THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 The ...

THE DHAMMAPADA: THE WAY OF THE BUDDHA, VOL. 9-12 183
movements of consciousness in the world. They created chains, they triggered chains. Many, many people became
enlightened through their efforts. Their efforts were thought to be antisocial. That’s why Jesus was crucified.
Where can you find a man who is more good than Jesus? What was his crime? His crime was that he was
really good. If he had been only mechanically good there would have been no trouble. There were many rabbis
who were mechanically good. The society is not afraid of mechanical people; they are manageable. They are
dependent on the society. They always live with the collective, they are always following the crowd. The crowd
is very happy with these people. And it is easy to create mechanical goodness because, in the first place, people
are mechanical. You have just to replace their evil ideas with good ideas, not changing at all their beings.
For example, hell was created the idea of hell to create mechanical goodness. People are afraid, people live
in fear; priests became aware of it in the very beginning of humanity, that it can be exploited: make them more
afraid. They depicted hell in such detail, they created so much fear in people, that people became conditioned
out of fear.
It is the same type of conditioning that can be done now in easier ways because we have more developed
technology. There is no need to teach for twenty-five years the idea of hell; then a person becomes mechanically
good. Now you can ask Pavlov, Skinner and other behaviorists: they will teach you some methods. Just electric
shocks will do.
Somebody smokes and you don’t want him to smoke just give him electric shocks. Whenever he smokes let
him have an electric shock. Within three days he will drop smoking because the moment he takes a cigarette in
his hand he will start trembling. He will become so much afraid that now the shock is coming. That’s how they
teach rats, they teach monkeys and chimpanzees. And that’s how they are trying to teach human beings.
Religious people created hell, politicians created prisons just to torture people. If you torture them enough,
people become accustomed. Pavlov calls it ”conditioned reflex.” He worked his whole life with dogs; he conditioned
his dogs.
If you bring food before a dog, of course, it affects his saliva. He starts salivating, his tongue starts hanging
out, saliva starts dripping. Seeing delicious food, it is natural. But if you ring a bell it won’t happen. There is
no connection between a bell and saliva glands, but Pavlov did one thing: whenever he would give food to his
dogs he would ring a bell. Whenever he would ring a bell he would give food to the dogs. The bell and the food
became associated, linked, hooked with each other. After fifteen days he just rang the bell and the dogs started
salivating and their tongues hanging out. Now, there is no natural connection between the bell and the tongue,
but a new, unnatural connection has been created.
Pavlov became the founder of communist psychology. That’s how in Soviet Russia, in China and other communist
countries, people are being conditioned. They don’t think that man is any different from dogs; maybe a
little more developed, a little more complicated, but still a dog.
Skinner goes on working on rats and goes on finding how to condition rats, and he says the same is applicable
to human beings. You just create fear and then they will not do certain things; and you create greed.... And
that’s why paradise, heaven were created. These are simple strategies for dominating people. Create fear for that
which you want people not to do and create the idea of reward for that which you want them to do and you have
created a mechanical behavior. They will not do the bad and they will do the good.
But what kind of good is this? It is exploitation by the society, by the church, by the state by the vested
interests. It has not changed the being of the man. It has not made him more aware, alert, more joyous, more
celebrating. It has not given him any taste of bliss. It has not opened any window for him from where he can
have a little glimpse of God. I don’t call it goodness, virtue. My idea of virtue is that it should be a by-product
of consciousness. You should become so conscious that you can’t do wrong not because you are conditioned but
because you can see it is wrong.
For example, I was born in a Jaina family. Now, Jainas are the most fanatic vegetarians in the world. In my
house even tomatoes were not allowed because their redness reminds you of meat and blood. Even poor tomatoes,
so innocent! In my childhood, the very idea of somebody eating meat was enough to make me sick. In my family
there was no possibility to eat in the night. Jainas don’t eat in the night. Who wants to suffer in hell just for
eating in the night?
When I was eighteen years old, for the first time I ate in the night. It was so much against my whole background,
but I had to because we had gone for a picnic and all the other boys were Hindus. They were not interested the
whole day in preparing food, and I don’t even know how to prepare tea! So I had to depend on them. I told them
many times, but they were not interested. They were interested in exploring the mountains we had gone to, the
fort, a very ancient fort, and the statues and there were many other things.