In a society which is unhappy and consists of miserable people, a happy person is a stranger. That’s why we poisoned Socrates, we crucified Jesus, we killed Mansur. We have never been at ease with happy people. Somehow, they hurt our egos very much. People crucified Jesus; when he was alive they killed him. He was very young, only thirty-three. He had not yet seen his whole life. He was just beginning his life, just a bud was opening, and people killed him because he was too much to tolerate. So happy? – Everybody was hurt. They killed this man. And then they started worshipping him. Just see… now they have been worshipping him for two thousand years, crucified. But with a crucified Jesus you can sympathize; with a happy Jesus you feel antagonistic.
The same is happening here. I am a happy man. If you want me to be worshipped, you will have to manage for a crucifixion. There is no other way. Then people who are against me will become my followers. But first they will have to see me on the cross, not before it. Nobody has ever worshipped a happy man. First, the happy man has to be destroyed. Then, of course, he is manageable. Now you can sympathize with Jesus. Whenever you see, tears start flowing into your eyes: “Poor man; how much he suffered.” A dancing Christ creates trouble.
In Sweden, a man is trying to make a film on Jesus: JESUS THE MAN. For ten years he has been trying, but a thousand and one barriers: the government won’t allow – “Jesus the man? – No!”
Because ‘Jesus the man’ means that this man may have been in love with Mary Magdalene, and the man will bring it out. Jesus loved women. It is natural; nothing is wrong in it. He was a happy man. He sometimes loved wine also. He was a man who could celebrate. Now, Jesus the man is dangerous. And this man wants to make a film on Jesus the man; not the son of God, but the son of man. This will be troublesome. And if he starts working out a story, he will have to bring in some illegal love affair with Mary, because a virgin woman cannot give birth. Jesus was not the son of Joseph; that much is certain. But he must have been the son of somebody. The government is against, the church is against: “You are trying to prove Jesus a bastard! Impossible! The film cannot be allowed.” And Jesus loving the prostitute Mary Magdalene? – And certainly, he loved. He was a happy man. Love simply happens around a happy man. He enjoyed life. It is a God-given blessing; one has to enjoy it. Every religious man is a celebrating soul.
Then they killed this man, crucified him, and since then they have been worshipping him. Now he is manageable; he creates much sympathy in you. Jesus on the cross is more attractive than Buddha sitting under the Bodhi tree. Jesus on the cross is more attractive than Krishna playing his flute.
Jesus became the world religion. Krishna? – Who bothers about him? Even Hindus feel a little guilty about sixteen thousand women dancing around him – “Impossible, it is just a myth.” Hindus say it is beautiful poetry, and they go on interpreting. They say, “These sixteen thousand women were not really women; these are sixteen thousand nadis, the nervous system, the sixteen thousand nerves in the human body. It is a symbolic expression about the human body. Krishna is the soul, and sixteen thousand nerves are the Gopis dancing around the soul.” Then everything is okay. But if they are real women, then it is difficult, very difficult to accept.
Jainas, another religion of India, have thrown Krishna into hell because of these sixteen thousand women. In the Jain puranas, they say, “Krishna is in the seventh hell, the last… and he will not be coming up soon. He will be there up to the moment this whole creation is destroyed. He will come up only when the next creation starts; millions and millions of years still to wait. He has committed a great sin”; and the great sin is because he was celebrating. The great sin is because he was dancing.
Mahavir is more acceptable, Buddha still more acceptable. Krishna seems to be a renegade who betrayed the serious people. He was non-serious, happy; not sombre, not a long-face – laughing, dancing. And that is the true way. I would like to say to you, dance your way to God, laugh your way to God. Don’t go with serious faces. God is already much too bored with that type.
Sympathy is a great investment, and that can be continued only if you can go on getting sympathy, only if you remain miserable. So if one misery stops, you create another; if one illness leaves you, you create another. Watch it – you are playing a very dangerous game with yourself. That’s why people are miserable and unhappy. Otherwise, there is no need.
Put all your energy into being happy, and don’t bother about others. Your happiness is your destiny; nobody is entitled to interfere with it. But society goes on interfering; it is a vicious circle. You were born, and of course you were born into a society already there, a given society of neurotic people, of people who are all miserable and unhappy. Your parents, your family, your society, your country, are already there waiting for you. And a small child is born; the whole society jumps on the child, starts culturing him, cultivating him. It is as if a child is born in a madhouse, and all the mad people start cultivating. Of course, they have to help – the child is so small and does not know anything about the world. They will teach whatsoever they know. They will enforce whatsoever has been enforced on them by their parents, by other mad people. Have you seen that whenever a child starts giggling and laughing, something in you becomes uneasy? You immediately want to tell him, “Shut up and suck your lollipop!” Immediately, something in you says, “Shut up!” When a child starts giggling, do you feel jealous, or what? You cannot allow a child running hither and thither, jumping, just sheer joy.
I have heard about two American women, two spinsters. They visited Italy to see an old church.
American visitors! In the church they saw an Italian woman praying, and her four or five children running inside the church and making much noise, and simply happy, completely oblivious that it was a church. Those two American women could not tolerate it: “This is too much. This is sacrilege.”
They went up to the woman who was praying, the mother, and told her, “These children are yours? This is a church and some discipline should be maintained! They should be controlled.” The woman, with prayerful eyes, tears flowing and tremendously happy, looked at them and said, “This is their Father’s house, can’t they play here?” But this attitude is rare, very rare.
Humanity is dominated by mad people: politicians, priests, they are mad because ambition is madness – and they go on enforcing their pattern. When a child is born he is a bubbling energy, an infinite source of bliss, happiness, joy, delight; sheer delight, nothing else – overflowing. You start controlling him: you start cutting his limbs, you start butchering him. You say, “There are proper times to laugh.” Proper times to laugh? – That means proper times to be alive? You are saying the same thing: proper times to be alive – “You should not be alive twenty-four hours.” There are proper times to cry. But when a child feels like laughing what is he supposed to do? He has to control, and when you control your laughter it goes bitter and sour within you. The energy that was going out has been held back. Holding back the energy, you become stuck. The child wanted to reach out, to run around, to jump and jog and dance; now he is stopped. His energy is ready to overflow, but by and by he learns only one thing: to freeze his energy. That’s why so many stuck people are in the world, so uptight, continuously controlling. They cannot cry; tears are too unmanly. They cannot laugh; laughter seems to be too uncivilized. Life is denied, death is worshipped. You would like a child to behave like an old man, and old people start forcing their deaths on new generations.
I have heard about an old woman of ninety, a countess, who had a very big house with acres of greenery. She came one day to look around the property; it was very big. Just beyond the pond, behind the woods, she saw two young people making love. She asked the driver, “What are these people doing here?” – Ninety years of age; she may have forgotten… “What are these people doing here?” The driver had to tell the truth. Very politely he said, “They are making love. They are young people.” The old lady was very much annoyed and she said, “Does such a thing still go on in the world?”
When you become old, do you think the whole world has become old? When you are dying, do you think the whole world is dying? The world goes on renewing itself, reviving itself. That’s why it takes the old people away, and gives small babies back to the world. It turns the old people into small babies.
Existence goes on peopl-ing the earth with new people. Whenever it sees that a person has gone completely stuck – now there is no more flow, no more juice, and the person is simply shrinking and unnecessarily becoming a burden on earth – then life removes him. The person goes back into existence, is destroyed. The earth goes to the earth, the sky goes to the sky, the air to the air, the fire to the fire, the water to the water. Then out of that earth, out of that water and fire a new baby is born – flowing, young, fresh, ready to live and dance again. Just as flowers come to the tree, just as the tree flowers, the earth goes on babying, goes on creating new babies.
If you really want to be happy you have to remain young, alive, available to crying, laughter, available to all dimensions, flowing all over, streaming. Then you will remain happy. But remember, you will not get any sympathy. People may throw rocks at you, but that is worth it. People may think that you are irreligious, they may condemn you, they may call names to you, but don’t be worried about it. It doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is your happiness.
And you have to undo many things; only then can you become happy. Whatsoever has been done by the society has to be undone. Wherever you are stuck – you were going to laugh and your father looked at you with anger and said, “Stop!” – You will have to start again from there. Tell your father, “Please, now I am going to start laughing again.” Somewhere inside your head your father is still holding you: “Stop!” Have you watched it? If you meditate deeply you will come to see and hear your parental voices within. You were going to cry and the mother stopped you, and of course you were helpless and you had to compromise to survive. There was no other way. You had to depend on these people and they had their conditions; otherwise, they wouldn’t give you milk, they wouldn’t give you food, they wouldn’t give you any support. And how can a small child exist without the support?
He has to compromise. He says, “Okay. Just to survive, I will follow whatsoever you say.” So by and by, he becomes false. By and by, he goes against himself. He wanted to laugh but the father was not allowing it, so he kept quiet. By and by, he becomes a pretender, a hypocrite.
And a hypocrite can never be happy, because happiness is being true to your life-energy. Happiness is a function of being true. Happiness is not somewhere where you go and purchase it. Happiness is not awaiting you somewhere, that you have to find the path and reach it. No, happiness is a function of being true, authentic. Whenever you are true, you are happy. Whenever you are untrue, you are unhappy.
And I will not say to you that if you are untrue you will be unhappy in your next life, no. This is all nonsense. If you are untrue, right now you are unhappy. Watch – whenever you are untrue, you feel uneasiness, unhappiness, because the energy is not flowing. The energy is not river-like; it is stuck, dead, frozen. And you would like to flow. Life is a flow; death is frozenness. Unhappiness comes because many of your parts are frozen. They were never allowed to function and, by and by, you have learned the trick to control them. Now you have even forgotten that you are controlling something. You have lost your roots in the body. You have lost your roots in the truth of your body.
People are living like ghosts; that’s why they are miserable. When I see inside you, rarely do I come across an alive man. People have become like ghosts, phantoms. You are not in your body; you are somewhere about your head hovering like a ghost, just like a balloon around the head. Just a small thread is joining you to the body. That thread keeps you alive, that’s all, but it is not a delight. You will have to become conscious, you will have to meditate, and you will have to drop all the controls.
You will have to unlearn, undo, and then for the first time you will again become flowing.
Of course, discipline is needed, not as control but as awareness. A controlled discipline is a deadening phenomenon. When you are alert, aware, a discipline comes easily out of that awareness – not that you force it, not that you plan it. No, moment to moment your awareness decides how to respond. And an alert person responds in such a way that he remains happy, and he does not create unhappiness for others.
That’s all religion is all about: remain happy, and don’t create any situation for anybody to be unhappy. If you can help, make others happy. If you cannot, then at least make yourself happy.
Tags: Patanjali Remain Happy
