Question 2

IS YOUR TECHNIQUE OF FAST BREATHING A SUDDEN TECHNIQUE OR A GRADUAL ONE?

It is gradual! It is gradual! Really, sudden techniques cannot be given publicly. They cannot be given! And for sudden techniques one has to bracket the whole life out, because for sudden techniques your totality will be needed. For gradual techniques your totality is not needed. You can do them for one hour and then remain in the world for twenty-three hours. But for sudden techniques your totality will be needed; you cannot be allowed to do anything else. So the whole life has to be just bracketed out, and you have to be totally for the technique. The whole consciousness must be prepared for it because even a single part remaining unprepared will prove dangerous -- and anything can prove dangerous because the moment is so potential. The moment is so potential, you must be purified of all that goes on around you. So you have to bracket -- bracket everything out. With gradual methods religion can be one thing among others. For sudden methods religion has to be totalitarian; nothing else can be allowed.

When someone would go to Gurdjieff, he would ask, "Are you ready to die for it? Nothing less will do. Are you ready to die for it?" That means, "Are you ready to leave everything for it?" Total consciousness is needed. It is not necessary to die, but one has to be ready to die for it.

For gradual methods, such is not the requirement. You can go on living and doing something. By and by, the doing will gradually become greater, and without even becoming aware, some day you will become ready to die for it. But this growth is like the growth of a pregnancy: by and by. Even the mother is not aware of what is going on, of what is happening. The child goes on growing and growing and growing. After nine months the child has grown so much that now the mother is not needed at all. That's why he comes out. The mother feels so much pain! The reason is not only physical: deep down it is psychological. It is because her own child has grown so much that it is leaving her. This is the first betrayal. Now many betrayals will follow. This is the first birth pain; now many will follow. When the child becomes sexually mature, he will again leave his mother -- for some other woman.

So birth is a constant process, and a mother has to go through many pains. And if she cannot understand it, then she unnecessarily creates troubles. She creates them! Even when the child is going to be born, the mother creates trouble: she contracts her whole body. That's why the pain is created; otherwise bodily pain is unnecessary. It is really a conflict. The mother is not ready to give up and the child is forcing to come out. That's why many children have to take their birth in the night -- eighty percent, more than eighty percent -- because when the mother is sleepy she resists less.

Now there are scientific methods and psychological ones also. If a mother can be persuaded to cooperate, there is no pain. In Paris, Dr. Lorenzo has worked with many, many methods -- psychological, persuasive methods. He has delivered thousands of births, helped mothers, and there was no pain at all -- not at all! The method is to cooperate with the child coming out -- not to resist, but to cooperate; to help the child; to feel that you have to help the child to come out.

Lorenzo may persuade many mothers, but there is a still greater problem when the child goes to another woman. He will have to persuade the mother not to feel hurt. Rather, she should help the child to go to someone else. She should help, cooperate, because it is a second birth and she is unnecessarily troubled.

With gradual methods you grow like a pregnancy -- by and by. Then suddenly one day you are reborn. With sudden methods it is different -- totally different. One needs to give up everything for sudden methods. Sannyas, in the old days, began with sudden methods. That's why it was necessary to leave everything. Particularly in India, we emphatically pressed the point that no one should leave for sannyas unless he was very old. There is a psychological reason: when you are so old, you can leave life totally. Then total renunciation becomes easy -- because in a subtle way life is renouncing you, so you can renounce life. You have become a dry leaf. Now you can leave the tree without hurting the tree or any hurt to yourself. The tree will not even know when the dry leaf has dropped. Pull out a young leaf that is fresh and green, and the tree is hurt and the leaf also. The wound may remain forever. So for sudden methods, it was decided that a man should leave only when life itself was leaving him. Then he could leave totally. With gradual methods, it was not necessary.