choose your own way...

I have heard about a man who became very famous in Germany -- even today his statues are there and some squares and some streets are still named after him. His name was Dr. Daniel Gottlieb Schreber. He was the real founder of Fascism. He died in 1861, but he created the situation for Adolf Hitler to come -- of course, unknowingly.

This man "... had very pronounced views on how to bring up children. He wrote many books. Those books were translated into many languages. Some of them ran into fifty editions." His books were loved tremendously, respected tremendously, because his views were not exceptional -- his views were very common. He was saying things which everybody has believed down the centuries. He was the spokesman for the ordinary mind, the mediocre mind.

"He believed in disciplining children from the time they were six months old" -- because he said if you don't discipline a child when he is six months old you will miss the real opportunity of disciplining him. When a child is very tender and soft, unaware of the ways of the world, make a deep imprint -- then he will always follow that imprint. And he will not even be aware that he is being manipulated. He will think he is doing all this of his own will -- because when a child is six months old he has no will yet; the will will come later on, and the discipline will come earlier than the will. So the will will always think: 'This is my own idea.'

This is corrupting a child. But all the religions of the world and all the demagogues and all the dictatorial people of the world, and all the so-called gurus and the priests, they all have believed in doing this.

This seems to be the basic cause why man is unhappy, because no man is moving freely, no man is sensing, groping his path with his own consciousness. He has been corrupted at the very root.

But Schreber called it discipline, as all parents call it. "He believed in disciplining children from the time they were six months old in such a way that they would never after question their parents and yet believe that they were acting of their own free will. He wrote that on the first appearance of self-will one has to..." stop it immediately, kill it immediately. When you see the child becoming a person, an individual, you have to destroy the first ray of his individuality, immediately, not a single moment should be lost.

When the first appearance of self-will is noticed "... one has to step forward in a positive manner... stern words, threatening gestures, rapping against the bed... bodily admonishments, consistently repeated until the child calms down or falls asleep.

Make the child so afraid, shake him to his very roots! And those roots are very tender yet -- a six-month-old child. Threaten him with gestures, with a deep hatred, enmity in your eyes, as if you are going to destroy the child himself. Make it clear to the child that either he can live or his self-will -- both cannot be allowed to live. If he wants his self-will then he will have to die. Once the child comes to know that he can live only at the cost of self-will, he will drop his self-will and he will choose survival. That's natural! Survival one has to choose first; everything else comes secondary.

"And then one is master of the child forever. From now on, a glance, a word or a single threatening gesture is sufficient to rule the child."

Down the centuries, parents have been destroying people. They were destroyed by their parents, and so on and so forth. It seems to be a chronic state. Your parents were not happy; whatsoever they knew made them only more unhappy and more unhappy -- and they trained you for it, and they have made a replica of themselves in you.

Happiness happens when you fit with your life, when you fit so harmoniously that whatsoever you are doing is your joy. Then suddenly you will come to know: meditation follows you. If you love the work that you are doing, if you love the way you are living, then you are meditative. Then nothing distracts you. When things distract you, that simply shows that you are not really interested in those things.

We have been distracted into unnatural motivations: money, prestige, power. Listening to the cuckoo is not going to give you money. Listening to the cuckoo is not going to give you power, prestige. Watching the butterfly is not going to help you economically, politically, socially. These things are not paying, but these things make you happy.

A real person takes the courage to move with things that make him happy. If he remains poor, he remains poor; he has no complaint about it, he has no grudge. He says: "I have chosen my way -- I have chosen the cuckoos and the butterflies and the flowers. I cannot be rich, that's okay! But I am rich because I am happy."

This type of man will never need any method to concentrate, because there is no need -- he is in concentration. His concentration is spread all over his life. Twenty-four hours he is in concentration.