Disciplining a child begins before it develops its will. At six months, a child is still very delicate and fragile and does not know how the world works. At this age, he is not aware that it is being manipulated. If it receives a very strict and harsh discipline as an education, as soon as the will develops, it will think that it is following its own will. All the religions of the world, all the demagogues, all the dictators of the world and all the so-called gurus and priests have believed in this.

That seems to be the main cause why people are unhappy, because no human being moves freely, no human being feels, gropes his way with his own conscience. It has been corrupted from the root, disciplined, as all parents and educators call it. But to encourage a child's free will, instead of teaching it unconditional obedience and discipline, is to help it develop its own individuality.

If the child has to choose between death (lack of love) and self-will, it will always unconsciously choose to give up its self-will. It is a natural law of survival. However, in the last centuries and until today, this kind of education through discipline and obedience is common and has always been supported by society and states. But if you kill a child's free will, if you kill his individuality, then you kill his natural inner sense of happiness. That is what the whole world suffers from.

Disciplining people from an early age, teaching them that the most important thing is to obey, is the cause of all the problems. Politicians have a very easy game with obedient people who think that obedience is the most natural thing in the world. This is how a dictatorial government can easily rule a people. People who have been brought up to be obedient, who have been brought up not to be independent personalities, who have been disciplined, these people believe that obedience is the greatest virtue.

But it is not. Sometimes the greatest virtue is to be disobedient. Sometimes, of course, obedience is also a virtue, but the decision has to be made by oneself. One has to consciously decide whether to obey or to disobey. This means that one must consciously maintain control in every situation, whether one chooses to obey or not. If one gives up self-control, one becomes dislocated. Obey, even if free will tells you not to obey, then your soul becomes sick, this is the chronic condition of today's world.

Unhappy parents educate their children to be unhappy, because acting against the free will of one's own mind kills inner happiness from early childhood. Education to be unhappy. Unhappiness is a mental illness. It is a chronic unconscious condition that perpetuates itself.

However, you don't need to complain about your parents, it won't do any good. The day you realize it, you will have to consciously abandon that pattern of behavior and leave it behind. You have to become an individual if you want to be happy. If you want to be happy, you have to start deciding for yourself. There will be many times when you will have to disobey. Well then! There will be many times when you will have to be rebellious, well then! This is not being disrespectful or reckless at all. Being respectful to your parents is fine, but you must always remember that your deepest responsibility is toward your own self.

Everyone gets carried away and manipulated in this system of education so that no one knows what their destiny is. You forget what you always wanted to do and how to be happy. Someone who could have been a poet is just a pawnbroker, someone who could have been a painter is a doctor. Someone who could have been a doctor, a wonderful doctor, is a businessman. Nobody is in his place. Everybody is doing something they never wanted to do. That's where unhappiness comes from.

Happiness comes when you are in tune with your life, when you are so in tune that everything you do brings you joy. Then, suddenly, you will find that meditation follows you. When you love the work you do, when you love the way you live, then you are meditative, then nothing distracts you. If there are things that distract you, it is because you are not really interested in them.

A true person has the courage to occupy himself with things that make him happy. If he remains poor, he remains poor. He doesn't complain, he doesn't hold grudges. He says to himself, I have chosen my path. I have chosen birds, butterflies and flowers, I cannot be rich. That's all right. But I am rich because I am happy.

This kind of person will never need a method to concentrate, because there is no need. He is concentrated. His concentration extends throughout his whole life. For 24 hours he is concentrated.

But the man himself has taken a completely toxic path. He forgets the inner value of his life, his happiness, his joy, his pleasure. He always chooses something external and sells something of his inner self for it. He loses the inner and gains the outer. But what will he do when the whole world is at his feet but he has lost himself? Even if he has accumulated all the riches of the world, if he has lost his inner treasure, what will he do with them? That is the real misery.

If anything can be learned, it is to be alert, to be aware of one's inner motives, one's inner destiny. Never lose sight of them, otherwise you will become unhappy.

And when you are unhappy, people say meditate and you will be happy, they say concentrate and you will be happy, pray and you will be happy, go to the temple, be religious, be Christian or Hindu and you will be happy. But all that is nonsense. Happiness is a basic requirement. Be happy and meditation will follow. Be happy and religion will follow.


Happiness comes first. Joy comes first. A joyful attitude, a life-affirming philosophy, comes first. Enjoy joy! If you can't enjoy your work, you have to change it! Don't wait, because all the time you are waiting, you are waiting for Godot and Godot will never come. You are just waiting and wasting your life.

What are you waiting for? If you realize that you are unhappy in a certain pattern of life, then all the old traditions say you are wrong. I would rather say that it is the pattern that is wrong, and do understand my emphasis, it is not you who is wrong, it is the pattern. The way you live is wrong. The motivations that you have learned and accepted as yours are not yours, they do not fulfill your destiny. They go against your nature, they go against your element.

No one else can decide for you. All external commandments, orders, morals only kill you. You have to decide for yourself. You have to take your life in your hands, otherwise life will keep knocking at your door and you will never be there. You are always somewhere else. If you wanted to be a dancer, life knocks on that door because it thinks you have to be a dancer now. It knocks there, but you're not there, you're a banker. And how do you expect life to know you're going to be a banker? Life comes to you as it has wanted you, it only knows that address, but it never finds you there. You are elsewhere, hidden in someone else's mask, behind someone else's god, under someone else's name. Life keeps looking for you. It knows your name. But you have forgotten that name. It knows your address, but you have never lived in it. You have allowed the world to lead you astray. Life can only find you in one way, and that is your inner flowering, the way it wanted you to be. If you don't find your spontaneity, if you don't find your element, you can't be happy, and if you can't be happy, you can't be meditative.

Why has the idea arisen in people's minds that meditation brings happiness? In fact, wherever you find a happy person, you always find a meditative mind. It is obvious that the two things are related. Whenever you see a person's beautiful, meditative, humble surroundings, you find them tremendously happy, blissful, radiant. That was the association. So it was thought that happiness came when one meditated. Actually, it is the other way around. Meditation comes when you are happy. But being happy is difficult and learning to meditate is easy.

Being happy means a drastic change of lifestyle, an abrupt change, because there is no time to lose. A sudden change, a discontinuity. A sudden thunderclap and you will escape from the old to start anew. You are reborn. You start your life again as you would have done if there had not been a pattern imposed by your parents, by society, by the State. As you would have done if there was no one to distract you. You have to abandon those old patterns that have been imposed on you and find your own inner feeling.

BONUSTRACK
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYIRO97dhII

Do you have a philosophy of life?

I don't have a philosophy of life, I have life itself. There are people who have a philosophy of life, but they have no life.

Your philosophy, if there is one, is expressed in the three words Love Life Laughter, is that a philosophy of life?

No.

Explain.

It is just an effect of inner stillness and being in tune with existence. Love arises in you, life becomes fullness and supply, and you laugh for no reason, simply because this whole existence is so hilarious. This is not philosophy, it is the consequence of stillness.

Is there to enjoy life and not worry about tomorrow?

There is no tomorrow. If there is a tomorrow, you can't stop worrying about it. Tomorrow never comes. It is a process of worrying. There is no yesterday either. One no longer exists, the other not yet. All we have in our hands is the present moment. Now. Here. And that is a wonderful experience, when there is no yesterday, no tomorrow, and one is in this very moment, still, then all pondering disappears. All imagining, dreaming, projecting disappears. And it is not that you have to enjoy this moment, enjoyment arises from this moment. But you, you are never here. You are always somewhere else. You are never in the now. Otherwise everything would be there, but you are absent. You have to understand a very simple fact, not a philosophy, something existential, not philosophical, which is to be present in this moment and then observe what happens.

EINIMMTEE