---
section: Library
booktitle: "In Search of the Miraculous Vol 1"
booktype: "Translations"
bookcode: "MIRAC1"
dategiven: "02 July 1970 am"
place: " in"
chapternum: "Chapter #11"
chaptertitle: "The Alchemy of Chaotic Breathing"
acode: "7007020"
shorttitle: "MIRAC111"
audio: "No"
video: "No"
esttime: ""
displaytitle: "In Search of the Miraculous Vol 1: Chapter #11"
---

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<p class="question">QUESTIONER: A GREAT MYSTIC OF RUSSIA, GEORGE GURDJIEFF HAS WRITTEN A MEMOIR OF HIS SPIRIT UAL ADVENTURES KNOWN AS Meetings with Remarkable Men. IN THE BOOK HE SAYS THAT HE WAS MUCH IMPRESSED BY A DISCUSSION WITH A SUFI DERVISH ON YOGIC PRANAYAM AND ASANAS. THE DERVISH HAD WARNED HIM AGAINST ALL KINDS OF BREATHING EXERCISES, BECAUSE ANY CHANGE IN THE NATURAL BREATHING SYSTEM BRINGS ABOUT DISORDER IN LIFE WITH DISASTROUS RESULTS. WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT IT?</p>


There is some truth in what he says about pranayam and other breathing exercises. In fact, there is no falsehood which does not contain a grain of truth; it cannot be otherwise. Every lie has a little of truth in it. And it is this small element of truth that impresses one. But with it, the lie goes along and finds credibility; otherwise one would not know about it.


Now it is true that we should not possibly interfere with and obstruct the natural ways of our life; otherwise there is going to be trouble. It would be good if we didn't impede the natural functioning of our bodies; we should not interfere with the way we breathe, the way we walk, stand or sit. Because as soon as we place hindrances in their way, changes begin to happen.


Remember that any kind of loss means change, and gain also means change. Both loss and gain are changes. So if you want to remain as you are, then it is just proper that you don't interfere with your breath ing. But if you have somewhere to go, if you want to bring about a change, a transformation in your life, then you will have to take the risk. The risk is if you bring about a change in your breathing pattern, it will change your whole lifestyle. If you are satisfied with being as you are, if you think it is okay as you are, then you need not do a thing. But if you feel that is you are is not enough, then you will have to make a change.


And then a change in our breathing becomes important to us, most important. And as soon as you make a difference in your way of breathing, many things in you will begin to fall apart, and many other things will begin to be put together. Now, after thou sands of experiments, it has been found what it is that will drop away from you and what it is that will be put together and added on to you. It is now as good as settled -- a veritable science.


A few things are known to all of us from our day to day experiences. For instance, when you are angry, your breathing undergoes a change; it does not remain the same. And breathing changes even as you feel quiet and silent; it will not be what it used to be. And if you know how you breathe in a state of silence, then you can create that state by regulating your breathing in a way that corresponds with silence.
Both mind and breathing are interconnected.


When the mind is sexually aroused, the pattern of breathing immediately undergoes a change. So if in a state of sexual arousal you don't allow your breathing pattern to change, sexuality will disappear instantly. The desire for sex will cease; it cannot last any longer. For anything to happen, everything in the body mechanism needs to be in a particular state of alignment with everything else. So if you begin to breathe slowly when a strong wave of anger assails you, anger will evaporate; because it will find no room in slow breathing to stay as it is.


Therefore the discipline of breathing has great significance. A change in breathing effects a corresponding change in your mind. And there is no danger involved when it has been established -- and established very scientifically -- how mind behaves in different states of breathing. There was danger of course in the initial stages of this experiment. In fact, danger is there even now in the experimental stages of every new adventurous search in Life. But as the experiment succeeds it turns into a scientific law. For instance, it is impossible for a man to be angry if he keeps his breathing steady and calm. Both anger and calm breathing cannot go together. The contrary is also possible. If you begin to breathe the way you breathe in anger you will shortly find anger arising in your mind.


Pranayam, or the discipline of breathing, has discovered many methods for the transformation of your mind.


It would be good to understand the difference between what we call artificial breathing and what we call natural breathing. What you know as natural breathing is not that natural. If you understand it rightly you will know that it is all artificial breathing which you have become accustomed to. Because you have been breathing this way for a very long time, ever since your childhood, you have become used to it. It has become your habit -- a second nature. Really you don't know what natural breathing is.


You breathe in one way during the daytime, and during the night you breathe in quite another way. Your breathing during the day has been artificial. In the night during sleep, natural breathing takes over -- process, which is operative during your sleep, is more natural than your daytime breathing.


We have gotten into a certain habit of breathing during waking hours which is not natural, and there are reasons for it. If you are a little alert about your ways of breathing when you are in a crowd and when you are alone, you will find that they are quite different from each other. You will also find that the way of your breathing changes as soon as you are alone after leaving the crowd.


You breathe in a certain manner while you are with the crowd, and you breathe quite differently when alone. Being surrounded by a crowd, your mind is tense and your breath is short and shallow; it does not go deep. But when you are sitting alone and relaxed, your breathing becomes deep again. And when you go to bed in the night, it becomes completely deep during your sleep. You never breathe so deeply during the daytime; while awake, you never breathe so natu-rally and deeply that it is loud and you hear it.


What is known as our natural breathing is not natural; it is only conditioned and artificial breathing. It is so patterned that it has turned into a habit.


Children breathe in a way that is quite different. Put a child to sleep and then watch him; he breathes with his belly, and as he breathes it is his belly which rises up and goes down. But grown-up people breathe with their chest, and so it is their chest that moves up and down with breathing. The child breathes naturally rally. And if you begin to breathe the way children do, your mind will slowly get into the same state as that of a child; your mind will be as innocent as the child's. Or conversely, if you become as innocent as a child is, you will begin to breathe with your belly.


That is why statues of Buddha made in Japan and China are quite different from statues made in India. In India, Buddha's images have a small belly and a large chest. It is quite different in Japan and China; all his images in those countries have a large belly and a small chest. To us, Japanese and Chinese statues of Buddha look odd; we think they are misshapen and ugly. But in fact, it is the right thing; because when a man of silence like Buddha breathes, he breathes with his belly -- which is the natural way of breathing.


Such an innocent person as Buddha cannot breathe with his chest, which is unnatural and artificial. And when one breathes with his belly, the belly is bound to be large and bulging. So the large belly of Buddha's statue is symbolic. It might not have been so large actually, but it has to be depicted the way it has been depicted. And the reason is that a man like Buddha breathes with his belly, and he is as innocent as a child.


When we understand this, we can take steps to more to natural breathing. As it is, our breathing is unnatural, artificial. The dervish is wrong to tell you not to breathe artificially. In fact, our breathing is already artificial, unnatural enough. But as our under standing of it will deepen, we will increasingly breathe naturally. And when our breathing will be utterly natural, the greatest possibility of our life will begin to actualize and unfold itself from within.


It is also good to know that the practice of sudden artificial breathing is beneficial.


Here, one thing should be clearly understood: that where there is gain there is loss as well. A person runs a shop which brings profit and loss in the same measure. And another person is gambling in which he is a winner and loser in the same measure. The ratio of gain and loss is always the same. So the dervish is right in saying that it is dangerous to interfere with one's breathing. But it is only a half truth. It is full of possibilities too. It is a gamble.


So if sometimes we breathe for a little while in a completely unnatural manner -- unnatural in the sense that we never have breathed this way -- we will begin to be aware of very new states, new situations within us. These are situations in which we can go mad, and we can also be liberated in such situations. We can be insane and we can also become free in such situations. Both the possibilities are there. And since it is we who create these situations in us, we can very well control and undo them when we think it to be necessary. So there is no danger. Danger is possible only if we cannot undo them. But because we have brought them into being, we can very well terminate them as soon as we wish.


Such situations are in your hand, because every moment you know where you are moving, whether you are moving towards bliss or you are moving to wards misery, whether you are moving towards peace or towards danger. At every step you know clearly what is happening. So there is no danger whatsoever.


And if the pattern of breathing is changed very suddenly and briskly, then your whole inner state undergoes a complete change. We can never know, in our habitual way of breathing, that we are separate from the body. The habit which has become ingrained in us has bridged the two; it works as a bridge between the body and mind, and we have become so accustomed to their being one.


It is like you go home every day, and every day as you reach your house you automatically turn the wheel of the car and find yourself standing on the porch. You don't have to think about it -- never. But what will happen if one evening as you turn your car to the left as you have been doing every day, the car turns to the right, and your familiar road disappears, and instead an altogether different road appears in sight? You will suddenly get puzzled and bewildered and find yourself in quite a strange and incredible state of mind. For the first time you will become fully aware.


Strangeness of a thing immediately shakes you out of the rut of unconsciousness; it puts an end to your psychological sleep. Your unconsciousness can never end in a world that is well organized and settled, and where everything repeats itself mechanically every day. Your unconsciousness goes when some thing unexpected, strange and amazing happens, and happens suddenly.


For instance, I am talking to you here. This will not bring you out of the state of unconsciousness. But if suddenly this table starts talking, not even one person will remain unconscious here. It will be impossible for you to remain unconscious if this table starts speaking. Even a thousand words of mine are not enough; you will hear them unconsciously. But one word from this table and you all will reach a state of awareness as you have never known before. Why? Because it is strange, it is weird, it is out of the way. It is this strangeness that upsets your inner state and breaks its established patterns of behavior.


So when the experiences of breathing put you in an utterly strange situation, then new possibilities of spiritual growth open up before you; you attain to awareness, and then you really see something.


And if someone can go mad consciously, it would be a great experience; no other experience could be greater than this. But he should be mad and yet re main aware. In the dynamic meditation that I have devised, such a space can be created where you remain fully aware within, and you go completely mad without. You go so mad that if someone else had been in your place you would not hesitate to call him in sane. So you can very well call yourself insane. But all the same you are aware and watching that you are dancing and whirling. So both things happen simultaneously: your being aware and your going mad.


But since you are aware, how can you go really mad? Yet what is happening to you is the same that happens to a madman. It is in such a situation that a feeling of utter strangeness overwhelms you, and you separate yourself from the body. Not that you do it, the separation happens on its own. You suddenly find that all connections, all communications between you and the body have snapped, that all bridges have broken, and all adjustments have collapsed. You find that everything relevant has become irrelevant; the day to day relevance of things is lost altogether. Things are happening on their own. Your hands are moving without your wanting to move them. Your eyes are shedding tears without you wanting to cry. You want to stop the laughter, but it continues in spite of you.


The creation of such moments of strangeness is very important for awareness. And they are created more quickly through breathing than through anything else. Where other techniques will take years, breath ing will do it in ten minutes. This is because breathing is so deeply connected with our being that even a slight stroke on it reverberates throughout our being.


We have had very valuable techniques of breath ing, but I do not give much value to pranayam or any methodical way of breathing. Because as soon as you systematize breathing, it loses its capacity to create a strange situation for you. As a person practices breathing methodically -- inhaling with one nostril, withholding it for a while and then exhaling it with the other nostril -- it becomes methodical, it becomes part of his habit. And it is the habitual breathing, it is the conditioned breathing that in its turn, bridges you with the body.


The breathing that I teach is absolutely non-methodical; it is without any rules; it is absurd. It is not a matter of exhaling, inhaling and withholding breath in a methodical manner. It is a way of creating a feeling of strangeness in you -- to put you so out of gear, to put you in such utter confusion and chaos that you cannot put it into order again. If you again create an order in this disorder, your mind -- which is so clever -- will soon accept it and adjust itself with it. Breathing in any methodological manner will again turn into a system. But it will lose all strangeness about it.


What I want is that a moment should come when all your roots, all your associations snap in one sweep. A day should come when you suddenly find that you have no roots, no identities, no associations whatsoever; that you have no parents, no brothers and sisters, that you don't have even a body to you. I want you to be in that absurd state where one appears to be crazy.


Remember that if you land in this state unaware and without your efforts, you will really go mad. But if you reach it through your efforts with awareness, you cannot go mad. Because then it will be in your hands, and you can retrace from it any moment.


In my view, if a person suffering from mental disorder is persuaded to do dynamic meditation, there is every possibility of his being restored to sanity and health. Because once he finds that insanity is what he himself creates, he will also know how he can cure it. In the past, insanity had gripped him by itself; he had no hand in it. This meditation will show him how he can have a hand in creating it and then getting rid of it. Of course, the technique has its risks -- but the risk is worth taking; it is full of possibilities. So a man can be cured of his insanity through the dynamic meditation. It can be used for treating the mentally sick with success.


For the normal person doing this meditation, it can be said with guarantee that he will never fall prey to insanity -- because now he knows for himself how insanity is created. So he can very well turn off what he has turned on. Now it will be impossible to drive him mad, because now he will always remain his own master. Now he knows the secret of insanity and sanity.


The breathing that I am talking about is non rhythmic and non-methodical. You cannot repeat it today the way you did it yesterday, because it has no method whatsoever. Not only that you cannot repeat your performance of yesterday -- even today you can not end it the way you will begin. It will be what it will be.


And its only purpose is to see that your mind's conditionings, its habits, its set patterns are loosened. The dervish is right in saying that many nuts and bolts of your physical and mental structure will get loosened; actually they have to be loosened. At the moment this structure -- with its conditionings, set patterns and habits -- is so tight that because of it, separation of the soul from the body is not possible. Only when it is completely loosened will you know that there is something more within you, which was joined to the body and has not been separated.


But since this loosening happens through breathing, it is through a special kind of breathing that it becomes tight again; you don't have to do anything to tighten it. It is not necessary to do something to readjust it; it is readjusted by itself. Of course, if breathing results in a kind of insanity within you which gets out of your control -- if it becomes an obsession and continues for the rest of the day -- then it will be a bad thing indeed.


But if someone does it just for an hour and then leaves it, then everything falls back in place on its own. Afterward only the memory of the experience will remain with you. You will remember how you became separate from the body, and how you were again joined to it in an orderly manner. But now you know, even after being rejoined with the body, that you are separate. You know that you are separate, in spite of being united again with the body after the meditation had ended.
Therefore, this way of breathing is indispensable; we cannot do without it.


So the dervish is right in saying that interfering with breathing is dangerous. It has its dangers, indeed. But if we are seeking life abundant, we must be prepared to face a danger as great as our objective is. But there is a danger and there is a danger. There is danger which unexpectedly confronts us on its own, and we cannot escape it. And there is danger which we invite and create, and which we can get over any time we wish.


For instance, in the course of this meditation you go through all kinds of movements and actions. Someone is yelling, someone else is dancing and singing. But if they are asked to stop everything, they can do so instantly. They will stop, because everything was of their own making -- this is one thing. And it is quite different if such things like crying and dancing happen to you involuntarily, without your cooperation. A lunatic is dancing on the road; his dance is compulsive. He does not know a thing about it, so he cannot do anything to stop it.


My understanding is that sooner or later, this meditation that I am giving you is going to be a therapy of great significance, and it will unavoidably be come a way of treating the mentally ill and restoring them to health. And if it be possible that every child in the school goes through this meditation, he will be saved from insanity for the whole of his life. He will never be mad; he will be immune from this disease, because then he will be his own master, master of his body mind.


The dervish, with whom Gurdjieff had a discussion on breathing, is a traveler of a different path. He never practiced breathing, and he experienced the situation of strangeness through some different way. And this is the trouble -- the trouble is, that the knower of one way loses no time in calling other ways wrong. But a thing is right or wrong in the context of a particular way. What is wrong for one way may be quite right for another.


For instance, there is a pin in the wheel of a bullock cart. Now a person with a motor car can say that this pin is utterly useless. It may be useless in the context of the car, but it is as useful for the cart as any part of the car can be useful for the car. So nothing is wrong or right absolutely; everything is relative.


But this mistake is being repeated always. This Sufi dervish has attained through another path, w hose techniques are different. A Sufi generally works upon his sleep, and not on breathing. For him, night vigil has great significance. He will keep awake for months; and a situation of strangeness can arise from long and constant wakefulness, as it arises from fast and hard breathing. If you can go without sleep for a full month you will land in the same state of madness which comes through deep and chaotic breathing.


Because sleep is a very natural phenomenon -- it is as natural as breathing -- the Sufi makes a frontal attack on sleep, and thus goes through very strange and weird experiences.


But night vigil has its own dangers, and they are greater than those inherent in chaotic breathing. This is a long and drawn out process: you have to keep waking for months together -- night vigil of a day or two is useless. And if something goes wrong after you keep awake for two months, the wrong cannot be remedied in a second or two. But a wrong arising after ten minutes of breathing can be remedied in a second. If you go to sleep after two months of constant waking, you cannot make up the loss in twenty four hours. Maybe, you will not even be able to sleep after two months of night vigil.


The path of the Sufi is more dangerous, although night vigil is very useful. The seeker keeps waking night after night and waits patiently. The dervish who met Gurdjieff has followed this path.


The Sufi also uses dance as a device. Dance also can be a means to bring about separation of the body and soul, but the dance has to be one that is not learned and practiced and prepared. If you dance in a practiced way, it won't do. As I said, that breathing in the way of pranayam cannot bring about the separation of the body and soul -- because pranayam is methodological -- similarly, if someone repeats a prepared dance, he will soon identify himself with the body. But if I tell one of you here who does not know dancing that he should dance, and he suddenly begins dancing and prancing, he can make it. This is such a strange thing that you cannot identify yourself with it, you cannot know that you are dancing.


So these are the two methods that the Sufis use: night vigil and dancing. Some other methods have also been utilized. For example, the Sufis use wool for their garments. They wear woolen clothes in the typical hot climate of deserts -- that is how they go against the body. Someone who fasts is also going against the body. Someone is sitting with one foot placed on a sharp nail, and another person sleeps on a bed of thorns. All these are devices to create that strange psychological situation where separation can happen.


It is, however, natural that a pilgrim of a particular path cannot think that the same situation can be created by other devices too. Gurdjieff's dervish knows nothing about pranayam. And he will harm himself if he practices something like it; it will do him real harm. In his case, the harm may be grievous. It will be like using the wheel of a bullock cart for a motor car -- it will be dangerous. Now if a man on night vigil practices pranayam, he is bound to go mad immediately. He will go out of his mind the same night. And there are good reasons for it.


Your person just cannot stand the combined effects of the two exercises -- night vigil and pranayam. That is why the Jains did not use pranayam, because they created that strangeness through fasting. If they combine fasting with pranayam, they will be in deep trouble -- the danger is really great. Pranayam has no use whatsoever for the Jains; the Jain monk will say that it is all useless. But he does not know that by denying pranayam he only wants to say that it has no place in his kind of spiritual discipline. Fasting does for him what pranayam does for others.


It is for this reason that the Jains did not concern themselves with yogic asanas and the rest of it, be cause they can be grievously harmful for a person undergoing a long fast. Those who go for yogic asanas need a very soft and greasy diet like milk, butter and ghee, which are deeply satisfying. Fasting goes contrary to it.


Fasting makes you dry and arid from the inside. Fasting whets your hunger, and it would be damaging to do asanas in a state of burning hunger. The fire of hunger can rise to your brain and you can go mad. So the Jain monk will tell you that yogasanas have nothing substantial about them, they are worthless.


But for the path that uses them, these yogic asanas have immense value. Done with the right kind of diet, they can work wonders. It is necessary that the body is in a smooth and supple state, as if it is well lubricated -- hence the importance of soft and greasy food -- because each one of its bones and sinews and nerves will have to go through great manipulation and transformation. The body will break if it is not sufficiently soft and supple. It has to be exceedingly flexible and supple.


Now these yogic asanas are nothing but strange bodily positions or postures which we normally do not adopt. And we have no idea how all our bodily positions are intimately connected with our mind.


When a person is anxious and worried, he begins to scratch his head. One can ask why he scratches his head -- what has it to do with his anxiety? But if you prevent him from doing so, you will find that he can not be worried. To be in a state of worry, he will compulsively take his hands to his head. And if you restrain him from doing so, he will find it difficult to be worried. Every anxiety has some necessary physical associations with it; it is necessary that the muscles of your hand should be in a particular position in relation to your nerves. His anxiety can be activated only when his body takes its required position.


All the yogic asanas and mudras follow the patterns of our mind's different states. And they are the results of countless experiments and experiences.


As I told you this morning, asanas and mudras, bodily postures and gestures, form by themselves in the course of the meditation that you have been doing here. After thousands of experiments it was found which kind of mudra is formed in a particular state of mind. Then the reverse process can also be worked out, in which you can attain to a particular state of mind by forming the mudra that corresponds with it.


For instance, Buddha sits in a particular way; and if you can sit that way it will be easier for you to attain to the state of mind which Buddha has, because every state of mind is bound with a corresponding position of the body. If you can walk as Buddha walks, if you can sit as Buddha sits, if you can breathe as Buddha breathes, it will be easier for you to achieve his state of mind. Or conversely, if you can attain to Buddha's state of mind, you will find a great similarity between your ways and Buddha's ways of walking and sitting.
Both things move parallel to each other.


Now persons like Gurdjieff -- who in a sense was an uprooted person -- cannot know it, because they don't have any tradition behind them, going back thousands of years. Moreover, Gurdjieff in the course of his wanderings met nearly two dozen mystics belonging to different schools. And it was from such diverse sources that he collected his wares. His wares consist of any number of parts belonging to any number of spiritual instruments -- each of which is quite different from the other.


These parts were right in their own places, but when all of them were jumbled together they made a very strange assortment. That is why sometimes a Gurdjieff technique works on somebody, but it never works fully on anyone. Therefore, none of those who worked with Gurdjieff could attain to complete fulfillment. It is simply not possible, because when someone begins to work with Gurdjieff and something clicks, he becomes interested in the work and enters a path which is a medley of diverse paths. So, soon other techniques begin to operate on him in a reverse manner. This is so because Gurdjieff does not have a complete system of spiritual discipline. One should say that it is a multi system, and incomplete at the same time. Many necessary links are missing, even in this chain of a multi-system.


Most of Gurdjieff is information has been collected from the Sufis. He has no knowledge of Tibetan yoga, and so far as knowledge of hatha yoga is concerned, it is inadequate. Besides, all his information about hatha yoga came from the opponents of this discipline, it came from Sufi dervishes. Gurdjieff is not an adept of hatha yoga. All his knowledge of yoga or kundalini was derived from hostile sources, or from those who were travelers of opposite paths.


So what Gurdjieff says on the basis of this information is inconsistent in many ways. For instance, his views on kundalini are wholly absurd. He does not know a thing about it. He goes on calling it "kunda buffer". This buffer is not a happy term. He means to say that it is because of the kundalini that you don't attain to knowledge; it works as a buffer, as a barrier between you and the ultimate. So it is necessary to transcend it by destroying it. According to Gurdjieff it is not at all necessary to awaken the kundalini. Now he does not know what he is saying.


There are of course buffer like things in our personality, and it is because of them that we can take many kinds of shocks in life. But the kundalini is not a buffer. Kundalini is a shock in itself, but Gurdjieff has no knowledge of it. It is the greatest shock possible. When the kundalini rises it comes to you as a most powerful shock. Of course, there are buffers in your system, but they are a different thing; they work as shock absorbers. And it is necessary that these buffers are destroyed. But Gurdjieff takes kundalini itself to be a buffer, because he knows nothing about it. In fact, he has no experience of kundalini, because he had no opportunity to know it from the adepts of kundalini yoga. That is why many times incongruous things happen.


Men like Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti have been victims of such incongruity. The incongruity is that they could not have systematic knowledge of the secrets that lie behind terms and energies like the kundalini. In fact, such knowledge is very difficult to obtain. It is simply not possible in one lifetime. It hap pens only in the case of some rare individuals who learn and grow among some dozens of schools in the course of dozens of lives; otherwise it is impossible. If someone grows among dozens of schools -- which will obviously take dozens of lives -- only then it is possible that in his last life he will find a synthesis among the diverse spiritual disciplines. Otherwise it is not possible to find a synthesis.


What is usual is that a person attains to the highest through a single school, and then he need not take another birth. His goal is reached, his life is fulfilled. Therefore a synthesis does not happen. Of late, I have been thinking that a synthesis between the various spiritual disciplines of the whole world is possible, and that it is something worth working for. All the disciplines have to be approached from different ends and then put together. Everywhere the ultimate happening is the same; only its methods are different.


Now a Zen Master throws a seeker out of the window. This only creates a space of strangeness in the seeker and nothing else. But the Zen Master will say that there is no need of pranayam and that this bhastrika pranayam -- bellow like breathing -- is useless. There is reason for him to say so. One may ask that if bhastrika cannot do it. how can throwing one out of the window do? If you go and tell Buddha or Mahavira that someone attained to knowledge after being thrown out of the window, he will say you are crazy. Every day people fall down from rooftops or tree tops and none of them achieves knowledge.


But falling is one thing and being thrown out is quite different. Falling from the rooftop is like someone goes mad; but when a few people lift a man bodily and throw him out of the window, and he knows that he is being thrown out, then he will soon undergo an experience of strangeness about the whole thing. He is all the time aware and wondering about the whole situation when he is being thrown out, and when he falls down on the ground. And that is the moment when he becomes separate from the body.


Another Zen Master picks up his staff and hits the seeker on the head. This is also strange. The seeker has gone to him for peace of mind, and the Master hits him with his staff. This suddenly creates a moment of strangeness for the seeker. But it will not be so in India. If you hit someone here, he will hit you back; he will be ready for a fight. It will only happen in Japan, because this practice has found a place for itself in that country. People are aware that Zen Masters can do something great through hitting the seeker.


If you go to a saint and immediately on seeing you he begins to insult your mother and sisters with four letter words, he will successfully create a situation of utter strangeness for you. You go to him in the belief that he is a knower of truth, and he openly hurls four-letter words at you! What a contrast! But this is okay only if you have some awareness of it; otherwise you will be in difficulty. You may think you went to a wrong person and you will not visit him again.


But in certain schools, even rebukes and invectives have been used to create strangeness. There is a fakir in a small village called Saikhera near Gadarwara. You can never know how he will receive you when you go to him. He may use four letter words for you, and he can do anything weird and crazy. Maybe he will stand up in the presence of his visitors and start pissing. You would be utterly shocked. That is creating what is called a space of strangeness in you.


Apart from it, he would even attempt to beat you physically. And in his attempt to beat you, he can chase you for miles and miles. But people who understand him are much benefited just by visiting him. Those who don't understand, they dismiss him as a madman. And he has nothing to do with those who don't understand him. But he certainly helps those who care to understand him. Now a man whom he pursues for miles will certainly find himself in a very strange space. Just think of the situation: a man is being pursued by him and a thousand people are watching the scene. Undoubtedly a strange atmosphere is created.


This can be done by many other schools, techniques and systems. But the difficulty is that every such school is not aware that others are doing the same thing in their own ways.


There is yet another difficulty in the matter. Even if someone knows, as I know, that the same result can be achieved by some other techniques, he will not say it. When I am explaining a particular system, I have to present it as the highest; otherwise it won't be effective. Even if I know that this can be achieved by some other methods, I will not say so when I am talking on a particular system. Then I will say that this can be achieved only through this system and not through any other. And there is a reason for doing so. You are not that intelligent, that you can take it in its right perspective. If I say that all schools can do it, you will be just confused. You will conclude then that no school can do it really. Besides, all these schools are so contrary to each other that you will begin to wonder how it can be possible. Your confusion will be even more confounded.


That is why many times the wise ones, those who know, have to talk in the language of the ignorant ones. They have to assert that "This is the only way, there is none except this." For this reason I find myself in great difficulty, because I know well that it can be achieved through other ways too. So I find myself in great difficulty.
			

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> Copyright 1964-1990 Osho (Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh)
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