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Consciousness is like a lake: with waves it becomes the mind, without waves it becomes the soul. The difference is only of turmoil.

Mind is a soul disturbed, and soul is mind silenced. The mind is just the ill state of affairs, and the soul is the healthy state of affairs.

Mind is not something separate from the soul, as waves are not separate from the lake. The lake can be without waves, but the waves cannot be without the lake. The soul can be without the mind, but the mind cannot be without the soul.

When there are great winds and the lake is disturbed, there is turmoil. And the lake loses one quality in that turmoil, and that is the quality of reflection. Then it cannot reflect the real. The real becomes distorted.

There may be a full moon in the sky, but now the lake is not capable of reflecting it. The moon will still be reflected, but in a distorted way. It will be reflected in thousands of fragments. It will not be any unity; it will not be collected, integrated. It will not be one.

The real is one. But now the lake will reflect many millions of moons; the whole surface of the lake may be filled with silver. Everywhere, moons and moons -- but this is not true.

The truth is one: when the mind reflects it, it becomes many; when consciousness reflects it, it is one. Consciousness is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian. If you are a Hindu you are still in the mind, distorted. If you are a Mohammedan you are still in the mind, distorted.

Once the mind has settled and the waves are no longer there, you are simply a consciousness -- with no adjective attached to it, with no conditioning attached to it. And then truth is one.

In fact, even to say that truth is one is not right -- because one is meaningful only in the context of many. Truth is so one that in the east we have never called it 'one'; we call it 'non-dual', not two.

Why have we chosen a roundabout way in calling it 'not two'? We want to say that it is difficult to say it is one, because one implies two, three, four. We simply say 'not two'. We don't say what it is, we simply say what it is not. There is no 'manyness' in it -- that's all. We have to express it Via Negativa, by saying that it is not two.

It is so one and it is so alone; only it exists and nothing else. But that is reflected in consciousness when the mind is no longer there.

When I say 'the mind is no longer there', remember, I am not talking about mind as a faculty. Mind is not a faculty. It is simply a disturbed state: consciousness waving, shaking, trembling, not at home. What winds blow on the consciousness that disturb it, Buddha says: The name of that wind is passion, desire. Watch, and you will see the truth of Buddha's saying.

It is a fact, it has nothing to do with any theory. Buddha is not interested in abstract systems; he simply says that which is. He's not formulating a philosophy. Always remember it, never forget it -- that he is very experimental, existential. His whole approach is just to say something that you can immediately experience. And your experience will prove that he is right. There is no other way to prove right or wrong. There is no way to argue about it.

Just sometimes sit silently; even if for a single moment desire stops, you will see that all turmoil has disappeared. Sitting silently, not desiring anything; sitting silently, not moving in the future; sitting silently, contented; in that single moment you will be able to understand what Buddha means.

Suddenly you will see that there are no waves at all. All the waves have gone.

The waves arise only when you desire, when you are discontented with the present and you hope for the future. Desire is a tension between the present and the future. In that tension, waves arise. Then you are shattered -- and consciousness is very fragile.

Consciousness is very soft: just a slight desire, just a flicker of desire, and the whole lake is disturbed. Go sometimes, watch, sit by the bank of a lake. See... there are no ripples. Throw a small pebble, a very small pebble, in the biggest of lakes, and the small pebble will start creating ripples, and those ripples will go on spreading to the farthest bank. Just a small pebble creates so much disturbance. Just a slight desire and disturbance comes through the back door.

Desire is disturbance, passion is a fever. In passion you are not yourself. In passion you are beside yourself. In passion you are not centered: you lose your balance. In passion you do things you cannot even imagine that you could have done.

Many murderers have confessed in the courts, down through the centuries, that they had not committed the crime; it happened. They were in such rage, they were almost mad. They had not done it deliberately; it had happened.

They are not criminals, they are victims of their own rage.

You may think they are deceiving; you may think they are now trying to escape from punishment. No, it is not so. Murder is impossible if you are conscious, if you are silent, if you are centered. It happens only when you are not, when you are so clouded, when there are only waves and waves and the surface of the lake is completely disturbed -- then it happens.

All wrong happens only when you are disturbed.

Ordinarily religious people say, "Cultivate character." Buddha says: Cultivate consciousness. Ordinary religious teachers say, "Do good." Buddha says: Be silent and good will be done. The good follows silence as your shadow follows you. And there is no way to do good unless you are silent.

You can do good, but only wrong will happen if you are not silent. That's why the so-called do-gooders go on doing a thousand and one mischiefs in the world. Your so-called do-gooders are the most mischievous people, but they are doing good for your sake, they are doing it for good, and you cannot even escape from them.

Everybody knows that good parents are dangerous parents. A parent that is too good is bound to be a wrong parent -- because he will encage you. A good mother will destroy you. Too much good is destructive.

Because the mother herself is not centered. Her good is enforced; she is trying to do good. The good is not natural and spontaneous. It is not like a shadow; it is effort, it is violent.

Your so-called Mahatmas go on crippling people, destroying people, destroying their freedom in many ways. They go on trying to dominate by subtle methods, in subtle ways. But the whole desire is to dominate, and it is very easy to dominate somebody when you are good. He cannot even rebel against you.

Against a bad mother you can escape; but what to do against a good mother?

She's so good that you start feeling bad. Watch it: everybody has passed through that state, and it has to be understood. Otherwise you will never be able to accept yourself.

Whenever there is a child, there is bound to be some conflict between the child and the parents, particularly between the child and the mother in the beginning, and then later on with the father. It is natural -- because the mother has her own way, her own ideas, her own philosophy of how life should be lived.

And the child is almost wild; he knows no society, no culture, no religion. He's coming directly from God; he's as wild as God.

He has nothing but freedom, so there is bound to be some conflict. And the child has to be initiated into the walls of the society. He cannot be left alone -- that too is true. So conflict is natural. If the mother is very good then the child is in a difficulty, a very great anguish and anxiety.

The anxiety is that the child loves his freedom and knows, intrinsically, that freedom is good. Freedom is an intrinsic value. There is no need to prove that freedom is good -- freedom IS good, it is self-evidently good. Everybody is born with that desire.

That's why we called the ultimate goal in the east 'total freedom', MOKSHA: where the intrinsic desire is completely fulfilled and one has no limitations of any sort. One is absolutely free, unconditionally free.

Every child is born with that intrinsic desire to be free, and now everywhere there is bondage. The mother says, "Don't do this, don't do that, sit here, don't go there." And the child feels pulled and pushed from everywhere.

Now, if the mother is bad, there is not much difficulty; the child can think that the mother is bad and deep in his heart he can start hating her. Simple, it is arithmetical -- she is destroying his freedom and he hates her. Maybe, for political reasons, he cannot express it, so he becomes a diplomat. He knows that she is the rottenest woman in the world, but he goes on paying lip service.

But if the mother is good then the problem arises. Then the child is at a loss to figure it out; the mother is good... and freedom is good: "Now, if Mother is good then I must be wrong, and my freedom must be wrong. If I am good and my freedom is good, then Mother must be wrong." Now, to think that the mother is wrong is impossible -- because she is really good, and she goes on caring, loving, and doing a thousand and one things for the child.

The mother is really good, the child knows that she is good. So there is only one possibility to decide, and that is: "I must be wrong. The mother is good, I must be wrong." Once the child starts thinking, "I must be wrong," he starts rejecting himself.

I ordinarily never come across a person who accepts himself totally. And if you don't accept yourself totally you will never grow -- because growth is out of acceptance. If you go on rejecting yourself, you are creating a split. You will be schizophrenic.

The part that you reject will hang around your neck like a great burden, a great sorrow, a great anxiety, a tension. You cannot throw it away, because it is part of you; it cannot be divided. At the most you can throw it into unconsciousness. You can become unaware of it, you can forget about it, you can believe that it is not there.

That's how the unconscious is created. The unconscious is not a natural thing.

The unconscious is that part of your being that you have rejected, and you don't even want to face it, you don't want to encounter it, you don't want to see that it exists at all. It is there; deep down in your being it goes on manipulating you. And it will take many types of revenge, because it also needs expression. Now this is the whole misery of human beings.

A 'good' mother can create the idea of a 'bad' child. The child himself starts rejecting himself. This is a division, a split in personality. The child is getting neurotic. Because to feel good with oneself should be a natural and easy thing.

That's what your religious preachers go on doing, what your priests go on doing: go to the mosque, go to the temple, go to the church, and they are there -- thundering, condemnatory, ready to throw you into hell, ready to reward you with heaven if you listen to them, if you follow them.

Of course you cannot follow because their demands are impossible, and their demands are impossible because they don't show you the way to be good. They simply say. "Be good."

The way to be good has nothing to do with being good.

The way to be good has something to do with centering, with awareness. Being good has nothing to do with your character. A really good person has no character at all; he is characterless.

And when I say 'characterless', I mean he has no armour, no armature around him. He has no defences around him, he's simply open. He's as characterless as a flower. He's neither good nor bad. He's simply there -- alert, conscious, responsible. If something happens he will respond, but he will respond directly, he will respond from here. He will respond out of the now, he will not respond out of the past.

'Character' means: you go on carrying the things that you have learned in your past.

'Character' means: the conscience that has been preached to you and forced upon you.

Conscience is a prison for consciousness.

Buddha brought a revolution into the world of religion, the greatest ever. The revolution was this: that he emphasized consciousness and not conscience. He emphasized awareness and not character.

Of course, character comes automatically, but it comes like a shadow. You are not to carry it; it is not a burden then.

Have you ever watched? -- your shadow goes on following you, and you are not burdened, and you need not care about it. You need not think about it. Even if you forget completely it will be there. You cannot lose it.

Buddha says: Character is real only when you cannot lose it. If you are afraid that you can lose it, then it is conscience and not consciousness.