..., but you must have known and somewhere deep in your unconscious, in the recesses of your being, you must be carrying a nostalgia, a dream. That is exactly the case. You have known God. You have lived as a God. When you were a child you lived without ego -- before you came into contact with the serpent. You have known, your eyes were clear, you had a transparent clarity, you were able to see through...

... and through. You have lived like a God and you have known what bliss is but now it is forgotten. But still it goes on knocking somewhere deep down from your unconscious -- 'Seek it. Seek it again.' Hence you seek God, hence you seek meditation, hence you seek love, hence you seek all that you seek. Sometimes in the right direction, sometimes in the wrong direction, but you are continuously seeking...

... the point where the mind, out of sheer tiredness, yields. But this will be only on the surface; deep in the recesses of your unconscious the turmoil will continue. It will be a false serenity. A forced serenity is a false serenity, it is not real. No, will cannot bring it. By effort it cannot be brought. It comes only through understanding, not by will. So never try to replace understanding by will...

.... Consciousness versus unconsciousness. But remember, when I say unconsciousness I don't mean the Freudian unconscious. That is a very poor unconscious, a very small unconscious. It is just the repressed conscious, it is not much. To Zen the unconscious is God, to Zen the conscious is poor -- a small part, just the tip of the iceberg. The unconscious is the vast, the enormous, the huge, the unlimited. The...

... conscious has to dissolve into the unconscious, not otherwise -- it is not that the unconscious has to become conscious. And that unconscious lives in the belly. But remember, the word 'unconscious' does not have good connotations. It seems as if there is no consciousness. No, there is a different kind of consciousness. Not this kind of consciousness that you know a different kind of consciousness a...

... anything for it to happen. You cannot force it, you cannot will it - it is not a part of your will at all. It is moving into the unconscious and your will is just a fragment of the conscious. When you move into the unconscious, towards the depth, that fragment which is consciousness, that fragment which is will, is left on the surface. You cannot take your surface to the depth, you cannot take your...

..., put off the light, close your eyes, relax and wait. Whenever it comes, it comes. You cannot bring it by any act of your will - will is against the unconscious. And this happens in many things in life: just the opposite comes out of it. If you want to be silent, what will you do? - because silence is just like sleep. You cannot force it. You can allow it to happen, it is a let-go, but there is no way...

... unconscious, to your depth, cannot be forced. It happens many times: you are trying to remember a name or a face and it is not coming, but still you feel it is just on the tip of your tongue. The feeling is so deep that you feel it is going to come and you try to bring it. And the more you try, the more it is not coming. You even become suspicious whether the feeling is true or not. But you feel - your...

... music - and suddenly it pops up. What happened? It belonged to the unconscious, it was deep in you. And the more you tried, the narrower you became; and the more you tried, the more the unconscious was disturbed. It became a chaos, then everything became unsettled. It was there just on the tip, but because you were too active to bring it out... you were using will, and will cannot bring anything out...

... of your depth. Only surrender brings it, only when you let go. So when you went into the park or into the garden, started reading the newspaper, digging a hole in the earth, listening to the music, you forgot about the whole project... suddenly it is there. This is the law of reverse effect. With the unconscious, remember, will is of no use - not only of no use, it is also dangerous, harmful. Lao...

...-fifty. Why do they choose the night more? And ninety percent! Because the mother is unconscious, in a let-go. She is sleeping and the child can come out easily. If she is aware, she will make effort and the law of reverse effect will be there. When the mother is awake, she will make every effort so that she goes beyond the pain and the thing is finished, the child is born. And every effort is a...

... believe it. How is it possible? Then many experiments were tried, many research projects, and it was found that it is because they are unconscious. They live like wild animals; there is no fight, no struggle, no forcing. They don't will anything, they simply float. They are primitive, they don't have a very conscious mind. The more civilized, the more you have a conscious mind. The more civilized, the...

... more your will is trained, and your unconscious goes further and further, deeper, and there exists a gap. If something is to be done, howsoever difficult, you can find the know-how, how to do it. You can learn the technique; there are experts, you can be trained. But in Zen nobody can be trained. In God there are no experts and no authorities - cannot be, because it is not a question of know-how, it...

... swimming in the unconscious. Now try to understand the sutra: WHEN THE DEEP MEANING OF THINGS IS NOT UNDERSTOOD, THE MIND'S ESSENTIAL PEACE IS DISTURBED TO NO AVAIL. IF YOU UNDERSTAND, there will be peace. If you don't understand, there will be disturbance, tension and anguish. Whenever somebody is in anguish it shows he has not understood the thing, the deeper meaning of things. And you go on accusing...

... practice. I give you no discipline - because you can practice a discipline, you can become very skillful, you can become very artful, crafty; still deep down you will remain the same person, because it is not a question of practicing a discipline. The question is of SEEING, the question is of understanding your life, its unconscious motives. The question is to understand the darkness in which you are...

... kill time." Time is killing you and you think you are killing time. Nobody has ever been able to kill time: time kills everybody. And when you tell them to meditate the immediate response is, "But where is the time to meditate?" And it is not that they are consciously saying it; it is a very unconscious reaction. It is not that they are deceiving, they are deceived. It is not that they...

... his grace, his very being is poetic, but his message is scientific, as scientific as it can be. He is talking about the unconscious and the conscious. He says you are deep in the dark if you are not aware that the world is on fire, that people are living in anguish - and they may not even be aware of it. That way the anguish is doubled or multiplied, because if you are aware of your anguish you can...

.... YOU ARE DEEP IN THE DARK. Buddha says: Looking at you it seems you are not conscious at all, you are living an unconscious life. Now it is a psychological truth. The whole contemporary psychology, whether Freudian or non-Freudian, Adlerian or Jungian, ALL the schools of modern psychology agree upon one thing: that only a very small part of man is conscious, a very tiny part. The major part of his...

... being is unconscious, is in darkness; you see only the tip of the iceberg, the rest is in darkness. And from that dark continent which is your unconscious come all the motives, desires, instincts, urges - and the conscious has to follow them. The conscious is only a servant, it is not a master; it is in the service of the unconscious. The unconscious becomes angry and the conscious follows suit; the...

... unconscious becomes full of a sexual urge and the conscious follows it. And the conscious has become very clever in rationalizing. It rationalizes everything. The conscious believes that it is the master and the unconscious laughs at it. Just watch yourself. If you are angry you never say, "I was angry because of my unconsciousness." You say, "I was angry because anger was needed. I was...

... guides have disappeared - long ago they disappeared. They were replaced first by the priests. Now the priests are being replaced by the psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists. The priests were blind, now the psychiatrists, the psychoanalysts are blind. They don't know what they are doing, they don't know where they are. They go on helping people and they are unconscious, sometimes even more than...

... are the Christians. "Be a Buddha," they say, and the people who are trying to be a Buddha are the Buddhists. No other Christ has yet happened, neither has a Buddha, and it is not going to happen ever. It is not in the nature of things. History repeats, existence repeats never. History repeats itself because history is constituted of the unconscious humanity. Existence never repeats itself...

..., it happened with Mohammed - the SAME people. They are not different people - the SAME unconscious humanity.... One thing can be concluded: the unconscious humanity always worships the established structure, because it is familiar with it. And a man like Jesus or Buddha or Krishna is a stranger. He does not belong to the common, he does not belong to the unconscious; he comes as if from another...

... want to attain the heights of truth." The same political language, the same political mind: "heights of truth." The desire is to be higher than everybody else, and something unconscious has also come into it. He says, "I have not acquired the truth in totality yet, nor did Mahatma Gandhi." The first thing is: truth cannot be divided into parts. You don't acquire truth in...

... alive - you are alive. He says, "I have not attained truth in its totality." Truth is always total. And suddenly he brings Mahatma Gandhi in; that is something unconscious erupting: "... nor had Mahatma Gandhi." Because that is his ultimate desire: to be like Mahatma Gandhi. The whole effort of his whole life has been to be like Mahatma Gandhi. So suddenly he remembers that there...

..., "I love you," that is enough. You don't go on saying, "I love you absolutely, I love you categorically, I love you completely, entirely! " If you say all these things with all these adjectives she may become a little aware that something is missing - why this emphasis? There is some unconscious fear. A ventriloquist traveling in the interior of Brazil was taking a ride in a bullock...

... stupid circles - complete faith in something that he knows not... only ambition for that which he knows not... a claim that he has achieved a little bit of truth, as if truth can be divided. But he represents in a way the ordinary, unconscious humanity. He is representative. That's how millions of people go on thinking and behaving. And the greatest root cause of it all is that you have been told...

... patient and quite pretty. The doctor took her name and background and then said, "In order to determine what is wrong with you, I will have to give you a thorough examination. Please get completely undressed. "Okay, doc," said the Italian beauty, "but to make me feel right, you first!" Your unconscious goes on erupting into your consciousness. If you watch a little carefully you...

... unconscious, he has been forced to remain in a deep slumber. You are being driven in many subtle ways to remain drunk with power, with money, with prestige, with fame, name; all these are different kinds of opium. Power makes people so drunk, money makes people so drunk. Ambition is the greatest intoxicant invented ever. The DESIDERATA says: "BE YOURSELF SPECIALLY DO NOT FEIGN AFFECTION." THAT TOO...

... exceptional experience. Whomsoever you marry you will be marrying the same woman. Mothers-in-law will be different, but the woman will be the same, the man will be the same, because you are the chooser - and you are as unconscious as before, you have not learned anything. If your love fails, that simply means you don't know what love is. It is not the fault of the woman, it is not the fault of the man. If...

... are unbearable. This is an escape; one falls below the rational mind. This is going back to the animal mind. This is falling into the unconscious. There are other people who manage the same thing in other ways. The alcoholic manages it through alcohol. He drinks too much; he becomes completely unconscious. He forgets the whole world and all its problems and anxieties - the wife, the children, the...

... market, the people. He moves into his unconscious through the help of alcohol. This is a temporary kind of madness which will be gone after a few hours. And whenever there are difficult times in the world, drugs become very important. After the Second World War, drugs became of immense importance all over the world, particularly in the countries which had seen the Second World War, in the countries...

... so much stress. People are so poor, they cannot afford psychiatry, psychoanalysis. Madness is a luxury. Only rich countries can afford it. This is one kind of madness that psychologists are aware of: falling below the rational mind, moving into the unconscious, dropping the small conscious that you had. It was not very much in the first place; only one-tenth part of your mind is conscious. You are...

... just like an iceberg - one- tenth above the surface, nine-tenths below the surface. Nine-tenths of your mind is unconscious. Madness means dropping that one-tenth that was conscious so the whole iceberg goes underneath the surface. But there is another kind of madness - that too has to be called madness because of a certain similarity - that is going beyond the rational mind. One is falling below the...

... rational mind; the other is falling above the rational mind, falling upwards. In both cases the rational mind is lost: in one you become unconscious, in the other you become superconscious. In both cases the ordinary mind is lost. In one you become totally unconscious, a certain integrity arises in you. And you can watch: in mad people there is a certain integrity, a certain consistency - they are one...

.... You can rely on a madman. He is not two, he is utterly one. He is very consistent because he has only one mind, that is the unconscious. The duality has disappeared. And you will find a certain innocence also in a madman. He is like a child. He is not cunning, he cannot be. In fact, he had to become mad because he could not be cunning. He could not cope in a cunning world. You will find a certain...

... dissolved into the nine parts that were unconscious. In this other madness, the nine parts that were not conscious start moving upwards and all come to the light, above the surface. The whole mind becomes conscious. That is the meaning of the word "Buddha", becoming absolutely conscious. Now this man will also look mad, because he will be consistent, utterly consistent. He will be together, more...

... together than any madman can ever be. He will be absolutely integrated. He will be an individual, literally an individual - it means indivisible. He will not have any split at all. So both look alike: the madman believes, and the Buddha trusts. And trust and belief look alike. The madman is one, utterly unconscious; the Buddha is also one, utterly conscious. And oneness looks alike. The madman has...

... beautiful words. But in his dreams his truth comes up; his conscious mind goes to sleep and his unconscious starts asserting itself. That is more real. Hence the psychologist, the psychoanalyst, has to look into your dreams. You are not reliable. You are so deeply conditioned to become a hypocrite, you may be saying things without ever thinking that you are lying. You may be thinking you are telling the...

... for the reason that the whole world is full of bigots about everything. Otherwise it is very simple. It has nothing to do with the judge; the man should be given to a hypnotist. The young man should be deeply hypnotized so that he goes below his conscious mind and comes to the unconscious - and then he should be asked. And the truth will be out, because the unconscious mind cannot lie. That is one...

... great thing about the unconscious mind: it cannot lie. And if the hypnotist is really skillful, he can take the person even deeper than the unconscious, to the collective unconscious. Then everything is crystal-clear, pure truth. It is not a question to be decided in a court; the judge has nothing to do with it. Whatever he decides will be wrong. I can say it before he decides: whatever he decides...

... will be wrong unless he decides to give that young man to a great hypnotist. And things can be very easily found - the unconscious carries all your past lives and their memories. If there has been such a thing, the unconscious will reveal it, will tell it to you clearly. Perhaps the man may start barking when he is unconscious. He may make the bark of a dog who is being tortured, and that will be...

... against hypnotism - which is a very accurate science. They are so afraid of hypnotism; they think it is something magical, something dangerous, something evil. It is neither evil nor dangerous; it is a simple, deliberate way of putting a man's conscious mind to sleep and allowing the unconscious to speak. It is going to be, in the future, one of the greatest sciences ever. But if you are not living now...

..., and you can be unconscious in the Indian way or the Chinese way or the Japanese way; what does it matter? And if you cannot listen to words said against your mind you need not come here; this is not the right place for you. I am not here to buttress your egos; I am here to destroy them. I have to speak against them. My whole work consists in destroying. First a great destruction is needed, only then...

... have it. These rare people have happened everywhere; it is nothing special to you. So stop bragging about it. This bragging keeps you unaware of your real situation; it has become very intoxicating to you. It keeps you in a kind of unconscious state. A fellow called up Mr. Vanderwater on Park Avenue and said, "Mr. Vanderwater, did my friend Bill come to your house party uninvited last night...

... ACCEPTANCE A FORM OF UNCONSCIOUSNESS? Ra, if you are unconscious you cannot be complete in anything. The unconscious mind cannot manage to be complete, to be entire, to be total in anything. One thing is certain: if you can manage to be entire, total, whole in anything, you are not unconscious. You may be anything else but not unconscious. You ask me, "Is to listen to discourse with complete...

..., unquestioning acceptance a form of unconsciousness?" No, it cannot be a form of unconsciousness, because to bring conscious effort is a must if you want to be absolutely, totally accepting. You will have to bring deliberate effort; you will have to be very conscious about it. Unconscious mind is always fragmentary; it is many, it is not one. It cannot be one; it is a crowd, it is a mob, many voices...

... within you. When you are unconscious you are many people; you are not a single individual. You are not integrated. Any effort to be total integrates you. And this is just a device, to listen with totality. But who told you that I am telling you to accept it? Totality is needed in listening, but I have not asked you to accept it. If you accept, you will not be total, because accepting means you are...

... life is death. But we go on creating illusions around ourselves that this is not going to happen - not at least today. And who takes care about tomorrow? "We will see about tomorrow when it comes. Let us enjoy this moment - eat, drink, be merry." Buddha says that this "Eat, drink, be merry" philosophy is sheer unconsciousness. And this unconscious state can create more and more...

... misery for you. Unconsciousness is misery, so if your life is unconscious it IS misery. Consciousness is bliss. If your life is consciousness then it is bliss, but then it becomes a totally different kind of life. It becomes the life of the awakened one, of the enlightened one. Shanahan staggered out of the saloon. He wandered up the street and by mistake went into a house where a wake was being held...

... difficult to figure out what they mean by love. Unconscious love is simply a magnetic pull towards something, irresistible. But you are not going towards the object of love, you are being pulled. You are fast asleep. In your whole life, you are behaving like a somnambulist. There are many people who wake up in the night without waking up; they get up, not wake up. And they will do things, and they will go...

... the boy, the father becomes imprinted on the girl. And when the boy falls in love with a woman, his unconscious mind signals him, "Here comes your mother." You don't hear it. And nobody can be exactly like your mother, so there can only be some similarity - the way the woman walks, the face of the woman, the eyes of the woman, the way she talks. Anything can trigger in you the old figure...

... waiting in your unconscious, deep in the well inside you. The same happens to the girl - the way the man walks, just the sound of his boots, may remind her of her father. Any small thing can trigger it, and suddenly you feel a great love arising in you. But because it is only fragmentary, it cannot be very lasting. It can be lasting if you don't ever meet - then you will never come to know about the...

... love that is important. It is your loving quality, your lovingness that is important, because you are so full of love you would like to share it. And the sharing has to be unconditional. You cannot say, "I will not share if your nose is Jewish" - what has sharing to do with noses? Conscious love changes the whole situation. Unconscious love is centered on the object of love. Conscious love...

... is centered in oneself, it is your lovingness. Unconscious love is always addressed to one person; hence there is always jealousy - because the other person also knows that unconscious love is always centered on one person, that it cannot be shared. If you start loving somebody else, that means you have stopped loving the first person. That's the jealousy, the continuous fear that your lover may...

... being, a soul. In unconscious love, you are just an emptiness - dark and dismal, hungry and thirsty. In unconscious love, you are a beggar. You are begging for love, because love is nourishment. And this is hilarious: You are begging for love, the other person, whom you are in love with is also begging for love - two beggars holding their begging bowls before each other, and both begging bowls are...

... empty. Conscious love makes you an emperor. You don't beg; you simply give. And you give because now you see that the more you give the more you have. So whoever accepts your love, you are grateful to the person. The whole earth can become full of love, an ocean of love, but only with conscious people. With unconscious people, it is just a disgusting place, nauseating... everybody pretending to be...

... deep into the unconscious. While I am talking, your conscious mind is listening. You will forget. When I have talked about one hundred and twelve methods, you will not even be able to rename them again - the one hundred and twelve. You will forget many completely. You will be able to remember a few, and then you will be mixed up and confused. You will not know what is what. The master has to choose a...

... right moment when your unconscious is open, and then he gives you the method. Then it goes deep down into the unconscious. So many times initiation is given in sleep, not when you are conscious. Many times initiation is given to you in a deep hypnotic trance, when your conscious mind is completely asleep and your unconscious mind is open. That is why surrender is so much needed in initiation. Unless...

... you surrender initiation cannot be given, because unless you surrender your conscious mind is always alert and on guard. When you surrender, your conscious mind can then be relieved of its duty and your unconscious mind can come directly in contact with the master. A right moment has to be chosen, and then you have to be prepared for initiation. It may take months to prepare you. There has to be the...

... SUPPOSED TO BE A MEDITATIVE AND SPIRITUAL QUALITY, SO THE ABOVE SAYING OF GURDJIEFF'S SEEMS TO BE PARTIALLY TRUE AND USEFUL ONLY FOR CERTAIN TECHNIQUES. No! It is not partially true, it is totally true. But you will have to understand. Identification is unconscious, but when you use identification in a meditative technique it is conscious. For example, your name is Ram. Someone insults "Ram"...

...; - immediately YOU feel insulted because you are identified with the name Ram. But this is not a conscious thing for you, it is unconscious. Your mind doesn't work in this way: "I am called Ram. Of course, I am not Ram, this is only my name, and everyone is born nameless. This name is given, and it is arbitrary. This man is only insulting my arbitrary name, so am I to be angry or not?" You would...

... never reason it out in this way. If you reasoned it out in this way, you would not be angry at all. Suddenly someone insults "Ram" and you are insulted, but this is just an arbitrary name. This identification is unconscious, it is not conscious. When you are identifying with a rose, it is a conscious effort. You are not identified with the rose. You are TRYING to identify yourself with the...

...? You are identified with it. That identification is unconscious. Unconsciousness is sin. Enough for today. Generated by PreciseInfo ™ ...

... discourse. The seventh question: Question 7: BELOVED MASTER, MY PREVIOUS LIFE WITH MY MOTHER, FATHER, SISTER AND BROTHER WAS A PERIOD FILLED WITH UNHAPPINESS. WHY DID I CHOOSE TO BE BORN INTO THIS FAMILY? Prem Joshua, you have not chosen, because you died unconsciously. How can you choose? If YOU had chosen, you certainly would not have chosen such a family. It was unconscious. You moved into the womb...

... going to be of tremendously condensed unconsciousness. You will die unconscious; then you don't choose. How can you choose? But millions of stupid people are making love all over the world; millions of wombs are ready to receive you. They are also as unconscious as you are. They don't know why they are making love. They don't know why a certain man is with a certain woman. They don't know what is...

... love you die; in unconscious love you don't die. Unconscious lovers quarrel continuously, fight. They try to dominate each other. Conscious lovers surrender. In fact, surrender is not to each other; surrender is to the god of love. Both the lovers surrender to some unknown energy in which they dissolve their egos, and they experience small deaths. Each time, each orgasm brings a deeper death. As love...

... are living in unconsciousness, doing all kinds of things in unconsciousness. Everybody is an unconscious robot. We are just pretending that we are conscious; we are not conscious. The moment you become conscious, all unconscious actions disappear from your life. Your life starts moving in a new dimension. Your each act comes out of inner clarity; your each response is virtuous, is virtue. To live...

... collapse, and a new life will start arising around that small center of awareness. The tenth question: Question 10: BELOVED MASTER, I JUST HAD A GENERAL ANESTHETIC. THE SPACE WAS SO FAMILIAR - LIKE BEING IN LECTURE OR DARSHAN. IS THIS WHAT YOU ARE DOING - ANESTHETIZING US SO THAT YOU CAN OPERATE? Deva Kanta, anesthesia I don't use, but I have my own ways of making you unconscious so that I can operate...

.... In the first place, you are already unconscious enough; just a little bit of flickering consciousness sometimes you have. I have to prevent that! No anesthesia is needed for that. A man who had just undergone a very complicated operation kept complaining about a bump on his head and a terrible headache. Since his operation had been an intestinal one, there was no earthly reason why he should be...