A mental state or chronic psychiatric disorder characterized by excessive feelings of sadness, loneliness, despair, helplessness, low self-esteem, and self-reproach. Depression is different than normal sadness because it prevents the person from functioning normally in their daily life. Other signs of depression include a lack of energy or initiative (psychomotor retardation), agitation, withdrawal from social contact, insomnia, decreased appetite and/or a vegetative state. The symptoms can become severe enough to cause self-harm or suicide. Any patient having thoughts their life is not worth living needs to get immediate medical help.

Patients suffering from the following may have depression: excessive sadness, problems falling asleep, sleeping too much, problems concentrating, uncontrollable negative thoughts, no appetite, short temper, feeling helpless, increase in drinking alcohol, increase reckless behavior, increased fatigue, thoughts life isn’t worth living.

Man has always lived with hope, a future, a paradise somewhere far away. He has never lived in the present — his golden age is still to come. It kept him enthusiastic because greater things were going to happen; all his longings were going to be fulfilled. There was great joy in anticipation. He suffered in the present; he was miserable in the present. But all that was completely forgotten in the dreams that were going to be fulfilled tomorrow. Tomorrow has always been life-giving.

But the situation has changed. The old situation was not good because the tomorrow — the fulfillment of his dreams never became true. He died hoping. Even in his death he was hoping for a future life — but he never actually experienced any rejoicing, any meaning. But it was tolerable. It was only a question of today: it will pass, and tomorrow is bound to come. The religious prophets, messiahs, saviours were promising him all pleasures — which are condemned here — in paradise. The political leaders, the social ideologists, the utopians were promising him the same thing — not in paradise but here on earth, somewhere far away in the future when the society goes through a total revolution and there is no poverty, no classes, no government and man is absolutely free and has everything that he needs.

Both are basically fulfilling the same psychological need. To those who were materialistic, the ideological, political, sociological utopians were appealing; to those who were not so materialistic, the religious leaders appealed. But the object of appeal was exactly the same: all that you can imagine, can dream of, can long for, will be absolutely fulfilled. With those dreams, the present miseries seemed to be very small.

There was enthusiasm in the world; people were not depressed. Depression is a contemporary phenomenon and it has come into being because now there is no tomorrow. All political ideologies have failed. There is no possibility that man will ever be equal, no possibility that there will be a time when there will be no government, no possibility that all your dreams will be fulfilled.

When man reaches to the cherished goals, then he becomes aware that there are many things around them. For example, for your whole life you try to earn money, thinking that one day, when you have it, you will live a relaxed life. But you have been tense your whole life — tension has become your discipline — and at the end of life, when you have achieved all the money you wanted, you cannot relax. The whole life disciplined in tension and anguish and worry won’t let you relax. So you are not a winner, you are a loser. You lose your appetite, you destroy your health, you destroy your sensibility, your sensitiveness. You destroy your aesthetic sense — because there is no time for all these things which do not produce dollars.

You are running after dollars — who has time to look at the roses, and who has time to look at the birds on the wing, and who has time to look at the beauty of human beings? You postpone all these things so that one day, when you have everything, you will relax and enjoy. But by the time you have everything, you have become a certain kind of disciplined person — who is blind to roses, who is blind to beauty, who cannot enjoy music, who cannot understand dance, who cannot understand poetry, who can only understand dollars. But those dollars give no satisfaction.  This is the cause of depression.

The first thing in life is to find meaning in the present moment.  The basic flavor of your being should be of love, of rejoicing, of celebration. Then you can do anything; dollars will not destroy it. But you put everything aside and simply run after dollars thinking that dollars can purchase everything. And then one day you find they cannot purchase anything — and you have devoted your whole life to dollars.  This is the cause of depression.

And particularly in the West, the depression is going to be very deep. In the East there have been rich people, but there was a certain dimension available. When the road to richness came to an end, they did not remain stuck there; they moved into a new direction. That new direction was in the air, available for centuries. In the East the poor have been in a very good condition, and the rich have been in a tremendously good condition. The poor have learned contentment so they do not bother about running after ambition. And the rich have understood that one day you have to renounce it all and go in search of truth, in search of meaning.

In the West, at the end, the road simply ends. You can go back, but going back will not help your depression. You need a new direction. Buddha, Mahavira, or Parshvanath — these people were at the peak of richness, and then they saw that it is almost a burden. Something else has to be found before death takes you over and they were courageous enough to renounce all. Their renunciation has been misunderstood. They renounced it all because they did not want to bother a single second more for money, for power — because they have seen the top, and there is nothing there. They went to the very highest rung of the ladder and found that it leads nowhere; it is just a ladder leading nowhere. While you are somewhere in the middle, or lower than the middle, you have a hope because there are other rungs higher than you. There comes a point when you are on the highest rung and there is only suicide or madness — or hypocrisy: you go on smiling till death finishes you, but deep down you know that you have wasted your life.

In the East, depression has never been a problem. The poor learned to enjoy whatsoever little they had, and the rich learned that having the whole world at your feet means nothing — you have to go in a search for meaning, not for money. And they had precedents: for thousands of years people have gone in search of truth and have found it. There is no need to be in despair, in depression, you just have to move into an unknown dimension. They have never explored it, but as they start exploring the new dimension — it means a journey inwards, a journey to their own self — all that they have lost starts returning.

The West needs a great movement of meditation very urgently; otherwise, this depression is going to kill people. And these people will be the talented ones — because they achieved power, they achieved money, they achieved whatsoever they wanted…the highest degrees in education. These are the talented people, and they are all feeling despair.

This is going to be dangerous because the most talented people are no longer enthusiastic about life, and the untalented are enthusiastic about life but they don’t even have the talents to get power, money, education, respectability. They don’t have the talents, so they are suffering, feeling handicapped. They are turning into terrorists, they are turning towards unnecessary violence just out of revenge — because they cannot do anything else. But they can destroy. And the rich are almost ready to hang themselves from any tree because there is no reason for them to live. Their hearts have stopped beating long ago. They are just corpses — well decorated, well honored, but utterly empty and futile.

The West is really in a far worse condition than the East, although to those who don’t understand it seems that the West is in a better condition than the East because the East is poor. But poverty is not as big a problem as is the failure of richness; then a man is really poor. An ordinary poor man at least has dreams, hopes, but the rich man has nothing.

What is needed is a great meditation movement reaching to every person. And in the West these people who are depressed are going to psychoanalysts, therapists and all kinds of charlatans who are themselves depressed, more depressed than their patients — naturally, because the whole day they are hearing about depression, despair, meaninglessness. And seeing so many talented people in such a bad state, they themselves start losing their spirit. They cannot help; they themselves need help.

The function of my school is going to be to prepare people with meditative energy and send them into the world just as examples for those who are depressed. If they can see that there are people who are not depressed — but on the contrary, who are immensely joyous — perhaps a hope may be born into them. Now they can have everything and there is no need to worry.  They can meditate.

I don’t teach renunciation of your wealth or of anything. Let everything be as it is. Just add one thing more to your life. Up to now you have been adding only things to your life.  Now add something to your being — and that will do the music, that will do the miracle, that will do the magic, that will create a new thrill, a new youth, a new freshness.  It is not unsolvable. The problem is big, but the solution is very simple.