You say, “Individualism and discipline – are they not diametrically opposite?” They are not! An individual is always a disciplined phenomenon. One who is not disciplined is not an individual; he is just a chaos, he is many fragments. All those fragments are functioning separately, even in opposition to each other. That’s how people are ordinarily: one part of the mind going to the south, another part going to the north; one part saying one thing, another part opposing it. You know it! I am simply stating a fact – you can observe it. One part says “Do this.” Another part immediately says “No!” Something says “Yes,” and something immediately destroys it by saying “No.”

This is your situation. You are an individual in such a situation, when you cannot even say a total yes or a total no? Your no is always halfhearted and your yes too – and you think you are an individual?

An individual means one who can function as a totality, as an organic unity. How are you going to become an organic unity? It can only be through conscious discipline.

That’s what Buddha is saying again and again: perseverance, effort, a conscious, deliberate effort to grow – and a total effort, not lukewarm. You have to boil at a hundred degrees. Yes, sometimes it is painful, but it all depends on you, on how you interpret it. If you really want to grow it is not painful, it is tremendously pleasant. Each step deeper into discipline brings more and more joy, because it gives you more and more soul, being.

Discipline means readiness to learn; hence the word disciple: they come from the same root. Who is a disciple? – one who bows down, surrenders, and is ready to learn. And what is discipline? – the readiness, the openness, the vulnerability, to learn.

Entering this commune you are entering a buddhafield. It is a surrender, it is a trust. I am here to make you individuals, but you will have to pass through many, many devices. You will have to pass through many fires, many tests. Only then, slowly, slowly will you be welded into one unity. And you have remained a multiplicity for so long, for so many lives, that unless a concentrated effort is made, unless you are attacked from every nook and corner, unless your sleep is broken in every possible way, you are shaken and shocked, the individual is not going to be born.

The work that is happening in the commune is not really what it appears from the surface. It is something else – it is a device. We have to use devices.

Somebody comes to me and he wants to become part of the commune, and I say to him, “Go to Deeksha.” Deeksha is my device! I have given her total power – and I have given her total power because she is so loving, so soft, so caring. She wounds people, but she heals also. With one hand she hammers, with the other she consoles. She is a device.

And when I say to you, “Go and work with Deeksha,” and she shouts at you, and in every possible way provokes you, it is a discipline to watch – not to act in your old ways, as you have always acted. And she is so motherly that it is very simple to react to her as you have been reacting to your own parents. It is very simple that she will create the reaction in you that your mother creates in you. Mothers are intolerable creatures – and Deeksha is a perfect mother!