Human relationships have changed a lot, and have changed for the worse. In all dimensions the deeper relationships have disappeared: the wife is no longer a wife, but just a girlfriend; the husband is no longer a husband, but just a boyfriend. Friendship is good, but cannot be very deep. Marriage is something which happens in depth. It is a commitment in depth, and unless you commit yourself you remain shallow. Unless you commit yourself you never take the jump. You can float on the surface, but the depths are not for you.
Of course, to go into the depths is dangerous -- bound to be so, because on the surface you are very efficient. On the surface you can work like an automaton; no awareness is needed. But you will have to be more and more alert, the more you penetrate into the depths, because at every moment death is possible. Fear of depth has created a shallowness in all relationships. They have become juvenile.
A boyfriend or a girlfriend may be fun, but cannot become a door to the deepest that is hidden in each and everyone. With a girlfriend you can be sexually related, but love cannot grow. Love needs deep roots. Sexuality is possible on the surface, but sexuality is just animal, biological. It can be beautiful if it is part of a deeper love, but if it is not part of a deeper love it is the most ugly thing possible; the ugliest, because then there is no communion -- you simply touch each other and separate. Only bodies meet, but not you -- not I, not thou. This has happened in all relationships.
But the greatest relationship has completely disappeared, and the greatest relationship is between a master and a disciple. You will not be able to understand Jesus if you cannot understand the dimension of that relationship which exists between a master and his disciples. That has completely disappeared. The wife is substituted by a girlfriend, the husband is substituted by a boyfriend, but the master, and the relationship that exists between him and his disciples, has completely disappeared. Or, this relationship has been substituted by a very contrary thing that exists between a psychiatrist and his patient.
Between a psychiatrist and his patient a relationship exists which is bound to be ill, pathological -- because a patient comes not in search of truth, is really not in search of health.... This word health is very meaningful: it means wholeness, it means holiness, it means a deep healing in the self. A patient does not come for health, because if he comes for health he cannot be anything other than a disciple. A patient comes to get rid of the illness; the attitude is totally negative. He has come just to be forced to become normal again, just to become a working part of the normal world again. He has become maladjusted; he needs adjustment and the psychiatrist helps him to be adjusted again. But adjusted to whom? Adjusted to this world, this society, which is absolutely ill.
What you call the 'normal' human being is nothing but normal pathology or normal madness, normal insanity. The 'normal' man is also insane, but insane within the boundaries, the accepted boundaries of the society, of the culture. Somebody sometimes trespasses, goes beyond the boundaries -- then he becomes ill. Then the whole society, which is ill, says that this man is ill. And the psychiatrist exists on the boundary to help this man back, back to the crowd.
The psychiatrist cannot be the master, because he himself is not whole. And the patient cannot be the disciple, because he has not come to learn. He is disturbed, and he does not want to be disturbed; his effort is only for adjustment, not for health. The psychiatrist cannot be the master, although in the West he is pretending to be, and sooner or later he will pretend that he is the master in the East too. But he cannot be -- he himself is ill. He may help others to be adjusted, and that's okay: one ill man can help another ill man, in some ways. But one ill man cannot bring another man who is ill to be whole; one madman cannot help another madman to go beyond madness.
Even your Freuds, your Jungs, your Adlers, are absolutely ill; not only ordinary psychiatrists, but the greatest of them are ill and pathological. I will tell you a few things so you can feel it. Whenever somebody mentioned anything about death, Freud would start trembling. Twice he even fainted and fell down from his chair just because somebody was talking about mummies in Egypt. He fainted! And another time also, Jung was talking about death, corpses, and suddenly Freud trembled and fell down, fainted, became unconscious. If death was such a fear to Freud, what about his disciples? And why should death be such a fear? Can you conceive of a buddha being afraid of death? Then he would no longer be a buddha.
Jung has reported that many times he wanted to go to Rome to visit the Vatican and particularly the library, the Vatican's library, which is the greatest, which has the secretmost records of all the religions that have existed -- very rare. But whenever he went to purchase the ticket he would start trembling -- just going to Rome! What will happen when you go to moksha? He would cancel the ticket and come back. He never went, never. Many times he tried, and in the end he decided, "No, I cannot go."
What is the fear, going to Rome? Why is a psychiatrist afraid of going to religion? ... Because Rome is just the symbol, the representative. And this Jung had created a philosophy around his mind, and that philosophy was afraid of being shattered. It is just as if a camel is afraid to go to the Himalayas, because when a camel comes near the Himalayas, for the first time he comes to know that he is nothing. This whole philosophy that Jung has created is just childish. Man has created such vast, cosmic systems, and all those systems are in ruins now. The fear is that going to Rome means going to the ruins of the great systems that the past has created.
What about your small system? What about this small corner that you have cleaned and decorated? What about your philosophy?
Great philosophies have tumbled down and gone to dust: go to Rome, see what has happened! Go to Athens, see what has happened! Where are the schools of Aristotle and Plato and Socrates? All have disappeared into dust. The greatest systems in the end come to dust; all thoughts finally prove to be useless, because thought is just a man-created thing.
Only in 'no-thought' do you come to know the divine. Through thought you cannot come to know the eternal, because thought is of time. Thought cannot be of the eternal; no philosophy, no system of thought can be eternal. That was the fear.
At least four or five times Jung made reservations and canceled. And this man Jung is one of the greatest psychiatrists. If he was so afraid of going to Rome, what about his disciples? Even you are not afraid -- not because you are better than Jung, but just because you are more unaware. He was aware that in Rome his head would come down; the moment he looked at the ruins of all the great systems, a trembling, a fear of death -- that, "What will happen to my system? What will happen to me?" -- would take hold. He trembles and comes back, and in his memoirs he writes: "Then finally I dropped the whole project. I am not going to Rome."
The same thing happened to Freud many times. He also tried to go to Rome -- so it does not seem to be just a coincidence -- and he also was afraid. Why? Freud was as angry as you can be, Freud was as sexual as you can be, as scared of death as you can be, as neurotic in his behavior as you can be, so what is the difference? He may have been a more intelligent man, may have been a genius perhaps, or he could help a little, but he was as blind as you are as far as the ultimate is concerned, as far as the secretmost, innermost core of being is concerned.
No, psychiatry cannot become religion. It may become a good hospital, but it cannot become the temple -- it is not possible. And a psychiatrist may be needed because people are ill, maladjusted, but a psychiatrist is not a master and a patient is not a disciple. If you come to a master as a patient then you will miss, because a master is not a psychiatrist. I am not a psychiatrist.
People come to me and they say, "I am suffering from this mental anxiety, neurosis, this and that."
I say, "It is okay, because I am not going to treat your anxiety, I am going to treat you. I am not concerned with your diseases, I am simply concerned with you. Diseases are on the periphery, and there is no disease where you are."
Once you come to realize who you are, all diseases disappear. They exist basically because you have been hiding self-knowledge, you have been avoiding yourself; you have been avoiding the basic encounter because you don't want to look at yourself. Why don't you want to look at yourself? What has happened to you? Unless you are ready to encounter yourself you cannot become a disciple, because a master can do nothing if you are not ready to face yourself. He can only help you to face yourself.
Why are you so afraid? ... Because something has gone wrong somewhere in the past. A child is born and he is not accepted as he is. Many things have to be changed, forced; he has to be disciplined. He has many parts which the society and his parents cannot accept, so those parts have to be denied, repressed; only a few parts can be accepted and appreciated. So the child has to work it out. He has to deny many fragments of his being which cannot be allowed manifestation. He has to deny them so much that he himself becomes unaware of them. This is what repression is, and the whole society exists on repression.
The greater part of the being of the child has to be repressed, completely thrown into the dark. But that repressed part asserts itself, tries to rebel, react; it wants to come into the light and you have to force it back again and again. So you become afraid to encounter yourself, because what will happen to the repressed part? That will come again, that will be there. What will happen to the unconscious? If you encounter yourself the unconscious will be there, all that you have denied will be there. And that gives you fear.
Unless a child is accepted totally as he or she is, this fear is bound to remain. But no society has yet existed which accepts a child totally -- and it seems that no society will ever exist which will accept a child totally, because it is almost impossible. So repression is bound to be there, more or less. And everybody has to face, some day, this problem of facing oneself. You become disciples the very day you forget about what is good, what is bad; you forget about what is accepted, what is not accepted. You only become a disciple the day you are ready to expose your whole being to yourself.
The master is just a midwife. He helps you to pass through a new birth, to be reborn. And what is the relationship between a master and a disciple? A disciple has to trust; he cannot doubt. If he doubts, then he cannot expose himself. When you doubt somebody you shrink; you cannot expand. When you doubt.... A stranger is there, then you close yourself; you cannot be open because you don't know what this stranger is going to do to you. You cannot be vulnerable before him; you have to protect yourself and create an armor.
With a master you have to drop the armor completely -- that much is a must. Even with a lover you may carry your armor a little; before a beloved you may not be so open. But with a master the openness has to be total, otherwise nothing will happen. If you withhold even a little part of yourself the relationship is not there. Total trust is needed, only then can the secrets be revealed, only then can the keys be offered to you. But if you are hiding yourself, that means you are fighting with the master, and then nothing can be done.
Struggle is not the key with the master, surrender is the key. And surrender has disappeared from the world completely. Many things have helped it: for three or four centuries man has been taught to be individualistic, egoistic; man has been taught not to surrender but to fight; not to obey but to rebel; man has been taught not to trust but to doubt. There has been a reason for it: it is because science grows through doubt. Science is deep skepticism. It works not through trust; it works through logic, argument, doubt. The more you doubt, the more scientific you become. The path is the very opposite of the religious path.
Religion works through trust: the more you trust, the more religious you become. Science has worked miracles and those miracles are very visible. Religion has worked greater miracles, but those miracles are not so visible. Even if a buddha is there, what can you feel? What can you see? He is not visible -- visibly, he is just a body; visibly, he is just as mortal as you are; visibly, he will become old and die one day. Invisibly, he is deathless. But you don't have the eyes to see that which is invisible, you don't have the capacity to feel the innermost, the unknown. That is why only trusting eyes, by and by, start to feel and become sensitive. When you trust, it means closing these two eyes. That is why trust is blind, just like love is blind -- but trust is even more blind than love.
When you close both these eyes, what happens? An inner transformation happens. When you close these eyes which see outwardly, what happens to the energy which goes through the eyes? That energy starts moving backwards. It cannot flow from the eyes towards objects, so it starts turning, it becomes a turning. Energy has to move, energy cannot be static; if you close one outlet, it starts finding another. When both eyes are closed, the energy that was moving through these two eyes starts turning -- a conversion happens. That energy hits the third eye in you. The third eye is not a physical thing: it is just that the energy that moves through the eyes towards outside objects is now returning towards the source. It becomes the third eye, the third way of seeing the world. Only through that third eye is a Buddha seen; only through that third eye is a Jesus realized. If you don't have that third eye, Jesus will be there but you will miss him -- many missed him.
In his home town, people thought that Jesus was just that carpenter Joseph's son. Nobody, nobody could recognize what had happened to this man: that he was no longer the carpenter's son, that he had become God's son. That is an inner phenomenon. And when Jesus declared, "I am the son of the divine, my father is in heaven," people laughed and said, "Either you have gone mad, or you are a fool or a very cunning man. How can a carpenter's son suddenly become God's son?" But there is a way....
Only the body is born out of the body. The inner self is not born out of the body, it is born of the holy ghost, it is of the divine. But first you have to attain the eyes to see, you have to attain the ears to hear.
It is a very delicate affair to understand Jesus; you have to pass through a great training. It is just like understanding classical music. If suddenly you are allowed to listen to classical music for the first time you will feel, "What nonsense is going on?" It is so delicate, a long training is needed. You have to be an apprentice for many, many years; only then are your ears trained to catch the subtle -- and then there is nothing like classical music. Then ordinary day-to-day music, like film music, is not music at all; it is just noise, and that too, foolish. Because your ears are not trained you live with that noise and you think it is music. But for classical music you need very aristocratic ears. A training is needed, and the more you are trained, the more the subtle becomes visible. But classical music is nothing before a Jesus, because that is the cosmic music. You have to be so silent that there is not a single flicker of thought, not a single movement in your being; only then can you hear Jesus, can you understand Jesus, can you know him.
Jesus goes on repeating again and again, "Those who have ears should be able to understand me. Those who have eyes, see! I am here!" Why does he go on repeating, "Those who have eyes, see! Those who have ears, hear!" -- why? He is talking of some other dimension of understanding only a disciple can understand. Very few understood Jesus, but that is in the very nature of things and bound to be so. Very few -- and who were those few? They were not learned scholars, no; they were not professors of the universities, no; they were not pundits or philosophers, no. They were ordinary people: a fisherman, a farmer, a shoemaker, a prostitute -- they were very ordinary people, most ordinary, the most ordinary of ordinaries.
Why could these people understand? There must be something extraordinary in an ordinary man. There must be something special which exists in an ordinary man and disappears in so-called 'extraordinaries'. What is this? It is a humbleness, a trust.
The more you are trained in the intellect, the less trust is possible; when you are not trained in the intellect, more trust is possible. A farmer trusts, he has no need to doubt. He sows the seeds in the field and he trusts they will come up, they will sprout when the right season comes. They will sprout. He waits and he prays, and in the right season those seeds sprout and they become plants. He waits and he trusts. He lives with the trees, plants, rivers, mountains. There is no need to doubt: trees are not cunning, you need no armor around you to protect yourself from them; hills are not cunning -- they are not politicians, they are not criminals -- you need no armor to protect yourself from them. You do not need any security there, you can be open.
That is why when you go to the hills you suddenly feel a rapture. From where does it come? From the hills? No, it comes because now you can put the armor aside, there is no need to be afraid. When you go to a tree suddenly you feel beautiful. It is not coming from the tree, it is coming from within you. But with a tree there is no need to protect yourself, you can be at ease and at home. The flower is not going to suddenly attack you; the tree cannot be a thief, it cannot steal anything from you. So when you go to the hills, to the sea, to the trees, to the forest, you put aside your armor.
People who live with nature are more trusting. A country which is less industrialized, less mechanized, less technological, lives more with nature, has more trust in it. That is why you cannot conceive of Jesus being born in New York -- almost impossible. Jesus freaks can be born there, but not Jesus. And these 'freaks' are just neurotic; Jesus is just an excuse. No, you cannot think of Jesus being born there, it is almost impossible. And even if he were born there, no one would listen to him; even if he were there, nobody would be able to recognize him. He was born in an age without technology, without science, the son of a carpenter. He lived his whole life with poor, simple people who were living with nature. They could trust.
Jesus comes to the lake one day, early in the morning. The sun has not yet come up over the horizon. Two fishermen are there and they have just thrown their net to catch fish when Jesus comes and says, "Look! Why are you wasting your life? I can make you fishers of men. Why are you wasting your energy on fishing for fish? I can make you catchers of men, fishers of men. Come, follow me!"
If he had said that to you when you were sitting in your office or in your shop, you would have said, "Go away! I don't have any time. Don't waste my time!" But those two fishermen looked at Jesus; they looked at Jesus without any doubt. The sun was rising and the man was beautiful, this man Jesus. And his eyes -- they were deeper than the lake, and his radiance was greater than the sun. They threw away their nets and they followed Jesus.
This is trust. Not a single question: "Who are you, stranger?" They didn't know him, he was not of their village; they had never seen him, they had never heard him. But it was enough -- the call, the invitation was enough. They heard the invitation, they looked at Jesus, felt his sincerity, and they followed him.
Just when they were going out of the town a man came running and he said to those two fishermen, "Where are you going? Your father has died suddenly. Come back!"
So they said to Jesus, "Can we go home and bury our dead father, and then we will come?"
Jesus said: "Don't worry about the dead. There are enough dead in the town; they will bury their dead. Come and follow me. You need not bother about the dead." And those two fishermen followed. This is trust: they heard, they saw Jesus.
He meant -- and he was right: "When the father is dead, what is to be done? When somebody is dead, he is dead. There is no need to go. And there are enough dead in the town; they will do the remainder, they will do the ritual, they will bury your father. You come and follow me." So they followed and they never turned back, they never looked back. Trust means not looking back. Trust means not turning back.
A doubting mind is always looking back, always thinking of the alternative, always thinking of what he has not done, always thinking whether he has done right: should he go back or follow this madman? Who knows -- he says he is the son of God, but who knows? Nobody knows about God, nobody knows about his sons -- "and this man looks just like us!" But the fishermen followed Jesus.
If you follow a man like Jesus, sooner or later he will become infectious, but you have to follow in the beginning. Sooner or later you will feel that he is the son of God -- and not only that, through him you will realize that you are also sons of God. But in the beginning you have to trust. If in the beginning there is doubt, doors are closed.
This relationship between master and disciple has disappeared because of three centuries of successful science. Science has succeeded so much, and it has done miracles -- useless miracles of course, because they have not added a single bit to human happiness, and a miracle is useless if happiness has not increased through it. Rather, happiness has decreased. The more technology, the more comfort, but the less happiness: this is the miracle that science has done. The more things can be done by mechanical devices, the less you are needed. And the less you are needed, the more you feel futile, useless, meaningless. Sooner or later, the computer will replace you and then you will not be needed at all. Then you can go and commit suicide because the computer will do everything.
Happiness comes out of being needed. When you are needed you feel happy, because you feel your being has meaning, you feel your life has meaning; you feel that you are needed, and that without you things would be different. But now, without you, nothing will be different. Rather, things will be better without you because machines can do everything better than you. You are just a hindrance, just an out-of-date thing. Man is the most out-of-date thing today, because every year everything else comes in a new edition: a new model of Ford car comes out, a new model of everything. Only man remains an out-of-date model. Amidst so many new things, you are the only old thing.
The modern mind continuously feels a meaninglessness, because nobody needs you. Even children won't need you, because the government, the welfare state will take care of them. Your old father and mother will not need you, because there will be homes -- government, state homes -- which will take care. Who needs you? And when you feel nobody needs you, you are just an unnecessary burden, how can you be happy? In the old days you were needed.
Somewhere, a Jewish mystic, Hillel, who must have been a very trusting man, a very prayerful man, said to God in his prayer, "Don't think that only I need you -- you also need me. You will be nothing without me. If Hillel is not there, who will pray? Who will look up to you? I am a must. So remember this: I need you, that is right, but you also need me."
When the whole universe needed you -- even God -- then you had a meaning, a significance, a fragrance. But now nobody needs you. You can be disposed of easily, you are nothing. Technology has created comfort and made you disposable. Technology has made you better houses, but not better men, because better men need some other dimension -- and that dimension is not of mechanics. That dimension is of awareness, not of mechanicalness.
Science cannot create a Buddha or a Jesus, but science can create a society in which a Buddha will be impossible. Many people come to me and they ask why there are no more buddhas now, no more tirthankaras, no more Jesuses. Because of you! You have created such a society that it becomes more and more impossible for a simple man to exist, for an innocent man to exist. And even if he does exist you will not recognize him. It is not that buddhas are not there -- it is difficult to see them but they are there. You may be passing them every day when you go to your office, but you cannot recognize them because you are blind.
