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I don’t think at all! That is why I have no problems, only answers and answers – no questions at all.

It is exactly so. Mind is the root cause of all problems. Problems grow on mind like leaves on trees. You can go on pruning the leaves; that is not going to destroy the tree. On the contrary, it will help the foliage to become thicker – more and more leaves will come. Every gardener knows it: cut one leaf and the tree will accept the challenge. To protect itself, it will give birth to three leaves.

Mind can go on trying to solve problems, but it cannot solve them. Each solution will bring many more problems in its wake. That is why philosophy has utterly failed. Philosophy is the greatest failure in the world.

And it has been such a great wastage of human intelligence that it is almost incalculable, because the people with the greatest intelligence have remained involved with philosophical problems. From Aristotle to Wittgenstein, thousands of brilliant people have wasted their whole brilliance for the simple reason that they were trying to solve single problems rather than going to the very root of all.

The mind is the only problem. Hence philosophy comes up with many solutions, many conclusions, but no conclusion is conclusive. Immediately many more problems pop up. Not one single question has been solved by philosophical endeavor, but still philosophy goes on and on moving farther and farther into the desert. It cannot reach the ocean; it is going basically astray.

That’s where religion differs.

Religion means not trying to solve particular problems, but looking at the root of all the problems and cutting the root. That is what we call meditation: meditation is cutting the root.

Meditation is not a solution of any problem in particular; it solves nothing. It simply helps you to get rid of the mind, the problem-creator. It simply helps you to slip out of the mind like a snake slips out of the old skin.

Once you know that you are not the mind, the great transcendence has happened. Suddenly all problems become insignificant; slowly, slowly they evaporate. You are left with a profound peace; a great silence prevails. This silence is the solution. This peace is the answer, the answer of all answers.

This is the miracle of religion, or the miracle of meditation to be more particular: that without solving a single problem it solves all the problems in a single blow. It is a sudden leap, a quantum leap.

And, you have the feeling already arising in you. You say, “If I think that I have a problem then I really do have one.” The moment you think, you create it; and once you have it you start looking for solutions. And who will look for solutions, and where? The mind will look for the solutions – and in the mind!

Do you see the absurdness of it all? It is like pulling yourself up by your shoestrings; it is not possible. Yes, mind will fabricate many solutions but they will only be superficial. The basic question will remain untouched and many more will arise, and it is a process – ad infinitum.

But it is good that you have the feeling – a vague feeling, of course. Mind you, I am saying feel; I am not saying that you have come to the right thought. No thought is ever right. I am telling you that you have come to the right feel. It is still vague, clouded, just like early morning: the sun has not yet risen, but it is no longer night either.

You will have a little difficulty because this is the moment of transition. You will feel very vulnerable. You will feel almost split because you will not be in the night, you will not be in the day. You will be somewhere in between, on the way.

Naturally a part of you will go on talking in the language of the night, and that is the older part and the major part. Just a small fragment of you will start speaking the language of the future, the language of the day, and you will find it is as if you have become two persons.

This period of transition is the most difficult period for every meditator – he starts falling apart. If you go to a psychologist he will say, “This is a breakdown.” And if your mind gets the idea that this is a breakdown, then of course it is.

It is not a breakdown; it is a breakthrough but psychology still has no idea of the breakthrough. It will try to push you back into the old skin which you have left behind or are in the process of leaving behind. But that cannot be done, that is impossible. Hence psychology – with all its different schools of psychoanalysis, psychosynthesis, gestalt, and so on and so forth – is groping in the dark because it is still unaware of the fact that a man can go beyond mind.

There are psychologists like B. F. Skinner or Delgado who think man is just a behavior. It is another way of saying that man is nothing but physics, chemistry, physiology. Science is capable of explaining everything, nothing else is needed; man is a body and nothing more. That is the major part of modern psychology, and that is the only psychology in the Communist countries.

There are a few people who are striving to get a little beyond that, but they get caught into the subtle traps of the mind. Then they start thinking psychology is nothing but mind. Freud, Adler, Jung are all of the opinion that psychology is nothing but a concern with the mind, an inquiry into the mind.

The word psychology is beautiful: it comes from psyche, and psyche means the soul. But no psychologist agrees with the idea of the soul. In fact, they have no right to call their thinking psychology; they are using a wrong word, a far bigger word. They are all either believers in the body or believers in the mind, which are not really separate things. “Mindbody” is one phenomenon.

In fact, we should not use the word and between the two. Mindbody should be a single word because there is not that much difference that you can use the word and. Not even a hyphen is needed, not even that much space is available. Body is mind looked at from the outside; mind is body looked at from the inside. Or, in other words, the body is the outer expression of the mind and the mind is the inner expression of the same phenomenon – just in two different dimensions.

Unless one goes beyond both, one never knows anything about the breakthrough. And man is really falling apart all over the world because of this stupid idea that man is nothing but body or nothing but mind, or at the most both. A breakthrough is possible if there is more space available inside you so that you can put the mind aside and still be.

When the skin of all the past, of all the memories, is dropped, there are moments, very delicate moments, when you are nowhere. You are neither the old nor the new; you are just passing through the birth canal. It is painful too because the old identity is disappearing and the new has not yet arrived. You can become very frightened; hence the master is needed.

The function of the master is to help you in such critical moments. Socrates used to say that the function of the master is that of a midwife, and I absolutely agree with him. It is just to help the child leave the womb in which the child has lived for nine months.

And the child has lived in immense comfort. In fact, he will search and seek for the same comforts his whole life. There was no responsibility, no worry, no problem. Everything was supplied; existence took every care. Some unknown energies went on flowing from the mother to the child. Everything was done by the mother, and the child was simply floating inside the womb.

Those nine months are nine months for the people who are outside the womb; for the child it is almost infinity because he is not aware of time, he cannot be aware of time. You become aware of time only when there are events happening.

Have you watched this? If one day many things happen you have a different sense of time, if some day nothing happens you have a totally different sense of the time. The sense of time depends on what happens. Time is measured through events.

But nothing is happening in the womb, all is quiet. The child cannot feel that this is only nine months; it is infinity, it is a timeless state. And floating in the mother’s womb in a warm liquid is immensely pleasant.

That is how the desire for bliss arises in us – because we have experienced it. Otherwise, you cannot seek for anything that you have never experienced. Something must be there lingering deep down in your unconscious – some experience, some nostalgia that keeps you searching for bliss.

The whole search for God is basically the search for the mother’s womb. And the meditator really enters into the womb of God.

In the Hindu temples the innermost shrine is called garbha – the womb. When you go into a Hindu temple the innermost shrine, where the statue of the God is, is called garbha – the womb. It is very significant, very meaningful. To enter again into the universe in a deep let-go is to find peace, bliss, a non-problematic existence. That is breakthrough.

If you go to a psychoanalyst, he will try to bring you back to your old identity. That is the whole function of psychology in the West: helping people to be adjusted again because they have become a little maladjusted with their past.

Of course, the moment you are not adjusted with your own mind you are not adjusted with society, because your mind is part of the collective mind of that society. You are no longer adjusted with your religion; you are no longer adjusted with your political ideology.

You simply find that everywhere you are in a way uprooted. And great fear grips you: you are no longer part of the collective mind, you are alone and you hanker to be part of some crowd so that you can feel a little warmth, a little coziness, and you can be on familiar ground again.

That is what psychology is doing in the West. Its whole work is against religion. Religion tries to give you a new identity, a new birth, and psychology gives you your old identity back again. It forces you somehow into the skin that the snake has left behind. The work can never really be done because the skin can never be your skin again. You can live with it, but it will be just hanging around you; it will be a burden, it is no longer part of you.

A father was telling his child, his small son, “There is nothing impossible in the world. Napoleon has said so: there is nothing impossible in the world.” The child said, “Wait, and I will show you. One thing is impossible – I have tried.” He ran into the bathroom, brought a tube of toothpaste, forced the tube. The toothpaste came out, and he told his father, “Now put it back! If you can do this I will believe that Napoleon is right.”

Now it is almost impossible to put the toothpaste back into the tube, but that may be possible. Just a little scientific device will be needed to suck it back. But man cannot be put back into the old skin again. At the most he can go on carrying the skin like clothes, but clothes are not skin.

The function of the master is to help you to become acquainted with the new territory that you have already jumped into, and to help you to forget all about the old.

That’s where your problem is. You can create many problems – they are all excuses – but the real problem is that you are passing through a beautiful process of immense value. This is the process of rebirth.

So you vaguely sense that, “It is me, my own mind which goes on creating problems.” You have started feeling, in fact you say, “…thinking seems to be just the making of problems.” Then why go on thinking? That’s the whole purpose of being here!

Young Mazzilli was not getting along too well with his wife. One night he threw a big party and invited all his friends. At the beginning everyone sat around just making small talk. But as the evening progressed, people started to couple off and find cozy corners. Soon the lights were dimmed and moans of love and passion could be heard.

Mazzilli began looking for his wife, but could not find her. After searching everywhere in the apartment he stepped into the kitchen and there she was, sitting on the sink, her legs in passionate embrace around Vince, one of his friends. “Your wife and I love each other,” stammered Vince, “and we want to get married. Can you forgive me for taking her away?”

“Hey,” smiled the husband, “that’s what this party was for!”