Nansen is violent in appearance only to those who cannot understand. To those who can understand he is simply manifesting a thing which has already happened. The cat was dead the moment it was possessed, the moment people started claiming it. He gave them one more opportunity, but they couldn’t use that opportunity. They remained silent. But if the silence had been real the cat would have been alive. The silence was false, the silence was only on the surface, on the faces, skin-deep. In-side, the mad mind was functioning fast. It was whirling, spinning. Many answers must have come to those monks, but not the answer. So Nansen had to kill. He chopped the cat in two, gave one part to the left-wing claimers, another part to the right-wing claimers. Those monks must have been happy, happy in the sense that at least they possessed half the cat!

That is what is happening to you all. Whenever you fight, life goes dead and is divided. A father and mother fight over a son – there is continuous fighting over children. The father says that the son belongs to him, that he should follow him, and the mother thinks the son belongs to her, that he should follow her. Claiming, they are killing. Sooner or later the son will be divided in two halves, chopped. Half of the son will belong to the father, half to the mother. And his whole life is destroyed, because now it will be very difficult for him to be whole. Half of his heart will always belong to the mother and half always belongs to the father. One half will be against the mother and one half will be against the father. Now he is divided. Now this division is going to follow him his whole life. He is chopped in two.

This is what Nansen is saying by chopping the cat in two: Don’t fight over a person, don’t try to possess a person, because you will chop him. Visibly he may seem one, but deep down in his heart he has become two, and now there will be constant conflict.

The mother and father were fighting over the son; now the mother may be dead and the father may be dead, but they will go on fighting within the son. Sometimes the voice of the mother, sometimes the voice of the father…and the son will always be at a loss whom to follow, and he cannot be whole.

You come to me in search of being whole, and I always say: To be whole is to be holy. There is no other way to be holy; just be whole. Divisions within you must fall, you must become a unity. But you are a conflict. Your father is fighting, your mother is fighting, your brothers are fighting, your teachers are fighting, your gurus are fighting – everybody is fighting to possess you. There are many claimants. They have fragmented you, they have chopped you into many parts. You have become many, you are not one; you are a crowd. Neurosis comes out of it, madness comes out of it, insanity comes out of it. Have you ever observed how many souls you have, how many selves you have? You are not one, that is certain.

In my university days I used to live with a boy. He would never get up in the morning at five, but every day he would set the alarm. So I asked him, “Why do you set it? Why do you bother? – because you never get up. You always turn the alarm off and go to sleep again. So why bother and why be disturbed every morning?”

He laughed, but his laugh was hollow. He himself knew that he would not get up. But in the evening another self said, “No, tomorrow morning I am going to get up.”

I said, “Okay, try.” And at the time he was setting the alarm he was confident, absolutely confident that he would get up in the morning at five. There was no suspicion. But this was only one fragment who said, “Absolutely, you have to get up. You have slept enough. No more time is left; the exam is coming near.”