“Modern man is a very new phenomenon, and no traditional method can be used exactly as it exists, because modern man has never existed before. Modern man is a new phenomenon. So in a way, all traditional methods have become irrelevant. Their spirit is not irrelevant, but their form has become irrelevant because this man is new.
“For example, the body has changed so much. It is not natural now, as it always was. The human body today is a very unnatural thing. When Patanjali developed his yoga, the body was a natural phenomena. Now it is not a natural phenomena. It is absolutely different; it is so drugged that no traditional method can be helpful….

“The whole atmosphere is artificial now: the air is artificial, the water is artificial, the society’s living conditions are artificial. Nothing is natural. You are born in this artificiality; you develop in it, so traditional methods will prove harmful. They cannot be used as they are. They will have to be changed according to the modern, the modern situation….

“So when I use chaotic methods and not systematic ones to push this center from the brain, chaotic methods are very helpful. Through any systematic method the center cannot be pushed below the brain, because systematization is work of the brain. You systematize everything through the brain. So if you use systematic methods the brain will be more strengthened. It will take energy in itself.

“So I use chaotic methods because through chaotic methods the brain is nullified. It has nothing to do. There is no system to be made and no mathematical formula to be applied. It is so chaotic that the center from the brain is automatically pushed to the heart, and that is a great step – to push the center from the brain to the heart. So if you do my method vigorously, unsystematically, chaotically, your center is pushed lower. You come to the heart.

“When you come to the heart then I apply catharsis because your heart is so suppressed – because of your brain: the brain has taken up so much territory within you, so much domination of you, it has absorbed the whole. There is no space for the heart, so longings of the heart have been suppressed. You have never laughed heartily, never cried heartily, never done anything heartily. The brain always comes in to systematize, to make things mathematical. That brain calculates and concludes and comes in. The heart is suppressed….

“So first chaotic methods are used to push the center – the center of consciousness – from the brain toward the heart. Then catharsis is needed to unburden the heart, to throw off the suppressions, to make it light. If the heart becomes light and unburdened, then the center of consciousness is pushed still lower. It comes to the navel, and the navel is the source of vitality. It is the source, it is the seed source from which everything comes: the body, the mind, all else.

“So this chaotic method, I use very meaningfully, very considerably. Now systematic methodology will not help because the brain will turn it into its own instrument. Now only chanting bhajans will not help, because the heart is so much burdened that it cannot flower into a real chanting….

“Consciousness must be pushed down to the source, to the roots. Only then is there the possibility of transformation. So I use a chaotic method to push consciousness from the brain. And whenever you are in chaos the brain stops working, it cannot work.

“Whenever you are in chaos, the brain stops. You are driving a car and suddenly someone comes in front of you. You push the brake so suddenly that it is not a work of the brain. It cannot be because the brain takes time: it thinks: what to do, what not to do. So whenever there is a possibility of an accident and you push the brake, you will feel the sensation near your navel, never near your brain. You will feel that your stomach is upset, because your total consciousness is being pushed because of the chaotic accident. If it could be calculated before and predicted then there would be no need, then there would be no need. Mind would do, brain would do. Whenever you are in an accident, unknown, something unknown comes to you, you will see that consciousness comes to the navel….

“If you ask a Zen monk, ‘From where do you think?’ he will put his hands to his stomach. When Westerners came in contact with Japanese monks for the first time, they could not understand: ‘What nonsense! How can you think from the stomach? No one thinks from the stomach.’ But the Zen reply is meaningful. Consciousness can use any center of the body, and the most primary and the most near to the original source is the navel, and the most far off is the brain. So if life energy goes outward, then ultimately the center of consciousness will become the brain. If life energy goes inward, then ultimately the navel will become the center.

“Otherwise you will only verbalize and go on verbalizing, and there will be no transformation and no change. Even if you know the right things you will not be transformed, because it is not enough to know right things. One has to go to the roots, and one has to change and transform the roots. Otherwise you will not change….

“And sometimes a person is in even more difficulty when he knows the right things and cannot do anything. A new impatience, a new tension arises – he becomes doubly tense. He understands and he cannot do. Understanding can only be meaningful when you understand from the navel. Otherwise it is never meaningful. If you understand from the brain, then it is not transforming.

“The ultimate, the original, the inner, cannot be known from brain work, because you are in contact with the ultimate from your roots, from where you have come. Your whole problem is having moved away from the navel. You have come from the navel and you will die through it; you have come from that gate and you will pass through that gate. One has to come to that gate, and when you come to the roots there is no difficulty to change. The change is simple, but coming to the roots is difficult and arduous.

“Traditional methods have become irrelevant to us, but they were not irrelevant to Buddha or to Mahavira or to Krishna. They were meaningful, they were used, they were helpful. Now Buddha cannot be denied his buddhahood, but the method is meaningless now. The method has appeal because Buddha cannot be denied – ‘A Buddha achieved through it, why can’t we?’

“It is not seeing that the whole situation has changed, and every method is organic to a particular situation, and to a particular mind, and to a particular man.

“As I see the situation, modern man has changed so much. He needs the new: new methods, new techniques. Of course, the truth is always eternal – it is never new and never old – but the truth is the realization, the end. Means are always relevant or irrelevant to a particular person and to a particular mind, a particular attitude.

“Chaotic methods will help the modern mind because the modern mind is itself going chaotic. That – that chaos, that rebelliousness in the modern man – is in fact a rebellion of other centers of the body, of other centers of the being, which have been too suppressed. This rebellion of the modern man is a rebellion of the heart and of the navel against the brain. If you take it in yogic reference the modern rebellion is against the brain.

“So to me, meditation is not only a salvation for the individual – a transformation for the individual – but of a greater significance. It can be a groundwork for transformation of the whole society, the whole human being as such. Either man will have to commit suicide, or he will have to transform himself.”