Western psychologists are very worried because people are becoming mere spectators. They go to the movies, switch on the radio, or sit in front of the television for hours. In America the average person spends about six hours a day watching television. If there is a football game, they watch it; a wrestling match, they watch it; a baseball game or the Olympics, they watch that. Now they have become mere spectators, spectators standing at the side of the road: the procession of life passes and you go on watching.
Man is wonderful! He even goes to see horse races. It is very strange -- no horse would go to watch men run. Horses run and men come to see it. Man has fallen even below horses.
Life is spent watching, just watching. Spectators.... You do not dance, you watch someone else dance. You do not sing, you listen to someone else sing. Is it surprising if your life becomes impotent, if all life-energy is lost? There is no movement, no flow of energy in your life. You sit like a corpse. Your sole function is to go on watching.
Humanity has been turned by and by into spectators -- about everything.
You don't play football, but twenty-two persons who are professionals, this is their business, to play football. And millions of people are just spectators, and they are so excited... jumping in their seats, screaming, shouting. If they are not in the stadium, then they are sitting in their homes before the television screen and they are doing the same gestures there. Somebody else is playing; you are just a spectator.
The average American is looking at the television five to six hours a day: six hours of just being a spectator, not a participant. Then there are movies where you are spectators, and there are boxing matches where you are spectators. It seems you have lost contact with life. You simply see others living; your life is just to watch. Somebody is in a competition for a world championship in chess, and you are watching. Can't you play chess yourself? Can't you play football yourself?
It is not far away, it is already happening... you will not be making love to your wife, to your girlfriend -- somebody else will be doing it and you will be watching, jumping: "Aha! Great! Go on!"
You have left the whole of life for others to live on your behalf, and then you ask where the meaning has gone, why you don't feel alive, why there is not some significance in your life. Spectators cannot have significance -- only participants, totally involved, intensely involved in every action.
You go into the church, you listen to the sermon and that is your religion. You have a Holy Bible and you read the Bible, a few pages every day, and that is your religion. You never live religion, nor does your priest live religion -- reading the Holy Bible does not mean living religion. You are again reading something as a spectator.
This kind of life cannot bring you joy. You are not living, you are avoiding living. It is better to compose your own music. It may not be great, it does not matter. You may not become a famous musician; that does not matter either. What matters is that you were composing it yourself. You were not a spectator; you were a participant, you were a creator. And if people are deprogrammed, all their energy will move towards creativity.
Don't replace your current program with any other program. Just deprogram you to simply leave you deprogrammed.
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