... consciousness. Our consciousness is in a deep bondage; we are chained. Inside is our prison, not outside. The walls of the prison are not outside us; it exists deep in our unconscious. It exists in our instincts, it exists in our desires, it exists in our unawareness. Freedom is the goal. Awareness is the method to reach that goal. And when you are really free you are a master; the slavery disappears...

.... Ordinarily we may appear free, but we are not free. It may appear that we are the choosers, but we are not the choosers. We are being pulled, pushed by unconscious forces. When you fall in love with a woman or a man, do you think you have decided it, it is your choice? You know perfectly well you cannot choose to love, you cannot force yourself to love somebody. You are not the master, you are just a slave...

.... The greatest suffering is that it deludes you - it creates the illusion that you are the chooser, and soon you know that you are not the chooser; nature has played a trick upon you. Unconscious forces have taken possession of you, you are possessed. You are acting not on your own; you are just a vehicle. That is the first misery that one starts feeling in love, and one misery triggers a whole chain...

... because to be possessed means to be reduced to a thing. The whole humanity suffers for the simple reason that every relationship goes on reducing you, goes on making your prison smaller and smaller. Buddha says: This life is not true life. You are being lived, you are not really living. You are being lived by unconscious forces. Unless you become conscious, unless you take possession of your own life...

... statement for a moment or two and then added solemnly, "He is not only complete - he is finished!" And you are not falling in one thing - in love - you are falling in a thousand things - in anger, in greed. You are continuously falling, falling victims of some unconscious forces within you that you have carried from your animal heritage. We have to make our unconscious full of light. No nook or...

... again, but all your decisions are impotent because that nine times more powerful unconscious is always there and it won't allow the one tenth to take possession, to be powerful. Hence the transformation is not through decisions, through taking vows; the transformation needs a totally different approach. You have to change your unconscious slowly slowly into consciousness. That's what meditation is all...

... about: it is making your light grow bigger, spreading it deeper, slowly slowly diving deeper into your own being. As more and more of your unconscious is reclaimed by the consciousness your decisions will start becoming great fulfillments. Then you can promise yourself something. Right now all your promises are false; you know they are not going to work. You know you have failed so many times and you...

... repressing: first they repress from others, then slowly slowly they start repressing from themselves. That's how the unconscious is created. If a person never represses anything he will not have any unconscious mind. The unconscious mind is just a part of the mind that you don't want to look at, that you are afraid to look at, that you are afraid to accept. All that you have denied goes on accumulating...

... that dark corner; you don't go to that side. You start forgetting about it - you want to forget about it; that's how the unconscious mind is created. The unconscious mind is a man-created phenomenon. If a man never represses anything - rather than throwing things in the basement he tries to understand them - there will be only consciousness in him and his whole house will be full of light, because...

... cultivated layers. Many masks are hanging around you - - whichever you need, you put it on. In fact, humanity has developed, by and by, almost an automatic system -- you need not do anything, it happens by itself. The moment you see your boss, your face changes -- not that you change it. It is so unconscious that you start smiling, just like a dog wagging his tail. Even dogs are very clever. If they are...

... boss is concerned, you have to take a joyous attitude, an ear-to-ear smile -- a Jimmy Carter smile. And you are not doing it deliberately; now it is your autonomous, unconscious functioning. Enlightenment is simply the process of becoming aware of your unconscious layers of personality and dropping those layers. They are not you; they are false faces. And because of those false faces, you cannot...

... comes and withdraws the circle, takes the child out, the child remains inside. And the child goes on growing, but the idea remains in the unconscious. So even an old man, if his father draws a circle around him, cannot get out of it. So it is not only a question of the child; the old man also still carries his childhood in his unconscious. And it is not a question of one child. The whole group of...

... biology will start forcing them towards each other. They will call it love because nobody wants to be categorized as a machine. But two machines cannot love, two machines can only be together, can struggle, can stumble against each other. And it is not coincidence that in every language, love is called `falling in love'. It is an unconscious process, it is a fall. You cannot answer why you love a...

.... And whenever I have been in Bombay, I have inquired, "Phone the astrologer and ask when that in-depth study is going to be complete -- because twenty years have passed. Has he dropped the idea?" If you are enlightened, then astrology cannot function for you. Then you can love, then you can do, then you can act, then you have a certain mastery over your own being. But unconscious, you are...

... just moving hither and thither as the wind blows. And anybody who has studied human nature deeply.... There are many astrological schools which have studied for centuries how the mechanical man works. They have come to certain conclusions, and their conclusions are almost always correct. If they are incorrect, that means the astrologer is not well prepared, his studies in human nature and unconscious...

... down there is turmoil. Deep down they are the same people, with greed, jealousy, envy, hatred, violence - unconscious, with all kinds of desires. Maybe now they are desirous of the other world, greedy for the other world, thinking more of paradise than of this world and the earth. But it is the same thing, projected onto a bigger screen, projected on eternity. In fact, the greed has become a...

... dollars. "All the money you gave me, I put in the bed," she said. "Ah," he screamed hitting his forehead, "I should have given you all my business." An unconscious man can't always be on his guard. There are moments when the secret comes out. You can deceive, but only for a time - you cannot deceive forever, at least not your wife. And how can you deceive God himself? How...

... dealing in invisible goods. You can have good conduct according to a certain society but you will still remain as unconscious as you were before. By being a Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Christian you don't become conscious. If you become conscious you CAN'T be a Hindu or a Mohammedan or a Christian. How can you be so foolish as to be a Hindu, to be a Buddhist, to be a Jaina? - impossible! You will not...

... have any adjective to you. You will simply be a human being, a divine being. That's more than enough, what else is needed? But following so-called good conduct, you will remain the same unconscious person. Joe was out all night with a dazzling blonde. He came home at dawn and tried to appear quietly sober, as his wife eyed him with suspicion. "Joe, where is your underwear?" she said as he...

... was undressing. "My God," he cried with aggrieved dignity, "I have been robbed." Your whole life is lived in such an unconscious way. You can practice good things, you can do good things, give service to people, you can donate to charity. You can even become a Mother Teresa of Calcutta, but your life will be the same. Yes, you will get a Nobel Prize, and you will be honored all...

.... And that is your idea of a saint - that he should serve. He should serve all kinds of fools, then he is a saint. Then other fools will respect him. You are unconscious, your expectations are unconscious and there are people who will fulfill them. You will respect them, you will call them saints. Now, Mother Teresa has no taste of awareness, no experience of ecstasy, but that is not the point for...

... very ordinary, even those twelve apostles were very ordinary, unconscious people. Buddha had thousands of BODHISATTVAS, thousands of disciples who were just on the verge of becoming buddhas any moment. Thousands were just on the verge of bursting into a flame of eternal light. He could talk without any fear of being misunderstood; hence he says: RELY ON NOTHING UNTIL YOU WANT NOTHING. The greatest...

... man, but somebody insults you and anger arises in you, of which you were not aware. It has always been there, hiding in the darkness of your unconscious, but if somebody insults you, immediately it is ready to react. I am reminded of one of the most beautiful stories, historical. A great Japanese emperor wanted to see Nan In, a Zen master. Because he was the ruler over all Japan, he thought that Nan...

... are happening inside me that I am not aware of?" Yes, things are happening within you and you have to make your awareness more sharp, more deep, more clear -- so that you can become aware. Otherwise, all your actions come out of an unconscious state; you don't know exactly why you are doing it, why there is such a deep urge to do it, because the urge comes from the unconscious where never a ray...

... of light has entered. In psychoanalysis you have to drop completely whatever you say in your waking hours -- it is not trustworthy. Psychoanalysis trusts your dreams more than it trusts you, because your consciousness is so small and it is not aware of all that is happening underneath. But when this consciousness goes to sleep, in your dreams the unconscious starts coming onto the screen of your...

..., all codes of conduct, all moralities, all principles disappear -- you are simply natural. Whatever is within you comes in its reality, as it is. The only problem with dreams is that the unconscious knows no language; it is still the mind of the child. The child thinks in pictures -- his language is pictorial, not alphabetical -- so you dream in pictures. And that has created a great problem: who is...

.... Except this, there is no radical transformation possible. No religion can give it to you, no messiah can give it to you. It is a gift that you have to give to yourself. But the unconscious creates difficulties. Not that they cannot be dissolved, but you need a little patience, a little trust in existence. Difficulties will be there but don't take them as difficulties, only as challenges. It is a great...

... light -- in the light it cannot exist. So remain alert about your blindness, about your fear, about your ignorance, and just your alertness will dispel the whole darkness of blindness, of fear, of ignorance. They are not separate things; they are separate aspects of a single unconscious mind -- they all exist together and they all disappear together. Watchfulness... your gift to yourself It is a good...

... is the man he described - he even said he would be ninety years old... and this is the tree! I must have been so absolutely unconscious that I did not look at the tree under which he was sitting. And the fragrance that he described - the radiance, the presence, the aliveness around him...." He fell at his feet and he said, "But what kind of joke is this? Thirty years I have been wandering...

..., exploited by another, befooled by someone else. Slowly slowly, a little alertness comes to him. And it is just by accident that he meets the master. As far as the master is concerned, he is consciously waiting for certain people. He is making every effort to reach those people, but the problem is that those people are all unconscious. Even if Gautam Buddha comes and knocks on your doors, are you going to...

... you don't disappear, forgive us: we will have to do the same - to crucify you again. So be a little intelligent, don't create trouble." The unconscious man will not recognize even a Gautam Buddha or a Jesus Christ or a Moses. It is not his fault. The archbishop is a little alert; he recognizes, but his whole business is at stake. The priests of any religion would not like their founders to come...

.... The unconscious minds of people cannot recognize them. The priests perhaps may be able to recognize, but they will be the ones to crucify them. Because the priests can have a business on the crucifixion of Jesus, on the life of Jesus; but if Jesus is alive, then the priest is no longer needed. His whole business is finished. It is simply a question of his livelihood, he is not interested in truth...

.... No priest is interested in truth. No theologian is interested in God, in searching for the ultimate. His interest is in exploiting the unconscious mind. So the seeker, the disciple, is bound to stumble with many pretenders. But if his search is genuine... And what is the symbol of a genuine search? The symbol is if his search is not an ego trip, if it is not that he wants to become holier, higher...

... hallucination that he had been creating - and he had created his hallucination with tremendous effort. First, he was a unique individual, not an ordinary priest. He was professionally a priest in the temple of Dakshineshwar in Calcutta, but his relationship with the goddess was not that of a professional priest. Sometimes he would dance the whole day till he fell unconscious. Sometimes he would lock the...

... lose your priest, and you will not find another Ramakrishna, I tell you." And he danced. As the sun was setting, he was going to cut his neck with the sword, and he saw the transformation - there was no stone statue. Kali was smiling; it was human. The sword fell from his hands. He remained unconscious for six days, and when he came to consciousness the first thing he said was - because...

... society, the social structure, the economic structure, it is capitalism. You are not responsible." It is again fate in new words, in modern language, in contemporary jargon. Karl Marx is a fatalist. And then there is Sigmund Freud who is even more sophisticated than Karl Marx, even more clever. He gives you new ideas. It is the unconscious which is responsible, not you. If you do something, what...

... can you do? - it is beyond your capacity to avoid it. It is coming from the unconscious, from the dark layers of your being. You have no access to those dark layers. And Sigmund Freud says there is no way to change it; man is a hopeless project. According to Sigmund Freud, man is bound to live in misery; at the most we can help him to live in misery more comfortably. We can make him accept the...

... misery so he will be a little more comfortable. We can make the misery a little more convenient by giving him good explanations so he is not so much disturbed; otherwise there is no hope. Man is determined by unconscious forces. These are just new ways of saying the old things: karma, fate, God. The idea of predetermination has dominated the unconscious man up to now. It is only once is a while that a...

... solely and wholly responsible for my actions" is a deliverance. Buddha says: BOTH GO INTO THE DARK.... The man who denies truth because of the ego, because of belief systems, because of the mind wandering in the past or the future, or the man who denies his actions either because of karma or fate or social structure or the unconscious, they both go into the dark. They are missing the opportunity...

... benediction goes on showering on you. The more dark you are, the more unconscious, the more misery is bound to happen. YOUR PLEASURES END IN FEAR AND THE KING'S PUNISHMENT IS HARSH. Buddha calls the ultimate law "the king." The punishment is harsh, but YOU are responsible. The law is not cruel; the law is simply law. It is just like gravitation: if you walk rightly, the gravitation cannot punish...

... a soft thing, a blade of grass, held awkwardly.... MAY CUT YOUR HAND.... It all depends on you. If you are conscious you can hold a sword and it will not cut your hand; if you are unconscious, even a blade of grass may cut your hand. SO RENUNCIATION MAY LEAD YOU INTO THE DARK. A tremendously important saying. Buddha says: Even renunciation, taken unconsciously, is not going to help. You can become...

... fallen in love. And slowly slowly you will become aware of it. It will take time, because to reach from the unconscious to the conscious it takes time. When somebody decides to take sannyas it is a conscious decision; the unconscious may not even cooperate with it. The unconscious may not even know about it. It will remain a very small thing, because the conscious is a small thing, one-tenth of the...

... total mind; its power is very small, flickering. But when something happens from the unconscious, from the guts, deep down from the belly, from the navel centre, then it takes time because the journey is long. Slowly slowly the conscious mind will become aware of all the implications, of the commitment, of the involvement. Sannyas is becoming involved with me and all that I represent. But you have...

...; otherwise you cannot drop it. Fear exists because of non-understanding. There are a few things that you have not understood and they are lurking in the unconscious. They manipulate you from the unconscious, so you are just a victim. You don't know where they come from. They come just out of the blue, and you are in their grip. When you are in their grip, you cannot do anything; almost helpless. So first...

... those lurking repressed emotions in the unconscious have to be brought to light... they have to be made conscious. Once they are conscious, they start disappearing. It is just as if I give you a lamp and tell you to go inside the room and search for where darkness is. So you take the lamp - otherwise how will you search in the darkness? And then you go into the room with the lamp but you cannot find...

... the darkness, because when the light is there, darkness is not. So the whole problem - not only for you, for every human being - is how to bring the unconscious into the light, into the conscious, or how to take the conscious into the unconscious dark basement of your being. Once darkness is penetrated by the light of consciousness, it starts disappearing. And things like fear, hatred, jealousy...

..., good. I can say I was hypnotised, so I am not responsible. I will never feel guilty and nobody can say I am guilty'. On the contrary she can make much fuss. But deep in her unconscious she wants to be raped. So tomorrow you sit in the corner and decide. Look inside. If you find a treasure there, by all means, protect it. These people are thieves, robbers. I am the greatest robber here! (laughter...

... quest for final values. Cosmic growth thus attends on the accumulation of meanings and the ever-expanding elevation of values. But nobility itself is always an unconscious growth. (1095.3) 100:1.8 Religious habits of thinking and acting are contributory to the economy of spiritual growth. One can develop religious predispositions toward favorable reaction to spiritual stimuli, a sort of conditioned...

... intentional, but the growth itself is unvaryingly unconscious. (1095.4) 100:1.9 The unconscious nature of religious growth does not, however, signify that it is an activity functioning in the supposed subconscious realms of human intellect; rather does it signify creative activities in the superconscious levels of mortal mind. The experience of the realization of the reality of unconscious religious growth...

... evolving. (1097.4) 100:3.7 Man cannot cause growth, but he can supply favorable conditions. Growth is always unconscious, be it physical, intellectual, or spiritual. Love thus grows; it cannot be created, manufactured, or purchased; it must grow. Evolution is a cosmic technique of growth. Social growth cannot be secured by legislation, and moral growth is not had by improved administration. Man may...

... worship, wholehearted and unselfish prayer. Altogether too much of the uprush of the memories of the unconscious levels of the human mind has been mistaken for divine revelations and spirit leadings. (1099.6) 100:5.8 There is great danger associated with the habitual practice of religious daydreaming; mysticism may become a technique of reality avoidance, albeit it has sometimes been a means of genuine...