system cannot have any contact. Active meditation is catharsis. It is to purify you. And when you are purified and the unconscious has been acted out, the barrier between the...

... unconscious and the conscious falls - because the barrier is created by suppression. When you are not suppressing the barrier disappears and then there is no boundary between the conscious and the unconscious. Then you are both: you are bisexual - man and woman both. And when you are both, you will have a new feeling of being, a new unity within you. You will not feel disrupted, divided. You will become...

... CONQUERED THE WORLD. THEY ARE FREE. THE WAY IS NOT IN THE SKY. THE WAY IS IN THE HEART. ALL THINGS ARISE AND PASS AWAY. BUT THE AWAKENED AWAKE FOREVER. LIFE IS EASY FOR THE MAN WHO IS WITHOUT SHAME, IMPUDENT AS A CROW, A VICIOUS GOSSIP, VAIN, MEDDLESOME, DISSOLUTE. Life can be lived in two ways: either as a continuous fall... then you are pulled by the unconscious forces of gravitation; you need not make...

... anything beyond the instinctive, beyond the unconscious. It is only man who has been able to produce a Buddha, a Lao Tzu, a Jesus, a Bahauddin. It is because of the buddhas that we can say man has the capacity to be a god. It is in the buddhas that we have found the link between man and God. Darwin and his followers have not been able to find the link between monkeys and man, but we have found in the...

... whatsoever you are doing is adultery. OR DRINK.... Remember, all the buddhas are against any chemical drug that can make you unconscious, for the simple reason that you are already so unconscious. Just the other day somebody had asked a question: "Jesus used to drink alcohol. What do you say about it?" I can allow Jesus! He was so conscious that he could afford to drink once in a while. But I...

... cannot allow you. You are already so unconscious, you are already so burdened; now, making you more unconscious will be dragging you towards hell. In the East, particularly in India, there has existed a tremendously beautiful esoteric school of tantrikas. One of their very secret methods is that whenever a master thinks that a disciple is ready, he allows him to drink alcohol or take some other drug in...

... ROOTS. He is not telling you to repress. He is simply saying, become more aware. Buddha was never in favor of repression. Repression is an unconscious effort; it never transforms you. It keeps you the same but repressed. "Sinners!" shouted the evangelist, accusingly, at the tent full of true believers. "You are all sinners. Every one of you has something on his conscience, and one sin...

... your face." Repression will do only that: it will take the smile off your face; otherwise, everything will remain the same. Buddha is not for repression. He says: Become more conscious of your lying, of your destructiveness, of your stealing, of your adultery, of your becoming constantly unconscious and finding new ways of becoming unconscious. Beware, because you are digging up your own roots...

... HATE. ILLUSION IS A NET, DESIRE A RUSHING RIVER. Beware of lust, unconscious sexuality. When sex becomes conscious it has a totally different flavor. It becomes tantra, it is no longer sex. When sex becomes conscious it is love, it is no longer lust. Love brings freedom, and lust simply creates prisons for you. THERE IS NO FIRE LIKE PASSION, THERE ARE NO CHAINS LIKE HATE. ILLUSION IS A NET, DESIRE A...

... truths. To understand this is to start a journey of transformation. Misery is caused by your unawareness, bliss is caused by your awareness; and between the unaware mind and the aware mind is the whole of life - the world and nirvana. Unconscious you are in the world conscious you are in nirvana. Unconscious you belong to Caesar, conscious you belong to Christ. You are the same person, and the energy...

... that becomes conscious or remains unconscious is also the same. When consciousness is asleep - it is unconscious. It can be provoked, it can be brought to awareness, it can burn as a bright light. Consciousness burning like a flame, like a bright light, is bodha. And when your whole being becomes full of light you have become awareness. That's why Siddharth Gautama is called Buddha; the name comes...

... do you think is playing Laxmi's role? It is Chuang Tzu. A few things to be understood about the question. It's certainly difficult to play an authoritative role, but the difficulty arises not because of the role but because of the unconscious desire to dominate. You can repress the desire, you can avoid any authoritative role; the desire will remain there. Whenever the authoritative role is given...

... to you, the desire hidden in the unconscious, the repressed desire, becomes alive, jumps on the role. It is beautiful to watch it and get rid of it; rather than getting rid of the role, rather than trying to avoid the role itself, it is better to get rid of the desire to be authoritative. So Nirgun, it is good that you are placed in a role where again and again you will have to say to people, "...

... fear simply shows that something in the unconscious is still lingering on. A man should be so free that if the situation demands him to be in a power role, he can be in a power role -- without being powerful. If the situation demands it of him, he can easily accommodate himself to the new situation without any trouble. A man should not have a fixed role in life. He should be fluid. And the question...

... is not of roles; the question is of consciousness. So Nirgun, be more conscious, be more loving. Don't allow that urge to dominate to become an unconscious trip, that's all. Become conscious of it. Through consciousness, it will be dropped. Because of this fear, millions of people down the ages became monks and nuns. What was their fear? Why were they afraid of the world? They were afraid not of...

... the world, they were afraid of their unconscious desires. They knew well that if opportunity is given to them they will fall from their pedestals. But what type of awareness is this? If you can be happy only in the forest and cannot be happy in the marketplace, your happiness is not worth much. If you can be celibate only when there is no woman available, your celibacy is not of any worth, not worth...

... directions -- you are available to every direction possible, you are available to the whole existence. But the difficulty is that if I tell you not to look you say, "Okay, we will not try," but an unconscious effort goes on. You even try not to look, but that too becomes just an effort to look. The question is very fundamental. Buddha says, "If you are desireless, all desires will be...

.... What clicks? The mother in you. When you see a woman and something reminds you deeply of your mother ... It may not be conscious, you may not be aware of it, you may not be able to figure out what it is, you may not be able to put your finger on it, but if you go deep into your unconscious you will find that the way the woman walks, the long nose of the woman, or the black eyes of the woman or the...

... style of her hair, or her voice, or something, suddenly has clicked your unconscious and the unconscious knows, "This is the woman." People fall in love so suddenly, without knowing the woman, who she is -- love at first sight. How is it possible? What psychological mechanism is functioning there? Your mother. And so it is true about the father. When Zen Masters say, "Kill your parents...

...," they are saying, "Destroy the imprint of your mother and father from your unconscious." Once that imprint is destroyed you will be free. Christianity, Islam, or Judaism or Hinduism are not as perfect religions as Zen, because they still talk of the Father God or the Mother Goddess. The imprint continues. Not only in this world, it goes on being projected in the sky too -- God the...

..., you are shocked. You have never thought that they would ever die. Although many times you have wished that they should die -- an unconscious wish -- because they are heavy on you, because their very presence is a restriction. Have you watched, whenever you go to talk to your father you start stuttering, perspiring, you become nervous? Because he reminds you again that you are helpless, a small child...

...; And when the father and mother die, suddenly you feel you are a child no more. But when Zen people say it, they mean something else. They are not talking about the father and mother on the outside. They are talking about the inside. When the father and mother in the inside die, you become mature, you become free. And remember, if you are free from your father and mother in the unconscious, you will...