Please don’t try to watch others – that is none of your business. If they have decided to play the old games, if they want to play the old games, if they are happy in playing their old games, who are you to interfere? Who are you even to judge? This constant hankering to judge others has to be dropped. It does not help others. It harms you, it only harms you. Why should you be bothered? That has nothing to do with you. It is others’ joy if they want to remain the old and they want to move in the same rut, in the same routine. Good! It is their life and they have every right to live it their own way.
Somehow we cannot allow others to have their own way. In some way or other we go on judging. Sometimes we say they are sinners, sometimes we say they are bound to go to hell, sometimes we say they are this and that – criminals. If all that has changed, now a new evaluation that they are playing old games and I am tired’. Why should you be tired of their games? Let them be tired of their games if they want; or if they don’t want, that too is their choice. Please don’t watch others. Your whole energy has to be focussed on yourself. Maybe you are condemning others for their old games just as a trick because you don’t want to condemn yourself. It always happens; it is a psychological trick: we project on others. A thief thinks everybody is a thief – that is very natural for him; that is a way to protect his ego. If he feels the whole world is bad, he feels good in comparison. A murderer thinks the whole world consists of murderers – that makes him feel good and at ease.
It is convenient to think the whole world consists of murderers; then he can murder and there is no need to have any guilt feeling, there is no need to have any prick of conscience. So we go on projecting on others whatsoever we don’t want to see in ourselves. Please stop that! If you are really tired of old games. then this is the old game – the OLDEST. For many lives you have been playing it: projecting YOUR defects onto others and then feeling good. And of course you have to exaggerate, you have to magnify. If you are a thief, you have to magnify others’ images, that they are greater thieves than you. Then you feel good; in comparison, you are a far better person.
That’s why people go on reading the newspapers. Newspapers help you very much. Early in the morning, before you have even taken your tea. you are ready for the newspaper. And the newspaper brings nothing like news, because there is nothing new. It is the same old rotten thing. But you feel good: somewhere, somebody has been murdered, somewhere there has been a Watergate, and somewhere something else, and somewhere somebody has stolen, and somebody’s wife has escaped with somebody else… and so on and so forth. Watching all that, you relax; you feel, ”So, I am not so bad – the whole world is going to the dogs. I am a far better person. I have not yet escaped with the wife of the neighbor. I have not killed anybody yet – although I think of it, but thinking is not a crime where people are actually doing things.” You feel good. And the moment you feel good, you remain the same.
Please don’t watch others. It is not going to help you. You use your energy, your observation, on yourself. And there is something tremendously transforming in observation. If you observe yourself, things will start changing. If you start observing your anger, one day you will suddenly find the anger has no more energy the way it used to have; it is no more so fiery. Something has gone dead in it. If you start watching yourself, you will see, by and by, the negative is dying and the positive is becoming more and more alive; that misery is disappearing and bliss is entering into your life; that you smile more, sometimes even for no reason; that a sense of humor is arising in you – if you start watching – that old depressed, long face is disappearing. A sense of humor is born. You start taking life more playfully, if you watch; seriousness becomes more and more irrelevant. More and more you become innocent, trusting, less and less doubtful.
I am not saying that your trust will always be respected. No, that is not the point. You may be deceived more, because when you are trusting you can be deceived more. But even when you are deceived, your trust will not be destroyed by it – in fact, it may even be enhanced. You may start thinking that even if you are deceived – somebody has taken a little money and deceived you – you will be able to see that you have saved the far more valuable thing, that is trust; and something almost valueless, the money, is gone. You could have saved the money and the trust would have gone – that would have been a far greater loss, because nobody has ever been found to be happy just because of money. But because of trust, people have lived like gods on earth. Because of trust, people have enjoyed life so totally that they could feel grateful to God. Trust is a benediction. Money, at the most, can give you a little comfort, but no celebration. Trust may not give you much comfort, but will give you great celebration.
Now, to choose comfort against celebration is simply stupid – because that comfortable life will be nothing but a comfortable death. Conveniently you can live and conveniently you can die, but the real taste of life is possible only when you are celebrating at the optimum, at the maximum, when your torch is burning from both ends together. Maybe only for a single moment… but the intensity of it, but the totality of it, but the wholeness of it! And this happens only through observation. Observation is one of the greatest forces of transformation. You start observing yourself. Don’t waste your energy for observation on others – that is a sheer wastage! And nobody will ever thank you for it; it is a thankless job. And whomsoever you observe will feel offended – because NOBODY likes to be observed; everybody wants to have a private life. Good or bad, stupid or wise, but everybody wants to have his own private life. And who are you to interfere? So don’t be a peeping tom, don’t go to people’s keyholes, and don’t watch. It is THEIR life. If they want and if they love to play the old game, let them play!
So the first thing: please stop watching other people; turn the whole energy on yourself. Second thing you say: ”I guess it’s because I’m seeing more and more my own games and tricks and I hear your maddening voice between my ears saying,’ That’s okay – just you have to accept and love yourself, and there is no problem.’ ” I have to repeat it: There is no problem. I have never come across a real problem – not up to now. And I must have listened to thousands of people and their thousands of problems. I have not come across a real problem yet. And I don’t think that it is ever going to happen – because the real problem exists not. ’Problem’ is a created thing. Situations are there: problems are not there. Problems are your interpretations of situations. The same situation may not be a problem to one person and may be a problem to somebody else.
So it depends on you whether you create a problem or you don’t create a problem but problems are not there. Problems are not in existence: they are in the psychology of man. Just look next time you are having some trip and riding a problem just watch. Just stand aside and look at the problem. Is it really there? or have you created it? Look deeply into it, and you will suddenly see it is not increasing, it is decreasing; it is becoming smaller and smaller. The more you put your energy into observation, the smaller it becomes. And a moment comes when suddenly it is not there… and you will have a good laugh. Whenever you are having a problem, just look at it. Problems are fictitious, they don’t exist. Just go around the problem, look from every angle – how can it be? It is a ghost! You wanted it, that’s why it is there. You asked for it, that’s why it is there. You invited it, that’s why it is there.
But people don’t like it if you say their problem is not a problem – they don’t like it. They feel very bad. If you listen to their problems they feel very good. And if you say, ”Yes, this is a great problem,” they are very happy. That’s why psychoanalysis has become one of the most important things of this century. The psychoanalyst helps nobody – maybe he helps himself, but he helps nobody else. He cannot. But still people go and pay. They enjoy – he accepts their problems; whatsoever absurd problem you bring to the psychoanalyst, he listens to it very sincerely and seriously, as if it is there. He takes it for granted that you are suffering greatly, and he starts working on it and analyzing it. And it takes years!
