Question 2

QUESTIONER: DO YOU THINK CHAITANYA'S SINGING AND DANCING WAS NOTHING MORE THAN A WAY OF INTOXICATION?

No, Chaitanya achieved the highest through singing and dancing. He achieved through dancing exactly what Mahavira and Buddha achieved through meditation, through stillness.

There are two ways to come to the axle, the center, the supreme. One of the ways lies in your being so steady and still -- just at a standstill -- that there is not a trace of trembling in you and you arrive at the center. The other way is just the contrary: you get into such terrific motion that the wheel runs at top speed and the axle becomes visible and knowable. And this second way is easier than the first.

It is easy to know the axle if the wheel is in motion. While Mahavira comes to know it through stillness, through meditation, Krishna knows it through dancing. And Chaitanya surpasses even Krishna in dancing; his dance is magnificent, incomparable. Perhaps no other person on this earth danced as much as Chaitanya. In this connection it is good to bear in mind that man has both a circumference and a center, and while his circumference -- the body -- is always moving and changing, his center -- his soul -- is still and quiet, it is eternal. And the question of questions is how to come to this unchanging, eternal center.

The second stage of the meditation that we are having here in the camp schedule, is a device and an attempt to bring about that stillness and silence through motion and restlessness. I am not using kirtan because the word kirtan has become too much loaded and obsolete in this sense; it has lost its original meaning. Words like money lose their value through too much use -- too much wear and tear -- and they go out of usage, and a time comes when they have to be replaced by new words. That is why you will often find it difficult to understand me because I am doing the same thing, I am minting new devices for the old ones which have become out-of-date. It is in the very nature of things: they are born, they grow into youth and have vigor and vitality, and then they grow old and die. The old coins are so worn out that one cannot say if they are coins or junk. Therefore, every time we have to begin from the beginning, and we do so with the awareness that again these new coins too will wear out through long usage and become antiquated, and again someone will have to declare them trash and mint anew.

Ironically we have to fight with the very things for which we live; we condemn the old coins and manufacture new ones in their place so the great work they are meant for gets going as ever. We oppose and fight old and worn out devices and fashion new ones in their place so that the dead ones go out of use and new ones take their place, and their great work comes alive once again. But through long association you get so attached to the old ones that it feels very painful to give them up. And then the fear of the new comes in your way of accepting the new devices, new techniques -- you become resistant to them.

This is what happens with religion every now and then. Religion that is alive and dynamic at the time of its birth grows old and dies, but we refuse to part with them, we carry their dead bodies on our backs and get crushed under their dead weight. But whether you like it or not they have to be buried or cremated and a new alive religion has to take their place and keep the wheel moving.

Kirtan, singing and dancing can play a great and unique role in spiritual growth. But the difficulty is that if I ask you to use it you will take it to be the same old kirtan that you are familiar with, and your mind will think that you already know it. And this is what makes me wary; what your mind thinks is right can never be right, because mind itself is wrong. Therefore I cannot support the kirtan that you know and do; if it was right you need not have come here. You are not right; with all your singing and dancing in the old way you have not reached anywhere. So say goodbye and forget it.

When I speak about kirtan I mean the kirtan in its pristine form, which was used to separate you from your body and settle you at your center. I speak about the significance of names and statues in the same sense. I have nothing to do with statues that adorn your temples and houses; I am consigning them to the dustbin. They are no longer of any use. This does not mean they never had any significance. They had, but it is gone. The truth is that because they original!y had great significance we continue to carry them thousands of years after they have lost their meaning. The fact that man persists with them long after they have ceased to be useful shows that the memory of their past significance lies buried deep in the recesses of his unconscious. Otherwise it would not have been possible for us to live under their dead weight for so long.