NOWADAYS, RIGHT FROM BIRTH TILL DEATH EVERYTHING IS BEING CONTROLLED, GUIDED, DICTATED, INFLUENCED, GOVERNED, HANDLED BY POLITICS. SO UNLESS AND UNTIL POLITICS IS SET RIGHT, ALL THE EFFORTS OF RELIGION AND SCIENCE MAY PROVE FUTILE; BECAUSE Of TODAY’S WORLD IS A PLACE OF CHAOS AND DISORDERS, PAIN AND SUFFERINGS, IT IS ONLY BECAUSE OF DIRTY POLITICS, ISN’T IT?
The question is in two parts. Humanity is not dirty because of dirty politicians; dirty politicians are there because of dirty humanity. You have to understand it well. Don’t throw the responsibility on the politicians. They simply represent you, nothing else. This is absurd: first you choose them, then you call them dirty.
And when you choose you choose the dirtiest. You vote for them, and then you call them dirty. How do they come? From where do they come? They come from you. They are there with your support; they will fall if you don’t support them.
Don’t call them dirty. This is an old trick of the mind: always throw the responsibility on somebody else and you feel guilt-free. You are the real culprit.
If dirty politicians exist they exist because of your dirty mind. Somewhere in your mind they have their roots; from there they are nourished. So just by changing the politicians nothing will change. For thousands of years man has been changing politicians, nothing else, but nothing happens – because man has not changed himself. You go on changing the politician but who will choose the next? You will choose the next again.
And whenever a politician is out of power he looks very beautiful, good, innocent, because without power you cannot be dirty – you need power. So whenever a politician is not in power he looks so humble, so sincere. Just give him the power, and immediately he is transformed, he is no longer the same person – because politics is a power trip. The man was after power: he had to be humble to persuade you, to seduce you, that he is a humble, saintly man. Once he is in power he doesn’t care about you. He, in fact, never cared before; he was just playing a game with you. He was seducing you, exploiting you. Now he has attained his goal – why should he bother about you? Who are you? He doesn’t recognize you. Now the long-cherished power is in his hands; he starts using it.
Then you start calling him dirty.
And you have been changing politicians for centuries – nothing has changed.
Rather, change yourself. It is time – enough time now – you must understand that no social revolution can be a revolution. No political revolution. Can be a revolution. At the most it can give you a temporary relief, but that’s nothing, nothing of any worth. Unless you change, nothing changes: the human individual has to be changed.
And, the second part of the question. You think that today, nowadays, right from birth till death everything is being controlled by politicians – “guided, dictated, influenced, governed.” Do you know any time when it was not so? Why do you call it “nowadays”? It was always so; always man was guided, controlled. In fact today the control is not so strong; that’s why the question arises. In the days of Rama the question would not have arisen – the control was perfect. Go further back and the control is so perfect that you cannot even ask the question. Now you can ask the question because the control is a little loose. You can raise the question: at least that much freedom has happened in the world. The further back you go, the more conditioned you will find people.
There has never been a moment in the past like this moment. It is the best up to now. Hitherto, this is the best moment you are living, and this should be so. The past was not better than the present – it can’t be. Now, at least, a facade of freedom exists in the world: at least you are allowed to talk; at least you are allowed to question. This is one of the greatest physiological insights to be understood.
For example, in India sudras, untouchables, have existed for thousands of years, but never in the past history was there ever a question raised against their slavery. Why? – The control was perfect. The control was so perfect, the conditioning was so absolute, they couldn’t even feel that they were controlled.
Who will feel it? How will you feel if the conditioning is total? You will think this is the only life there is; there is no possibility of any other life to be compared with it. Sudras accepted that this was the only possibility. They lived one of the ugliest lives on the earth, but they were never aware. The conditioning was perfect.
You cannot find greater conditioners than brahmins; and they have to be the best because they are in the trade for the longest. They have been in the trade for the longest – nobody knows more tricks than they know. The whole world has to learn from Brahmins how to condition. They are the oldest brainwashers. They conditioned so perfectly that sudras, a great mass of people, simply believed that this is because of their past bad karmas that they are suffering; so there is no question of any revolt – you have to suffer it. If you suffer silently there is a possibility in the next life you may not be born a sudra; if you create trouble then in the next life also you will be born a sudra, even worse than this. They not only conditioned one life, they conditioned the whole chain of lives. And the sudras were not allowed to read because when you start reading you start questioning.
They were not allowed to know anything about the Vedas, the scriptures, because if you know the same secrets as the oppressors know then it will be difficult. They were never allowed to have any understanding of any sort. They lived like animals.
That slavery was perfect; and this has been so all over the world. It is for the first time that man has got a little freedom, a little rope. So don’t say, “nowadays,” because in that “nowadays” there is a condemnation of the present and appreciation of the past; that’s not right. The present is always better. It has to be because it has grown out of the past: more experienced, richer, future will be better. But conditioning is there; it has always been there. Society lives on conditioning; it conditions everybody. The methods may differ – in China they condition in a different way, in Russia in a different way, in India in a different way – but the conditioning is the same.
And what do you think?… What have religious people been doing? Do you think only politicians have been conditioning people? Religion has been the greatest politics in the world; it has also conditioned people. How are you a Hindu? What is being a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan? It is conditioning. The child is born: the politician will be able to catch hold of the neck of the child very late, when the child goes into the school – only then. By that time he will be seven years of age. Now scientists say that by the time of the age of seven the child is already eighty percent conditioned. So who is doing that conditioning? – The parents, the priest, the temple, the church. From the very beginning they are loading your mind that you are a Hindu, that you are a Mohammedan, that you are a Christian – or, that you are a Communist.
Every religion is interested in children, to teach them. Immediately, the moment they can understand words, they have to be taught. Immediately – because once they miss the opportunity of teaching them early, there is danger; your unconscious should be completely conditioned. And that affects your whole life.
Whatsoever you become, that conditioning will be there always, coloring your attitudes, your mind. If you have been a Hindu, a born Hindu, then by studies, intellectual understanding, meeting with other peoples, knowing other religions, other scriptures, you may become a little aware that not only Hindus are right, that there are other people also who are right – the Koran is also good, not only the Veda is good – but if you look deep down in the unconscious, you will always find a hierarchy: the Veda will always be at the top. You may appreciate Christ, but Krishna will be at the top.
Even a man like Bertrand Russell, who became absolutely agnostic in his later life, became religionless, stopped believing in God or in any future life – even he says that he knows well that Buddha seems to be the greatest person ever born in the world, but intellectually he can say that: his heart goes on saying, “No, how can Buddha be so great – greater than Jesus? Not possible.” So he says, “At the most I can put them on the same pedestal, but I cannot put Buddha higher. And I know intellectually that Buddha seems to be a greater phenomenon than Jesus” – but the childhood training goes on clutching your heart.
Religions have been conditioning you, politicians have been conditioning you: you are a conditioned mechanism. Only through meditation is there a possibility to uncondition the mind. Only a meditator goes beyond conditioning. Why?
Because every conditioning works through thoughts. If you feel you are a Hindu, what is it? – A cluster of thoughts given to you when you were not even aware of what was being given to you. A cluster of thoughts and you are a Christian, a Catholic, a Protestant. Only in meditation thoughts dissolve – all thoughts. You become thoughtless. In that thought-less state of mind there is no conditioning: you are no longer a Hindu, nor a Christian, nor a Communist, nor a Fascist. You are no longer anybody – you are simply yourself. For the first time all conditioning has been dropped. You are out of the prison.
Only meditation can uncondition you. No social revolution will help, because the revolutionaries will again condition you in their way. In 1917 Russia went through a revolution. Before it, it was one of the most orthodox Christian countries. The Russian Church was one of the most orthodox – more orthodox than the Vatican – but then, suddenly, Russians changed everything. Churches were closed – they were converted into schools, Communist Party offices, hospitals – religious teaching was banned, and they started conditioning people for Communism. Within ten years everybody was an atheist. Just in ten years! By the year 1927 the whole of religion disappeared from Russia; they conditioned anew.
But to me it is the same: whether you condition a man as a Catholic, Christian. or you condition a man as a Communist, it makes no difference to me, because the whole question is of conditioning. You condition, you don’t give him freedom – what difference does it make whether you live in a Christian hell or a Hindu hell, or you live in a Christian slavery or a Hindu slavery? What difference does it make? There is no difference. If you live in a Hindu prison, hmm?… just the label.
Then someday there comes revolution: they tear away the label; they put “Communist Prison.” Then you are happy and rejoicing that you are free – in the same prison! Only the words change. First you were taught there is a God, he created the world; now you are taught there is no God and nobody has created the world; but both things are being taught to you.
And religion cannot be taught. All that can be taught will be politics. That’s why I say religion itself has been the greatest politics in the past. And there is no possibility of any social revolution, because all revolutions will again condition you.
There is only one possibility: that is individual flowering of no-mind. You attain thoughtlessness. Then nobody can condition you, then all conditionings drop.
Then, for the first time, you are free. Then the whole space is yours: without any limitations, without any walls, in life you move, you live, you love, you rejoice, you delight.
Tags: Change Yourself Patanjali
