The Greatest Challenge : The Golden Future

Preparing People for Power

 

 

 

The people who are going to be powerful need to be prepared.

 

Right now, up to now, for thousands of years you have never prepared anybody. If somebody is going to be a boxer you don't just push him into the ring and say: "Start!" He has to learn. If somebody is going to be a swordsman, it will take him years. Otherwise he won't even know how to hold the sword -- using it and fighting with it will be impossible. First he will have to find out how to take it out from its sheath, how to hold it. It needs training. You don't just give a guitar to somebody who has never seen the instrument before and expect him to be an Amadeus Mozart or a Ravi Shankar.

 

Now this is your fault.

 

These people who are in power, have you trained them? Has anybody ever thought that the people who will be holding so much power need certain qualities so that they don't misuse power? It is not their fault.

 

So I propose two institutes in every university. One institute is for deprogramming. Anybody who gets a graduation certificate will first have to get a clearance certificate from the deprogramming institute -- which means it has deprogrammed you as a Christian, as a Hindu, as a German, as an American, as a communist, as a Mohammedan, as a Jew, or whatever trademarks you had. It has taken out all the rubbish, because this has been our trouble.

 

And when you have believed a certain thing for fifty or sixty years, and I suddenly say that it is nonsense, you will get upset, you will resist, because that means for sixty years you have been a stupid guy. But if you have guts and intelligence, there is still time to get out of the rut.

 

My religiousness is nothing but the science of deprogramming.

 

And remember, don't get mixed up with the "deprogramming" that exists in California -- they are re-programmers! Someone was escaping from Christianity; they bring him back to Christianity -- and you call it deprogramming?

 

Deprogramming means you are simply left without a program, without religion, race, caste, nationality...you are left alone to be yourself -- to be an individual.

 

And four years is enough time. Deprogramming does not take that much time; just a few hours a month for four years and you will be deprogrammed. And you will not get any certificate from the educational institute unless you are cleared by the deprogramming institute that: "This man doesn't carry any label anymore; he is now simply a human being."

 

The second institute will be an institute for meditation, because just deprogramming is not enough. Deprogramming takes rubbish from you -- and it is difficult to be empty; you will start gathering rubbish again. You cannot manage by yourself to learn how to live joyfully with your emptiness, but that is the whole art of meditation.

 

So this institute will give you a simple meditation. There is no need for any complexity; universities, the intelligentsia, tend to make things complex. A simple method of just watching your breath is enough, but every day for one hour you have to go to the institute.

 

You just sit silently and witness your mind-process, while keeping your attention on the breath.

 

Nothing needs to be done. Just be a witness, an observer, a watcher, looking at the traffic of the mind -- thoughts passing by, desires, memories, dreams, fantasies. Simply stand aloof, cool, with no condemnation, no evaluations. Once you get the knack of it, it is the most simple thing in the world.

 

About meditation -- a few essential things to be remembered: The first is a relaxed state -- no fight, no control, no concentration. The second is watchfulness -- witness whatever is going on inside of you. And the third is, don't have any judgment or evaluation about it. Just be a watcher.

 

The body changes, the mind changes, the emotions change -- only the witness remains the same.

 

As you practice witnessing, you will notice that the clouds of thoughts and emotions will slowly slowly start to disperse and the vast blue sky of your inner being will appear -- you will have a taste of going beyond the body-mind-heart complex. Once you have experienced this state you have tasted meditation; and meditation is peace, meditation is joy -- meditation is fulfillment.

 

So on the one hand the deprogramming institute cleanses you, empties you, makes you a vacuum; and on the other hand the meditation institute goes on helping you to enjoy your nothingness, your emptiness, your inner vacuum -- its cleanliness, its freshness. And as you start enjoying it, you start feeling that it is not empty at all, it is full of joy. It looked empty at first because you were accustomed to having so much rubbish in it, and that rubbish has been removed so you say it looks empty.

 

It is just like a room full of furniture: you have always seen it full of furniture; then one day you come and all the furniture is removed and you say: "The room looks empty." The room is not empty, the room is simply clean. The room is roomy for the first time. It was cluttered before, burdened, full of rubbish; now it is pure space.

 

You have to learn meditation to enjoy your emptiness.

 

And that is one of the greatest days in life -- when a person starts enjoying emptiness, aloneness, nothingness, because then you will be able to live your whole life meditatively.

 

And by living meditatively I mean to be loving, to be alert, to be a witness. Whatever you are doing, do it with joy and totality -- do it as if this is the greatest thing in the world in this moment. When you do anything with such intensity, with such love, with such respect, you will be transformed by it.

 

Unless something transforms you, it is not meditation.

 

But all the religions have been doing prayers in the name of meditation, prayers which are nothing but complaints and desires. They will not take you to your innermost being or into some higher state of consciousness -- you will remain the same person.

 

And in the name of meditation there are hundreds of so-called teachers who go on exploiting people. Their teachings are of disciplining the mind by practicing concentration. But concentration is a mind phenomenon, it makes the mind even stronger -- and meditation, in short, is nothing but creating a gap between you and your mind.

 

For example, Transcendental Meditation has become representative of all so-called meditations: you concentrate on some word, a holy word, and you repeat it as fast as you can -- without gaps in between. This creates a deliberate kind of sleep and gives you relaxation from thinking. It is an enjoyable exercise and coming out of it you will feel refreshed. I am not against it -- but please don't call it meditation and don't call it transcendental; those are wrong words for it. It is hypnotic auto-suggestion and nothing more.

 

Meditation will make you a new being, a new man, a new consciousness which knows no fear, no seriousness, no greed, no hate -- nothing of those dark emotions and sentiments which are ugly, sick, nauseating; meditation knows only that which uplifts you, which goes on uplifting you.

 

Then nobody can reprogram you, nobody in the whole world.

 

Unless the meditation institute gives you its degree, the university is not going to give you a degree.

 

The university's degree will come only when a clearance certificate from the deprogramming institute and a graduation certificate from the meditation university have been granted. It will depend on you -- you can graduate in one year, you can graduate in two years, you can graduate in three years, four years. But four years is too much. Any imbecile, if he just sits for one hour every day, doing nothing, for four years, is bound to find what Buddha or Lao Tzu have found, what I have found.

 

It is not a question of intelligence, talent, genius. It is only a question of patience.

 

So from the university meditation institute you get a degree, a bachelor of meditation; then you get a bachelor of arts or commerce or science, not before it. And in the same way it continues. You get a master's degree in meditation, M.M., and again you will be required to continue with the deprogramming institute for two years, because you can't be left alone so easily.

 

These processes go on simultaneously -- deprogramming and meditation. One institute goes on cleaning you, emptying you; the other goes on filling you -- not with some thing, but with some quality: blissfulness, lovingness, compassion, a tremendous feeling of worth for no reason at all. Just that you are living, breathing, is enough proof that existence thinks you worthy of living, that existence thinks you worthy of being here.

 

You are indispensable to existence.

 

So if a person continues to study in the university, then he continues to go to the meditation institute for one hour every day, and before he gets his M.A., he gets his M.M. -- that is, master of meditation. These are clearance certificates for your M.A. degree. And I want this to continue. If you are going to do your Ph.D. then you do four years of deprogramming and four years of meditation. Those are compulsory to the very end, so when you come out of the university you are not only an intelligent person, well-informed, you are also a meditator -- relaxed, joyful, silent, peaceful, observant, watchful, intuitive. And you are no longer a Christian, no longer a Hindu, no longer an American, no longer a Russian. All that has been completely burned; nothing is left of it.

 

This is the only way: to replace the politicians by the intelligentsia.

 

But as the intelligentsia is now, it won't be of much help, because they are still in the grip of power politics.

 

That's why I make these two conditions. If you get a Ph.D., simultaneously you will be getting a doctor's degree in meditation. So while you are being educated you are in a very silent and subtle way being prepared to be in power, in such a way that power cannot corrupt you, that you cannot misuse it.