I Say Unto You, Vol 2

Talks on the Sayings of Jesus

Talks given from 2/11/77 am to 10/11/77 am

English Discourse series

CHAPTER 1

Neither do I condemn thee

31 October 1977 am in Buddha Hall

JOHN 8

1. JESUS WENT INTO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES.

2. AND EARLY IN THE MORNING HE CAME AGAIN INTO THE TEMPLE, AND ALL THE PEOPLE

CAME UNTO HIM; AND HE SAT DOWN, AND TAUGHT THEM.

3.

AND THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES BROUGHT UNTO HIM A WOMAN TAKEN IN

ADULTERY; AND WHEN THEY HAD SET HER INT HE MIDST,

4. THEY SAID UNTO HIM, MASTER, THIS WOMAN WAS TAKEN IN ADULTERY, IN THE VERY

ACT.

5. NOW MOSES IN THE LAW COMMANDED US, THAT SUCH SHOULD BE STONED: BUT WHAT

SAYEST THOU?

6. THIS THEY SAID, TEMPTING HIM, THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE TO ACCUSE HIM. BUT JESUS

STOOPED DOWN, AND WITH HIS FINGER WROTE ON THE GROUND, AS THOUGH HE HEARD

THEM NOT.

7. SO WHEN THEY CONTINUED ASKING HIM, HE LIFTED UP HIMSELF, AND SAID UNTO

THEM, HE THAT IS WITHOUT SIN AMONG YOU, LET HIM FIRST CAST A STONE AT HER.

8. AND AGAIN HE STOOPED DOWN, AND WROTE ON THE GROUND.

9. AND THEY WHICH HEARD IT, BEING CONVICTED BY THEIR OWN CONSCIENCE, WENT

OUT ONE BY ONE, BEGINNING AT THE ELDEST, EVEN UNTO THE LAST: AND JESUS WAS

LEFT ALONE, AND THE WOMAN STANDING INT HE MIDST.

10. WHEN JESUS HAD LIFTED UP HIMSELF, AND SAW NONE BUT EH WOMAN, HE SAID

UNTO HER, WOMAN, WHERE ARE THOSE THINE ACCUSERS? HATH NO MAN CONDEMNED

THEE?

11. SHE SAID, NO MAN, LORD. AND JESUS SAID UNTO HER, NEITHER DO I CONDEMN THEE: GO, AND SIN NO MORE.

Religion always deteriorates into morality. Morality is dead religion. Religion is alive morality. They never meet, they cannot meet. because life and death never meet light and darkness never meet.

But the problem is that they look very alike – the corpse looks very like the living man. Everything is just like when the man was alive: the same face, the same eyes, the same nose, the hair, the body.

Just one thing is missing, and that one thing is invisible.

Life is missing, but life is not tangible and not visible. So when a man is dead, he looks as if he is still alive. And with the problem of morality, it becomes more complex.

Morality looks exactly like religion, but it is not. It is a corpse: it stinks of death. Religion is youth, religion is freshness – the freshness of the flowers and the freshness of the morning dew. Religion is splendour – the splendour of the stars, of life, of existence itself. When religion is there, there is no morality at all and the person is moral. But there is no morality; there is no idea of what morality is. It is just natural; it follows you as your shadow follows you. You need not carry your shadow, you need not think about your shadow. You need not look back again and again and see whether the shadow is following you still or not. It follows.

Just like that, morality follows a religious person. He never considers it, he never deliberately thinks about it; it is his natural flavour. But when religion is dead, when life has disappeared, then one starts thinking about morality continuously. Consciousness has disappeared, and conscience becomes the only shelter.

Conscience is a pseudo phenomenon.

Consciousness is yours, conscience is borrowed.

Conscience is of the society of the collective mind; it does not arise in your own being. When you are conscious you act rightly because your act is conscious, and the conscious act can never go wrong. When your eyes are fully open and there is light, you don’t try to get through the wall, you go through the door. When there is no light and your eyes are also not functioning well, naturally you grope in the dark. You have to think a thousand and one times where the door is – ’To the left, to the right? Am I moving in the right direction? And you stumble upon the furniture, and you try to get out through the wall.

A religious person is one who has eyes to see, who has awareness. In that awareness actions are naturally good. Let me repeat: naturally good. Not that you manage them to be good. Managed goodness is not goodness at all. It is pseudo, it is pretension, it is hypocrisy. When goodness is natural, spontaneous, just as trees are green and the sky is blue, so is the religious man moral –

completely unaware of his morality. Aware of himself but unaware of his morality, he has no idea that he is moral, that he is good, that what he is doing is right. Out of his awareness comes innocence, out of his awareness comes the right act – of its own accord. It has not to be brought, it has not to be cultivated, it has not to be practised. Then morality has a beauty, but it is no more morality; it is simply moral. In fact, it is just a religious way of living.

But when religion has disappeared, then you have to manage it. Then you have to constantly think about what is right and what is wrong. And how are you going to decide what is right and what is wrong? You don’t have your own eyes to see, you don’t have your own heart to feel. You are dead and dull. YoU don’t have your own intelligence to go into matters, then you have to depend on the collective mind that surrounds you.

Religiousness has one flavour – whether you are Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan does not make any difference. A religious person is simply religious. He is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian. But a moral person is not just moral. Either he is Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan or Buddhist, because morality has to be learnt from the outside. If you are born in a Buddhist country, in a Buddhist society, you will learn the Buddhist morality. If you are born in a Christian world, you will learn the Christian morality. You will learn from others. and you HAVE to learn from others because you don t have your own insight. So morality is borrowed; it is social, it is mob – it comes from the masses.

And from where does it come to the masses? – from tradition. They have heard what is right and what is wrong, and they have carried it down the ages. It is being given from one generation to another. Nobody bothers whether it is a corpse, nobody bothers whether the heart beats still; it goes on being given from one generation to another. It is dull, dead, heavy; it kills joy, it is a killjoy. It kills celebration, it kills laughter, it makes people ugly, it makes people heavy, monotonous, boring.

But it has a long tradition.

Another thing to be remembered: religion is always born anew. In Jesus, religion is born again. It is not the same religion that was with Moses. It has not come from Moses. It has no continuity with the past; it is utterly discontinuous with the past.

It arises again and again just like a flower comes on the rose bush. It has nothing to do with the flowers that had come before on the rose bush. It is discontinuous. It comes on its own; it has no past, no history, no biography. For the moment it is there, and for the moment it is so beautifully there, so authentically there. For the moment it is so strong, so alive, and yet so fragile. In the morning sun it was so young... by the evening it will be gone, the petals will start falling down into the earth from which they had come in the first place. And it will not leave any trace behind: if you come the next day, it is no more there. And it has not left any marks; it has simply disappeared. As it has come out of nothingness, so it has gone back to nothingness, to the original source .

Just like that is religion. When it happens in a Buddha, it is fresh, young, like a rose flower. Then it disappears, it leaves no traces. Buddha has said ’Religion is like a bird flying in the sky, it leaves no foot-marks.’ Then it happens in a Moses – it is fresh, young again. then in Jesus – it is fresh and young again. And when it will happen to you, it will not have any continuity, it will not come from somebody else – Christ, Buddha, me; it will not come from anybody else. It will ARISE in you, it will bloom in you. It will be a flowering of your being, and then it will be gone. You cannot give it to anybody; it is not transferable. It cannot be given, cannot be borrowed; it is not a thing.

Yes, if somebody wants to learn, it can be learnt. If somebody wants to imbibe, it can be imbibed.

When a disciple learns around a Master, absorbs the vibes of the Master, then too it is something that is happening within him. Maybe he gets the challenge, the provocation, the call from the outside, but that which arises, arises in him, utterly in him; it does not come from the outside. It may be like you are not aware that you can sing; you have never tried, you have never thought about the possibility. Then one day you see a singer, and suddenly his song starts pulsating around you, and in a moment of awakening you become aware that you have also got a throat and a heart. And now, suddenly, for the first time, you become also aware that there has been a song hidden in you, and you release it. But the song comes from your innermost core, it arises from your being. Maybe the provocation, the call came from the outside, but not the song.

So the Master is a catalytic agent. His presence provokes something in you, his presence does not function as a cause.

C.G. Jung is right in bringing a new concept to the Western world. It has existed in the East for centuries – the concept of synchronicity. There are things which happen as cause and effect, and there are things which don’t happen as cause and effect, but just by synchronicity. This idea has to be understood, because this idea will help you to understand the difference between morality and religion.

Morality is cause and effect. Your father, your mother have taught you something: they function as the cause, and then the effect goes on continuing in you. Then you will teach your children: you will become the cause, and the effect will continue in your children. But listening to a singer, suddenly you start humming a tune. There is no cause-and-effect relationship. The singer is not the cause, and you are not the effect. You have caused the effect yourself – you are both the cause and the effect. The singer functioned only as a remembrance, the singer functioned only as a catalytic agent.

What has happened to me I cannot give to you. Not that I don’t want to give it to you, no – because it cannot be given, its very nature is such that it cannot be given – but I can present it to you, I can make it available to you. Seeing that it is possible, seeing that it has happened to another man, ’Why not to me?’ suddenly something clicks inside you, you become alert to a possibility, alert to a door that is in you but you were never looking at, you had forgotten it. And something starts sprouting in you.

I function as a catalytic agent not as a cause. The concept of synchronicity simply says that one thing can start something somewhere without it being a cause. It says that if somebody plays sitar in a room where another sitar has been placed in the corner, and if the player is really a master, a maestro, the sitar that is just sitting there in the corner will start throbbing – because of the other sitar being played in the room, the vibe, the whole milieu. And the sitar that is just sitting there in the corner – nobody is playing it, nobody is touching it – you can see its strings vibrating, whispering.

Something that is hidden is surfacing, something that was not manifest is manifesting.

Religion is synchronicity; morality is causal. Morality comes from the outside, religion arises in you.

When religion disappears there is only morality, and morality is very dangerous.

First, you don’t know yourself what is right, but you start pretending: the hypocrite is created. You start pretending, you start showing that whatsoever you are doing is right. You don’t know what right is, and naturally, because you don’t know you can only pretend. From the back door you will continue doing the same: that you KNOW it is right. From the back door you will have one life, from the front door, another. From the front door you may be smiling, and from the back door you may be crying and weeping. From the front door you will pretend to be a saint, and from the back door you will be as much of a sinner as anybody else. Your life will become split. This is what is creating schizophrenia in the whole human consciousness. You become two, or many.

Naturally when you are two, there is constant conflict. Naturally when you are many, there is a crowd and much noise, and you can never settle in silence, you can never rest in silence. Silence is possible only when you are one, when there is nobody else within you, when you are one piece –

not fragmented.

Morality creates schizophrenia, split personalities, divisions. A moral person is not an individual because he is divided. Only a religious person is an individual. The moral person has a personality but no individuality. Personality means PERSONA, mask. And he has many personalities, not just one, because he has to have many personalities around him. In different situations, different personalities are needed. With different people, different personalities are needed. To one he shows one face, to another he shows another face. One goes on changing faces.

Watch, and you will see how you go on changing faces every moment. Alone you have one face.

In your bathroom you have one face, in the office you have another. Have you observed the fact that in your bathroom you become more childish? Sometimes you can show your tongue to yourself in the mirror, or you can make faces, or you can hum a tune, sing a song, or you can even have a little dance in the bathroom. But while you are dancing or showing your tongue in the mirror, if you become aware that your child is looking through the keyhole, you change – immediate change! The old face comes back... the father personality. ’This cannot be done in front of the child’ otherwise what will he think? – that you are also like him? So what about that seriousness that you show to him always? You immediately pull down another face; you become serious. The song disappears, the dance disappears, the tongue disappears. You are back into your so-called front-door personality.

Morality creates conflict in you because it creates many faces. And the problem is that when you have many faces, you tend to forget which is your original one. With so many faces how can you remember which is your original one?

The Zen Masters say the first thing for a seeker to know is his original face, because only then can something start. Only the original face can grow, a mask cannot grow. A false face can have no growth. Growth is possible only for the original face, because only the original has life.

So the first thing is to know ’What is my original face?’ and it is arduous, because there is a long queue of false faces, and you are lost in your false faces. And sometimes you may think ’This is my original face.’ If you go deep into it, you will find this again is a false face, maybe it is more ancient than the others, so it looks more original.

The Zen Masters say: If you really want to see your original face, you will have to go before birth, you will have to conceive of what your face was before you were born, or what your face will be when you are dead.

Between birth and death you have all kinds of false faces. Even a small child starts learning the pseudo tricks, diplomacies. Just a small child – maybe one day old, just out of the womb – starts learning, because he sees that if he smiles, then mother feels very good. If he smiles the mother immediately gives her breast to him. If he smiles, the mother comes close, hugs him, pats him. He has learned a trick, that if he wants the mother to be close to him, if he wants to be hugged and kissed and talked to, he has to smile. Now the diplomat is born, the politician is born. Whenever he wants the mother to pull him close... He cannot call, he cannot talk, but he can wait until she looks at him then he can smile. The moment he smiles, the mother comes running. Now whether he feels like smiling in this moment or not is not the point, he wants the mother, he wants to manipulate the mother. He has a trick, a strategy, a technique which he has learned: smile, and mother comes.

Then he will go on smiling, and whenever he wants somebody to come close, he will smile. And this face will not be the true face.

Your smiles are not true. Your tears are also not true. Your whole personality is synthetic, plastic.

The moral person, the so-called moralist, has many personalities but no individuality. The religious person has individuality but no personality. He is one. His taste is always one.

Buddha is reported to have said: Taste me from anywhere and you will find the same taste as when you taste the sea. From this side, from that side, from this shore, from that shore – taste the sea from anywhere and it is salty. And Buddha says: So is my taste. Taste me while I am asleep, taste me while I am awake, taste me when somebody is insulting me, taste me when somebody is praising me – you will always find the same taste, the taste of a Buddha.

The religious person is an individual.

The second thing to be remembered: the moralist is always making efforts to impose his morality on others – for many reasons. First: he uses his morality to manipulate himself. Naturally, he does the same to others; he starts using his morality to manipulate others. He uses morality for his own strategies, diplomacies. Naturally, he learns a trick: that if he can enforce his morality on others, then things will be easier.

For example, if the moralist speaks the truth, his truth is not very deep. Deep down there are only lies and lies. But at least in society he pretends to speak the truth. He will try to impose his truth on others also. He would like everybody else to speak the truth, because he will be very much afraid that if somebody lies and tricks him, deceives him... And he knows that he himself is Lying and deceiving people in subtle words, but on the surface he keeps the truth. And he goes on shouting

’Everybody should be true!’ He is very much afraid. He knows that just as he is deceiving others, others may be deceiving him.

Bertrand Russell has said that thieves are always against stealing. A thief has to be against stealing, otherwise somebody will steal things from him. And he has been making so much effort to steal things from others that if others steal things from him, then what will be the point? A thief will always shout ’Stealing is bad! Never steal! You will be thrown into hell!’ So nobody steals, then the thief is free to steal.

If nobody speaks untruths, then you can speak untruths and exploit people easily. If everybody speaks untruths, how can you exploit? Just think: a society where everybody speaks untruths, and it is an accepted phenomenon that everybody tells lies. Then you will be at a loss – you will not be able to cheat people. Whatsoever you say, people will think you are a liar – ’Everybody tells lies here’; nobody can be deceived. So, in his own interest, the liar has to go on preaching morality.

’Speak the truth, never steal, do this, do that’ – and from the back door he goes on doing just the opposite. This has to be understood.

If somebody’s pocket is picked right now – somebody steals – then many will be there shouting

’Catch the thief! Kill the thief! Who is there?’ And many will shout. Remember, the shouters are just showing one thing: that they are also thieves. By shouting they are showing many things. One thing is: ’Remember, I am not the thief, because I am so much against. Nobody should ever think or suspect me because I am against all of this kind of thing. I am a moral person.’ Those who are pickpockets will shout more, and if the real pickpocket is caught, then the pickpockets will beat him to show everybody that they are very much against it.

This is a very very complex phenomenon. A religious person is a totally different person. He will be able to forgive, he will be able to understand. He will be able to see the limitations of man and the problems of man. He will not be so hard and so cruel – he cannot be. His compassion will be infinite.

Before we enter into these sutras, a few things have to be understood.

First: the concept of sin, the concept of the immoral act. What is immoral? How should we define immorality? and what is the criterion? One thing is immoral in India, another thing is immoral in China. That which is immoral in India may be moral in Iran, and that which is moral in Russia may be immoral in India. There are a thousand and one moralities. How to decide? – because now that the world has become a global village, there is much confusion. What is right?

To eat meat is right? Is it moral or immoral? The vegetarian says it is immoral. Many Jains have come to me many times and said ’What about Jesus eating meat? How can Jesus be an enlightened person – and you say that he is enlightened – how can he be an enlightened person? He cats meat.’

For a Jain it is impossible to conceive that Jesus can be enlightened although he eats meat. Jains have come to me and said to me ’How can Ramakrishna be enlightened? He eats fish. He cannot be.’ Now they have a very definite criterion with them – vegetarianism.

One Jain monk was talking to me, and he said ’I cannot believe that Jesus or Ramakrishna are enlightened, they eat meat.’

I told him ’Do you know that there are people in the world who think that to drink milk is almost like eating meat? – because it is an animal food. Now, milk is an animal food. It is almost like blood because it comes out of the mother’s blood. It is also full of live bacteria. There are people in the world, real fanatics, who take things to the very extreme. They say that milk, cheese, and butter are all animal foods – they have to be avoided.’

I asked the Jain monk ’Mahavir used to drink milk. What do you say? He was drinking an animal food. Was he enlightened or not? Now Indian scriptures say milk is the purest food – SATTVIKA –

the MOST PURE food is milk. It is not. It is an animal food!’

That Jain monk started perspiring when he heard that milk is an animal food. And he said ’What are you talking about? Milk is the SATTVIK food, the purest food!’

But I said ’This is the analysis, the scientific analysis. Prove it wrong. That’s why when you drink too much milk your face starts becoming red: milk creates blood – it becomes blood in you. That’s why milk is so vital. And milk is a hundred per cent food, that’s why children live only on milk. It supplies everything. It becomes blood, it becomes your flesh, it becomes your skin, your bone, your marrow; it becomes everything. It is pure animal food. Now how to decide who is right?’

There are a thousand and one moralities. If you go on deciding, you will be in difficulty; it will be impossible for you. You will go mad, you will not be able to eat, you will not be able to sleep, you will not be able to do anything!

Now, there is a Jain sect which is afraid of breathing. To breathe is immoral, because with each breath you kill many many small cells living around you in the air. They are true. That’s why the doctor has to use a mask, so that he does not go on inhaling things which are moving around –

infections. That Jain sect is afraid to breathe. Breathing becomes immoral.

Walking becomes immoral – there are Jains who don’t walk in the night because they may kill something, an ant or something, in the darkness. Mahavir never moved in the night, never moved in the rainy season because then there are many more insects around. Movement becomes difficult, breathing becomes difficult. If you go on looking around at all the moralities, you will simply go crazy or you will have to commit suicide. But to commit suicide is immoral!

If you listen to all kinds of moralities that seems to be the logical thing: just commit suicide. That seems to be the least immoral thing. One act and you are finished, then there will be no immorality.

But that too is immoral. And when you commit suicide you are not dying alone, remember. It is not killing one person. You have millions of cells in the body which are alive, millions of lives inside you, which will die with you. So you have killed millions of people. When you fast, is it moral or immoral?

There are people who say to fast is moral, and there are people who say to fast is immoral. Why?

– because when you fast you kill many cells inside, because they die of starvation. If you fast, then one kilo in weight disappears every day. You are killing many things inside you. One kilo in weight disappears every day. Within a month you will be just a structure of bones. All those people who used to live inside you – small people – they have all died. You have killed all of them.

Or there are people who say to fast is like eating meat. Mow... very strange. And that is true, there is a logic to it. When one kilo in weight disappears, where has it gone? You have eaten it! Your body needs that kind of food every day. You go on replacing it with outside food. If you don’t replace it with outside food... the body goes on eating because the body needs; for twenty-four hours, the body has to live. It needs a certain fuel. Then it starts eating its own flesh. To be on a fast is to be a cannibal.

These moralities can drive you mad! There is no way to choose. Then what is moral to me? To be aware is moral. What you are doing is not the question. If you are doing it in full awareness, then whatsoever it is – it is irrelevant what it is – irrespective of the fact of what it is, if you are doing in full awareness, it is moral. If you are doing unawares, unconscious, then it is immoral.

To me, morality means awareness.

The French language seems to be the only language which has only one word for two words: conscience and consciousness.

That seems to be very very beautiful.

Consciousness is

conscience. Ordinarily, consciousness is one thing and conscience is another thing. Consciousness is yours. Conscience is given to you by others: it is a conditioning.

Live by consciousness, become more and more conscious, and you will become more and more moral – and you will not become a moralist. You will become moral, and you will not become a moralist. The moralist is an ugly phenomenon.

Now the sutras:

JESUS WENT UNTO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES.

He always used to go to the mountains whenever he would feel that his consciousness was becoming dusty, his mirror was covered with dust. He would go to the mountains in aloneness to cleanse his being, to cleanse his consciousness. It is like you take a bath, and after the bath you feel the body is fresh, young.

Meditation is like an inner bath. To be alone for a few moments every day is a must; otherwise you will gather too much dust, and because of that dust your mirror will not reflect any more, or will not reflect rightly. It may start distorting things.

Have you not watched? A single dust particle goes in your eye, and your vision becomes distorted.

The same is true about the inner vision – the inner eye – so much dust goes on collecting, and dust comes from relationship. Just as when you travel on a dusty road, you collect dust; when you move with people who are dusty, you collect dust. They are all throwing their dust all around, they are all throwing wrong vibes – and they cannot do anything, they are helpless. I am not saying that you condemn them. What can they do?

If you go to a hospital and everybody is ill in the hospital, and if they are throwing their infections all around – they can’t help it. They breathe and the infection goes out. Have you not seen it when you go to the hospital to see somebody? Just one hour in the hospital and you start feeling a kind of sickness, and you had come perfectly healthy? Just the smell of the hospital, just the faces of the nurses and the doctors, and the medical instruments, and that particular hospital smell, and people who are all ill, and the whole vibe of illness and death always there... somebody is always dying.

Just one hour there and you feel very low; a kind of nausea arises in you.

Coming out of the hospital you feel a great relief. The same is the situation in the world. You don’t know because you live in the world. The nurse who goes on working in the hospital, and the doctor who goes on working in the hospital – they have to become insensitive, otherwise they would die. They would not be able to live there. They have become insensitive; they go on moving.

That’s why many times you see doctors looking very very insensitive – that is their protection. The patient goes on saying that this is wrong and that is wrong, and the doctor stands there almost not listening. The relatives of the patient go on running after the doctor and go on telling him that this is going wrong and that is... And he says ’Everything will be okay. I will come tomorrow morning.

When I come on my round, I will see.’ Now you are feeling so concerned, and he seems to be absolutely unconcerned. This is just to protect himself. If he becomes too sensitive, he will not be able to survive. He has to become hard, he has to create a kind of stoniness around himself.

That stoniness will protect him – will protect him from the hospital and the patients and the whole atmosphere. Doctors become hard, insensitive; nurses become hard, insensitive.

The same is happening in the world at large. It is a kind of big hospital, because everybody is ill here and everybody is on the deathbed; and everybody is full of anger and violence and aggression and jealousy and possessiveness; and everybody is false, pseudo, and everybody is a hypocrite –

this is the world. You don’t feel it, but when a Jesus moves amidst you, he feels it because he comes from the heights. He descends from the mountains.

If you go to the Himalayas and after living few days in the Himalayan freshness you come back to the plains, then you feel how dusty, how ugly, how heavy the vibe is. Now you have comparison.

You have seen the fresh waters of the Himalayas – those fresh fountains running forever, and the crystal-clear water – and then the municipal tap water. You have the comparison then. Only a meditator knows that the world is ill, only a meditator feels that everything is wrong here. And when a meditator moves amidst you, naturally he feels much more dust collecting on himself than you can feel, because you have lost all sensitivity.

You have forgotten that you are.a mirror! You know that you are just a dust collector. Only a meditator knows that he is a mirror.

So Jesus goes again and again to the mountains.

JESUS WENT...

unto the mountains

... UNTO THE MOUNT OF OLIVES. AND EARLY IN THE MORNING HE CAME AGAIN INTO THE

TEMPLE, AND ALL THE PEOPLE CAME UNTO HIM; AND HE SAT DOWN, AND TAUGHT THEM.

AND EARLY IN THE MORNING HE CAME... INTO THE TEMPLE...

Only when you have been to the mountains – and that does not mean that you really have to go to the mountains. It is not an outer phenomenon. The mount is within you. If you can be alone, if you can forget the whole world for a few seconds, you will regain your freshness. And only then can you go to the temple, because only then you ARE a temple. And only then will your presence in the temple be a real presence; and there will be a harmony between you and the temple Remember, unless you bring your temple to the temple, there is no temple. If you simply go to the temple, and don’t bring your temple there within you, it is just a house.

When Jesus goes into a house, it becomes a temple. When you go into a temple. it becomes a house – because we carry our own temples inside. Wherever Jesus goes it becomes a temple, his presence creates that sacred quality. And only when you bring the temple and the freshness of the mountains, and the virginity of the mountains, only then can you teach. You can teach only THEN, when you HAVE it.

AND EARLY IN THE MORNING HE CAME AGAIN INTO THE TEMPLE, AND ALL THE PEOPLE

CAME UNTO HIM; AND HE SAT DOWN, AND TAUGHT THEM.

AND THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES BROUGHT UNTO HIM A WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY; AND WHEN THEY HAD SET HER IN THE MIDST,

THEY SAID UNTO HIM, MASTER, THIS WOMAN WAS TAKEN IN ADULTERY, IN THE VERY ACT.

NOW MOSES IN THE LAW COMMANDED US, THAT SUCH SHOULD BE STONED: BUT WHAT

SAYEST THOU?

This is one of the most important parables in Jesus’ life. Go into it slowly, delicately, carefully.

AND THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES...

Now for that you can read ’the moralists and the puritans’. In those days those were the names of the moralists, the pundits, the scholars – ’the scribes and the Pharisees’. The Pharisees were the people who were very respectable. On their surfaces very moral, pretentious, with great egos. ’We are moral and everybody else is immoral’ – and always searching and looking into people’s faults.

Their whole life is concerned with that: how to exaggerate their own qualities and how to reduce others’ qualities to nil.

The puritans, the moralists

... BROUGHT UNTO HIM A WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY,

Now when you come to a man like Jesus, you have to come there in humbleness, you have to come there imbibe something from Jesus; it is a rare opportunity. And now here come these fools and they bring a woman. They bring their ordinary mind, their mediocre mind, their stupidities with them.

AND THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES BROUGHT UNTO HIM A WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY...

They have not learnt even this simple lesson that when you go to a man like Jesus or Buddha, you go to partake, to participate in his consciousness: you go to become intimate with him. You don’t bring the ordinary problems of life there; they are irrelevant. That will be wasting a great opportunity, that will be wasting Jesus’ time. And he had not much time, as I told you before – only three years of ministry. And these fools were wasting like this... But they had a certain strategy in it: it was a trap.

They were not really concerned with the woman. They were creating a trap for Jesus. It was a very diplomatic act.

AND THE SCRIBES AND PHARISEES BROUGHT UNTO HIM A WOMAN TAKEN IN ADULTERY; AND WHEN THEY HAD SET HER IN THE MIDST, THEY SAID UNTO HIM, MASTER, THIS

WOMAN WAS TAKEN IN ADULTERY, IN THE VERY ACT.

Now what is adultery?

A conscious mind will say if you don’t love a man – maybe the man is your own husband – if you don’t love the man and you sleep with the man, it is adultery. If you don’t love the woman – and she may be your own wife – if you don’t love her and you sleep with her, you are exploiting her, you are deceiving her. It is adultery.

But that is not the definition of the Pharisees and the puritans and the scribes and the pundits. their definition is legal, their definition does not arise out of consciousness or love. Their definition arises out of the legal court. If the woman is not your wife and you have been found sleeping with her, it is adultery. It is just a legal matter, technical. The heart is not taken into account, only the law. You may be deeply in love with the man or with the woman, but that is not to be taken into account. The unconscious mind cannot take higher things into account. He can only take the lowest into account.

His problem is always legal. Is it YOUR woman? YOUR wife? Are you legally wed to her? Then it is good, then it is no more sin. If she is not your woman, you are not legally wed to her... You may be in deep love, and you may have immense respect for the woman – you may almost be a worshipper of the woman – but it is sin, it is adultery.

These people brought this woman to Jesus, and

THEY SAID UNTO HIM, MASTER, THIS WOMAN WAS TAKEN IN ADULTERY, IN THE VERY ACT.

Just the other day I was reading the memoirs of an English Christian missionary who went to Japan in the early days of this century. He was taken around Tokyo. His host took him around to show him the city. In one public bath there were men and women taking their baths in the nude. The missionary was very much shocked.

He stood there for five minutes, watched everything, and then he told his host ’Is it not immoral –

women and men taking baths naked in a public place?’

And the host said ’Sir, this is not immoral in our country, but to stand here and watch is immoral.

Sorry to say’ he said ’but I am feeling very guilty standing with you, because that is THEIR business if they want to take a bath naked. That is THEIR freedom. But why are you standing here? This is ugly, immoral.

Now the missionary’s standpoint is very ordinary, and the host’s standpoint is extraordinary.

These people say

MASTER, THIS WOMAN WAS TAKEN IN ADULTERY, IN THE VERY ACT.

And what were you doing there?

These were peeping Toms or... what type of people were these? What were you doing there? Why should you be concerned?

This woman’s life is her life. How she wants to spend her life is her concern. Who are you to interfere? But the puritan, the moralist, has always been interfering in other people’s lives. He is not democratic, he is very dictatorial. He wants to manipulate people, condemn people.

Now what were these people doing there?

And they say

MASTER, THIS WOMAN WAS TAKEN IN ADULTERY, IN THE VERY ACT.

They have caught the woman while she was making love.

One thing more: Where is the man? She was doing adultery alone...? Nobody has ever asked THIS

question about this parable. I have read many Christian books, but nobody has ever asked ’Where is the man?’

But it is a man’s society. It is always the woman who is wrong, not the man. The man will go free perfectly well. He may himself be a Pharisee, he may himself be a respectable man – but the woman has to be condemned. Have you not observed it? Prostitutes are condemned, but where are the prostituters? Where are those people? They may be the same people who condemn.

Now Morarji Desai wants to bring prohibition to the country. And in his own ministry, out of seventeen, twelve are drunkards. Twelve! And he himself does not drink, that is true, but he drinks his own urine.

That is a far worse case! But he wants to bring prohibition on the country. He wants to put it through force. Maybe because he has not been drinking... He wants to take revenge on others, on what?

Puritans are always ugly people. They don’t live, but then they don’t allow anybody else to live. Their only joy is how to kill other people’s joys, how to kill everybody’s celebration.

Now what were these people doing there? Don’t they have anything else to do? Don’t they have their own women to love? What kind of people are these? They must be a little perverted to go out searching and seeking who is committing adultery. And then where is the man? Just the woman has to be condemned always.

Why does the woman have to be condemned? Because the woman is a woman and the man is the dominant one, and all the legal codes have been made by men. They are very very prejudicial, biased. All the legal courts say what should be done to a woman if she is found in adultery, but they don’t say anything about what should be done to the man. No, they say ’Boys are boys. And boys will be boys.’ It is always a question of the woman.

Even if a man rapes a woman, the woman becomes condemned; she loses respect not the rapist!

This is an ugly state of affairs. This can’t be called religious, it is very political – basically in man’s favour and against woman. And all your so-called moralities have been that way.

In India, when a husband used to die, the wife had to go with him to the funeral pyre, then only was she thought to be virtuous. she had to become a SATI, she had to die with the husband. If she did not die, that meant she was not virtuous. That simply meant she wanted to live without the husband, or maybe she wanted the husband to die, now she wanted freedom, now she would fall in love with somebody else.

In India it has been thought then that for the woman there is no life once the husband is dead. Her husband is her whole life. If the husband is gone, she has to go. But nothing is said about the man if his woman dies – no prescription for him that he should die with the woman. No, that is no problem.

Immediately after the woman has died... In India it happens every day: the people are burning the woman and then coming back home they start thinking about the new marriage – where the man should find a new woman, how to find. Not a single day is lost.

For man the morality is different, for woman it is different. Then it is a very unconscious morality, and very IMMORAL MORALITY.

My definition of morality is that of consciousness, and consciousness is neither man nor woman.

Consciousness is just consciousness. Only when something is decided by your being conscious will it be classless, will it be beyond the distinctions of body, caste, creed. And only then is it moral.

MASTER, they say, THIS WOMAN WAS TAKEN IN ADULTERY, IN THE VERY ACT.

NOW MOSES IN THE LAW COMMANDED US, THAT SUCH SHOULD BE STONED: BUT WHAT

SAYEST THOU?

THIS THEY SAID, TEMPTING HIM, THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE TO ACCUSE HIM. BUT JESUS

STOOPED DOWN, AND WITH HIS FINGER WROTE ON THE GROUND, AS THOUGH HE HEARD

THEM NOT.

This w as the trap. They wanted to trap Jesus, because Moses has said that such a woman should be stoned. Nothing is said about the man. Such a woman should be stoned to death: Moses has said this. Now they are creating a problem for Jesus. If Jesus says ’Yes, do as Moses says’

then they can accuse him, because he has always been talking about love, compassion, kindness, forgiveness. Then they can say ’What about your compassion? What about your forgiveness? What about your love? You say this woman has to be killed by stones? This is hard and cruel and violent.’

Tricky fellows.

And if Jesus says ’This is not right. Moses is not right’ then they can say ’So you have come to destroy Moses? So you have come to destroy and corrupt our religion? And you have been saying to people ”I have come not to destroy but to fulfil.” What about that? If you have come to fulfil, then follow Moses’ law!’ Now they are creating a dilemma. This is the trap. They are not much concerned about the woman, remember, their REAL target is Jesus; the woman is just an excuse. And they have brought such a case... That’s why they say IN THE VERY ACT, red-handed. So it is not a question of deciding whether the woman has really committed adultery. Otherwise, Jesus will have an excuse to get out. He will say ’First, try to find out whether REALLY it has happened. Bring the witnesses. Let it first be decided.’ Then it will take years. So they say ’Red-handed! We have caught her in the very act. We are all the witnesses, so there is no question of deciding anything else. And the law is clear: Moses has said that such should be stoned.’

... BUT WHAT SAYEST THOU?

’Do you agree with Moses? If you agree, then what about your love and compassion – your whole message? If you don’t agree, then what do you mean when you say ”I have come to fulfil”? Then you have come to destroy Moses’ law. So do you think you are higher than Moses? Do you think that you know more than Moses?’

... BUT WHAT SAYEST THOU? THIS THEY SAID, TEMPTING HIM, THAT THEY MIGHT HAVE

TO ACCUSE HIM. BUT JESUS STOOPED DOWN, AND WITH HIS.FINGER WROTE ON THE

GROUND, AS THOUGH HE HEARD THEM NOT.

Why? Why did Jesus stoop down? Why did he start writing on the ground?

They were just on the bank of a river. Jesus was sitting in the sand. Why has he started writing on the sand? What has happened?

There is one thing to be understood: it is always a delicate problem. For example, if I see something stated by Buddha as wrong, there is a great hesitation to say that he is wrong. He cannot be wrong. Tradition must have misinterpreted him. Something must have been wrongly put into his mouth. Buddha cannot be wrong. But now there is no way to decide, because the scriptures say this clearly...

Jesus hesitating., .Jesus is concerned. He does not want to say a single word against Moses, but he has to say, hence the hesitation. He does not want to say anything against Moses because Moses CANNOT say it that way. It is his inner feeling that Moses cannot say it that way. But the inner feeling cannot be decisive. These people will say ’Who are you? And why should we care about your inner feeling? We have the written code with us, given by our forefathers. It is there written clearly!’

Jesus does not want to say anything against Moses, because he REALLY has come to fulfil Moses.

Anybody who becomes enlightened in the world is always fulfilling all the enlightened ones that have preceded him. Even if sometimes he says something against them, then, too, he is fulfilling them, because he cannot say anything against them. And if you feel that he is saying something against them, then he is saying something against the tradition, against the scripture. But that looks like saying something against Moses, against Buddha, against Abraham. Hence, he stoops down. He starts looking at the sand and then starts writing. He is puzzled about what to do. He has to find a way out.

He has to find the way out in such a way that he has not to say anything against Moses, and YET he cancels the whole law. And he really comes with a very very miraculous answer, a magical answer.

SO WHEN THEY CONTINUED ASKING HIM, HE LIFTED UP HIMSELF, AND SAID UNTO THEM, HE THAT IS WITHOUT SIN AMONG YOU, LET HIM FIRST CAST A STONE AT HER.

It is really incredible, it is beautiful – that was his hesitation. He has found a golden mean. He has not said a single word against Moses and he has not supported Moses either. This is the delicate point to understand.

Jesus was really utterly intelligent – uneducated, but utterly intelligent, a man of immense awareness. That’s the only reason why he could find the way out.

He says

HE THAT IS WITHOUT SIN AMONG YOU...

He says ’Perfectly right’ does not say directly that Moses is right. but he says ’Perfectly right. If Moses says so, then it must be so. But then, who should start throwing stones at this woman?’

HE THAT IS WITHOUT SIN AMONG YOU, LET HIM FIRST CAST A STONE AT HER.

’So start, but only those who are without sin...’

Now this is a new thing that Jesus brings in. You can judge only if you are without sin. You can punish only if you are without sin. If you are also in the same boat, then what is the point? Then who is going to punish whom?

AND AGAIN HE STOOPED DOWN, AND WROTE ON THE GROUND.

Why did he stoop down again? Because he must have been afraid; some foolish person is always possible. He knows that everybody has committed one sin or other. If they have not committed, then they have been thinking to commit – which is almost the same.

Whether you think or you act makes no difference. Remember, the difference between sin and crime is this: Crime has to be acted out, only then is it crime. You can go on thinking, but if you don’t commit it to action, no court can punish you because it never becomes a crime. And only crime is within the jurisdiction of the court, not sin. Then what is sin? Sin is if you think ’I would like to murder this man.’ No court can do anything. You can say ’Yes, I have been thinking of it my whole life’ –

but thinking is beyond the court’s jurisdiction. You are allowed to think. No court can punish you because you dreamt that you killed somebody. You can dream every day, and you can go on killing as many people as you want. No court can catch hold of you unless it comes to actuality, unless thought becomes deed, unless thought is translated into reality. If it comes out of you and affects society, then it becomes crime. But it is sin, because God can go on reading your thoughts. There is no need for him to read your acts. The magistrate has to read your acts, he cannot read your thoughts; he is not a thought-reader or a mind-reader.

But for God there is no difference; whether you think or you do, it is all the same. The moment you think, you have done it.

So Jesus says HE THAT IS WITHOUT SIN AMONG YOU... not without crime. He says HE THAT

IS WITHOUT SIN AMONG YOU, LET HIM.FIRST CAST A STONE AT HER. That distinction was known down the ages: that if you think it, you have committed a sin already.

AND AGAIN HE STOOPED DOWN...

Why this time? – because if he goes on looking at people. his very look may be provocative. If he goes on looking at people then somebody, just from his look and out of his offense may throw a stone at the poor woman. He does not want to offend; he withdraws. He simply stoops down, starts writing in the sand-again as if he is not there. He becomes absent, because his presence can be dangerous. If they have come just to trap him, and he is there and they feel his presence, it will be difficult for them to feel their own consciences, their own consciousnesses. He withdraws into himself, he allows them total freedom to think about it. He does not interfere; his presence can be an interference. If he goes on looking at them, that will be offensive to their egos. And it will be difficult for them to escape also, because then it will feel bad that somebody was standing just in front of the mayor of the town or somebody – the respectable people... and how can the mayor escape when Jesus is looking? And if he escapes and does not throw the stone at the woman, it will be a proof that he is a sinner.

He stoops down again, starts writing on the sand, gives them a chance – if they want to escape they can escape.

AND THEY WHICH HEARD IT, BEING CONVICTED BY THEIR OWN CONSCIENCE...

Jesus leaves them alone. That is the beauty of the man. He does not even interfere by his presence; he is simply no more there. Their own consciences starts pricking. They know. Maybe many times they have lusted after THIS woman, and maybe they themselves have been participants with this woman in the past. Maybe this woman is a prostitute, and all these respectable people in their turn have made love to her. Because one prostitute means that almost the whole town becomes involved.

In India, in the ancient days, prostitutes were called NAGARVADHU, the wife of the town. That is the right name.

So all of these people must have been involved in some way or other with this woman or with other women – if not in acts, then in thoughts.

My feeling is it must be evening and the sun is setting, it is becoming dark and Jesus is writing on the sand, stooping down, and it becomes dark. And by and by people start disappearing in the dark.

AND THEY WHICH HEARD IT, BEING CONVICTED BY THEIR OWN CONSCIENCE, WENT OUT

ONE BY ONE, BEGINNING AT THE ELDEST – THE MAYOR – EVEN UNTO THE LAST...

First the eldest disappeared, because of course, they have lived long, so they have sinned long.

The young people may not be such great sinners; they have had not enough time yet. But the oldest disappeared first. Those who were standing in front, they must have moved slowly to the back, and then from the back they escaped. Because this man has really created a great problem: he has changed the whole situation. They had come to trap him and they are trapped.

You cannot trap a Jesus or a Buddha; it is impossible – you will be trapped. You exist at a lower state of mind. How can you trap a higher state of mind? That is just foolish. The higher state can trap you immediately, because from the higher state your whole being is available.

Now Jesus must have looked into these people’s consciences – that was possible for him – he must have seen all kinds of sins raising their heads. In fact, even standing there, they were thinking about the woman: how to get hold of her. Maybe they were angry because somebody else had committed the sin and they were not given the opportunity. Maybe they were only jealous: maybe they wanted to be there instead of that man who had not been brought. ]esus must have looked from his height into their hearts. He has trapped them. They forget their trap completely, they forget about Moses and the law etcetera. In fact, they were never worried about Moses and the law. This has also to be understood.

They were really more interested in stoning this woman, enjoying this murder. Not that they were interested in punishing somebody who had committed a sin; that was just an excuse. They could not leave this opportunity of murdering this woman. And now Moses can be used.

There are a thousand and one things said by Moses. They are not worried about them. They are not interested in all those sayings and all those statements. They are interested in this: that Moses says you can stone a woman if you catch hold of her in adultery. They can’t miss this great opportunity of murder, of violence. And when violence can be committed according to the law, who would like to miss it? Not only will they enjoy the violence, they will enjoy that they are very very legal people, virtuous followers of Moses. But they have all forgotten about it. Just a little turning by Jesus, and they have forgotten about Moses... He has changed the whole point. He has changed their minds from the woman to themselves. He has converted them, he has turned them backwards – a one hundred and eighty degree turn. They were thinking about the woman and Moses and Jesus, and he has changed their whole attitude. He has made them their own target. He has turned their consciousness.

Now he says ’Look into yourself. If you have never committed a sin, then... then you are allowed, then you can kill this woman.’

WHEN JESUS HAD LIFTED UP HIMSELF...

he saw they had all gone

... EVEN UNTO THE LAST: AND JESUS WAS LEFT ALONE, AND THE WOMAN STANDING IN

THE MIDST.

WHEN JESUS HAD LIFTED UP HIMSELF, AND SAW NONE BUT THE WOMAN, HE SAID UNTO

HER, WOMAN, WHERE ARE THOSE THINE ACCUSERS?

Now he is not saying ’I am accusing you.’

... WHERE ARE THOSE THINE ACCUSERS?

He is not for a single moment a participant in it. He has not judged, he has not condemned. He has not said a single thing to the woman. He simply says.

WOMAN WHERE ARE THOSE THINE ACCUSERS? HATH NO MAN CONDEMNED THEE?

Have they all gone? Has no man thrown a stone at you?

SHE SAID, NO MAN, LORD.

She must have felt deep respect, reverence for this man, who has not only saved her physically, but who has not even accused her in any way. Spiritually also he has saved her. She must have looked into those eyes which have only love and compassion and nothing else.

This is the religious man. The moralist is always condemning, accusing; the religious man, always accepting, forgiving.

SHE SAID, NO MAN, LORD. AND JESUS SAID UNTO HER, NEITHER DO I CONDEMN THEE: GO, AND SIN NO MORE.

Jesus says ’Nothing to be worried about – the past. The past is past, gone is gone. Forget about it.

But take some lesson from this situation. Don’t go on making the same mistakes in the future – if you think they are mistakes. I am not accusing you.’

NEITHER DO I CONDEMN THEE...

’But if you feel that you have done something wrong, then it is up to you. Don’t do it again. Forget the past, and don’t go on repeating it.’

That is the whole message of all the Buddhas and all the Christs and all the Krishnas: Forget the past, and if you understand, then don’t do it again. That’s enough. There is no punishment, there is no judgement. If you have been doing something, you were helpless. You are unconscious, you have your limitations. You have your desires, unfulfilled desires. Whatsoever you have been doing was the only thing you could have done. So what is the point of accusing and condemning you?

The only thing that can be done is: your consciousness can be raised high.

And that woman must have moved into a high consciousness. She must have been afraid that she was going to be killed. Then this man, by a single statement, saved her from death. Not only that, those accusers disappeared. This man did a miracle! Not only that they didn’t kill her, they simply became ashamed and escaped like thieves into the darkness of the night. This man is a magician.

And now, he is saying ’I don’t condemn you. If you feel you have been doing something wrong, don’t do it again. That’s enough.’ He has converted the woman.

This is what acid people call a ’contact high’. Jesus is high, If you come into close affinity with him, you will start moving high. This is synchronicity – non-causal. The woman must have come there almost condemning herself, ashamed of herself, thinking to commit suicide. He has raised that woman, transformed that woman.

SHE SAID, NO MAN, LORD.

Jesus becomes LORD, Jesus becomes God to her. She has never seen such a godly man before.

With no condemnation a man becomes a God. With no judgement a man becomes a God. And just his presence, a single statement, and those people disappeared and she is saved. And not only saved physically, but spiritually intact. Jesus has not interfered at all. He has not condemned, he has not said a single word. He simply says ’Don’t repeat your past’ – not a single word more. ’Let the past be past and the gone, gone. You become new. All is good, and you are forgiven.’

Jesus transformed many people by forgiving them. That was one of the accusations against him –

that he forgives people. Who is he to forgive? Somebody has committed a sin – the society has to punish him! and if the society cannot punish and the man escapes, then the society has prepared a punishment through God – he should be thrown in hell.

Hindus also are very much against the idea that Jesus can forgive you. The Christian idea is immense, tremendous, very great and potential. Hindus say that you will have to suffer for your past KARMAS, whatsoever you have done, you will have to undo. If you have done a bad thing you will have to do a good thing. And the bad and its result are going to come: you will have to suffer the consequence. Hindus will not agree with this. Neither will agree the Buddhists, nor the Jains, nor were Jews agreeing with Jesus. How can he forgive?

But I say to you: a man of that understanding can forgive. Not that by his forgiving are you forgiven.

But just if that consciousness, that great consciousness can give you a feel of well-being – ’Nothing is wrong, don’t be worried; you can just shake off the past like dust and get out of it’ – that very thing will give you such courage, such enthusiasm, will open new possibilities and new doors. And you are freed from it. You immediately move beyond it.

From this came the idea of Christian confession. It does not work that way, because the man you go to confess to is an ordinary man just like you. When you are confessing, the priest is not really forgiving you, he may be condemning deep down. His forgiveness is just a show. He is an ordinary man, he has no higher consciousness than you. Only from the higher can forgiveness flow. Only from the high mountains can the rivers flow towards the plains. Only from a Jesus or a Buddha, can forgiveness flow. And when there is a man like Jesus or Buddha, just his touch, just his look is enough to forgive you your whole past and all your KARMAS.

I TOTALLY agree with Jesus. He brings a new vision to humanity: to attain to freedom. The Hindu, the Jain, the Buddhist concept is very ordinary and mathematical. It has no magic in it. It is very logical but it has no love in it. Jesus brings love to the world.

CHAPTER 2

Go to the Very End

1 November 1977 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

WELL, I WAS BROUGHT UP AS A CATHOLIC, SO HOW COME JESUS IS A STRANGER TO ME?

Jesus is always a stranger. It does not matter whether you were brought up as a Catholic or a Protestant or a Hindu or a Mohammedan. The very being of Jesus is that of a stranger, because he is an outsider. He lives on a different plane, he lives in a different dimension: he lives in God, you live in the world. He talks a different language; he talks about things you have not even dreamt about. You cannot trust him. You cannot even understand him; he is incomprehensible.

You may have been brought up as a Catholic; that means you have been taught from your childhood things about Jesus. Those are simply words; you have not been introduced to Jesus, because that introduction is possible only through meditation – not through any kind of teaching, not through the Catholic catechism. It is all rubbish. In fact, rather than helping you to become acquainted with Jesus it becomes a barrier; you become knowledgeable. You know many things about Jesus without knowing Jesus. The more you know about him, the less you think that you need to know him. You become satisfied by and by; you start feeling that you already know him without knowing him at all That’s what Christian teachings do And the more you have been taught, the more you become familiar, the more it breeds contempt.

So sometimes it happens that one who has not been brought up as a Christian may have fresher eyes to see Jesus, because his mind will be uncluttered. He will not know anything, he will look through innocence. He will not have any conditionings, he will look empty. He will approach Jesus without any prejudice for or against. And you can know Jesus only when you go nude, naked –

naked of all beliefs, naked of all prejudices, when you approach him without any preoccupation, when your mind is utterly silent.

So in fact the Catholic upbringing has done just the Opposite.

All religions are doing that, it is nothing special to the Catholic Church. Hindus destroy the possibility of knowing Krishna, Buddhists destroy the possibility of knowing Buddha – because knowledge becomes more important than knowing, and knowledge is second-hand. Only knowing can help.

And remember, let me repeat it again: Jesus is a stranger. He may be standing by your side but he is not there, he is somewhere else. You may be standing in front of Jesus but you are not there, you are somewhere else. You and Jesus never meet, because the planes are so different. You never criss-cross – you cannot! Unless you become something like Jesus, there is no possibility. And to become like Jesus needs great meditation, needs great intelligence – not a Catholic upbringing, not a Sunday religion, not foolish dogmas and creeds. Great intelligence, sensitivity, awareness...

People are fast asleep. Somebody is asleep as a Christian, and somebody is asleep as a Hindu.

That doesn’t matter – sleep is sleep. A Christian, a Hindu, a Mohammedan – if all these three get too drunk, will there be any distinction, differentiation between their drunkenness The Hindu will behave as foolishly as the Mohammedan; and the Mohammedan will behave as stupidly as the Christian.

Once they are drunk, they are drunk. And people are asleep. It makes no difference what kind of theology you have used as a pillow for your sleep. Whether the pillow is white or green or blue or red does not matter. Once you fall asleep, you fall asleep; the pillow becomes immaterial. Whether you are sleeping on the Bible, on the Gita, on the Koran does not make any difference; you are using a pillow. Somebody is using the Bible as the pillow, somebody else is using the Koran as the pillow.

And you are snoring over your scriptures. And Jesus and Mohammed and Buddha and Krishna remain strangers.

They do not belong to this world, that’s why Hindus call them avatars. Avatar means one who has come from beyond descended from the beyond, like a ray of light descends into darkness. It comes from the transcendental world, from the world of turiya – the fourth.

Jesus LOOKS like you, but he is not like you. Don’t be deceived by the appearance. He is here on the earth, and not of it. He moves in the same world, the same market-place, the same people, rubs shoulders with you, holds your hand, looks into your eyes, but he does not belong to this world. He belongs to the other shore. He has risen, he has risen in God.

You can also rise, and only by rising will you be able to understand him; befreind him, otherwise he will remain an outsider.

Jesus is a lotus. You are still the mud. There cannot be any dialogue between the lotus and the mud

– although the lotus is born out of the mud, although the mud is carrying many more lotuses than have become manifest. Many unmanifest lotuses are there in the mud, but the mud and the lotus are so different – strangers to each other. That is the situation. If you want to understand the lotus you will have to become a lotus. Only a lotus can have a dialogue with the lotus.

Never become a Christian. If you want to become something, become a Christ. Never become a Buddhist. If you want to become something, become a Buddha. Otherwise you will remain unaware of the reality of Jesus.

And because people feel uneasy – uneasy because they cannot comprehend Jesus – they create theories. Rather than transforming themselves, they load Jesus with theories, theories which can help them make him comprehensible. No theory can make him comprehensible. All theology is false.

But there are only two ways: either you wrap theories around Jesus which you can understand... In that way you feel that you have understood Jesus, but you have understood only the theories that you have wrapped around him. He remains there, absolutely far away, distant. He is not even touched by your theories. You can weave and spin beautiful philosophies around him. That philosophy you will be able to understand – it is woven by you – it is your creation, it is your invention rather. But Jesus, who is just standing there hidden behind your philosophies, is still an outsider. In fact your philosophies, your theories have made him more of an outsider than he was. With those theories, there has come a China Wall between you and him.

If you are a Christian you will never understand Jesus. Your very Christianity will be an obstruction, a hindrance. How can you understand Jesus when you are a Christian? Impossible! What does it mean to be a Christian? It means that you have certain ideas about Christ. You are clinging to certain theories: those theories become more important than Christ himself! Naturally, because you can understand those theories and you cannot understand Christ. So those theories become more and more important. You can discard Jesus, but you cannot discard your theories. That’s why there are so many Christianities – the Christianity of the Catholic, and the Christianity of the Protestant, and the Christianity of many many other sects. They all go on fighting, they are always at each other’s necks, and they are all followers of Jesus! So where is the conflict?

The conflict is not between their Jesuses, because Jesus is one. The conflict is between their theories, and they cling to the theory. They can discard Jesus very easily – Jesus is discarded, but they cannot discard their theory. Their theory is more important: it is their invention. Jesus has become secondary.

No, you cannot understand Christ if you are a Christian or a Catholic. You can understand Christ only if you are nobody. I am not saying that you can understand Christ if you are a Hindu. When you are nobody, when you drop all the curtains and you start moving in that reality called Christ without any preoccupied mind – empty, clean, clear, no smoke around you, just a clarity and the freshness that clarity brings, and the vitality that clarity brings – and you start approaching Jesus, with no idea of who he is, then there will be a meeting. Only if you are a nobody can you meet with Christ or Buddha or Krishna. And these are different names for the same state of consciousness. It is the fourth state of consciousness. Theories belong to the third state of consciousness; and Jesus, Buddha, belong to the fourth state of consciousness. You will have to drop many things before you can feel Jesus.

Question 2

INDIA IS SUCH A SACRED COUNTRY: THE HEART OF SPIRITUALISM. I DON’T UNDERSTAND

ALL THE CRUDE REMARKS THAT THEY WRITE IN MAGAZINES ABOUT YOU. WHY IS INDIA SO IGNORANT IN RECOGNISING YOU?

If they recognise me then I will not be of much worth. Because they don’t recognise me, that’s why I have something important to deliver to you. The recognition is not possible; it has never been possible. Christ was not recognised by the Jews, Buddha was not recognised by the Hindus – how can they recognise me?

Recognition comes from the past, and I am herenow. Recognition means that I should behave in a pattern that they recognise. If I walk naked, then Digamber Jains will recognise me, because they have the idea that an enlightened person walks naked. They cannot recognise me with clothes on: those clothes are a barrier. Buddhists will recognise me only if I look like Buddha. And I don’t look like Buddha, and I am not sorry that I don’t look like Buddha. I am happy that I look only like me and I don’t look like anybody else.

If you look like somebody else you are a carbon copy. Carbon copies can be recognised, because they tally with some original. I cannot be recognised because I myself am an original copy; it does not tally with anybody. The Christian will come and he will start thinking in terms of Christ. He will start looking for Christ in me, and he will not find. That is obvious. And the Buddhist starts looking for the Buddha, and he cannot find. Because I am ME – and the recognition of me, if you are searching for it in some past pattern, structure. is impossible. You can recognise me only as me. And to see me AS me, you will need to become unprejudiced.

To be a Hindu is to be prejudiced. To be an Indian is to be prejudiced.

So you ask: INDIA IS SUCH A SACRED COUNTRY...

First, never be befooled by such slogans. No country is sacred, no country has ever been sacred.

It is only rarely that one individual in millions becomes sacred – countries are not sacred. Just because Buddha was in India, has India become sacred? Does that mean because Albert Einstein was born in Germany, so Germany has become mathematical? Does that mean if some country has produced a great painter, the country has become artistic? That does not mean anything. No country can be artistic because it has given birth to a Picasso, and no country can be a musical country because a Wagner is born there or a Mozart. No country can be sacred because a Buddha or a Mahavir is born there.

Jesus was not born in India. Mohammed was not born in India. Zarathustra was not born in India.

Lao Tzu was not born in India. Sacred people have been coming to the world in different places.

Places have nothing to do with it – places are just places. Buddha is born, but only one in a million.

And what about the million fools? And if you judge by number, then every country is a foolish country, because it produces millions of fools and rarely a Buddha!

No country is sacred. No geography is sacred. No history is sacred. That quality of sacredness happens only to individuals, because a c.*ountry has no soul to become holy. A country has no individuality, only individuals have souls. And meditation happens in a soul, not in a country. And meditation happens in an individuality, not in a collectivity, not in a society. Remember it. Although every country tries to prove itself the best in some way or other, it is part of the game of ego. Every country thinKs I am incomparable. You can go to any country, and every country thinks deep inside that it is higher than others, holier than others, more moral than others, this and that.

This is part of our egoistic mind which is being projected in the name of the country – sometimes in the name of religion. Every religion thinks This is the highest religion there is: my religion. My religion has to be the highest because it is my religion. And I am the greatest person in the world –

how can it be otherwise?

I have heard about a professor of philosophy who was head of the department of philosophy in the University of Paris. One day he declared ’I am the greatest man in the world.’

His disciples, his students were a little puzzled, because he was a poor professor. First, he was a professor, and then a professor of philosophy – the poorest. They could not believe it, but they had always been thinking that he was a little eccentric, otherwise why should one go and study philosophy? He v. as a little crazy, but that day they thought he had gone completely out of his mind.

What was he saying... that he was the greatest man in the world?

One student, just jokingly, stood up and said ’Sir, can you prove it? We need proof, and we can expect proof from a man like you – a logician, a professor. Have you got any proof for your statement?’

And the professor said ’Yes, I have brought it and he had brought a map of the world.’ He fixed the map of the world on the blackboard. They could not understand what he was going to do with the map of the world. And then by and by they came to understand what he was going to do.

First he said I will ask one question: ’Which is the greatest country in the world?’

They were all French, so naturally they said ’France.’

So he said ’So now, the whole world can be dropped; we can concentrate on France. If I can prove that I am the greatest Frenchman, then I will be proving that I am the greatest man in the world.’

Still they were not certain what he was going to do.

Then he said ’Which is the greatest city in France?’ Naturally, it is Paris, and they were all Parisians.

Now they started suspecting that he had something in it.

And he said ’Paris! And I am the greatest man in Paris. If I can prove this, then my first statement will be proved.’ And then he said ’Which is the greatest place in the city of Paris?’

Naturally, it is the university – the seat of learning, the seat of wisdom, knowledge. Now to everybody it was clear that they were trapped.

And then he said ’Which is the greatest department and the greatest subject in the university? It is philosophy, and they were all students of philosophy. So naturally it is philosophy.’

And then he said ’Who is the head of the department of philosophy?... I am the greatest man in the world.’

That’s how we go on vicariously, indirectly proving that we are the greatest. So our country is the most sacred country, our country is the most brave country, our country is the most intelligent country, our country is the most aesthetic country, and all kinds of things are being claimed. And everybody else is a barbarian, uncivilised. Everybody else is the link between monkey and man.

We are men and everybody else is a link.

It is not only Adolf Hitler’s logic, it is the logic of everybody. And unless this logic is thrown away to the dogs, Adolf Hitlers will go on coming. They use this logic. They say Our race is the Nordic race, the Aryans... the purest blood. And these are all nonsense statements. What do you mean by pure blood? Everybody’s blood is pure – unless you mix something in it; everybody’s blood is pure. What do you mean by pure blood? And what do you mean by pure race? All races have been mixing, and man has been growing by mixing each with the other. And the crossbreed is the stronger breed, because it has more complexity. And growth is from the simple to the complex.

What do you mean by calling a race ’pure’? But these are just egoistic ideas. It appeals, it appeals to people. It gives them a great nourishment; it becomes food for their egos. No country is sacred.

Yes, there have been only few and far in-between individuals: a Buddha, a Christ, a Zarathustra, a Mohammed – they can be counted on one’s fingers. These are sacred people. But they have been coming to every part and place of the world, they have been coming to every poisonous.

Never be trapped by such slogans. These slogans are dangerous, poisonous.

You say: INDIA IS SUCH A SACRED COUNTRY...

It is not, because no country is.

And you say: THE HEART OF SPIRITUALISM.

All nonsense! You cannot find more materialistic a country in the world than India. But you will have to look with open eyes. You will be surprised how this idea that India is the heart of spiritualism is not allowing you to see the reality.

Just another sannyasin has written Osho, I am freaking out that the move to Gujarat is postponed.

Why is she freaking out? – because, she says In Poona it is so difficult to walk on the streets. People look at you with such lustful eyes. One feels embarrassed. They come on bikes and motorbikes and hit you. If they can touch the woman’s body, they will not lose that opportunity. They are crude and ugly. And I can understand the sannyasin’s letter to me.

And you call these people the heart of spiritualism? They are the most sexually-obsessed people in the world. Of course, they are against sex, but that does not make them non-sexual, that makes them sex-obsessed. Their WHOLE MIND IS sex-obsessed! They are continuously thinking of sex...

and they are against it. Because they are against it, they cannot fulfil it; and because they cannot fulfil it, it goes on accumulating and it drives them crazy and perverted. Now, THIS is ugly.

If you love a woman, to hold her hand has a beauty, to caress her body has a beauty. But a woman just walking on the road and you hit her...? It is perversion! It is... Love has gone into a very poisoned and ill state of affairs. It is pathological. It is uncivilised, uncultured. But this goes on happening.

And these people are against materialism.

But don’t just listen to their words, watch their life and you will find them more materialistic than anybody else. Indians are so obsessed with money: money seems to be their god. No other country worships money; in India it is worshipped. They have a special day in the year when they worship notes and rupees – that day is coming closer – Diwali. No country in the world has ever worshipped rupees and money, yet they worship. And this is not just symbolic, this is very indicative.

They cling to money like anything. It is very difficult for them to be non-greedy, to leave a single paise is impossible. And that’s why if somebody renounces a little bit of money, he is thought to be a great man. That too is materialism.

Why? If somebody has renounced money, what is the point in it? Why should he be praised? But he is praised like anything, the whole country will talk about him! He will be thought to be a great man – he has renounced money! Then money must be the greatest value. One becomes great if one renounces money. If people were really spiritual, renouncing money would be that somebody has renounced his mistake, that’s all. There is nothing great in it. Somebody has found that money is valueless, so he has renounced it. But there is nothing to be praised in it; he has corrected his error. He was thinking that two and two are five, now he has come to understand that two and two are four. You don’t go declaring that he has become a Buddha because now he knows two and two are four. Before, he was stupid; now he is normal.

But in India, it is worshipped if you renounce money, because the people know how much they are clinging to money. And you call India the heart of spiritualism?

This is what Indians have been teaching the whole world. Don’t be deceived – this is just advertising.

They go on claiming all over the world that they are the heart, that they have the greatest secrets of spirituality. And they go on exploiting in the name of spirituality. And they can deceive people, and they can deceive only because, particularly in the West, people are no more materialistic.

Let me explain it. In the West there is material affluence. People have much more money, better houses, bigger cars, better bank balances, that is true – but people are not materialistic. They have much material wealth, but that does not mean that they are materialistic. In the East, people are poor, but that does not mean that they are spiritual. Poverty has nothing to do with spirituality. In fact, you can become aware that material wealth has nothing in it only when you have it, not before it.

Psychologists talk about three layers or planes of desires and needs – they call it the hierarchy of needs. The first they call physiological needs, the second psychological needs, the third spiritual needs. And this idea of the hierarchy of needs is very very important.

The first and the basic needs are physiological – food, sex, shelter. If food is not available, you cannot think of poetry. If food is not available, you cannot think of music; a higher need. If sex is not available, you cannot think of love. Love is a higher need; it comes only when sex has become very very satisfied, not before it. When you have food, right shelter, clothes, warmth, and you are not constantly starving yourself and not constantly afraid of tomorrow – tomorrow is coming and you may again be hungry and you may not get bread and butter – then you start thinking of something else: music, poetry, literature, painting. When sex needs are fulfilled love arises; it cannot arise if sex needs are not fulfilled. And in India sex needs are not fulfilled, that’s why people are not loving

– notwith-standing what they pretend. People are not loving because their basic need is not fulfilled: they are sexually starved.

Because the food need is not fulfilled – thousands of people die every year because of starvation, and those who are not dying are undernourished – so they cannot have higher needs, they cannot think of beauty, and they cannot think of stars. And they cannot see dewdrops on the grasses in the morning, and they cannot see the sun rising – that is not possible. The body needs to be completely satisfied. When the body is satisfied, it starts moving into new dimensions: it thinks of higher things, it dreams of higher things.

The second stage is of psychological needs: love, music, art, painting, poetry, sculpture. If your love need is not fulfilled then prayer never arises. That is the third, the highest need. Sex fulfilled...

Love arises; love fulfilled... prayer arises. When physiological needs are fulfilled you start singing and dancing. When the dance need is fulfilled, then arises the need to meditate. When you have heard the outer music, then you want to hear the inner music. When you have known the poetry that is created by words, then you want to know the poetry that is wordless, the poetry that arises in silence. Those are spiritual needs. And there is no way to jump them.

What I am talking about here is the highest need. So it is not accidental that the people from the West are coming to me, and the people of India go on condemning me; it is just natural. I don’t take any offense from it; it is natural, it is how it should be. I am talking of the third need – the spiritual need – and people in India are not even fulfilling their first need. There is no meeting between me and them. I am a stranger here, an outsider. They need food first, they don’t need God at all. God does not make sense. they can’t be interested in music? How can they see the beauty of a solitary tree standing in the field all alone? It is impossible. They are preoccupied with their body needs.

So whatsoever I say is completely incomprehensible to them. They take revenge. They go on criticising. In criticising me they think they have solved the problem; they are deceiving themselves.

They don’t want to see the problem. They don’t want to see that a country can be spiritual only when it has settled as far as materialism is concerned.

Spirituality is a higher stage of materialism.

It is the same search. First you have to seek in matter, then you have to seek in mind. When you don’t find in matter, you start seeking in mind, but the matter has to be searched completely, only then can you rise to the mind. When you search in the mind and you don’t find it – and you have searched the whole realm of the mind – then you start searching in the soul. That’s how it is. And because I call a spade a spade, people don’t like it.

How can they like it? If I say that India is very sexually-obsessed – how can they like it? They like Vivekananda because he says You are the greatest country in the world. You are the most spiritual country in the world. You are the source of all spirituality. You are the source of all wisdom. You are the source which is going to lead the whole world. They feel very good. They can t feel good with me. With Vivekananda they feel good. Vivekananda becomes a hero, because he satisfies their egos. And just because he satisfies their egos, I declare that he is not enlightened, because no enlightened man will ever satisfy anybody’s ego. Because to satisfy anybody’s ego, is really inimical, it is poisoning him.

I say things as they are. I say it is one of the most barbarous countries – ugly, materialistic. money-oriented, sex-obsessed. And I don’t deny that Buddha has been here, Mahavir has been here. They were spiritual people, but they don’t make the whole country spiritual.

If I am here – remember it – some day, after a few centuries, Poona will claim that Poona is spiritual because of me. And I have nothing to dc. with Poona and Poona has nothing to do with me. Just the same was the case with Buddha. India had nothing to do with him. He was alone and solitary, and people were criticising him as cruelly as they are criticising me. They have always done that.

They were throwing stones at Mahavir, they are throwing stones at me. They have always done that.

And not only here. everywhere in the world they have done that. Whenever there is somebody who brings light into the darkness, people feel offended. Because his presence becomes a very very embarrassing phenomenon – he reminds you of your darkness, he reminds you of your ugliness.

Have you not heard about the woman who was against mirrors? Whenever she would come across a mirror, she would immediately throw a stone and break it. Why was she so much against mirrors?

This was her logic: Mirrors are against me, and whenever I come before a mirror, the mirror shows that I am ugly. She was ugly, but she was very much offended by the mirror, because the mirror showed her as ugly. She was throwing the responsibility onto the mirror.

That has always been so. Buddha is a mirror: he reflects whatsoever you are. If you are ugly, he rejects you as ugly. If you are materialistic, he reflects you as materialistic. He simply reflects without changing, without colouring – he simply reflects that which is. Naturally people feel offended, because then their ugliness and all kinds of darknesses and snakes and scorpions moving inside their being are all reflected. They want to throw a stone at the mirror. If the mirror is not there, they will be again at ease.

Hence, they crucified Jesus, and they killed Socrates. This has been their attitude everywhere and always.

You ask me: INDIA IS SUCH A SACRED COUNTRY: THE HEART OF SPIRITUALISM. I DON’T

UNDERSTAND ALL THE CRUDE REMARKS THAT THEY WRITE IN MAGAZINES ABOUT YOU.

They are very very understandable. There is nothing special about them. If they didn’t write those crude remarks about me, that would not be right.

Lao Tzu has said: When I talk about Tao, very few are there who understand it. Those who understand – they become silent. Many are there who feel offended – they become angry. And the angry people there are more of. And Lao Tzu says: If people don’t become angry, then what I am saying is not truth.

One mystic used to stay with me. He was really a beautiful old man, very strange, very eccentric, but always to the point. He used to deliver talks all over the country. He had something to give.

And whenever people applauded he would become very angry. He would say Stop! Don’t applaud, because whenever you applaud, I think I must have said something wrong. If you can understand it, then it must be wrong. When you don’t understand, only then is there a possibility that some truth has been said. And if you become angry, then certainly some truth has been said, then some stone has been thrown into your sleep, and you have become disturbed. Your dreams are disturbed. You are ready to take revenge.

Because I am saying the truth, because I am BEING the truth, it is very natural.

I DON’T UNDERSTAND ALL THE CRUDE REMARKS THAT THEY WRITE IN MAGAZINES ABOUT

YOU.

They should be writing more and more. The more people will be coming to me, the angrier they will become, because the more dangerous I will be to them. And more and more people will be coming; they are on the way. And there will be thousands, many thousands of sannyasins around here. They will become very very angry, because then they will become afraid, more afraid that what I am saying is becoming powerful. They will try everything to destroy what I am saying. They will try in every way to destroy me.

That is natural, there is nothing unexpected in it. And you have to be ready for it: you have to be ready to accept all this. You need not feel offended, this is the way they are showing their respect towards me. When they threw stones at Buddha, they were showing their respect. That was their way of recognising that someone dangerous was present. When they crucified Jesus that was their respect – their way of respecting a man who had brought truth to them. When they poisoned Socrates, that was their humble homage.

So this is going to happen, and this is going to happen more and more. You have to be accepting of it without any anger.

WHY IS INDIA SO IGNORANT IN RECOGNISING YOU?

Because India is very knowledgeable: India thinks it knows already. Every PAN WALA, every CHAI WALA – they all know what truth is. They can quote the Gita and the Vedas, they are like parrots.

India is a country of pundits, parrots. They go on repeating mechanically. And because they think they know, how can they recognise me? Because I am saying things which go against their parrot-like knowledge. I go on saying things which ARE against their so-called knowledge. I am trying to give truth new words, because the old words have become rotten, because the old words have been used so long they have lost intensity. They have lost life, they have become like a dirty currency note. When a currency note comes from the mint it is fresh, clean; when it moves through hands –

from one hand to another – it starts becoming dirty.

Words are also currency. Currency means they go on moving, they are like a current – from one mouth to another mouth the word goes on moving down the centuries. It becomes very dirty. The Vedas have become dirty, so has the Bible. I am trying to renew: I am trying to give new words to old truths, new bottles for the old wine. They cannot recognise the bottle, they don’t know anything about the wine – they have never tasted it. They only know about the old bottle. When they see the new bottle they become angry – This can t be the truth! The truth has to be in the.old bottle. And the old bottle is rotten, maybe broken, and the wine has flowed out of it. It may be just an empty bottle, and they don’t know anything about the wine, they only know about the bottle. So if I give a new bottle, they cannot recognise it. Only those who have tasted wine will recognise me, not otherwise.

You will recognise me because you are tasting with me. You are a part of the feast I am, you are celebrating with me. The more you taste, the more you will know that what I am saying is exactly v hat Jesus said, or Buddha said, or Krishna said. But first you will have to taste me, then that recognition will come. They are too occupied with Krishna’s words and Buddha’s words. Those words are like bottles.

And they cannot come here, they are very much scared, frightened. Maybe they have deep down somewhere a suspicion, Maybe there is truth...? and if they come close they may be converted. That fear, that unconscious fear is there. They go on talking against me and they don’t know anything about me. They go on writing against me and they have never come here. They never listen, they never look into my eyes, they never come close. They go on circulating rumours, and they feed upon each other’s rumours. It is a mutual arrangement. Somebody writes one article in a magazine, somebody else reads it, writes another – basing himself on that article. And it goes on and goes on in this way.

And of course, then they have much material: they have been reflecting each other. And nobody comes to me. But that’s how they have always been doing. They are afraid to come. In fact, they criticise me just to protect themselves. That criticism helps them. Because of the criticism they can think that now there is no need.

But more and more people will be coming to me. Thirsty people, seekers who have nothing to do with Christianity or Hinduism or Mohammedanism – they will be coming to me. I am here only for the seekers not for the mob. And what the mob says is irrelevant. I am here for those who are ready to be transformed and transfigured. And I only want to be for them. I don’t want to waste a single minute on anybody else. And these people are there in the world – many at this moment, because this moment is very critical in the history of man, in the history of human consciousness.

A great jump! Either man dies or man becomes new – that is the only choice. The old man cannot continue. The old man has arranged for his suicide: he is ready to commit global suicide. Either the old mind wins and there will be a global suicide and humanity will disappear from the earth, or the new mind will be born – and that’s w hat the effort here is – and humanity will take a new direction.

The new man will be born.

The new man will not be Indian, and will not be German, and will not be Chinese. The new man will not be Christian, will not be Hindu, will not be Mohammedan. The new man will not be black, will not be white. The new man will not be man, will not be woman. The new man will be a totally different kind of being, with no adjectives around him... a purity, a primal innocence. My work is to give birth to that new man.

And if only a few can be transformed, they will become the heralds. Only a few seeds... if they can grow into the new man, they will create the new humanity. My whole interest is with them and in them. I want to invest my whole energy into those few people who are ready to slip out of the old skin and become new.

The Indians cannot recognise me, the Christians cannot recognise me, the Hindus cannot recognise me. To recognise me they will have to come out of their preoccupations.

Two keen football fans up in London for a big match, decided to spend the evening at a Soho strip-club. The first act was a very voluptuous blonde who went through her whole routine while the whole audience stared open-mouthed. As the curtain came down and the applause rang out, one of the two fans said ’Phooey!’

His companion was surprised, but said nothing. The second act was even more breathtaking but again, when the curtain came down, the first man said ’Phooey!’

This went on all through the show – however beautiful and exotic the girls were, after each act the first man said ’Phooey!’

Finally the second man could stand it no longer.

’What’s the matter with you?’ he said. ’These are some of the most attractive and sexy girls I’ve ever seen – and all you can say is ”Phooey?”’

’I’m not thinking about the girls replied the friend. I’m thinking about my wife!’

Now this is his preoccupation. He is not looking at those girls, he is thinking of his wife. He is not saying Phooey! to these girls. He is saying ’Phooey!’ to his wife again and again. A preoccupied mind never sees that which it is confronting, never sees that which is; it goes on comparing. When an Indian comes, he is not listening to what I am saying, he is comparing in his head – whether it corresponds with the Vedas, whether it follows the Gita, is in harmony with this or that. He is continuously working inside his mind, comparing, judging, condemning, criticising – and he goes on missing. He looks as if he is here, he is not here.

And it is not only a question of Indians. anybody who has come with a fixed mind, will have the same difficulty.

Yoga Prem’s old mother is here. And just the other day somebody said that she went to mass in the church. Here Jesus is being made alive. Here we are living Jesus again, moving with Jesus again, here Jesus is again not a history but a presence. But Yoga Prem’s mother had to go to the church, to mass, to listen to some stupid priest there.

The preoccupied mind! My Christ is not her Christ. My Christ is alien. She wants the Christ who is sold in the church, she wants the old bottle. She must have felt good there, because this must be a strange world to her. These orange people – what are they doing here? There, with the same kind of people, with the same kind of mind, she must have felt good, she must have felt relaxed, at home.

This is how it happens with the preoccupied mind.

The Christian visitor to Jerusalem asked his Israeli host to show him the Wailing Wall. Arriving at the sacred spot, the visitor put on his hat, stood close to the wall, and said ’Thank you, Lord, for all the blessings you have bestowed upon me during my life.’ Then he turned to his Israeli friend and said ’Is that nice?’

That’s nice said the Israeli smiling.

The Christian then turned back to the wall and said ’Please, Lord, keep my family and friends in health and prosperity. Is that nice?’

’That’s nice.’

’And persuade the Israelis to see the error of their ways and to hand back to the Arab nations the land taken from them in the recent conflicts so that there may be peace in the Middle East. Is that nice?’

And the Israeli said ’You’re talking to a wall.’

Question 3

I AM VERY INTERESTED IN THE ’MIRACLES’ OF JESUS, ESPECIALLY HIS HEALINGS AND

HIS RESURRECTION. HE HAS ALSO SAID THAT OTHERS COULD DO THE SAME. IS THIS

POSSIBLE? IF SO, HOW? AND IS IT NECESSARY FOR THE PHYSICAL BODY TO DIE BEFORE

ONE LEARNS HOW TO MANIFEST AND DE-MANIFEST AT WILL?

I HAVE REBIRTHER FRIENDS WHO HAVE DEVELOPED SOME ’POWERS’: TELEPORTATION, ASTRAL DOUBLE, TRANSFORMING ONE’S BODY FORM AND FUNCTIONS. IS IT DANGEROUS

FOR THEM TO BE DEVELOPING THESE ’POWERS’ BEFORE BEING FULLY REALISED? THEY

SAY IT’S EASY. YOU JUST HAVE TO BELIEVE YOU CAN DO IT.

HOW DOES ONE PROTECT ONESELF FROM NEGATIVE GROUP THOUGHT FORMS? FOR

EXAMPLE ’DON’T DRINK THE WATER OR YOU’LL GET AMOEBAS’ OR ’EVERYONE GETS

SICK IN POONA.’ IT SEEMS TO BE TRUE. I HAD NOT BEEN SICK FOR TWO YEARS BEFORE

COMING HERE, AND HAD LEARNED TO HEAL MYSELF. YET HERE I FEEL THE GROUP

CONSCIOUS OR UNCONSCIOUS NEGATIVITY WEIGHING ME DOWN. I TOO AM SICK AND

I DON’T LIKE IT VERY MUCH.

WHAT I DON’T LIKE IS FEELING THE EFFECT OF THE GROUP MIND AND UNABLE TO

MAINTAIN MY SPACE. PLEASE DISCUSS. IT HAS ALWAYS SEEMED TO ME THAT BELIEFS

ARE MORE CONTAGIOUS THAN ’GERMS’ OR ’INFECTIONS’..

The question is from Ma Prem Mantra.

A few things... First: Mantra must be very much afraid of death – that’s why the interest in resurrection. It has nothing to ,do with Jesus and his resurrection, it has something to do with your deep fear of death.

The interest IN THE ’MIRACLES’ OF JESUS, ESPECIALLY HIS HEALINGS AND HIS

RESURRECTION... Mantra must be very much afraid of death and illness.

This interest arises because of that fear, otherwise who bothers? If you are not afraid of death, who bothers about resurrection? It is fear. In fact, if it is proved absolutely that there had been no resurrection in Jesus’ life, ninety-nine per cent of Christians will drop being Christian, because then what is the point? They have been hanging around this person with the idea that he knows the secret of resurrecting himself, somehow he will impart his secrets and keys to them. Or maybe, if he does not show the art, at least he can do the miracles for them; he can save them. It is fear of death.

If it is proved absolutely that Jesus never did any healing miracles, then you will not find many Christians in the world; they will disappear. They are not interested in Jesus at all. Their whole interest is in how to protect themselves from illness, and finally, from death.

Mantra, rather than thinking of resurrection and healing miracles, go deep inside yourself and look into your fear of death. There is no resurrection, but if you go deep into your fear of death, it disappears. And with the fear of death, death disappears. Then you know you are eternal life. There is no resurrection. Resurrection is possible only if first you DIE! You never die. Nobody has ever died. Death is a myth!

The word myth comes from a Sanskrit root MITHYA. MITHYA means false. Death is a falsity. Death has never happened – never is going to happen. It cannot happen in the very case. Life is eternal, only forms change. You die here, your flame disappears in this body. and it becomes embodied in some other body, you are born in some other womb. And so on and so forth. And even when there is no more birth, you disappear into God. But life lives.

And when I am saying life lives, I don’t mean Mantra lives, no. Mantra is a form. You are a form.

The form is not eternal. The form is going down the drain. Even while you are alive you will change your form a thousand and one times. If somebody brings a picture of you – of the first day when you were born – will you be able to recognise that this IS YOUR picture? One day that was your form.

Now you are seventy years old, you cannot recognise it. But maybe the first day’s picture can even have some resemblance.

But what about when you were in your mother’s womb? If a picture could have been taken, the first day you entered the mother’s womb, would you be able to recognise that small cell? It will not have your face, it will not have your nose, it will not have any visible mark; it will just be a small life cell.

It was you Then during those nine months. your form goes on changing, changing, changing. And then your whole life the form goes on changing.

Form is a flux. You never die! Form dies every clay. But the problem arises because you have become too identified with the form. You think I am the form. You think I am this body. Then the fear of death arises.

You need not learn the art of resurrection. You have simply to learn that death does not exist; there is no need to resurrect because you cannot die in the first place! Rather than being intrigued by Jesus miracles, perform a miracle, Mantra: go into yourself. That is the only miracle. Go into your fear of death, and go on deeper into it, and see WHERE it is, WHAT it is. Watch it.

And don’t rationalise, and don’t bring theories borrowed from the outside to console yourself. Don’t say that soul is eternal, no; you don’t know yet. I am saying it is eternal, but that is not your knowledge. Don’t make it your consolation.

You have to go trembling, you have to go with fear, you have to descend the staircase of death. You have to go to the very end. You have to see the whole possibility of death – what it is. In that very seeing you will be surprised that you are not it. You are not the body, you are not even the mind.

You are just pure life energy, you are a witness. In that witnessing is the real miracle.

You say: I AM VERY INTERESTED IN THE ’MIRACLES’ OF JESUS, ESPECIALLY HIS HEALINGS

AND HIS RESURRECTION.

You are not interested in Jesus at all. If you are interested in his miracles of healing and resurrection that is a wrong kind of interest. And because of that, Jesus religion died very early. It really was a miscarriage.

Buddha still lives far more penetratingly in human consciousness because he never did anything like miracles. So only the people who were REALLY interested in inquiry came to him. Jesus attracted wrong people; wrong people came around him, and then Christianity made its base on his miracles.

And I don’t think that he ever did any miracles.

He did miracles which are far-penetrating, but they are totally different from what you have heard.

Yes, he healed the eyes, but not the physical eyes; he healed the inner eyes. Yes, he made people listen who were deaf, but that has nothing to do with your physical deafness. All are deaf, and all are blind. And he touched people’s eyes and their ears and opened them. And all are dead! – because you are identified with the body, which is death. You are identified with the form, which is death. Yes, he helped many people to come out of death.

That is the meaning of the story of Lazarus. He called forth Lazarus, Come out! On the ordinary plane it seems that he called him from his grave. On the higher plane it means that he called him from his body – the body is your grave. He made him aware that he is consciousness not the body.

That is the real miracle! But somehow the followers of Jesus got mixed up.

That’s why I say again and again he was not as fortunate as Buddha, because he didn’t get the right kind of following – and much depends on followers. A single wrong follower and he can destroy, can change the whole story, can interpret the whole story in a wrong way.

When Buddha died, his disciples gathered together to write down whatsoever he had said. Now there were millions of stories because everybody was relating in his own way. How to decide? And all these people were eye-witnesses and very cultured people, sophisticated people. And they were saying different things, contradictory to each other. Then it was decided that only those few disciples who had become enlightened in Buddha’s days should be listened to. Even one of the most intimate followers, Ananda, was not allowed because he had not yet become enlightened. He was the MOST

intimate disciple.

He lived with Buddha for forty years, day in, day out, year in, year out. Not for a single day was he away from Buddha. For forty years he slept in Buddha’s room. He took every care of Buddha. He should be relied upon. Whatsoever he says should be the most authentic, because he had listened to everything that Buddha said in those forty years after his enlightenment. Not a single word has he missed, and he was very sophisticated, cultured – had a beautiful memory, one of the most miraculous memories. He could repeat things word by word. But even he was not allowed. He cried, he wept, he said What are you doing? I was the most intimate. You people have lived for a few days with Buddha – somebody for a few months; I have lived for forty years. And not only during the day, but at night too. And we had many conversations which nobody has ever heard. I know much more than anybody else!’

And they said, ’That’s true, but you are not enlightened yet.

You can be dangerous.

Your

unenlightened mind can pollute the whole message. You may put something into it, you may delete something from it, and that will be uncon-scious! Not that you will be doing it; it will happen automatically because of your unconsciousness. And because of your unconsciousness you may emphasise something that looks more important. You may forget something or may not emphasise something which was more important or would have been more important if you were enlightened.

the emphasis will be different. You will underline different things than an enlightened person would.

You cannot be allowed.’

Five hundred disciples who had become enlightened in Buddha’s days – whose enlightenment was declared by Buddha himself – only they were allowed. Buddhist scriptures are the most authentic.

And Ananda was sitting outside the door crying. After twenty-four hours he was allowed. What happened?

In those twenty-four hours for the first time, the last barrier that had remained in him broke. That was a barrier that had persisted for forty-two years. He was a cousin-brother to Buddha, and an ELDER cousin-brother. When he had come to be initiated by Buddha – he was elder and, in India, traditionally the elder brother can command the younger brother – he said to Buddha ’Before I am initiated by you, let me command you three things. I am your elder brother. Once I am initiated, I will be a disciple, then whatsoever you say I will have to follow. But I am not yet your disciple, I am your elder brother. Promise me these three things, then initiate me.’

Buddha said ’What are those three things?’

’First’ he said ’I will live with you twenty-four hours a day for ever. You will not be able to say ”Ananda, you go somewhere, or you do something.” I will follow you like a shadow. Promise?’ And Buddha promised. Of course when an elder brother asks such a thing, how can he deny him? He said ’Okay.

What is your second?’

And he said ’Even in the middle of night, if I bring somebody inside, you will have to give an appointment – you cannot say no to me. I will have the sole right. Anybody, if I feel that he needs you, and needs you immediately... I will have the sole right. I will decide it.’

Buddha said ’Okay. And what is your third?’

And he said ’My third is that whatsoever I ask you will have to answer. You cannot postpone, you cannot say ”Later on”, or ”After some days”. You will have to answer it immediately.’

Buddha promised these three things. Ananda became his disciple, but that ego remained: ’I am the elder brother, I am the most close, I am the only one who sleeps in the Buddha’s room, I am the only one who can ask any question and Buddha has to answer. That ego remained. Otherwise he became surrendered, but that ego remained.

When the conference of the monks did not allow him in, it was so painful to him, it was so wounding...

it hurt, and he cried and wept outside. And then he became aware that because of this small ego, subtle ego, many more came to Buddha and became enlightened and he didn’t become. In that awareness that ego melted. And you will be surprised that when Ananda became enlightened, the whole conference inside – five hundred monks – immediately felt it. They said ’Open the door.

Ananda is no more the same person. Bring him in.’

Jesus was not so fortunate.

His disciples were ordinary in a sense.

Not a single one was

enlightened, so whatsoever they wrote was from the unenlightened standpoint. So the real meanings got lost and unreal meanings got imposed. The miracle of giving eyes to a spiritually blind man became a miracle of giving eyes to a blind man. Healing a person from the illness called ’this world’

became an ordinary healing of a person from tuberculosis or something like that. Making a person really alive for the first time – and he was dead up to now – became an ordinary miracle of giving life to a dead man.

Mantra, don’t be interested wrongly. Your interest is wrong.

Second: HE HAS ALSO SAID THAT OTHERS COULD DO THE SAME. IS THIS POSSIBLE? IF

SO, HOW? AND IS IT NECESSARY FOR THE PHYSICAL BODY TO DIE BEFORE ONE LEARNS

HOW TO MANIFEST AND DE-MANIFEST AT WILL?

Will is the source of ego. Let it be understood deeply. ALL is possible if the will is dissolved into God’s will. ALL IS possible – with no conditions. But if you want to do it AT WILL, then you will become more and more egoistic. And that’s what happens. People who can do a few things, which are not of any significance, become very egoistic because THEY can do them. All these so-called SIDDHIS

and miraculous powers just enhance your ego and ARE AGAINST spiritual growth. Beware of them.

These things can be done! Mind has great powers, but to use the powers of the mind is to prevent yourself from going higher than the mind. You will get stuck there. A few people are stuck in the world – in the world also there are many powers. A politician has great power, a man who has money has great power. A few people are lost in worldly powers: those powers belong to the body level. Then a few people are lost in mental powers. Then you can have clairaudience, telepathy –

things like that – mind reading. But you will be lost, you will never move beyond that.

Get out of the world, and get out of the mind too!

And whenever you develop something, it becomes difficult to drop it. Yes! When you become spiritual, all powers become available to you: of the body, of the mind. But then who uses them? It is so stupid then to use them. It is so meaningless, it is so childish.

These powers can be developed, these mind powers. And two are the ways: either you develop imagination or you develop will, then you can develop these powers. These are the two ways – both are dangerous.

If you develop the power of imagination, it is a double-edged sword. For example, that’s what has happened to Mantra. She says she was not ill for two years, and she was powerful enough. Then what happened? She came here, and she heard these things. Imagination can work both ways: it can make you healthy, it can make you ill. If your imagination gets the idea ’I am healthy’, then you will feel healthy. If the imagination gets the idea that you are ill, you will become ill. Beware of imagination, it is dangerous because it carries the opposite in it.

Or, there is some possibility to develop will – that is developing your ego. That is far more dangerous than imagination, because the more the ego becomes crystallised, the less is the possibility to go beyond. You will be confined.

Imagination is like this:

The team that wins the Football League Cup usually has quite a celebration afterwards. The morning after such a night before, one member of the winning team woke to find himself in a hospital bed, heavily bandaged, with one of his team-mates sitting beside him.

’What happened?’ he asked groggily.

’Well, it was at the reception last night – don’t you remember?’ said his mate. ’After your seventeenth or eighteenth pint, you went over to the window and said you were going to fly round the hotel and land on the roof.’

’Why on earth didn’t you try and stop me?’ said the man in the bed.

’Last night I thought you could do it!’ replied his friend.

He must have taken at least sixteen pints himself.

Imagination can create many things. And you can live in imagination, and in your imagination you will feel that it is happening. And it happens too! If there is no doubt inside you, imagination is a great force. It can create a dream almost as real as possible. That’s what is happening to LSD

people.

Karl Marx has said ’Religion is the opiate of the people.’ Timothy Leary says ’Opium is the religion of the people.’ And I say to you: Religion is religion, opium is opium! Neither religion is opium nor opium is religion.

That’s what you are enjoying when you are on an acid trip. Then you are full of imagination – there is no bondage to your imagination. Then you live in a totally separate reality, the reality that Castaneda talks about; it is out of drugs. And in the East people have done it long. In the Vedas they talk about SOMA – it was their LSD. And then down the ages in the East, people have tried all kinds of things

– marijuana, opium and others, mushrooms. Now in the West, the idea is-catching hold of people’s imagination. Beware of imagination. Imagination cannot help, it can only give you beautiful dreams; but they ARE dreams. When they are there they look very real. When they are gone you are lost into darkness.

You-can create these imaginations without drugs, too. Through certain breathing exercises, you can create them, because breathing can change your inner chemistry. Through certain yoga exercises you can change your inner chemistry. Through fasting you can change your chemistry. But by changing your chemistry you are not changing your soul.

Or you can create great friction. Through friction, ego is created, will is created. You can start fighting with something.

For example, a man decides that he will not sleep for one year. Now there is going to be great friction. Every night he will have to fight hard. After a few nights, even in the day it will be difficult for him – a continuous fight will be there. And if he goes on fighting, goes on fighting, it is a friction, a struggle. And if he goes on keeping himself alert, a moment comes when the body surrenders. Then he can be awake and sleep will not come any more. With this he will become very very WILLFUL.

Now he can do many things.

He can say to somebody ’You will die tomorrow!’ And just his assertion will have so much will, it will go like a dagger and will kill the man. Or, he can be helpful also. Somebody is ill, and he can say

’You are cured!’ And when he is saying ’You are cured’ he is total; there is no doubt in him. Because there is no doubt in him, he creates a pulsation in the other person of trust, of no doubt that he will be cured.

This man can be helpful, can be dangerous – to others. But to himself he is always dangerous. To others it is possible, helpful or dangerous. But to himself he is always dangerous, because now he is caught in a will. The will has become very strong – now he cannot get out of it, now he cannot surrender it. And now there is much investment in it too. He has worked for it for so long, how can he surrender it? And there is always a possibility when you have power to misuse it.

Power corrupts, not only political power, but the so-called psychic power also corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

So this is my suggestion to you: Rather than thinking of resurrection, powers, miracles, will – think, meditate more about what this life is. Go into it, otherwise you will be moving in a wrong direction.

You will be gathering junk and you will be throwing away real diamonds.

Meditate on this small anecdote:.

A young American entered a railway compartment on a British Rail train, to discover that all the seats were occupied, including one on which was seated a small Pekinese dog. To its owner, a middle-aged lady wearing a large flowered hat, he said politely ’Excuse me, Ma’am, but may I sit down?’ She said nothing, but merely sniffed and turned over the pages of her Illustrated London News.

Again he said ’Excuse me, Ma’am, but may I have this seat please?’ And again she ignored him.

For a third time the young American said ’Ma’am, would you please remove your dog so that I may sit down?’

And for the third time the snooty matron utterly ignored him, so he opened a window, picked up the dog, hurled it out and then sat down on the empty seat.

There was stunned silence, and then an Englishman sitting opposite said ’You know, you Yanks are the strangest people. You drive on the wrong side of the road, you eat with your fork in the wrong hand, and now you have just thrown the wrong bitch out of the window.’

CHAPTER 3

To the New as the New

2 November 1977 am in Buddha Hall

MARK 9

33. AND HE CAME TO CAPERNAUM: AND BEING IN THE HOUSE HE ASKED THEM, WHAT

WAS IT THAT YE DISPUTED AMONG YOURSELVES BY THE WAY?

34.

BUT THEY HELD THEIR PEACE: FOR BY THE WAY THEY HAD DISPUTED AMONG

THEMSELVES, WHO SHOULD BE THE GREATEST.

35. AND HE SAT DOWN, AND CALLED THE TWELVE, AND SAITH UNTO THEM, IF ANY MAN

DESIRE TO BE FIRST, THE SAME SHALL BE LAST OF ALL, AND SERVANT OF ALL.

36. AND HE TOOK A CHILD, AND SET HIM IN THE MIDST OF THEM, AND WHEN HE HAD

TAKEN HIM IN HIS ARMS, HE SAID UNTO THEM,

37. WHOSOEVER SHALL RECEIVE ONE OF THESE CHILDREN IN MY NAME, RECEIVETH ME: AND WHOSOEVER SHALL RECEIVE ME, RECEIVETH NOT ME, BUT HIM THAT SENT ME.

JOHN 8

52. THEN SAID THE JEWS UNTO HIM,

53.

ART THOU GREATER THAN OUR FATHER ABRAHAM, WHICH IS DEAD? AND THE

PROPHETS ARE DEAD: WHOM MAKEST THOU THYSELF?

54. JESUS ANSWERED,

56. YOUR FATHER ABRAHAM REJOICED TO SEE MY DAY: AND HE SAW IT, AND WAS GLAD.

57. THEN SAID THE JEWS UNTO HIM, THOU ART NOT YET FIFTY YEARS OLD, AND HAST

THOU SEEN ABRAHAM?

58. JESUS SAID UNTO THEM; VERILY, VERILY, I SAY UNTO YOU, BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM.

The ego is subtle, its ways are subtle, its working is very complex. It is a puzzle, and a puzzle that cannot be solved – that can only be seen through and through, but cannot be solved. There is no solution for it, because the puzzle is not anything accidental to the ego. Ego itself is the puzzle. If it were accidental, then there would be a way to solve it. Ego itself is the puzzle, it is its nature to be puzzling. So all the efforts that are made to solve it make it more complex, make it more difficult.

If you fight with it, you are fighting with yourself. There can never be any victory, you cannot defeat it by fighting. Because by fighting you will be dividing yourself into two – the fighter and the fought.

And from where will you bring the fought? It will be just ego dividing into two parts, playing the game of fight. Sometimes one part can pretend to win, sometimes the other part can pretend to win, nobody ever wins. The struggle becomes infinite and meanwhile energy is dissipated, meanwhile life is wasted. Remember, you cannot fight the ego.

Can you repress it? People have done that too. It has not helped. If you repress the ego, it goes deeper into your being. Rather than getting rid of it, you become more and more poisoned by it, because what will you do when you repress? You will force it into the unconscious; it will start going underground. But the Unconscious is far more powerful than the conscious. Ego in the conscious has not much power. Once it enters into the unconscious it becomes nine times more powerful than it was before. Rather than getting rid of it, you will be more and more in its control. And one thing more: once the ego has become unconscious, you don’t know anything about it. It has gone behind you. Now you cannot even watch it. Now you are completely a victim. Now you cannot protect yourself against it. Now you cannot make any arrangements to save yourself from it. It is there pulling your strings from behind. You will become a puppet, and you will be in the hands of the ego.

And you were thinking that you had repressed it. Fight does not help, repression does not help.

The the third thing that has been tried down the ages is sublimation. Sublimate it – let it be identified with higher goals. Then it becomes very decorated, it becomes enthroned. And naturally it again becomes very powerful. Identify it with your church, identify it with your country, identify it with your colour, identify it with ideology – socialism, communism, fascism, Christianity, Hinduism. Identify it with some high value, some utopian value, or you can even identify it with God. Then it rules suprememost. Then it rules in the name of God. God is just an excuse. The real sovereign becomes the ego. And these are the three available ways: either fight or repress or sublimate. And nothing helps. Nothing can help because by its very nature the ego is such that solutions are not possible.

I have heard...

A mother is standing in a toy shop, and she says ’Isn’t this a rather complicated toy for a small child?’

The toy salesman says ’This, Madam, is an educational toy, specially designed to adjust a child to live in the world of today: no matter which way he puts it together, it’s always wrong.’

And that’s how the ego is. No way will ever bring you out of it. There is no remedy. To see it is to be on the right path. To see the complexity, the riddling nature of the ego, the puzzling nature of the ego, to comprehend it in its totality, is the beginning of wisdom. Otherwise it will come, and it will come in more subtle forms, and you will be deceived far more deeply.

The religious, the so-called religious person is deceived by it, because it comes hiding behind religious curtains. Sometimes it becomes humbleness, sometimes it becomes humility. Sometimes it can even pretend egolessness: it can say ’I am absolutely egoless.’ And it is there, and now it has protected itself perfectly. You will not even suspect its existence. Watch the so-called religious people, and you will see a great game of the ego. The ego is there. It has become pious. But when the ego becomes pious it becomes more poisonous. It is pious poison. It corrupts you deeply.

The ordinary gross ego is not such a big problem. You can see it, it is there. Even the person who is its victim knows it is there – the disease is known. But when it becomes pious, takes religious garb, then even the victim is unaware. He lives in its imprisonment and thinks that he is free.

Start finding a remedy and you will be in more and more trouble. Why? – because most remedies are imposed. Why most? ALL remedies are imposed. You find them from somewhere outside, you find the clues from somebody else.

You see a Buddha. He looks so humble – he is. His humbleness is there. You see his face, his simplicity, his utter innocence, and a clue is found – maybe this is the way to get rid of the ego.

This is not the way! It is a consequence, something has happened in him which has made him egoless. You cannot copy his behaviour and become egoless. Copying the behaviour will simply make you a carbon copy. The ego will not disappear. You can eat the same food Buddha takes; you can walk the same way Buddha walks; you can imitate him perfectly. You can become very skillful in imitation, and still the ego will be there, because there is no way to see what has happened in Buddha’s innermost core. All that you can watch is behaviour, That’s why a certain school of psychologists, the behaviourists, go on saying that there is no soul in man; man is only behaviour. They are following a certain logic. The logic is that only the behaviour can be watched, observed. The soul has never been watched, never has been observed; nobody has seen it! Then how to accept that it exists? Anything that exists must be seen. Only that which is seen exists. Have you ever seen anybody’s soul? All that you see is his behaviour, and still you know that your behaviour is not you.

But that is inner, an introspection. Inside you know ’My behaviour is not me’ because many times the behaviour is there, and you are totally different from the behaviour. You see a man coming to your house and you smile, and you know that you are not smiling. That smile is false, just polite, just part of etiquette. You have to smile, so you smile – but deep down there is no smile. Now from the outside you are smiling: that is your behaviour; the behaviourist is finished there. But from the inner you are not smiling at all: that is your soul, that is you, the more real you, not just a show, but authentically you. You go on doing a thousand and one things on the outside, and the inside may be different, may be far more different, may even be the polar opposite to your behaviour.

But this is introspection, it cannot be an objective observation.

You look at the Buddha, you watch his behaviour. From his behaviour you start taking cues. You see Jesus, you watch, you start taking notes in your mind: This is the way to sit, this is the way to stand, this is the way to walk, this is the way to sleep and eat... and these are the things to eat. This is how Jesus prays – on his knees – so you kneel down. These are the words that Jesus speaks when he prays. He looks at the sky and says ’Father, ABBA. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done...’

And you say ’So I know prayer.’ You can kneel down... Millions of people kneel down every morning, every night all around the globe, and they repeat the same words that Jesus said ’ABBA, give us our daily bread.’ And they go on repeating, and nothing happens. Millions of people who pray are simply wasting their time, because it is pretension, it is not prayer. They have learned a behaviour, but their soul is not in prayer. And the question is not HOW to pray, the question is not WHAT to pray.

Just the other night Gramya was telling me that since she has become a sannyasin, she does not know whom she is praying to, but the prayer is there. Now she was a little puzzled. She asked me

’... whether I am praying to God, or I am praying to you, Osho, or to whom? I don’t know anything about God now.’ And I told her ’This is a far better prayer – vague, cloudy, but more alive.’

Now the prayer is not addressed to anybody in particular. It is not even addressed to God, so how can it be addressed to the Christian God? It is unaddressed. It is simply an overflow of joy, thankfulness, gratitude – gratitude to the whole, to the total. It is a kind of thankfulness. Now it will not matter much what words you use, or whether you use words at all. Silence will do, sometimes gibberish will do – what Christians call ’talking in tongues’ – that will do. That will be far better.

Sometimes just enjoying sounds like a small child – ’ga ga’ – that will do.

The whole question is of the prayerful attitude, the inner quality of prayer, that you are surrendered, that you are no more separate from the whole. Now this remedy cannot be imposed from the outside, otherwise you will be simply doing empty postures, empty gestures – perfect from the outside and not at all breathing from the inside, not at all vital and alive.

Prayer is a state, not a ritual. Prayer is a state of inner silence, humbleness, love, gratitude, surrender, let-go. It has nothing to do with the outer formulations of it. But all remedies come from the outside. And people go on changing remedies. One fails, they immediately jump to another; that fails, they go on – from one guru to another guru, from one remedy to another remedy, from one scripture to another scripture, from one temple to another temple – they go on and on. And not seeing real fact: that no remedy is possible, that no remedy exists, that to search for the remedy is to search in vain. And why? – because remedies are imposed from the outside either by somebody else or by yourself. And whatsoever is imposed from the outside is an intrusion, interference on your natural being – intrusion on your natural self. They are manipulations. That creates three selves where previously there was only one self. Previously there was only one ego. If you use some remedy, there will be three egos. You have multiplied the problem, you have made it more difficult.

Now it will be far more impossible for you to get out of it. And if you bring another remedy, you will have nine egos instead of three. Each remedy will bring three egos instead of one.

People have used many remedies, and they have become many egos. Mahavir has used the right word for it. He calls man BAHUCHITTAVAN – polypsychic; man is not one mind but many minds. And that is the research of the modern psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, psychologist, too. Man is polypsychic. It is not one ego that you are carrying inside, you are carrying many egos. Egos upon egos – they are standing in a queue, they are surrounding you from every side, they are like a crowd. You are lost in the crowd, you don’t know who you are, because there are so many pretenders around you who say ’This is you. I am you. Where are you looking? I am your self.’

Every desire, every fragment of your mind claims to be the master, and that’s how your slavery is created.

Each remedy brings three egos into your being instead of one. How does it happen? In accepting a remedy you become the one who you are plus the one who is helping you become other than the one who you are, plus the one who you hope to become. The one that you were, now the goal that you-want to become egoless, and the remedy, the help that you are using to try and pull yourself towards the goal: you are divided in three. And this division is not going to help, it will confuse you, it will make you more and more dull, insensitive, insane, neurotic, schizophrenic.

The remedy proves far more dangerous than the disease itself.

So the first thing to be understood: the ego is the basic problem that anybody who is searching for his real self has to face. Now it cannot be countered by anything outside. No remedy is going to help, no medicine is going to help, no method is going to help. Then isn’t there any way to get out of it?

There is a way, but it cannot be imposed from the outside. And the way is not like a remedy, the way is clarity, transparency, to look through and through, to watch how the ego functions, to see its subtle games. You throw it out from the front door and it has come back from the back door.

You throw it from one side, it starts imposing itself from another side. You think you have got rid of it, suddenly you find it is there sitting inside. So without any condemnation, the ego has to be looked into through and through, with no idea that you want to drop it. That conclusion will be a hindrance. That conclusion means you have decided before you have looked into it. So go into the ego with no conclusion, with no idea of what you want to do: with just one idea – that you would like to understand this mystery of the ego, what it is. All the religions say it is the hindrance, all the great Masters say it has to be got rid of, all the mystics say nothing is barring your path except your ego.

But you don’t know what this ego is.

So, first thing: go innocently into it. Just watch its ways; its ways are very mechanical. The first thing that you will come across is its mechanicalness. The ego is not an organic whole, it is mechanical because it consists of the dead past. Your ego consists of your past. And if sometimes your ego thinks of the future, that too is nothing but the projection of the past and from the past – maybe a little modified, sophisticated, decorated, but it is the same thing. You desire the same pleasures that you have had in the past. Of course you hope to make them a little better. Your past goes on projecting itself into the future, and the past is dead, the past is just memory – and that’s all that ego consists of.

So the first experience, if you go into the ego without ally conclusion, will be this: you will be able to see that it is mechanical. And you are an organic unity! You are an alive phenomenon and ego is dead, and the dead is ruling the alive. That’s why people look so heavy, dragging. Their life seems to be nothing but a long story of boredom, monotony. It is not the quality of life – boredom is not the quality of life – boredom is there because life is too burdened by death, life is too burdened by the dead. And the grave goes on becoming bigger and bigger, and life is encroached from every side.

The first experience, and a great revealing experience it is, is to see that ego is your past, it is not your present. Ego is never found in the present. If you go into it you will be surprised. Right at this moment, if you go into yourself, you will not find any ego. And if you do find, they will just be fragments from the past floating in the present consciousness. The present consciousness is always egoless, and THAT IS your reality. But the pact consciousness, which is not consciousness at all but memory, is dead – and that’s what your ego consists of. Your nation, your family, your education, your experiences, your certificates – all that is no more there. It has gone down the drain, it exists not, but it goes on influencing your mind. It can destroy your whole life.

I have heard a future story:

Male Robot: ’Hello I64259.’

Female Robot: ’You can call me I64 if you like. I’m sorry I’m a bit late but I was screwing on a new face.’

Male Robot: ’That’s A OK, I was a bit late too. I blew a sprocket.’

Female Robot: ’How nasty!’

Male Robot: ’Might have been worse... I thought my big end had gone. My own fault, though. I went out last night and got oiled.’

Female Robot: ’Still you’d better go down to the garage for a check-up. You might have a dirty sparking plug. I’ve some trouble too... My employers programmed me to do the wages but I gave out the horse racing results... I’ve got a new operator now.’

Male Robot: ’Was the other one sacked?’

Female Robot: ’No, retired on his winnings. Hope it doesn’t happen again.’

Male Robot: ’I expect one of your woggles worked loose. And talking about woggles, what’s this about your sister?’

Female Robot: ’We don’t talk about her. She’s eloped with a petrol pump.’

Male Robot: ’That’s the spirit. Not as bad as my brother, though. He fell in love with a robot with three eyes. We didn’t have the heart to tell him it was a traffic light. Eventually she blew a fuse, and he did not know whether to stop or to go. Actually now we’re alone, I’ve got a present for you.’

Female Robot: ’It’s wonderful; what is it?’

Male Robot: ’I bought it at the geiger counter.’

Female Robot: ’But what is it?’

Male Robot: ’A geiger counter. It comes in useful if you go geiger hunting. They say it’s made especially for girls. It’s a girl geiger!’

Female Robot: ’Qh you’re so wonderful, so magnetic.’

Male Robot: ’You’re only saying that because you’re attracted to me! Let’s run away and get married.’

Female Robot: ’But I’ve had my heart broken before. Look, you can see where it’s been soldered.’

Male Robot: ’But this time it will be different.’

Female Robot: ’How do you know?’

Male Robot: ’I can feel it in my transistors.’

So they were joined together in welded bliss and lived mechanically ever after.

This is a future story, but the past also and the present too. This is your story. This is the story of the ego, the mechanical robot-like thing that has overpowered you. You are not alive, or only so-so alive in a lukewarm way, because the ego does not allow you to be alive. It goes on pulling you towards the past.

And remember, the past is growing bigger every day, because every moment that passes becomes the past. So the ego goes on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. The child has a smaller ego, the old man has a bigger ego, and that’s the difference between a child and an old man. The child is closer to God, the old man is far away. And if he wants to be closer to God, the old man will have to become a child again.

Why does Jesus say again and again ’Unless you are like a child, you will not enter into my kingdom of God.’ Why?

He is saying that unless you become alive again like a child, which has no past... A ’child’ means one who has no past: an ’old man’ means one who has nothing but the past. The more you Oh old, the more the past goes on becoming bigger and bigger and the future starts disappearing. The child has future, the old man has past; the child thinks of the future, the old man simply remembers his past, goes into the nostalgia of the past. He always remembers how things were in ’the good old days’ and always goes on fantasising that his past was tremendously beautiful. It is more or less imagination, consolation.

As you become older you will be getting more and more burdened by the past and then, even before death happens, you are dead. Those who know say people die nearabout thirty, then they are buried nearabout seventy. For forty years they live a dead life. The hippies are right when they say ’Don’t trust a man above thirty.’ There is some truth in it, because the man who is above thirty is less and less alive. His investment is more in the dead past. He is no more a rebel, he is no more free, he is no more responding to the present. His spontaneity has gone; everything has become fixed. He has become very knowledgeable. He goes on repeating his knowledge, and he goes on behaving in the past old ways which are not in context at all, which are not relevant. But he goes on. And nothing works in his life, because nothing can work.

Each moment life is new and you have to respond from your inner newness, you have to be available TO the new AS the new. And you have to respond, not out of your knowledge, but out of your present awareness. Only then life works, otherwise life stops working. If your life is not working, remember, it is the ego that is hindering, the mechanical has encroached upon the organic. To be free from the mechanical is to be in God, because it is to be in the organic unity of existence.

What has to be done? You have to watch, you have to learn the ways of the ego. Walking on the road, watch how the ego comes in. Somebody insults you, watch – don’t miss that opportunity –

how the ego raises its head, how the ego swells up suddenly. Somebody praises you, see how you become like a balloon and you go on becoming bigger and bigger and bigger. Just go on watching, in different situations, in different moments, what happens to your ego. And there is no hurry to conclude. It is a complicated matter, it is one of the greatest problems – the greatest in fact, because if it is solved, God is available immediately. That very moment you are in God and God is in you.

So it is a serious problem, and you cannot be in a hurry. You have to go very slowly, very carefully, so that nothing is missed. Just for a few months watch your ego, and you will be surprised. You will be surprised that the ego can control you only if you are not aware of it. The moment you become aware of a certain functioning of the ego, that function disappears. Just by sheer awareness that functioning disappears. Wherever you put your light of consciousness, ego disappears. Then you have got the real key. Now go on bringing more and more light to your ego-functioning, and one day you will see it has disappeared from everywhere. You have not repressed it, so it cannot bubble up again. You have not been fighting with it, not at all, so you are not giving any energy to it. In fight you give energy. You have not been sublimating it; you were not making a divine ego. You have not done anything with it, you were simply watching. Watching is not a doing. And the miracle is that by non-doing, the ego disappears.

In fact, to say it disappears is not right. I have to use language, so many times I have to use incorrect expressions because they are prevalent and there is no other language. When I say it ’disappears’, I mean it is not found. It was never there, it was invented. It was just our ignorance, it was just our unawareness that had allowed it to exist.

Now the sutras:

AND HE CAME TO CAPERNAUM: AND BEING IN THE HOUSE HE ASKED THEM, WHAT WAS

IT THAT YE DISPUTED AMONG YOURSELVES BY THE WAY?

And this is an ugly story – an ugly story about Jesus’ disciples, or maybe the story of all kinds of disciples that have existed in the world.

The disciples of Jesus were continuously arguing about who was the greatest amongst them, who was the topmost, who was closest to Jesus. Not only that, but when Jesus would die and go to his Father who is in heaven...’When we die, who will be there with Jesus... the closest? Of course, he will be standing at the right side of God, he will be the right hand of God. Who will be at the right hand of Jesus? Who amongst us?’

Those twelve were continuously arguing.

This is a subtle ego game. Even when you are around a man like Jesus, you go on thinking about your ego. How are you going to meet this man Jesus? It is impossible. Your ego will function like an iron curtain.

These disciples are not enjoying the presence of Jesus. Their whole worry is who is the topmost of them all. The same old ambitious mind, the same old games of the ego, the same old politics.

Nothing has changed it seems. They are the same people. If they were in politics they would have been thinking ’Who is going to become the president of the country?’ It is the same old game.

Now they are thinking ’Who is to become the first? Who is the closest to Jesus? Who is his chief disciple?’ The same ambition, the same cut-throat competition, the same fight, the same violence –

of course, now in the name of religion, in the name of disciple-hood, in the name of spirituality. But nothing has changed: ego has entered from the back door.

And Jesus has said many times to them... but they won’t listen. Even on the last night when Jesus is taking leave forever, this is the last time that they will see him. Tomorrow morning he will be crucified.

The last supper... but still they are arguing. They are going to lose Jesus forever. They may not be able to find such a man again for millions of lives, but they are not worried about that. They are not worried about Jesus’ death; they are worried about their positions in heaven. ’Jesus is leaving, now what about us? What will be our position?’ The last thing they ask Jesus is this! That’s why I say it is an ugly story.

But ego is ugly: it is a monster. And if you are under its impact, you become ugly, you become a monster.

I have heard...

One day a man dashed into the Space Police Station, threw himself onto the counter and gasped

’Officer! Officer! We’ve just been attacked by a creature from outer space!’

Officer: ’Now, sir. Can you describe what happened?’

Man: ’Well, it was like this, Officer. I was out for a walk on the common with my mother-in-law when he... it... the creature suddenly appeared in front of us and made a grab for my mother-in-law.’

Officer: ’Could I have a description, sir?’

Man: ’Well, er... that is... green, glaring eyes, two big yellow-fang teeth, hair like knotted barbed wire... and an ambling, fat, ugly, sloth-like body...’

Officer: ’How terrible!’

Man: ’Yes, and wait until I tell you about the monster!’

Just now he was telling about his mother-in-law.

That monster of the ego is making you ugly. That monster of the ego is possessing you from everywhere. Your life is not beautiful because of it. And it goes on and on in new ways, in new shapes, in new sizes. Remember, the ego comes in all shapes and all sizes – to everybody’s requirement. Whatsoever fits you, the ego is ready to fit with you. It is very very adjusting. If you become religious, it becomes religious and adjusts with you. If y ou become humble, it becomes humble and adjusts with you. If you become a disciple, it becomes a disciple and adjusts with you; it is very cooperative. It never creates any difficulty for you in that way. Wherever you go it simply follows you. It does not create any sound, it is very silent – not even the footsteps are heard. It goes on working very silently, but goes on poisoning you.

Now think of these disciples...

AND HE CAME TO CAPERNAUM: AND BEING IN THE HOUSE HE ASKED THEM...

On the road he must have thought ’It is not right to ask my disciples in front of other people; it looks so ugly. My disciples... and thinking about who is the greatest, and who is the topmost and who is the real disciple and the chief disciple...”Who is next to Jesus?”’ And remember, the person, who wants to be next to Jesus, if he is made next to Jesus, will try to become even more important than Jesus. That’s what really happened.

Judas was the most knowledgeable disciple. Judas was the only sophisticated and educated disciple of Jesus. All the others were very common and ordinary men. Only Judas was of any worth.

Naturally, many times in life he tried to CORRECT Jesus. Many times he argued with Jesus, many times he advised Jesus ’Do this, don’t do that.’ He was deep down, the competitor.

And this has happened always. One of Buddha’s brothers was initiated by Buddha. Devadatta was his name; he is the Judas of Buddha’s story. He was very educated – as educated as Buddha.

He came from the same family – royal blood, great heritage, noble family. He was as educated as Buddha and as much cultured, sophisticated, philosophical – maybe even more than Buddha. Now it was very difficult for him to think of himself as second to Buddha. He created the rift. He started making his own group, he started initiating people himself; he betrayed.

He tried to kill Buddha so that he could dominate the Buddha community – the disciples of Buddha; he wanted to become the leader. Buddha was poisoned once by him. Once a rock was thrown from the mountain underneath which Buddha was meditating – just by inches he was saved. Then a mad elephant was brought to Buddha and left alone with Buddha. The elephant was so mad, he had killed many people. But even elephants are more loving, more compassionate than Devadattas and Judases. The elephant looked at this silent man; something happened in him. He bowed down and touched the feet of Buddha. Even the mad elephant was not as mad as the ego is mad.

Judas was always feeling that he could be the leader, and be the leader in a far better way – he

’knows better than Jesus’. Maybe that rivalry, that ego conflict created the desire in his mind to destroy Jesus. Once Jesus was removed, he would be the topmost man.

But the others are also not very different. Of course, they don’t say ’We are bigger than Jesus’, but they certainly want him to say and let it be decided before Jesus leaves who is the greatest among them.

This is our whole life’s struggle: Who is the greatest? And we waste our life in this struggle. This is politics, this is not religion. Wherever ego is, there is politics. Once the ego goes, then there is no politics, then you don’t compare yourself with anybody, because each individual is incomparable.

Each individual is unique, so unique that comparison is not possible. You don’t put yourself higher and you don’t put yourself lower: you are simply different. There is no question of putting yourself higher or lower. You are you and somebody else is somebody else; there is no question of comparison. Remember, when ego disappears, comparison disappears. And when comparison disappears, competitiveness disappears, and there arises great peace.

What is your anxiety? What is it that creates anguish, competition, comparison, conflict in you? –

the effort to be the greatest, to be the first. And everybody is trying to be the first, hence the war-like quality that surrounds society.

EVERYBODY is your enemy! Even those who are your friends are your enemies, because they are also fighting for the first place as you are fighting. How can you be friendly? With the ego there is no possibility of friendship. Then friendship is just a mask. The real nature of life is that of the jungle: the big fish goes on eating the small fish. Even if you pretend to be friendly, that is just show, strategy, diplomacy. Nobody can be a friend here unless the ego disappears. Once the ego disappears the whole life has a quality of friendship, of love. Then you are friendly, simply friendly

– and to everybody, because there is no problem. You are not trying to be the first, so you are not more a competitor. this is real dropping out.

You can drop out from the school, from the college, from the university. That is not going to help. In your hippie community you will try to be the first – to be the hippiest amongst the hippies. But then it is the same, it makes no difference. You have created another society, and you have started playing the same games again: the same comparison, the same competition.

Just see... Jesus’ disciples – they were so fortunate to be allowed to live with Jesus so closely, but yet the old mind continued. That’s why I say ego is very subtle.

AND HE CAME TO CAPERNAUM: AND BEING IN THE HOUSE HE ASKED THEM...

It would have looked ugly for him to mention the subject that they were discussing on the way. They must have discussed it the whole way. That was their basic problem: they were not interested in the kingdom of God, they were not interested in meditation, they were not interested in prayer, they were not interested in Christ and Christ-consciousness; their whole interest was ’Who am I? Where do I stand? Am I the first or not?’

WHAT WAS IT...

Jesus asks

... THAT YE DISPUTED AMONG YOURSELVES BY THE WAY?

He must have asked this many times. This story is a condensed story, representative of many stories. It must have been a daily thing. It was so with Buddha, it was so with Mahavir.

Mahavir’s chief disciple betrayed him. First he tried to become the chief – his name was Gosala.

Once he started feeling that he was the chief, then the problem was how to topple Mahavir. This is how the ego goes. Then he went against Mahavir. The ego is dangerous. To be against a man like Mahavir seems inconceivable. If you cannot even be with a man like Mahavir, Buddha, Jesus, then you cannot be anywhere. Then you cannot ever be in love.

WHAT WAS IT THAT YE DISPUTED AMONG YOURSELVES BY THE WAY?

Jesus asked

BUT THEY HELD THEIR PEACE...

They remained silent. Not that they were silent – how can the egoistic mind be silent? They were full of turmoil; there was no peace in their mind – their mind was in pieces, there was no peace. They were not together at all. But why did they keep silent? Because it has happened many times before too, and each time they are caught Jesus says something which hurts. But again and again they fall back into the trap: the ego comes back in subtle ways.

It is so subtle that you may not even be aware that it comes. You have to be very very careful, then only will you know, because it comes like a whisper, it does not shout. It raises its head so silently that nothing stirs. Once it has taken possession of you, then it is very difficult.

Those disciples must have felt embarrassed again and again. But again and again they would forget Jesus. Jesus was walking with them on the road... Maybe he was a little ahead and they were following at the back, or maybe they were a little ahead and he was following – but there must have been a little gap, and that gap helped them to discuss their basic problem again: ’Who is the greatest?’ Jesus must have seen it, must have seen it on their faces. And when they kept silent, when they remained quiet, Jesus spoke.

... FOR BY THE WAY THEY HAD DISPUTED AMONG THEMSELVES,

WHO SHOULD BE THE GREATEST.

Jesus knew what they were discussing. It was not necessary for Jesus to listen to what they were discussing, he knew it. That was their basic problem continuously. And as the days were coming closer to Jesus’ death, they were becoming more and more agitated: ’Who will be the head when Jesus is gone?’ As if deep down they wanted Jesus to go so that somebody among them could be the head.

The mind is very cunning, the mind is very violent.

BUT THEY HELD THEIR PEACE FOR BY THE WAY THEY HAD DISPUTED AMONG

THEMSELVES, WHO SHOULD BE THE GREATEST.

AND HE SAT DOWN, AND CALLED THE TWELVE, AND SAITH UNTO THEM, IF ANY MAN

DESIRE TO BE FIRST, THE SAME SHALL BE LAST OF ALL, AND SERVANT OF ALL.

This he was saying again and again – but who listens? This he was repeating every day, but people are deaf. And they have seen this man Jesus who has become the first because he has become the last. He has come to the top because he has become capable of remaining the last.

He was saying again and again ’The first will be the last in my kingdom of God, and the last shall be the first.’

But mind has its own calculations. Sometimes the mind says ’Okay. If the first should be the last in your kingdom of God, and the last shall be the first then I will try to be the last sol can be the first.’

But this is the same game. You have missed the point. Logically you have understood, but spiritually you have missed. Now, a person can even TRY to be the last, can make all kinds of endeavours to be the last, can torture himself to be the last IN ORDER to be the first. Then he is not the last, because it is the same desire and the same ambition .

When Jesus says ’Those who are the last shall be the first’ he is not giving you a strategy, he is not giving you a technique how to be the first; he is simply stating a fact! This has to be understood.

Sometimes people come to me and they want to go into meditation, they REALLY want to go into meditation. But they have motives. They say ’If we go into meditation, shall we see God?’ I say to them that if they have a motivation like that, meditation will not happen, because a motivated mind can never be meditative. Motivation is desire, desire is disturbance. How can you meditate with disturbance? Meditation is possible only when you are unmotivated: you don’t have any desire.

When there is no desire, there is meditation. Meditation is a state of desirelessness.

They understand logically, and they say ’Okay. So we will drop the motive. Now if we drop the motive will it be possible for us to see God?’ They are ready to drop the motive but the motive is still there.

It has slipped deep down the unconscious. They say ’Okay, if you say so, if this is the condition to be fulfilled, we will fulfil it. But are you certain that then we will see God?’ So where has the motive gone? It is still there; it has gone underground.

Jesus was saying again and again ’Those who are the last will be the first.’ This is simply a statement, a simple statement. It is not a question of cause and effect. He is not saying that if you want to be the first be the last. He is saying ’If you are the last you will be the first.’ And there is a great difference between these two. Linguistically, not much; logically, not much. You will say

’What is the difference whether you say it this way or that?’ But existentially there is such a big difference.

Be the last. Enjoy being the last and not because by being the last you will be the first. By being last with such joy, you are already the first! Now where else can you be? What higher state can you be in? Standing last, enjoying it... because to stand last is a very very beautiful space, because nobody competes for it, nobody comes to struggle with you. You are the last already.

Lao Tzu used to say ’I am the last, that’s why I am the most peaceful, because nobody comes to fight with me.’ Who is ready to fight with the last? Everybody has compassion for the last; everybody feels ’Poor man.’ And who is ambitious to be the last? Nobody comes and throws him off his place.

If you are the last you are left alone, then you are never disturbed by anybody, then you can simply be yourself. And when you are ready to be the last, you can be in the present – never otherwise. If you want to be the first you will have to remain in the future, because you will have to think ’How to be the first? How to drag people who are already there out of their places so I can make some place for myself? How to fight? How to manage? What to do? What not to do?’ You will be in the future.

To try to be the first is to be in the future: if you want to be the first you will have to project, worry about the future. And from where will you get your ideas? – from the past. So you will remain in the past and in the future, and you will go on missing the present.

And the present is the only thing that really is. Now is the only real time.

A man who is ready to stand last – not as a strategy to go first, but just as an understanding that it is foolish and stupid to compete... What is the point of it all? Why not enjoy life? You can only do one thing: either you can compete or you can celebrate. If you compete you cannot celebrate, IF YOU

celebrate you cannot compete; it is the same energy. Either you can enjoy or you can fight. Either you can love or you can struggle; both together are not possible.

So the person who stands last – not as a desire to be first, but as an understanding that to be first is just the stupidity of the mind, the mediocre mind, the foolish mind. Seeing the foolishness of it, seeing the uselessness of it, seeing the people who are standing first and looking like hell – in that very understanding one has become the first. Can you see it? Do you understand it?

In understanding that, one has become the first. This is the meaning of Jesus.

AND HE SAT DOWN, AND CALLED THE TWELVE, AND SAITH UNTO THEM, IF ANY MAN

DESIRE TO BE FIRST, THE SAME SHALL BE LAST OF ALL...

Now, the language creates trouble. You can misinterpret Jesus’ language.

IF ANY MAN DESIRE TO BE FIRST...

he says

... THE SAME SHALL BE LAST OF ALL...

then he has to become the last.

But the language can be dangerous. He uses the word ’desire’ – IF ANY MAN DESIRE TO BE

FIRST... And all those twelve are desiring to be the first. They can again get a clue from it. They can say ’Okay, sol will be the last because I want to be the first. Jesus says ”one who wants to be the first” so this is the way to be the first. I will do all that I can do... I will do all that I can do to be the first, even if it is needed to stand last, I will stand I will suffer that But I have to be the first ’ Then the message is missed.

To be the last means: no desire for being first. That is the meaning. To be the last means: all comparison has been dropped, all competition has been dropped, all aggression, arrogance has been dropped. One starts enjoying this moment – the peace, the bliss of it, the benediction of it.

One is in sheer delight because one can breathe, because one can see the flowers, because one can watch the birds, one can listen to the song of the birds or the rain falling on the roof, or the smell of the wet earth – small things.

Jesus says ’Look at the lilies in the field. They toil not, they think not of the morrow – and how beautiful, how incredibly beautiful they are. Even Solomon was not so beautiful attired in all his precious dresses, sitting on his golden throne studded with diamonds. And these poor lily flowers

– just standing alone in the field... Look how beautiful they are: how silent, how blissful, how meditative, how prayerful.’

What is the beauty of the flowers? – they are non-competitive.What is the beauty of the stars? –

they are non-competitive.What is the beauty of existence? – it is not competing. It is not going anywhere, it is not trying to be something that it is not.

That is where man has gone wrong, has gone insane. To exist with the ego is to exist in a kind of neurosis. It is a state of madness. It is the original fall. To be in the ego is to be a sinner. Not to be in the ego is to become a saint.

But remember again, I am not saying become a saint. Otherwise ego comes back and says ’Look, I am such a great saint. Look! I don’t think of the morrow. Look! I am no more worried about any competition.’ Then the ego has arisen again. Then there can be a competition! If somebody else is trying to be the last you will fight with him ’What are you doing? I am the last! You cannot be the last. You can be second to me but you cannot go ahead of me.’

I have heard...

A great king was praying in a synagogue early in the morning. The rabbi was there to accompany the king. It was dark, and a beggar had also entered.

The king prayed, and said ’God, I am nobody. I am just a nothingness.’

And the rabbi also prayed. And he also said ’God I am nobody. I am just a nothingness.’

And then they heard the beggar who was just standing there. And he also prayed and he said ’God, I am nobody. I am just a nothingness.’

And the king said to the rabbi ’Look who is trying to be nobody! Look who is pretending to be a nothingness! – a beggar? How dare you... before a king? When I am saying I am nothing, a nobody

– and a beggar dares to pretend that he is also nothing, a nobody? This is offensive.’

This can happen, then you can start fighting about who is the last. And it is the same game, only the names have changed. Be very careful when you listen to a Buddha or Jesus; be very careful because they have to use your language.

It is a necessary evil. But try to be very careful so that you don’t misunderstand them.

Jesus says

IF ANY MAN DESIRE TO BE FIRST, THE SAME SHALL BE LAST OF ALL, AND SERVANT OF

ALL.

And Christians missed it: they started becoming servants of all. ’Service’ became the key word, and the Christian missionary has become a servant. He runs the hospital, the school, the orphanage; he goes on serving people. But look into his eyes, look, and there on his nose is sitting the ego. ’I am the servant of the people. Nobody is serving the people as I am serving.’

A story I have heard... a very beautiful story...

In China, in some village, there was a great fair. And a man fell into a well, because there was no protective wall surrounding the well. So he shouted from the well ’Save me!’

And there came a Buddhist monk. He looked down, and the man was crying – he said ’What are you looking at? DO something! I am dying.’

And the Buddhist monk said ’Listen to me. Buddha has said ”Birth is suffering, life is suffering, death is suffering. All is suffering.” So what is the difference whether you are suffering in a well or somewhere else? Accept it. Buddha has said ”TATATHA – accept. In acceptance there is deliverance.” ’

But the man prayed, and he said ’I will listen to your sermon, but first please take me out, then you can bore me as much as you want! But this is no moment right now – I am not in a state to listen to your great philosophy.’

But the Buddhist monk said ’Buddha has said ”Don’t interfere in anybody’s life.” I cannot interfere.

You must be suffering because of your past KARMAS. It is not a question of there being no wall and that’s why you have fallen in – because there are so many people and nobody else has fallen in. It is because of your past KARMAS! You must have thrown somebody in a well in some life. You are suffering for that, and I don’t want to interfere, because if I take you out you will have to fall in again somewhere, some time. Buddha has said ”Never interfere in anybody’s life.”’

And he went on his way perfectly calm and quiet. He thinks he has understood Buddha’s message.

And he is quoting rightly. All the words are Buddha’s; this also can be the interpretation. And it is not just a story.

In India there is a Jain sect – TERAPUNT. They say: If you find somebody dying by the side of the road, thirsty, go on your way, don’t interfere. Even if he is dying of thirst and you have a thermos flask and you can give him a little water, don’t give it, because he is suffering from his past KARMAS.

Let him finish it, let him go through it; otherwise he will have to go into it again. And you will be responsible then: you will be prolonging his suffering.

Look at the logic: You will be prolonging his suffering. This time maybe two hours more and he would have been finished with the KARMA. YOU give him water. Now those two hours have remained; he will have to account for them. On some other day, in some other life maybe again he will have to fall by the side of the road, thirsty. You have disturbed his life pattern, and not only that, because you have disturbed his life pattern, you have accumulated a wrong karma for yourself; you will have to suffer. So you have not helped.

That’s why you will not find a Jain monk running a hospital or a school, no. That is impossible.

’People are suffering from diseases because of their past KARMAS. They have to suffer. Help them to accept.’ The Jain monk will say ’Please be silent and meditate.’ And he has the thermos and he can give the water, but he will not give it.

So this is not just a story. It has happened in the East.

And then comes another man: a Confucian monk. And he looks into the well, and the man says

’Take me out! Take me out, sir, otherwise I will not survive. A few minutes more and I will be gone!’

And he is shivering and he is cold.

And the Confucian says ’Don’t be worried.We will create a revolution in the world.We will not leave a single stone unturned.We will force the government to make protective walls around every well!’

He says ’But what is the point of that? That will take years and I will die!’

And the Confucian says ’You are not the question... the society! Individuals come and go, society remains. Social reform is needed! Every well should have a wall!’

This is what the communist says. He says ’If you are dying, there is nothing to be worried about. If you are poor, there is nothing to be worried about. Wait. When the revolution comes and communism comes, everything will be okay.’

You will say ’I will die’ – that is not the point. You are not the question, the question is of society.

The society has to be changed first. Only when the society is changed, the economic structure is changed, the state, the law is changed, then only will people be happy. Nothing can be done about you.

And the Confucian goes, stands on a high stage, and gathers people around him and says to them

’A revolution is needed! Every well should have a wall!’ And the man is dying...

Then there comes a Christian missionary, as if he was in search of somebody who has fallen into the well. He looks and says ’My God! Good! I was in search... I wanted to serve somebody. You did well!’ He pulls a rope from his back. He is carrying it ready-made – he is in search, because it is through service... Jesus has said that you have to be the servant of all. He throws the rope in, takes the man out.

The man is very happy. The man touches his feet, and he says ’You are the real religious person.

The Buddhist monk came and he started preaching, and the Confucian came and he has gone...

And look! there he has gathered a big crowd and he is teaching people about reform and how society has to be changed and the law. You are the only religious person. If you had not come I would have died. But tell me one thing: why were you carrying the rope? That is strange.’

And the Christian missionary is very happy because he has done a good work. He says ’I always carry a rope. I carry many things, because I am always ready. I am a servant.’

And the man says ’How should I thank you? I would like to do something for you – you have saved me.’

And the Christian says ’You do only one thing. Teach your children also to go on falling into wells, because that is the only way to go to God. If people stop falling into wells, if this Confucian fool succeeds, then there will be no opportunity to serve. If this Buddhist monk succeeds in teaching people to accept everything, then there will be no need to serve them. They will not accept service.

So just do one thing: go on falling into wells. Teach your children too.’

You will be surprised. You will think that this seems to be a little far-fetched. No, it is not.

In India, there is a Hindu MAHATMA – Karaptraji Maharaj.

He has written a book against

communism. And the basic, the most fundamental question he has raised is: If there is nobody poor then religion will disappear. The poor are needed because only if the poor are there can you donate and open hospitals and DHARMASHALAS and things like that. If ALL poor people disappear, if communism succeeds, then what will happen to religion? Because Hinduism says to donate is the greatest of religions, to share your riches is the greatest thing. But if everybody is rich, then nobody would like to share your riches; and you won’t have riches to share if everybody is equal. If the society becomes communist, then religion will disappear. And this man thinks that he is a religious man.

It is not far-fetched; that’s how people have understood things. He quotes the Vedas and the Gita and the Upanishads where to serve the poor is praised because ’that is the only way’: If you serve the poor, you serve God. But if there is nobody poor, then how will you serve the poor and how will you serve God? Then the bridge will be broken. So the logical conclusion is: Keep poverty, keep people starving. They are needed, otherwise what will MAHATMAS do? They won’t have anything to do.

Down the ages, words of Buddha, Jesus, Mahavir have been misunderstood, because they have to use your language. And when they use your language it is always inadequate – and they have no other language. And even if they have another language, they cannot speak it to you because you won’t understand.

Jesus says

IF ANY MAN DESIRE TO BE FIRST, THE SAME SHALL BE LAST OF ALL, AND SERVANT OF

ALL.

He is simply stating a fact: that the man who has understood the ugliness of the ego, the ugliness, violence, poisonousness of ambition – in that very understanding will not compete, will be happy wherever he is. And in that happiness he will see that God is everywhere. And in that very experience that God is everywhere, he will become a servant.

Not that he will have to practise, not that he will have to search where to go and how to serve.Wherever he is, all is God, and the part is the servant of the whole. There is no deliberate effort to serve. Service comes when you are silent. Service flows from your being when you are happy, when you are so full of energy that wherever need arises, you serve.

A dog is dying and you serve. A tree is drying out and nobody has given it water, and you give water. And you don’t go on pretending and posing that you have served. You don’t go on shouting to everybody ’Look how great a servant I am! I have helped this tree to become green again.’ That is not the point. In helping the tree to be green, you have made your life green. It is already the reward, there is no other reward. In helping the dying dog you have helped yourself – because it is all one.

When you hit somebody, you are hitting yourself. When you kill somebody you are killing yourself –

because we are all one. And when you serve you serve yourself, so there is no need to brag about it. You don’t become a great missionary, a great servant of the people, and things like that. You don’t become anybody, it all comes naturally. When a person is happy his compassion is natural, out of happiness he is compassionate.

AND HE TOOK A CHILD, AND SET HIM IN THE MIDST OF THEM: AND WHEN HE HAD TAKEN

HIM IN HIS ARMS, HE SAID UNTO THEM,

WHOSOEVER SHALL RECEIVE ONE OF SUCH CHILDREN IN MY NAME, RECEIVETH ME: AND

WHOSOEVER SHALL RECEIVE ME, RECEIVETH NOT ME, BUT HIM THAT SENT ME.

And then Jesus takes hold of a small child. A child is a symbol of helplessness and of innocence.

And he says

WHOSOEVER SHALL RECEIVE ONE OF THESE CHILDREN IN MY NAME...

Wherever you find somebody helpless, help. And wherever you find something innocent, embrace it, love it.

WHOSOEVER SHALL RECEIVE ONE OF THESE CHILDREN IN MY NAME, RECEIVETH ME...

Jesus says ’He has received me, he has opened his heart to me.’ In love you become close to Christ.

Jesus is saying ’Not through competition, not by being the first, but in receiving, helping innocence, in receiving life energies that surround you, and in pouring yourself wherever the need arises, you come close to me.’

... AND WHOSOEVER SHALL RECEIVE ME, RECEIVETH NOT ME, BUT HIM THAT SENT ME.

And Jesus said ’You don’t know about God, you have known me. And you don’t know this child, that the innocence of this child is my innocence. In his innocence my innocence is hidden. And if you go into my innocence, you will find in my innocence God’s innocence is hidden.’

Look into a flower, penetrate deep into the heart of the flower and you will touch Christ. And when Christ is touched, go a little deeper still, and you will touch God.

’You can touch God in every leaf and in every drop of water and in every pebble, in every stone –

God is everywhere. Just a penetration... And it is not a question of being first, it is a question of being last, it is a question of being egoless. Only then can you respect a child; otherwise you will respect a king, not a child. You will respect a rich man, not a helpless child. Have you ever respected a child? If you have not respected a child, you don’t know how to respect Christ. You will say ’For what?’

We respect people because they have some capacity. He is a great painter, you respect him. He is Picasso, you respect him. Why, because he is world famous? Because he has a very famous ego?

Because he is somebody and you would like to be associated with Picasso? This man is a great musician, this man is a great poet, this man is a great philosopher; this man is a great man of God

– a Christ, a Buddha. You would like to respect them, because you would like to come closer. By coming closer you will feel satisfied in your ego, you are so close to Christ, you stand by his side.

This is not real respect. A real respect is not for fame, for name; a real respect is a totally different thing. You respect a flower because God is there fully alive. You respect a bird because God is on the wing. You respect a child because in those eyes is innocence, those eyes are exactly like Christ’s. You respect animals, trees, stones, because God is hidden everywhere; his signature is everywhere.

THEN SAID THE JEWS UNTO HIM, ART THOU GREATER THAN OUR FATHER ABRAHAM, WHICH IS DEAD? AND THE PROPHETS ARE DEAD: WHOM MAKEST THOU THYSELF?

Listening to such words as ’If you love a child, respect a child, you have loved me and respected me. And if you have loved me and respected me, you have loved God’, the Jews that were standing there must have felt offended. So what is this man claiming? Is he claiming that he is God? Who is this man... the son of the carpenter Joseph or the son of Mary? And one is not even certain whether he is a legal son, legitimate or illegitimate – because people say he was born out of the virgin Mary.

Maybe he is illegitimate.

This illegitimate son of a woman, of an ordinary carpenter is saying ’If you come close to me you come close to God.’ He must have looked like a pretender, a deceiver. The Jews must have felt offended.

ART THOU GREATER THAN OUR FATHER ABRAHAM...

Because even Abraham has not said that. Even Abraham said ’I am just a servant of God.’ And Jesus says ’I am the son of God, not the servant.’ Jesus really says ’I am God; I am in God and God is in me. If you have seen me you have seen my Father who is in heaven.’

ART THOU GREATER THAN OUR FATHER ABRAHAM, WHICH IS DEAD? AND THE PROPHETS

ARE DEAD...

Are you greater than our prophets?

... WHOM MAKEST THOU THYSELF?

Who do you think you are?

Jesus answered

YOUR FATHER ABRAHAM REJOICED TO SEE MY DAY...

Now again there will be difficulty with the language. He is saying exactly what the truth is, but the language becomes very very inadequate.

He says

YOUR FATHER ABRAHAM REJOICED TO SEE MY DAY: AND HE SAW IT, AND WAS GLAD.

Just think: If I say to you that Jesus rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and w as glad...

Now somebody who is a Christian here will feel offended. So who do I think I am? And naturally the question will arise that Jesus’ days – two thousand years – have past. How could he see MY DAY, and how could he rejoice?

There is something very symbolic in it. Whenever anybody becomes enlightened, all the enlightened persons, all that energy which has become enlightened before rejoices, because one more person has come back home, one more person has bloomed, one more person has entered into God.

In India there are beautiful stories:

When Buddha became enlightened all the gods showered flowers from the sky, all the enlightened people sang songs around him. That day was the day of great rejoicing. The whole forest bloomed; trees bloomed out of season, dead trees sprouted again. There was music and song, and gods sang and danced, because one more had become enlightened. Enlightenment is such a great phenomenon that this should be so, the whole existence should rejoice. But Jesus is saying something which the Jews cannot understand.

YOUR FATHER ABRAHAM REJOICED TO SEE MY DAY: AND HE SAW IT, AND WAS GLAD.

THEN SAID THE JEWS UNTO HIM, THOU ART NOT YET FIFTY YEARS OLD, AND HAST THOU

SEEN ABRAHAM?

Now, two different planes talking to each other... dialogue seems to be impossible. The Jews are talking about time, and Jesus is talking about eternity. The Jews are talking about the past, and Jesus is talking about the present.

He says

BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM.

Now, he is not talking about Jesus, he is talking about Christ-consciousness. The Jews are talking about time, he is talking about eternity. The Jews are talking about Jesus, and he is talking about Christ! That’s the whole difference: two different planes. Christ-consciousness is eternal, timeless.

It knows no beginning, no end; it is not confined to time or to periods. Christ-consciousness has always been there. Jesus has participated in it NOW, but once you participate in it you disappear .

It is like a drop of water entering the ocean. The moment the drop enters the ocean it is no more there. Now the drop can say ’I have been always’ because now it is the ocean saying it not the drop. The river has fallen into the ocean. Jesus has fallen into Christ-consciousness... that oceanic feeling. Now he is no more there, now he is not the son of Mary or Joseph, he is not the carpenter of the village, he is not young, he is not the body, he is not the mind. Now he is the transcendental, the fourth state of consciousness: TURIYA. He is Christ, he is Buddha. That’s why he uses two different tenses.

He says

VERILY, VERILY, I SAY UNTO YOU, BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM.

He does not say ’Before Abraham was, I was’ – that would be wrong. That’s why this statement is really great. He says ’Before Abraham was...’ Abraham he uses as a past tense.

BEFORE ABRAHAM WAS, I AM.

Before Jesus was, I am.

Abraham participated in Christ-consciousness and disappeared. So Jesus participated in Christ-consciousness and disappeared. Now there is no question of time, now time exists not. Now there is no more any time and no more any space. This state is what Buddha calls NIRVANA, and Jesus calls the ’kingdom of God’.

Meditate on these sutras. They are incredible. Go into them, and you will be immensely benefitted.

Great will be your grace if you can understand them.

CHAPTER 4

Respect and Accept

3 November 1977 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GREAT SEXUAL SUPPRESSION AND FREEDOM

FROM SEX? ON THE SURFACE, BOTH HAVE NO INTEREST IN SEX. HOW DOES

SUPPRESSED SEX BUBBLE UP?

First, suppressed sex has more interest than expressed sex can ever have. The interest is not direct

– it is indirect, it is vicarious, it is cunning; the interest is there, immensely there. If your sex life is normal, unrepressed, uninhibited, the interest cannot be so much, because you will have a kind of satisfaction, a contentment.

It is like when you have taken your food, you forget about food. But if you fast, then you continuously think about food. Fast one day and then go to the market, and you will see only hotels, restaurants, food stores, and you will smell only food smells coming from everywhere. And you had been to this place before many times. It had never happened like that.

Repression cannot free you from interest. The repressed person becomes more interested in sex than anybody else. Maybe he shows antagonism, that’s possible, but antagonism is interest. That’s why your so-called religious scriptures are full of antagonism towards sex, condemnation. Your so-called MAHATMAS go on cursing sex. That simply shows their interest, nothing else. They are still haunted by it. They may be sitting in their caves in the Himalayas, but they are condemning sex.

Why?

It is deep inside them, in their very guts, they are fighting with it. Their condemnation is a way of their fighting with it: they condemn it so that they can remain on top of it. If you don’t condemn for even a single day, they start feeling afraid that the real thing from inside may surface, may throw away them and their control and their saintlihood and their holiness.

And the more you repress, the more it accumulates. It becomes more and more powerful.

So the first thing to understand is that it is impossible for a repressed person not to show interest.

He will show DIS-interest – but that is interest upside down. And if you watch, you will see it coming everywhere. A normal sexual life has sex in a normal way. Sometimes it takes possession of you, and it is beautiful.to be possessed by it, because to be possessed by any life energy is to be possessed by God.

That is the only natural way for ordinary people who are not trying to attain some higher consciousness, who are not going into meditation; that is the only way to have a taste of meditation.

When sex possesses you, it is God possessing you – on the lowest rung, of course. SAMADHI IS the highest rung of being possessed by God, and sex is the lowest rung of being possessed by God. But in both ways you are possessed by God. In sex God has to function through your body, in SAMADHI he functions through your soul. In music, in art, in poetry, in dance, he functions through your mind. But whenever you are in a state of let-go, whenever you are not...

And that is the joy of sex, because you disappear for a moment. That moment is very small, but immense is its impact. For one moment you are no more the ego, you don’t think in terms of ’I’, for one moment you dissolve into the unity of the all, you become one with the whole, you pulsate with the whole. You are no more an individual, you are no more confined to your body. You don’t know limitations, for a moment you are unlimited, infinite.

That is the meaning of sexual orgasm – that your frozen energy melts, becomes one with this universe, with the trees and the stars, and the woman and the man, and the rocks – for a single moment, of course. But in THAT moment you have a kind of consciousness that is religious, that is holy, because it comes from the whole.

The attraction for sex is the attraction for God. The attraction for sex is the attraction to let-go. There is nothing wrong in it; it is the beginning of the search for God. And of course the beginning can begin where you are. You ARE in the body. So only in the body can the search start. It should not remain there, that’s true, but it cannot start anywhere else. You have to go rung by rung, step by step. The higher you move, the more meaningless the lower starts becoming. Not that you are against it, but because you are gaining higher ecstasies – who bothers about the lower?

The man who is against sex is below sex. He has fallen below sex, he is obsessed with sex. His twenty-four hours will be full of sexual thoughts, fantasies. and you can watch. He will show his fantasy, his repression everywhere. You can see him walking on the road – he will not be able to walk naturally. A beautiful woman passes by, then what do you do if you are carrying great repression? Trembling comes in him. He starts looking the other way, or he escapes into a small street to avoid her. He cannot look at the woman.

By looking he is showing where his interest is. But by not looking he is also showing his interest.

The man who is above sex, the man who has become free of sex avoids nothing. He has no antagonism toward sex. He will have compassion for all those who are still in the world of sex. And the man who has gone beyond sex will look at the beautiful woman, and the beautiful woman will not remind him of sex but of God – because ALL reminds him of God. A beautiful flower reminds him of God, a beautiful face reminds him of God. In fact, all reminds him of God.

A man went to his psychiatrist and the psychiatrist was trying to find out what his problem was.

And psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts have stumbled upon one great fact about humanity: that out of a hundred, ninety-nine problems arise out of sex. Not because of sex, but because of your religious conditioning against sex.

So the doctor was trying to find out where the problem was arising from. He asked the man ’When you see a tree, what does it remind you of?’

And the man said ’Of sex.’

Tree? – of sex? To be more certain, the doctor asked ’And when you see stars, what do they remind you of?’

And the man said ’Of sex, of course.’

And the doctor, to be still more certain, asked ’When you see a camel walking by what does it remind you of?’

And the man said ’Of sex.’

And the doctor said ’Camel? – reminding you of sex?’

And the man said ’Yes, everything reminds me of sex... It is not a question of the camel or the tree or the elephant or the dog... EVERYTHING reminds me of sex!’

If you are obsessed, repressed, everything will remind you of sex – EVERYTHING, because you are carrying such a load, you will go on projecting. There is no need for a real woman to be there, just a SARI, hanging, will do. There is no need for a real woman there, just one of my long-haired sannyasins going by... and from the back you see... and those long hairs... and it is there.

You cannot get beyond sex by repressing it. The way beyond is through. The way beyond is through understanding.

I have heard...

Several men who had been involved in a serious road accident were brought to hospital on stretchers and the dead were separated from the living. One of those believed to be dead had been accompanied by his wife, who was mainly interested in the insurance money to which his death would entitle her.

As soon as she arrived therefore, she approached one of the harassed doctors dealing with the emergency, and pointing to her husband on his stretcher, said ’He’s dead, isn’t he, doctor?’

’I’m afraid so, madam’ said the doctor, incautiously assuming that the judgement of the stretcher-bearers as to who was dead and who was not had been correct.

At this moment, the woman’s supposedly dead husband, who was in fact alive and had overheard the conversation, suddenly sat up on his stretcher, and said ’I’m not dead, doctor!’

’Lie down’ snapped his wife. ’The doctor knows!’

Now, her interest is in the insurance money. It shows; you cannot hide it. It will show in some way or other. It will empty out of you.

You must have heard about great RISHIS and MAHATMAS doing their meditations in the forest.

And then APSARAS, beautiful damsels from heaven, come to distract them. But why should these beautiful women be interested in distracting these poor people, who are not doing any harm to anybody? They are just sitting under their trees doing their JAPA, their meditation. Why should anybody be interested in distracting them?

Indian scriptures are full of these stories. But nobody asks ’Why in the first place...?’ Why should God have a portfolio, a special department to distract these poor, fasting, meditating people? But they come. And those beautiful women dance around naked, and they hug the MAHATMAS, and they try to distract them from their meditations. These women are NOT coming from heaven. Heaven has no interest. Heaven really should rejoice that another man is coming higher, reaching to heaven.

It is not very populated. Heaven is very uncrowded, almost a desert, because people go to hell. God should rejoice, the angels should dance and sing that a new guest is coming. There should be a sensation in heaven. Why should they send beautiful women to distract? And in the first place, where will they find the beautiful women? They all go to hell.What are they doing with beautiful women in heaven? But they come. They don’t come from heaven, they come from the unconscious repressed sexuality

If you fast if you torture your body, if you go on repressing your natural desires, a moment comes when you are so full of it that the fantasy looks almost real. Then you cannot make any distinction between the fantasy and the real. Then the imagination looks objective. You are in a kind of hallucination. These are hallucinations.

No. You ask: WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN GREAT SEXUAL SUPPRESSION AND

FREEDOM FROM SEX?

The difference is great! The difference is: that the man who has repressed his sex will remain continuously giving signals about his sexuality and obsession. He will continuously talk against it, he will condemn it. He will never be able to forgive anybody for being sexual. Just the WORD IS

enough to trigger his anger and hatred. If he sees two persons in a loving state, he will be off his rocker.

Just a few days before, it happened. One SHANKARACHARYA came to see me. Now this is the last place for SHANKARACHARYAS to come to. He was staying with a doctor in Poona, and the doctor is interested in me, and he must have persuaded the poor old man – ’You come.’ Somehow he managed and brought him to the gate. He was sitting in the car. The doctor had gone to the office to arrange for the meeting.

When he went back, the SHANKARACHARYA was very angry. And he said ’Take me away from this place immediately!’

The doctor said ’What has happened?’

He said ’Look! Sannyasins – men and women – holding hands! I CANNOT remain here a single moment. THIS IS not a holy place! This is AGAINST religion and against culture!’ He really got very irritated.

The doctor wrote a letter to me ’I have never seen him in such anger. He was in a rage, a MURDEROUS rage!’

Now where is it coming from? Why should you be worried if a man and woman are holding hands?

This is none of your business. They are not forcing you to do anything, they are just going on their way. They have not even looked at you. They are not enraged about you. Why should you be enraged about them?

But about them is not the question.

The repressed sexuality is provoked. Seeing a beautiful woman holding somebody’s hand, jealousy arises. To repress that jealousy, sex starts bubbling up. To repress that sex. one has to be very very angry. Only through anger can you repress sex.

People who repress sex become angry. Have you watched it? They become irritated – small things irritate them. They are never at ease, always in anger. Have you seen people who have repressed sex? They become aggressive, and they start finding ways and means to express their aggression.

They become politicians, they become money-oriented. They have to find some way out for their aggression. It may be politics, it may be money, it may be some other kind of ambition, but they become very aggressive.

And have you known this too – or not – that if you want to earn money you will have to repress sex?

If you don’t repress sex you will not have enough aggression left to fight in the market, to compete with people. If you want to become a great politician you will have to repress sex; otherwise, from where will you find this stupid energy to be a politician? You have to repress sexuality so that energy starts becoming more and more accumulated in you. And finding no natural way, it is ready to go into any way, any channelisation where you want it to go.

A man who has-repressed sex is not uninterested in sex – no, not at all. He is more interested than the ordinary man. His whole interest is centered there. He is continuously afraid of sex, afraid of beauty, afraid of bodies, afraid of his dreams. He cannot sleep well, he cannot communicate well because everything reminds him of sex.

And it is not only that women... If you repress sex toward women long enough you will start turning homosexual. Even men will remind you of sex and nothing else. If camels can remind you of sex, then why not men? People who repress sex are going to have great difficulties, are going to be perverted. Men will remind you... everything by and by will start having a sexual tinge and colour.

Beware of it.

Do you know that Alexander the Great was a homosexual, Julius Caesar was a homosexual? And many other great kings and generals have been homosexuals. And the reason? – Continuously fighting, continuously on the move, battling on the front women not available – sex starts turning towards homosexuality. Soldiers – people in the army, navy, air force, start turning homosexual.

Monks, nuns start being homosexual or lesbian, because monks are not allowed any women in the monastery.

Now there are monasteries in Europe where for a thousand years not a single woman has entered

– not even a small baby of seven days old, no. Now what will happen there? A thousand monks in the monastery... and once you enter in the monastery you are not allowed to get out of it; you enter forever. Mount Athos is such a monastery. You enter once, forever – it is like the grave –

then you never come out of it. Sometimes people come out of graves too, but nobody comes out of Mount Athos. And no woman ever has crossed the threshold – not even a small baby. The limit is seven days – a small baby more than seven days old is dangerous. What kind of people are living there? Just think of an eight-day-old girl... These people must be great MAHATMAS – the same MAHATMAS scriptures talk about – to whom damsels and beautiful APSARAS come to distract.

Now even an eight day old baby is not allowed. It is against the code of the monastery.

When these thousand people live in a complete ’boys’ club’, naturally the repressed sexuality starts turning into homosexuality; nuns start turning into lesbians. This goes on. This has been so down the ages. That’s why I don’t like MY ashram to be mono-sexual – only men or only women. I want men and women to mix and meet. I want this place to be very natural, healthy, whole; only then can you go beyond it, otherwise not.

And the man who has gone beyond sex is free from sex. To say that he has no interest in sex is also wrong. His interest is not personal any more. He has no involvement, that is true, but he is interested in everything – in the flowers, in the birds, in the animals, in the people; he is interested in everything. His interest is not personal. No involvement of his own being, but he is interested in everything.

If such a man sees a couple looking into each other’s eyes, he will be happy. He will thank God that he has seen love energy moving. He will BLESS this couple! He will say ’Go ahead. This is the way. Enjoy these moments.’ He will show no obsession this way or that. He will not start thinking of possessing this woman and he will not start thinking of how to escape from this situation, because he has no fear. He can bless the couple.

It happens every day. Couples come to me... Sometimes Indians are also there. They become very puzzled, because Indians cannot think that any sage will give any advice about sex too. They cannot conceive of it. They think a sage only talks about God, ONLY about God. When I advise people on their ordinary life problems, Indians who have never heard of Buddha advising anybody or Mahavir advising anybody even about their sexual problems, feel very uneasy, embarrassed. They cannot understand what is happening. They expect from me only advice about God, meditation and things like that. I should not help a couple in their problems.

But how is this couple going to become meditative, if this couple which is involved, entangled in sexuality, is not helped to go beyond it? How is it possible some day for them to become meditative?

I have to take their whole life, and I take great interest in every kind of problem. I get completely lost in their problems, I become completely absorbed. I forget the whole world when somebody is facing me with his problem: that problem is my whole world – whatsoever the problem. Whether is is sex, whether it is money, whether it is over-eating, whether it is body health, meditation, God, prayer does not matter – whatsoever it is, the person has a problem which has to be solved, and I have to bring all my energy to solve it. I am utterly interested in everything, because I am not afraid of anything. Why should I not be interested?

But remember, the interest has a totally different meaning. I am interested in a flower, I am interested in beauty, I am interested in poetry, in music, in dance, I am interested in all kinds of possibilities.

And God too is interested, otherwise sex would have disappeared long before. Why should sex continue? If MAHATMAS are right, then God is wrong.

George Gurdjieff used to say that your so-called MAHATMAS are all against God, and your so-called religions are all against God. And he is right, he has something very significant to say there. They are, because God goes on creating the world and God goes on creating the world in such variety, in such richness, in all directions. dimensions. And MAHATMAS are monotonous. They just simply do the JAPA, repeat ’Ram, Ram, Ram’... go on repeating.

The life of a MAHATMA IS a very poor life – no richness, no inner variety, no dimensions to his being.

He is linear, one-dimensional.

The man who is free of sex has no personal involvement in it, he has no desire for it. Not that he is against it, just his desires have moved higher.

It is like a child. Once you were a child and you used to play with coloured stones, used to collect shells and stones on the sea beach. Then one day you became a grown-up, now you don’t collect.

But if your child is collecting sea shells and coloured stones, won’t you be able to understand him?

Won’t you show interest? Won’t you say to the child ’Good. This stone is beautiful. Where did you find it? Even I didn’t find such stones when I was young, and like you I was searching and exploring sea beaches. You are fortunate.’ You will not condemn the child. You will not say ’This is nonsense, rubbish . Throw these stones away! I know they mean nothing.’ You will show all interest. That is real grown-upness. If you start shouting at the child, and you say ’This is nonsense and rubbish. Throw all these stones away. Don’t carry them, they will dirty your clothes, your pockets. Your pockets will lose shape, this and that, and your mom will be very very angry. Throw them away! I have known through my own experience that they are meaningless’ that simply shows you are not yet mature enough.

Maturity is mature enough ONLY when it can accept the immature. Maturity is real maturity when it can not only accept the immature but can bless you, with all the hopes that you will grow out of it.

Everybody grows, just time is needed.

You had a teddy bear or a toy that you loved so much that there were days you could not sleep without it. You had to carry it to bed, you had to carry it on journeys. Your parents were feeling a little embarrassed that you have carried this big teddy bear with you, this big toy, and ’You have become a big boy now, or a big girl. Stop it.’ But you had to carry it everywhere. And then one day suddenly something changed: the teddy bear got lost. It remained for a few days in the comer of your room, then you threw it out onto the rubbish heap. What happened? How did you get rid of it? You became mature.

You have not repressed the desire, you have not repressed your love affair with the teddy bear. You have simply grown up: you have gone beyond.

Freedom from sex is not repression of sex, it is the understanding of sex. And through understanding one goes beyond it. But that does not mean that you will be angry and against and antagonistic. You will be blissful, you will have a blessing for everybody. And you will bless with the hope that some day they will also go beyond it.

Real religion has to be rooted in the earth. Yes, real religion also has to rise towards the sun. It is like a lotus flower – rooted in the mud and rising towards the sun. The lotus has to be freed from the mud, but the mud has not to be condemned at all, because the mud is the nourishment. Your sex energy is the nourishment for your SAMADHI. It is out of the mud of sex that the lotus of SAMADHI IS going to bloom. Never repress it! Never be against it; rather, go deep into it with great clarity, with great love. Go like an explorer. Search all the nooks and comers of your sexuality, and you will be surprised and enriched and benefitted.

Knowing your sexuality, one day you will stumble upon your spirituality. Then you become free. Your energy has risen high. Now sex is just like a toy. But you are not angry with other people who are still playing with the toy. You will understand them too, you will have compassion for them. You would like to help them go beyond, but you will not condemn them and you will not want to throw them to hell to be punished. They are not doing anything wrong.

Sex is not a sin. Nobody is ever punished for sex. Nobody ever goes to hell for sex; otherwise God would be responsible, not you. He has given it to you, you are born with it; you have not created it. It is nothing like your invention, it is not like an atom bomb, it is not like a bayonet, it is not like a sword, it is not like money, it is not like politics – these are inventions of man, of the ugly human mind. These people will go to hell, certainly.

But sex is a God-given gift, and it is a great seed. And in the seed is hidden SAMADHI. Once it starts sprouting and finds the right soil, it will become a big tree. Millions of flowers will come to it.

It is not only a child that is born out of sex, it is out of sex that you will be reborn too! Sex is the generating force, sex is the very source of creativity. It is out of sex that new life is born. You will give birth to a child – this is new life, God coming in another garb, another manifestation, another incarnation of God in your child; but it comes through sex. Just watch it. Sex must be immensely valuable – God has chosen it to be the passage for life.

What is more valuable than life? What CAN be more valuable than life? God has chosen sex as the vehicle for life. Life comes through sex, in sex, out of sex. And those who know, those who have gone beyond say that another life, spiritual life, also comes through it. Not only your child is born through it, you will be reborn through it: you will become twice-born through it, you will resurrect out of it. It is life-giving energy.

Sex has to be respected. Sex is sacred. Sex is the very temple of God.

So I cannot say the man who is free from sex has no interest, because sex is life. And sex is potential spirituality. How can he be disinterested in it? Yes, he has no personal interest in it. he has gone beyond it; but he is immensely interested. In fact for a man who is free from sex his interest becomes very very great. Now, he is interested in everything.

When you are obsessed with sex you are not interested in anything. You are not interested in poetry, you are not interested in music, you are not interested in beauty, you are only interested in sex. And if sometimes you show interest in music, poetry, beauty, art, you show interest only because some sexuality is there. You become interested in poetry if it is sexual. You become interested in a picture, in a painting if it is nude, pornographic. You become interested in the music if it excites you sexually; otherwise you are not interested.

This is not interest in music -and painting, this is interest in sex. That’s why ninety-nine per cent of poetry, music, painting and sculpture is sex-based, because ninety-nine per cent of people don’t want anything other than sex. Your films, your novels, your books – even your so-called religious books – are all full of sexuality. Sometimes it is in the name of condemnation, but they go on talking about the physical, the sexual. Sometimes they are obscene.

The man who is free of sex, his interest is also free of sex. His interest spreads to the whole of life.

Just the other day I was reading:

In a school, the teacher asked the children – small children ’How many stars do you see at night?’

One child said ’Thousands.’

Another child said ’Millions.’

And the third child said ’Trillions.’

And then the smallest boy in the class stood up and said ’Three.’

The teacher asked ’Three? And these, your friends, are seeing thousands, millions and trillions, and you see only three?’

He said ’What to do? We’ve got a very small window.’

Now the small window becomes the frame. Only three stars...

You have a very small window through which to look at life. That window is called sex – only three stars. When you are free of sex, you jump out of the window. The whole sky becomes available to you. Those three stars are also still there but no longer prominent. Lost, in so many stars... your interest becomes bigger, infinite. The whole sky becomes your limit: that means there is no limit anymore.

A man who has attained to freedom from sex is immensely interested in everything. Everything thrills him, everything excites him to ecstasy, and everything reminds him of God.

Question 2

WHAT IS HYPERTENSION?

Hypertension is a state of mind when you have been become too much focused on rationality and you have forgotten your feelings. Hypertension comes out of an imbalance; too much trust in reason is the basis of all hypertension. People who live in their heads become hypertense. Relaxation comes through the heart. One should be capable of moving easily from the head to the heart just as you move out of your house and inside your house. One should be fluid between head and heart.

These are the two shores of the river that you are. You should not cling to one shore, otherwise life becomes lopsided.

The West suffers very much from hypertension, because it has forgotten the language of the heart, and only the heart knows how to relax, because only the heart knows how to love. Only the heart knows how to enjoy, celebrate. Only the heart knows how to dance and sing. The head knows nothing of dance. the head condemns dance as stupid. The head knows nothing of poetry, the head condemns poetry.

Do you know that one of the greatest philosophers, Plato, thinking about his ultimate utopian republic, said that no poet should be allowed there? In his republic, in his ultimate state of society, poets should not be allowed. Why? – because he is afraid of poets. He says: Poets bring fantasies, poets bring dreams, poets bring confusion and mysticism, and we don’t want any of it. We want a very clear-cut, logical, prosaic society. That society will be hypertense; everybody will be neurotic.

In Plato’s republic – if it ever happens... and there is every fear that it can happen – everybody will be a neurotic, and everybody will always be carrying his psychoanalyst with him. Wherever he moves, he will have to carry his psychoanalyst. That is already coming in the West.

I have heard...

In a New York street two small boys were talking – as they have always talked down the centuries, but what they said was very new.

One boy said to the other ’My psychoanalyst can lick your psychoanalyst any time.’

Small boys... They have always talked that way: ’My father can lick your father’ or ’My house is bigger than your house’ or ’My dog is stronger than your dog’ – a small child’s beginning of the ego.

But ’My psychoanalyst can lick your psychoanalyst any time’ – this is something new.

Three women were talking about their children. One was saying ’He is the topmost in the class. He always comes first.’

The second said ’That’s nothing. My child is only seven but he can play music like a Mozart, like a Wagner ’

The third said ’That’s nothing. My child is only five and he goes to his psychoanalyst all alone.’

Hypertension is a state where you have lost balance. You cannot bring your heart to function in your life; logic has become all – and logic remains superficial. Logic, when it becomes all, only creates anxiety; it never gives any peace, it goes on bringing new problems. It never solves any problem – it cannot solve, it is not in its power – it only pretends, it only promises. It goes on saying ’I will deliver the goods’ but it never delivers. And then problems go on accumulating and you don’t know how to get out of the problems, because you don’t know how to get out of the head. You don’t know how to play with children, how to love your woman, how to go and have a talk with the trees, and sometimes have a dialogue with the stars. You have forgotten all, you are no more a poet, you are no more an alive heart.

And whenever any part of the body is repressed, that part takes revenge. If another part of the mind is repressed, THAT part takes revenge. And the heart is the MOST vital part, the MOST fundamental part. One can live without the head, but one cannot live without heart. The head is a little superficial, it is a kind of luxury, but the heart is very essential. The head exists only in man, so it cannot be very essential. Animals live without it and live perfectly well in a far more silent and blissful way than man. Trees live without the head, and so do the birds and the children and the mystics.

The head is superficial. It has a certain function – use it, but don’t be used by it. Once you are being used by it you will become anxious: anxiety will come and life will become nauseous. It will just be a long stretched-out pain, and you will not find any oasis anywhere in it; it will be a desert thing.

Remember, the essential has not to be repressed. The non-essential has to follow the essential –

has to become its shadow. You cannot deny ANYTHING without getting into trouble.

Listen to this anecdote:

One day a flying saucer landed in Elsie Gumtree’s garden... right in the middle of her summer bloomers, which could have been quite painful if she had been wearing them. There was a whirring sound, and a strange purple man appeared through the hatch in the side of the saucer. Straight away he headed for Elsie’s back door and knocked politely.

Elsie opened the door, and quickly taking in the situation said ’Are you from the flying saucer?’

’Mm’ replied the man, as though in pain.

’Are you from Mars?’ Elsie asked.

’Mm’ went the man again, his face contorted.

’How long did it take you to get here? Ten years?’ asked Elsie.

’Mm’

’Twenty years?’

’Mm’ said the man, an agonised look on his face.

’Twenty years? You’ve been all that time in your flying saucer?’

’Mm.’ nodded the man, furiously.

’What can I do for you?’ asked Elsie.

The little man opened his mouth, and with great difficulty said ’Can I use your toilet, please?’

Deny anything and it becomes overpowering. Now, for twenty years he has not been able to find a toilet and you are asking nonsense questions. ’Where are you coming from?’ and ’Who are you?’

and ’How many...?’ How can he answer all these things? His denied part is there with a vengeance.

Your heart has been denied for so many lives that when it erupts it is going to create great chaos in your life. First you suffer from the mind, its tensions, anxieties; and then you can suffer from the explosion of the heart. That’s what happens when a man breaks down. First he suffers from the tense state of the mind, and then one day the heart takes its revenge, erupts, and the man goes mad, goes berserk.

Both situations are bad. First the sanity was too much – that created the insanity. A really sane person is one who can live between sanity and insanity in absolute balance. A really sane person always has some insanity in him – he accepts it. A really rational person is one who respects irrationality too, because life is such. If you cannot laugh because of your reason – because ’laughter is ridiculous’ – then you are bound for trouble, you are destined for trouble.

Yes, logic is good, laughter too is good – and laughter brings balance. It is good to be serious, it is good to be non-serious too, and there should be a constant balancing.

Have you seen a tightrope walker? He continuously balances himself. Sometimes he leans to the left with his staff, and then he comes to a point where if he leans a single moment more, he will fall.

He immediately changes his balance, goes to the other side – to the right – leans to the right. Then again a moment comes when one single moment more and he will be gone; he again starts leaning to the left. That’s how he proceeds: leaning to the left, to the right, he keeps in between. That’s the beauty – leaning to the left and to the right, leaning toward both extremes, he keeps in between.

If you want to keep yourself in between you will have to lean toward both sides again and again.

You are not to choose. If you choose, you will fall. If you have chosen the head, you will fall; you will hypertense. If you choose the heart and forget the head completely, you will become -mad. And if you want to choose anyhow, if you want to choose, then choose being mad. Choose the heart, because it is more essential.

But I am not saying that you should choose. If you insist and you say ’I HAVE to choose’, then be mad rather than just dry and sane. Be of the heart. Love, love madly; sing, sing madly; dance, dance madly. That is far better than just becoming calculating, logical, rational, and just suffering nightmares.

But I am not saying... it is not my suggestion that you do that. My suggestion is to remain choiceless.

’Choiceless awareness’ is the key word. Remain choiceless, aware, and whenever you see that something is going off-balance, lean to the other side. Bring the balance again, and this is how one moves. Life is like tightrope walking.

Question 3

WHAT DID JESUS REALLY DO WITH MARY MAGDALENE?

Shiva, no personal questions, please.

Question 4

HOW CAN I STOP WANTING TO BE SPECIAL?

Because you ARE special, and there is no need to be special. You ARE special, you ARE unique –

God never creates anything less than that.

Everyone is unique, utterly unique. There has been no person like you before, and there will NEVER

be a person like you again. God has taken this form for the first time and the last time, so there is no need to try to become special, you already are. If you are trying to be special you will become ordinary. Your very effort is rooted in misunderstanding. It will create confusion, because when you try to become special you have taken one thing tor granted – that you are not special. You have become ordinary already. You have missed the point.

Now, once you have taken it for granted that you are ordinary, how can you become special? You will try this way and that, and you will remain ordinary, because your base, your foundation is wrong. Yes, you can go to the dressmaker and can find more sophisticated dresses, you can have your hair style done again, you can use cosmetics; you can learn a few things and become more knowledgeable, you can paint and start thinking that you are a painter; you can do a few things, you can become famous or notorious, but deep down you will know that you are ordinary. All these things are on the outside. How can you transform your ordinary soul into an extraordinary soul? There is no way.

And God has not given any way because he never makes ordinary souls, so he could not think about your problem. He HAS given you a special, extraordinary soul. He has never given it to anybody.

This is just made for you.

What I would like to say to you, Shaila, is recognise your specialness. There is no need to get it, it is already there – recognise it. Go into your self and feel it. Nobody’s thumb print is like yours

– not even the thumb print. Nobody’s eyes are like yours; nobody’s sound is like yours; nobody’s flavour is like yours. You are absolutely exceptional. There is not a double of you anywhere. Even two twins are different – howsoever alike they look, they are different. They go different ways, they grow different ways; they attain to different kinds of individualities.

This recognition is needed.

You ask: HOW CAN I STOP WANTING TO BE SPECIAL?

Just listen to the fact. Just go into your being and see, and the effort to be special will disappear.

When you know that YOU ARE special, the effort will disappear. If you want me to give you some technique so that you can stop being special, then that technique will disturb. Again you are trying to do something, again you are trying to become something. First you were trying to become special, now you are trying not to become special. But trying... trying... improving in some way or other, but never accepting the you that you are.

My whole message is: Accept the you that you are, because God accepts it. God respects it, and you have not respected your being yet. Be immensely happy that God has chosen you to be, that God has chosen you to exist, to see his world, to listen to his music, to see his stars, to see his people – love and be loved – what more do you want? Rejoice! I say again and again rejoice in it!

And in that very rejoicing, by and by, it will explode in you like lightning that you are special.

But remember, that will not come as an ego that you are special as against others. No, in that moment you will know that everybody is special. The ordinary exists not.

So this is the criterion: If you think I am special’ – more special than that man, more special than that woman – then you have not understood yet. It is the ego game. Special, not comparatively; special, not in comparison with anybody – special just as you are.

A Zen Master was asked – a professor had come to see him – and the professor asked ’Why am I not like you? This is my desire. Why am I not like you? Why am I not silent like you? Why am I not wise like you?’

The Master said ’Wait. Sit silently. Watch. Watch me, and watch yourself. And when everybody else has gone, if the question still remains, I will answer.’

And the whole day people were coming and going, and disciples were asking, and the professor was getting very very restless – time was being wasted. And this man said ’When everybody is gone...’

Then came evening and there was nobody. And the professor said ’Now enough is enough. I have been waiting the whole day. What about my question?’

And the moon was rising – it was a full moon night. And the Master said ’Haven’t you got the answer yet?’

The professor said ’But you never answered me.’

The Master laughed. He said ’I have been answering many people the whole day. If you had watched you would have understood. But come out. Let us go in the garden, the full moon is there in the garden, and it is a beautiful night.’ And the Master says to him ’Look at this cypress tree’

– a big cypress tree, standing high, almost touching the moon. The moon was intertwined in its branches – ’and look at this small bush.’

But the professor said ’What are you talking about? Have you forgotten my question?’

The Master said ’I am answering your question. This bush and this cypress tree have lived for years in my garden. I have never heard the bush asking the cypress tree ”Why am I not like you?” And I have not heard the cypress tree ask the bush ”Why am I not like you?” The cypress tree is the cypress tree, and the bush is the bush; and they both are happy in being themselves.’

I am myself, you are you. The comparison brings conflict. The comparison brings ambition, and the comparison brings imitation. If you ask ’Why am I not like you?’ then you will start trying to BE like me, and that will be the undoing of your whole life: you will become an imitator, a carbon copy. And when you are an imitator you will lose aU respect for yourself.

It is very rare to find a person who respects himself. Why is it so rare? Why isn’t there reverence for life – your own life? And if it is not for your own life, how can it be for others? If you don’t respect your own being, how can you respect the rose hush and the cypress tree and the moon and the people?

How can you respect your Master, your father, your mother, your friend, your wife, your husband?

How can you respect your children if you have not respected yourself? And it is very rare to find a person who respects himself.

Why is it so rare? – because you have been taught to imitate. From the very childhood you have been told ’Become like Christ’ or ’Become like Buddha.’ But why? Why should you become like Buddha? Buddha never became you. Buddha was Buddha. Christ was Christ. Krishna was Krishna. Why should you become like Krishna? What wrong have you committed, what sin have you committed that you should become like Krishna? God never created another Krishna. He never created another Buddha, another Christ – never! Because he does not like to create the same things again and again. He is a creator, he is not an assembly line – one Ford comes, another Ford, another Ford – Ford cars go on coming, all alike, on the assembly line. God is not an assembly line.

He is an original creator: he never creates the same.

And the same will not be valuable. Just think: a Krishna walking again – the same type of man.

He will look like a joker. He will only get some place in a circus, nowhere else, because he will be repetitive. He will say the Gita again – whether Arjuna is available or not, whether the Mahabharata, that great war, is happening or not – but he will have to repeat his Gita. And he will walk in his clothes, and they will look very odd.

Just think of Jesus amidst you again. He will not fit! He will be out of date, he will be antique, he will be useful only in a museum, nowhere else.

God never repeats. But you have always been taught to become somebody else. ’Become somebody else – the neighbour’s son... become like the neighbour’s son. Look how intelligent he is. Look... that girl, how gracefully she walks. Be like that!’ You have always been taught to BE

LIKE SOMEBODY ELSE. Nobody has told you: BE YOURSELF, and be respectful to your being; it is God’s gift.

Never imitate – that’s what I say to you. Never imitate. Be yourself – that much you owe to God.

Be yourself! Be authentically yourself and then you will know that you are special. God has loved you so much, that’s why you are! That’s why you are in the first place, otherwise you would not have been. It is indicative of his tremendous love for you.

But your specialness is not in comparison with anybody else, it is not that you are special in comparison to your neighbours, friends, your wife, husband. You are simply special because you are alone. You are the only person just like you. In that respect, in that understanding, efforts to become special will disappear.

All your efforts to become special are like putting legs on a snake. You will kill the snake. You think...

because of compassion you are putting legs on the snake. ’Poor snake, how will he walk without legs?’ Just as if the snake has fallen in the hands of a centipede. And the centipede has great compassion on the snake, he thinks ’Poor snake. I have one hundred legs and he has none. How will he walk? He needs at least a few legs.’ And if he operates and puts a few legs on the snake he will kill the snake. The snake is perfectly okay as he is, he need not have any legs.

You are perfectly okay as you are. This is what I call respect towards one’s own being. And to respect oneself has nothing to do with ego, remember. To respect oneself is not self-respect. To respect oneself is GOD’S respect! It is to respect the creator, because you are just a painting – his painting. Respecting the painting, you respect the painter.

Respect, accept, recognise, and all those foolish efforts to be special will disappear.

Question 5

WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MIND AND EGO? OSHO USES MIND WITHOUT EGO

SO THEY CAN’T BE THE SAME. IS MIND ONLY DANGEROUS WHEN IT IS WORKING ON THE

PAST OR FUTURE? I WOULD BE HAPPY TO FIND NO EGO, BUT I DON’T WANT TO DROP MY

MIND LIKE A BANANA PEEL ON THE ROAD FOR OTHER PEOPLE TO SLIP ON (AND/OR FOR

BUFFALOS TO EAT).

Niraj, buffalos are not so foolish. If you throw away your mind like a banana peel, no buffalo is going to eat it.

Yes, there is a possibility that some man may swallow it – that much stupidity exists only in man.

Buffalos are not interested in minds at all: they are perfectly okay, mindless.

But mind and ego are not synonymous. Ego is an illness of the mind. Ego means an ill mind, non-ego means a healthy mind. Ego is a constriction, a limitation on the mind. When the ego disappears, mind becomes Mind with a capital M.

In Buddhist literature they use mind in two ways: Mind with a small, lower case M, and Mind with a capital M. The capital M Mind is cosmic mind: the ego has disappeared, the whole has taken possession of you, you have surrendered. you are no more, God is. And the lower case M mind is you, the ego. It is against God, it separates you.

It is like an earthen pot... You take the earthen pot to the river, you fill the earthen pot with water, the pot is underneath the water. The water inside the pot is the same, and that outside of the pot is the same, but there is a wall – an earthen wall, dividing. The wall disappears... then again the inside of the pot and the outside of the pot is one.

Ego is like a wall, an earthen wall that surrounds you and divides you from God. The question is not of the mind, the question is of the ego.

But you don’t know any other mind, you only know this ego-mind. So when I am talking to you and I say to you drop the mind, I mean drop the ego. When you have dropped this mind, the ego-mind, then the cosmic Mind arises in you. Then you start functioning not from your own, you start functioning from the original source. Then God functions through you.

Beware of the ego. Sometimes even the idea of God can be used by the ego.

One man came to me. He had a big suitcase with him. He opened the suitcase and there were many files. And he said ’Now, look. God comes every day to me in the night, and he gives me messages. And in the middle of the night I have to write messages.’ He was a Mohammedan, and the Mohammedans were very angry, because he was saying ’The NEXT Koran is descending on me, just as it descended one thousand years before on Mohammed. A higher dispensation is coming to me.’

I looked in his files. They were all rubbish! There was not a single word of any significance. But that man had come to me, he wanted me to recognise that he was a prophet, that God had spoken through him, that here was the proof.

And he said ’I know nobody else will recognise me, but you will recognise me.’

Now he had come with great hope and I felt great compassion for him. He was in a very very ill state, he was almost schizophrenic. One part of his mind was befooling another part of the mind. One part was saying things to the other part, and the other part was writing. No, he was not deceiving anybody, he was himself deceived. But the ego was feeling very good – that God had chosen him to be a special messenger.

The ego can even play with the idea of God. It can claim to be God, it can claim God’s realisation.

One has to watch very carefully, because the ego and its games are very subtle.

It is related of Bernard Shaw that he once opened his front door to find himself face to face with two earnest young men, one of whom had some pamphlets in his hand.

’Who are you and what do you want?’ asked Shaw.

We’re Jehovah’s Witnesses’ said one of them.

’Really?’ replied Shaw. ’I’m Jehovah. How are we doing?’

Now he is simply joking, but this is how the ego functions.

It happened in Baghdad that a man was caught because he declared himself a prophet of God. He was thrown in jail. After seven days the Caliph went to see the man. For seven days he had been kept starving, had been beaten continuously and was tied to a pole, swollen, scratched all over the body, very badly beaten, starving, dirty.

The Caliph asked him ’Now, what do you think? Do you still think that you are the prophet of God? Because there is only one God and there is only one prophet, Mohammed. So you take your statement back, otherwise you will be killed.’

The man started laughing and he said ’But when I was coming from God, when he appointed me as the prophet, he told me ”You will be tortured, people will beat you, just as in the old days they have done with other prophets. They will insult you, they will kill you, as they have done with Jesus.”

So your beating, this jail and all this torture simply prove that I am a prophet. It does not disprove a thing. So I was right! In fact I was thinking that so many days had passed and nobody was beating me, and nobody was torturing me – am I a prophet or not? You have proved that I am a prophet!’

And just then another man who was tied to another pole, started laughing very loudly.

And the Caliph asked ’Why are you laughing? What is the matter with you?’

And the man said ’This man is a liar. I myself AM GOD, and I never sent this man!’ – he had been caught one month before because he had declared himself to be God.

And I am not saying that there have not been people who have become God. Mansoor was right when he declared: ANA EL-HAQQ: I am God. The seers of the Upanishads were right when they declared: AHAM BRAHMASMI: I am God. Jesus is right when he says: My Father in heaven and I are one and the same. If you have seen me you have seen my Father But it is a very delicate matter, because pretenders are there, egoists are there, ego-maniacs are there. You have to be very careful. You have to watch, you have to see into yourself so no ego starts claiming. When the ego has disappeared, when you have become just an emptiness, a nothingness, then the voice of God starts floating through you. That is cosmic mind.

Ego and mind are not synonymous. IN YOU they are! Right now they are. But if ego is dropped, then a totally new quality of mind arises in you which has nothing to do with you, which has existed before you, which is eternity. That’s what Jesus means when he says ’Before Abraham was, I am.’

He is saying ’Abraham’ as the ego, as the personality. And when he says ’Before Abraham was, I am’ he is using the words ’I am’ as cosmic mind.

I can say to you ’Before Jesus was, I am’. Then ’I’ is no more used in the sense of ego, it is just a linguistic way of saying that the eternal precedes the temporal, that the formless precedes the form, that the nameless precedes the name, that the egoless precedes the ego.

You are right, mind and ego are not the same. But don’t get deceived by the idea. It can be dangerous, it can prove fatal. In you they are the same.

Drop the ego – just peel it like a banana skin and throw it. And don’t throw it on the road because, that’s true, somebody can slip on it. You have been slipping on it for so many lives. And don’t throw it on the road. As far as I know, no buffalo will eat it, but who knows? Some buffalo may have become stupid through living with men too long and may eat it and may get into trouble.

Question 6

ARE WE NOT PUNISHED FOR OUT SIN?

No, We are punished BY our sin, not FOR our sin.

Sin itself is its punishment. You over-eat, you suffer; you over-indulge, you suffer. It is not that the suffering will come later on, that suffering will come as a result, no. Suffering comes in the act itself.

So let me tell it in this way: We are punished BY our sin, not for our sin.

That FOR has created great difficulties for man, because ’for’ means ’in the future’, maybe in the other life. ’Who bothers about the future? And we will see when it comes if some ways and means can be found to avoid it. Or we can always go to the priest and confess, or we can go to the Ganges and take a bath and be relieved of the sin. Or we can go to a saint and be blessed by him.’ Some strategy can be found, but I tell you you are not punished FOR sin, you are punished BY sin. So there is no way to get rid of it.

If you eat too much, you go against nature, and immediately... the punishment. The punishment is instantaneous, it is not afterwards; it is then and there, it is immediate. So nobody can avoid it. If you want to avoid it. you have to be very very conscious not to commit sin.

Sin is a kind of unconsciousness. You become angry. In that very anger you suffer, not that you will suffer afterwards. Anger is fire, anger is poison. It poisons your whole system: it disturbs your health, it disturbs your mind, it disturbs your tranquillity, it disturbs your soul; and then it hangs with you for days together. The disturbance has to settle again, and before it settles, you become angry again. Then it becomes chronic. Then it hangs with you.

My approach is that in the very act is the punishment, and in the very act is the reward, obviously.

When you are loving, there is heaven; when you are hateful, there is hell.

Question 7

I WANT TO SERVE PEOPLE. ISN’T THAT RIGHT?

It depends. It depends on you. If you have come home, if you have become that which is your destiny, if your own problems have disappeared, if you don’t have any more anxiety, any more desires, any more unconsciousness, then there is no need to ask the question; service will flow from you, it will overflow. It will be a constant sharing – not deliberate; it will be very natural, spontaneous.

Wherever the need will arise you will be in service. If somebody is drowning in the river, you will jump. If somebody’s house is on fire, you will rush with water. If somebody has fallen on the road, you will help him to get back up. But all these things will not be deliberate. Not that you will plan, not that you will seek for these situations, not that you will go out of your house thinking ’Where to serve? How to serve people?’ You will live your life, and if some situation arises you will respond to it, with I10 plan. You will never become a servant. You will always be of service, but you will never become a servant.

These public servants are mischievous people. Never become a public servant. These are the people who have been creating trouble for man. And sometimes when you are a public servant, you go on serving whether the other person likes it or not.

I have heard...

One school in Manchester had a canal running alongside the playground. One day, two little boys came running into the headmaster’s office in a state of great agitation.

’Sir, sir’ said the first one, ’Bobby Armstrong fell in the canal!’

’Good heavens l’ said the headmaster. ’Did you get him out?’

’Yes. sir.’

’Did you give him artificial respiration?’

’We tried to, sir, but he kept getting up and running away!’

I have heard about a missionary who told his children in the Sunday School to help people.

One child asked ’How? What should we do?’

So just as an example he said ’If some old woman wants to cross the street, help her.’

After seven days, he asked next Sunday ’Did you help somebody?’

Three hands were raised. He asked the first ’What did you do?’

He said ’I helped one old woman cross the street.’

The priest was very happy and said ’God will bless you. This is very good.’ He asked the other

’What did you do?’

He said ’I also helped an old woman cross the street.’

A little suspicion arose in the priest’s mind whether they both got two old women. But old women are there, they can get them – it is not such a big thing. He asked the third, and the third also said ’I helped an old woman to cross the street.’

Then it was too much. He said ’You all three got three old women?’

They said ’Who is saying three? It was only one woman.’

The priest was more puzzled, he said ’Then...? Three boys were needed to help the woman to cross?’

He said ’Even with three it was difficult because she didn’t want to cross. It was so difficult, sir, but we did it ANYHOW! We carried her to the other side.’

Never become a deliberate public servant. Service should come as a natural growth of your meditation, otherwise you can be dangerous.

One man asked Buddha ’I would like to serve people.’ Buddha looked at him and became very sad.

He said ’But why are you looking so sad? Why did you suddenly become so sad?’

Buddha said ’YOU ARE NOT. How can you serve people? First be; otherwise, in the name of service, you will do some harm. You are not yet beyond harm, you are carrying much poison in you.

If you start serving people your poison will spread.’

It happened:

The chaplain of a large London hospital was doing his rounds of the wards when he came across a Chinese, desperately ill, in a side ward. He was in an oxygen mask, and looked close to death’s door. The chaplain learned over him and said ’How are you feeling, old chap?’

The reply was necessarily muffled; however, it sounded so frantic and urgent that the chaplain asked him to repeat it. But he could not understand what the unfortunate man was trying to tell him. And then to his distress the Chinese, obviously suffering acutely, expired before his very eyes.

He was haunted by this last word from a poor, lonely man in a foreign land, friendless and unable to communicate, so he sought out a professor of Oriental languages and repeated the, man’s last phrase as exactly as he could remember it.

’Now’ pleaded the chaplain what was he trying to tell me? What did he say?’

’He said’ the professor answered ”’You are standing on my oxygen pipe”!’

Question 8

OSHO, THEY SAY THAT WHEN DRUNK THE ENGLISHMAN TENDS TO BOAST, THE IRISHMAN

TO FIGHT, AND THE SCOTSMAN TO GO TO SLEEP IN CASE HE’S ASKED TO BUY A ROUND

OF DRINKS. NOW I WANT TO KNOW WHAT DO YOU SAY ABOUT AN INDIAN?

There is no difficulty. The question is very simple. When an Indian is drunk, he delivers a little spiritual discourse – minimum time limit ninety minutes.

CHAPTER 5

Ecstasy is Polarities Meeting

4 November 1977 am in Buddha Hall

LUKE 7

36. AND ONE OF THE PHARISEES DESIRED HIM THAT HE WOULD EAT WITH HIM. AND HE

WENT INTO THE PHARISEE’S HOUSE, AND SAT DOWN TO MEAT.

37. AND, BEHOLD, A WOMAN IN THE CITY, WHICH WAS A SINNER, WHEN SHE KNEW

THAT JESUS SAT AT MEAT IN THE PHARISEE’S HOUSE, BROUGHT AN ALABASTER BOX

OF OINTMENT.

38. AND STOOD AT HIS FEET BEHIND HIM WEEPING,A ND BEGAN TO WASH HIS FEET WITH

TEARS, AND DID WIPE THEM WITH THE HAIRS OF HER HEAD, AND KISSED HIS FEET, AND

ANOINTED THEM WITH THE OINTMENT.

39.

NOW WHEN THE PHARISEE WHICH HAD BIDDEN HIM SAW IT, HE SPAKE WITHIN

HIMSELF, SAYING, THIS MAN, IF HE WERE A PROPHET, WOULD HAVE KNOWN WHO AND

WHAT MANNER OF WOMAN THIS IS THAT TOUCHETH HIM: FOR SHE IS A SINNER.

40. AND JESUS ANSWERING SAID UNTO HIM, SIMON, I HAVE SOMEWHAT TO SAY UNTO

THEE. AND THE SAITH, MASTER, SAY ON.

41. THERE WAS A CERTAIN CREDITOR WHICH HAD TWO DEBTORS: THE ONE OWED FIVE

HUNDRED PENCE, AND THE OTHER FIFTY.

42. AND WHEN THEY HAD NOTHING TO PAY, HE FRANKLY FORGAVE THEM BOTH. TELL ME

THEREFORE, WHICH OF THEM WILL LOVE HIM MOST?

43. SIMON ANSWERED AND SAID, I SUPPOSE THAT HE, TO WHOM HE FORGAVE MOST. AND

HE SAID UNTO HIM, THOU HAST RIGHTLY JUDGED.

47. WHEREFORE I SAY UNTO THEE, HER SINS, WHICH ARE MANY, ARE FORGIVEN; FOR

SHE LOVED MUCH; BUT TO WHOM LITTLE IS FORGIVEN, THE SAME LOVETH LITTLE.

48. AND HE SAID UNTO HER, THY SINS ARE FORGIVEN.

49. AND THEY THAT SAT AT MEAT WITH HIM BEGAN TO SAY WITHIN THEMSELVES, WHO IS

THIS THAT FORGIVETH SINS ALSO?

50. AND HE SAID TO THE WOMAN, THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE; GO IN PEACE.

Who is Jesus Christ? The question has been asked down the centuries again and again, and it has been answered too. t3ut the questioners were wrong, and so were those who have answered it, because the question was out of a certain prejudice, and so was the answer. They were not essentially different; their source was one and the same.

The question was asked by those who were suspicious of Jesus’ Godhood. And the question was answered by those who were not ready to believe Jesus’ manhood. They were only ready to believe half of him. The Jews were ready to believe that he was a man. And the Christians were ready to believe that he was God. The Jews were denying half of him – the Christ part. And the Christians were denying the other half – the Jesus part.

Who is Jesus Christ? Christians don’t want to see him as Jesus, son of man – man of flesh, blood and bones, man as other men are. And the Jews did not want to believe him as God, as divine –

made of pure consciousness, not of flesh, blood and bones.

Nobody has been ready to believe Jesus in his totality. And that is not only the case with Jesus, that is the case with all the Masters – Buddha, Krishna, Zarathustra. And unless you allow Jesus in his totality to penetrate you, you will not be transformed. Unless you allow him as he is, you will not be in contact with him. Jesus is both Jesus and Christ, and he is not ashamed of it.

In the Bible many times he says ’I am the Son of man’, and as many times he also says ’I am the Son of God.’ And he seems to have no idea that there is any contradiction between these two. There is none. The contradiction exists in our minds. It doesn’t exist in Jesus’ being. His being is bridged.

His being is bridged between time and eternity, body and soul, this world and that. His being is bridged between the visible and the invisible, the known and the unknown. He is utterly bridged, he is at ease with both, because he is both. Jesus and Christ are like two shores, and the river is only possible if there are two shores. Jesus is the river that flows between these two shores: both shores are his. He exists between them, he is a river.

Who is Jesus Christ – God or man? And I say all the questions that have been asked were wrong, and so were the answers. Why? – because the questions came either from Judaic knowledge or from Muslim knowledge or from Hindu knowledge. And the answers came from Christian knowledge, and knowledge cannot answer it. Knowledge cannot even ask it! Knowledge is impotent. Such questions of such importance can be asked only out of innocence, not out of knowledge. The distinction has to be understood.

When you ask a question out of knowledge, you are not really asking, because you already know.

Your question is false, inauthentic. Your heart is not there. You are asking for asking’s sake – maybe for a discussion, a debate, an argument. But you know the question beforehand – the answer is there A PRIORI. SO you cannot receive the answer, you are not open for it, you are not available for it. You are not ready to move, to explore; you already have the answer. And the question is arising out of that answer.

The Jews had the answer. They KNEW that he was not the Messiah, that he was not God. Why?

– because they had the idea that when the Messiah came EVERYBODY would recognise him!

Everybody – without any exception. That was their idea of the Messiah, that everybody would recognise him.

And if Jesus was not recognised by everybody, how could he be the Messiah? They have a definition. They had also believed – that has also been their knowledge – that when Jesus, the real Jesus, the Christ, the Messiah came, everybody would be liberated immediately. All past sins, present sins would disappear in that light, and it had not happened. ’Christ is there but people are not liberated yet, they are still living in sin, they are still living in misery. So this man cannot be the Messiah, cannot be the Christ.’ This was not the man they were waiting for.

These are prejudices. They had never seen any Messiah. How could they define what would happen when the Messiah came?

For example, if in the dark night of your soul you have an idea that when the morning comes, money will shower from the sky: when the sun rises, everybody will become rich. And then in the morning when the sun rises, how can you accept that this is the sun? – because the money is not falling and everybody has not become rich, people are still poor. And you go on looking at the sky and no money is coming. And because you are too concerned with the money, you don’t see what is coming from the sun – the light, the life, the ecstasy. You cannot see that because your eyes are completely covered with your prejudice, with your idea. And then you ask ’Who is this Jesus Christ?’

You already know how the Messiah should be. That is hindering, that is an obstruction.

That’s why the Jews missed. It was for this man that they had been waiting for centuries, and when he came and knocked on their doors, they missed. They denied him. How could they have denied?

Were they bad people? No, they were people as good as you are, they were as good as Hindus and Mohammedans and Buddhists; there was nothing wrong with them. Then what was the problem?

The problem was their knowledge. They had a prejudice. And when Christians answer that Jesus is the only begotten son of God, again it is knowledge.

What I want to say to you is: that the questions and the answers are coming from the same source; they are not different, they are not a little bit different. Christians say he is the only begotten son of God. Now this is stupid, because all comes from God, so how can Jesus be the son of God EXCLUSIVELY? Everybody is the son of God, we all partake of sonhood. God is our father, and that’s what Jesus goes on saying again and again. But Christians won’t listen. They have an idea that God has sent his only son. Why ’only’? – too afraid that he may have another son to send, and the other son may come and then there will be conflict. Then who is right? ’So make it sure, certain, that he has only one son so that you are finished. Once more the Bible has come, now there will be no more Bibles coming again.’ Mohammedans say ’Mohammed is the only prophet – the last prophet. Now there will be no more coming. He has brought the ultimate.’ So nobody can improve upon the Koran, nobody can improve upon the Bible, because nobody has the right to improve.

Why ’the only begotten son’? Are not trees, and the rivers, and the mountains, and the stars, and man, and animals, and birds created by God? Doesn’t this whole existence come from God? Is it not flowing from his being? God is the totality of all. Rocks and rivers and mountains are as much his creations as you are, as Jesus is. There is no distinction. All beings participate in God. In fact, to BE IS to participate in God. Otherwise you cannot be – there is no other way to be!

TO BE IS to be God!

Then what is the difference between you and Jesus? The difference is not of your being, the difference is only of your knowing, recognition, awareness. Jesus knows that he is the son of God, and you have not yet recognised it. That’s the difference. You can recognise it any moment.

In that very recognition... the transformation, what Jesus calls METANOIA. It is only a question of recognition.

You have become oblivious of your reality, he is aware – but there is no difference between the beings. You are as rich as he is; he knows it, you don’t know. Because you don’t know you remain poor, not because you are poor. You are not poor! How can you be poor when God is showering every moment on you? When he is beating in your heart, and circulating in your blood, and flowing into your consciousness, how can you be poor? You are not beggars. Everybody is an emperor, but you are not aware of the fact. You don’t look inside yourself where God goes on making contact with you. You don’t look into your source.

The word that Jesus uses for looking into your source is ’return’. That word ’return’ has been translated as ’repent’. ’Repent’ also means return, but it has fallen into wrong associations. It has become repentance. It has nothing to do with repentance. Return – turn into your own being, a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and suddenly you see the light that you have always been. You see the light that you are. You see God. And for the first time you recognise that you have never lost track of him; he was just behind your back. You were not looking at him.

It is as if the sun has risen and you are standing in the full morning with closed eyes. Just open your eyes. Jesus is standing just by your side with open eyes, and you are standing with closed eyes.

That’s the only difference, there is no other difference.

Jesus is man because you are God.

Let me tell you what I mean. Jesus is as much man as you are man, and you are as much God as Jesus is God. God and man are not two separate entities. Man is one of the forms of God’s expression in the world. Jesus is man and God, so are you. And to understand Jesus is to understand your own situation. And to love Jesus is to love your own being. To meditate on Jesus to meditate upon your own division, the gap that has come in your being between you and your own real self. To understand Jesus is to bridge that gap.

Jesus has no privilege over you, neither has Buddha. Nobody is privileged, otherwise God would be unjust. Everybody has the same powers. In the eyes of God we are all equal. Inequality is our creation. In God’s eyes everyone is equal to everything else.

The Jews were very disturbed because Jesus was claiming that he was God, or God’s son. For two thousand years Christians have been defending Jesus – that he was God, that he is God.

And they have been trying to efface ALL the possibilities with which it can be proved that he is man.

That’s why they say he was born out of a virgin mother – that is the beginning. So they deny his manhood, so he is not just like you; he is special. Even in his birth he is special. Then they try to make his life in such a way that no indications are left that he was human. He was very human, utterly human. He was a total man. He was not a perfectionist. When it was needed to be angry he became really angry. He threw the money-changers out of the temple and he said to them ’What are you doing here in my Father’s home, in my Father’s temple? Get out from here!’ And he was in such a rage, that alone, single-handed, he threw many people outside.

He loved people. He had friends, he mixed with people. He ate with people, drank with people, he moved with people. He lived like an ordinary man. He had no pretensions of being anything extraordinary. And even if something extraordinary happens, he always says ’It is your faith that has performed the miracle. It is God’s mercy on you. It is something between you and your God.’ He does not even expect gratitude. Somebody is very grateful because a miracle has happened and he has been cured, and he wants to touch his feet and thank him, and he says ’No.’ And the man says

’You are a great man, you are so good!’ and Jesus says ’Nobody is good except God. You thank him. Forget about me. It is your faith that has cured you, not I. And if you have to be thankful, you have to be thankful to God. Forget about me. Don’t allow me to be between you and your God.’

That’s exactly what Buddha is reported to have said to his disciples ’If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately. Never allow me to stand between you and the reality. Hold my hand as far as you are not capable of walking alone and on your own. The moment you are capable of walking alone and on your own, just forget about me. Go ahead. Then don’t cling to me. Then don’t try to remain a shadow of me. If you meet me on the way, kill me immediately!’ he says. That’s what Jesus goes on saying again and again ’Forget about me. Let your thanks go directly to God. Who am I?’

Christians have been trying to efface all traces of his humanity; so he is born out of the virgin Mary, a virgin mother, which is absolutely absurd. Then he lives a life in which all human traits are removed.

Christians only talk about his miracles, not about his ordinary life. They are afraid. Christians say that Jesus never laughed! Now this seems to be the ultimate in stupidity. Jesus... and never laughed?

Then who else can laugh? But laughter seems too human, too mundane: they cannot allow Jesus to laugh.

But Jesus’ life is such that he must have been laughing. He must have been really laughing. He must have been a man of laughter, because he says again and again ’Rejoice! Be merry! Celebrate!’

These words cannot come from d man who has never laughed. And a man who has never laughed, why should he go to parties? Why should he drink with people? Why should he be mixing with people? And he was a mixer. Every day, every night, he was moving with people. He was not secluded. He must have been really laughing, enjoying. But Christians say he never laughed.

They have made his picture very sad-looking, long-faced, burdened. This is not possible! This is utterly wrong, because it goes against the basic realisation of a Christ, of a Buddha. Because a man who has attained to ultimate consciousness will be completely blissful, cheerful. His life will be a song and a dance. It will have the quality of flowers and stars. It can’t be sad. Why should he be sad? It is his Father’s world, it is his God’s world. Why should he be sad? He has come home.

When is he going to be happy? If you are not happy by knowing God, then there is no possibility.

Jesus looks so sad. He has been painted sad. He has been painted as ’the Saviour’. He has been painted as if he is carrying the burdens of everybody and sins of everybody. He forgives you! He does not carry your burden, he simply forgives you.

This is a wrong standpoint, that he takes your burden upon himself. If it is not of worth, why should he take it upon himself? And if it is so valuable, why should he take it from you? He will put some more on you. No, he is not taking anybody’s burden, he is simply helping everybody to drop it.

Because it is you who are holding and clinging to it, it is valueless. When he says you are forgiven, he says ’Forget all about your sadnesses and forget all about hell. It is your Father’s world, and he is compassion and he is love. How can love punish you? How can love throw you in hell? How can love torture you? God is not a sadist!’

And then Christians say: resurrection. Their whole Jesus depends on three things. First: a virgin birth; second: a non-laughing, non-enjoying monotonous, sad life of miracles; and third: resurrection. These are the three things that seem to be important to them, and these are all useless because they miss the whole point. The real Jesus is missed. This is a myth that Christians have created around him, and because of this myth the real Jesus is lost.

I would like to tell you, he is a real man, an authentic man. He lived like a man, and he Loved living like a man. He lived in all the dimensions of manhood, and yet he is God.

Now there are people, strange people... Just the other night I was reading a Christian theologian, T.L.J. Altizer. He holds that ’God has ceased to be God in becoming a man, Jesus. The incarnation is the death of God in his divine being. In short, God is dead, and Jesus is his son.’ Altizer says that God died because he became Jesus.

There are people who are against Jesus being the incarnation of God. They look like enemies, because they say how can God incarnate himself in such a small body? How can the infinite come into the finite? And how can the eternal enter time? They have their logic. How can the infinite be contained in a small body? It is not possible, because God is so great and Jesus is so small; they say it is not possible.

Now look at the other side. Now this is a Christian theologian. He says: Forget about God, God DIED the day Jesus was born. He became Jesus. God exists no more, now Jesus is God.

This is another extreme. First, the enemy does not allow God to incarnate because how can he incarnate? His logic is also the same; he denies Jesus’ Godhood. To oppose this man, people like Altizer are there. They are ready to kill God to make Jesus a perfect God. Now God has disappeared into Jesus, he lives no more.

These are not the right ways to bridge: either ’God has to die’ or ’Jesus has not to be a God’.

My understanding, my vision is totally different. God descends, not only in Jesus but in everybody.

This incarnation is not only for once, it is an everyday incarnation. When a child is born to you, God is incarnated. When a seed sprouts, God is incarnated. When a sun is born, God is incarnated. When a flower blooms, God blooms. It is only God, there is nothing else. Existence is synonymous with God. And God can go on incarnating in millions and millions of forms. He remains inexhaustible, that’s what the Upanishads say. They say: You can take out of the perfect as much as you want, but the perfect remains the perfect. You can take it COMPLETELY out of itself, and yet the whole remains behind intact. That is the meaning of the infinite.

If you take something from the infinite and the infinite becomes a little less, then it was not infinite in the first place. The definition of the infinite is that you can take as much as you want, but you cannot exhaust it. God goes on being born, and remains unexhausted. And there are poor thinkers like Altizer, who think God was exhausted with Jesus. That too is a very very cunning device, so nobody can be born any more as Christ. So no more Buddha, no more Mahavir – with Jesus God is finished, the doors are closed. God is dead because Jesus is there. God has become Jesus, so God cannot remain as God. To put the whole philosophy of Altizer in short, I would like to say, he is saying: God is dead, and Jesus is his son.

The father need not die in the son, the father can give birth to many sons.

You will be surprised, an ordinary father, a human father... How many sons can a human father give birth to, do you know? Millions. One single couple, if allowed time, can populate the whole world.

That’s how it has happened... Adam and Eve, one single couple, and they have populated the whole world. One single seed, and the whole earth will become green, just time is needed. An ordinary man will have intercourse at least four thousand times in his life – ordinary, very ordinary. Those who go more into lave, they can make more – eight thousand, ten thousand or even more. But the normal average is intercourse four thousand times. In each single intercourse, do you know how many cells are released? Millions. And each single cell can become a human being. Multiply four thousand by millions... A single human father can give birth to the whole earth. What to say about the ultimate Father?

Altizer’s God seems to be very poor. A single incarnation and he dies, and he disappears. But there is a cunning trick in it so that Jesus becomes God and nobody else can become god again: so that Jesus remains the ONLY begotten son. I would like to say to you that Jesus is beautiful, he is divine, because everybody else is ALSO beautiful and everybody else is ALSO divine. The difference is of recognition not of existence. The difference is only of knowledge not of ontology.

Jesus Christ is both Jesus and Christ. He is Christ in Jesus, and he is Jesus in Christ. He is the meeting point where two worlds meet, where two utterly polar worlds meet. And hence the beauty, and hence the ecstasy of Jesus.

Ecstasy always arises when two polarities meet. The bigger the polarities, the bigger the distance between the polarities, the bigger the ecstasy. That’s why while you are making love to a woman there is great joy, because two polarities meet. Not very big polarities, because a man and woman are not very far away – not very distant, but still distant. When a man and woman meet and are lost in love there is great ecstasy, there is great joy because they are dissolved, the egos are lost.

Boundaries are no more valid – they are overlapping, overflowing into each other. Their ordinary mundane worries don’t make any sense in this moment of joy. This orgasmic moment, how does it arise? It is the meeting of the polarities. What to say about Jesus meeting Christ, Gautama meeting Buddhahood, man meeting God – those are the ultimate polarities as far away as possible – finite meeting infinite. The very meeting is the ultimate in celebration.

Jesus must have been ecstatic. Because of the Christian painting, Christian ideology, he looks very sad. He must have been a man of great joy, overflowing with delight. What else is possible when the light has happened inside? – delight has to happen outside. They go together. When the house is lit – even with closed windows, travellers can see the light falling outside, from the curtains, from the doors. That is delight! When light has happened inside, from the outside people can see something immensely valuable flowing.

That is the definition of ecstasy: polarities meeting.

Ordinary man is like a person living in sleep. not aware of who he is. When God’s energy touches him, when he is available to God’s energy, when he is receptive to God’s energy, when that stirring energy comes dancing into him, there is ecstasy. There is no ecstasy unless we join the mundane with the supramundane, the mud with the sun, the earth with sky, the body with the soul, matter with mind – only then, when sun and the mud meet, is the lotus born, the lotus of ecstasy. Unless reality is as miraculous as the supposedly miraculous, we are frozen in ice.

Man as man is a frozen thing. And let me say to you: God as God is also a frozen thing. So it is not only that you are seeking God, God is also seeking you. It is not that without God you are sad, God is ALSO sad without you. And when you meet with God, and God meets with you, it will not be only YOUR ecstasy, it will be his ecstasy too. The whole existence will feel ecstatic. Whenever a single human being becomes a Christ or a Buddha, the whole existence dances, the whole existence is overjoyed – goes mad with ecstasy!

Meeting is the melting of the divisions. Thinking of yourself as man is creating a division. And if you don’t drop this division, this category that you have created around you, that ’I am a man’, you will not allow God to enter in you. You have to be completely free from boundaries, from all boundaries

– the boundary of the Hindu, the boundary of the Christian, the boundary of man, the boundary of richness, poorness, education, uneducation, the boundary of white and black, the boundary of the brahmin and the SUDRA – all the boundaries have to be dropped. In that very dropping the eternal enters into your time world. Into your dark night of the soul comes that light, floods that light. And suddenly, you are no more the same. And let me repeat: God is also no more the same!

God was never so rich as he became after Christ. He was never so rich as he became after Buddha.

He is not so rich as he will become when you meet him, because you will pour into him. I know you only have a small energy, but an ocean is created by small drops falling, falling, falling... Small rivers flow into the ocean and create the ocean. No single river can create the ocean, but each single river goes on creating it, goes on helping it. God is bigger than ever every day, because some water, some river again flows into him, again brings a new life, a new thrill.

God is evolving, God is hot a static thing. God is evolving every moment.

Meeting is the melting of the boundaries, blurring of the divisions, overlapping, overflowing. This is what is called trust or faith or surrender. At absolute zero, absolute surrender, life takes over once more and we are returned to God or to Tao or to DHAMMA, to free-flowing totality. God is the free-flowing totality, God is not a person.We return to our pure being only when we become a free-floating totality. In this state everything: is okay, right.

A rusting tin can fill us with radical awe as the sunlight catches it...

In Yoga they call it a certain state of NADAM, a certain state of harmony, accord. When man disappears into God and man’s conflict with God disappears, there IS NADAM, there is harmony –

what Heraclitus calls ’the hidden harmony’. NADAM IS homeostatis – harmony, rhythm. You are out of rhythm, out of tune with God, that is your misery. Jesus is in tune with God, that is his joy. If he is also miserable, if he is also sad, then what is the difference between you and him? The difference is that he feels for you, that he feels all compassion for you, but he himself is in utter joy. In &ct, because he is in utter joy, he feels sorry for.you, he feels compassion for you. He wants to bring you also to this utter J oy, and he knows it is yours just for the asking. Hence he says ASK, AND

IT SHALL BE GIVEN YOU; SEEK, AND YE SHALL FIND; KNOCK, AND IT SHALL BE OPENED

UNTO YOU.

The sutras:

AND ONE OF THE PHARISEES DESIRED HIM THAT HE WOULD EAT WITH HIM. AND HE WENT

INTO THE PHARISEE’S HOUSE, AND SAT DOWN TO MEAT.

Jesus was always ready to go anywhere to anybody. He wanted as many people to come in contact with him as possible. He never missed a single opportunity of Contacting people.

Before we go further into the sutras, a few things about Jesus’ way, his work, have to be understood.

How did he transform so many people? what was his secret? what was his alchemy?

Remember these seven words. Christ means to me these seven words, and this is his whole alchemy. First: catalytic; second: catalepsy; third: catharsis; fourth: catastrophe; fifth: cross; sixth: conversion; and seventh: Christ-consciousness. This is his whole alchemy, how he used to transform people. His work is different from Buddha’s, his methodology is different; different from Krishna’s, different from Mohammed’s. He is a unique Master.

First: catalytic. Jesus’ work is that of a catalytic agent. He wants people to be in contact with him, what Hindus call SATSANG. To be in contact with the Master, to be in the presence of the Master –

the very presence functions. Jesus does not give methods to people, that is not his way. Patanjali’s way is to create devices, methods; that is the way of Gurdjieff too – to create methods and devices so people can start growing. Jesus’ way is that of SATSANG. He transforms people just by his touch. He overpowers people, he surrounds them. His energy starts dancing around them. He starts pulsating his being, and in his pulse – that powerful pulse of Jesus – the other person also starts pulsating. In the beginning, hesitant, afraid, not knowing where he is going, but slowly slowly he gains momentum. It is like a dancer. Have you not watched when a dancer is dancing and the music is on, something of the dancer starts happening in you? Your feet start moving, you start tapping the chair with your hand, your head starts nodding. You are filled with it. Some pulsation has reached you.

Jesus’ methodology is to pulsate people through his pulse, to magnetise people through his magnetism; to be with them. And the best way to be with them is when they are very very relaxed.

Hence Jesus was always ready to go to people, to drink with them, to eat with them, because that is the most relaxing moment in people’s lives. Buddha has never done that – that was not his way.

When people are eating, they are relaxed.

Have you not watched it? Even businessmen like to take you for lunch, because then things are easier. You are more positive, you are more relaxed, you say yes more easily. So if the salesman wants to sell the car to you, he takes you for lunch. When your belly is feeling good and you are feeling very contented, and the aroma of the food and the joy of the food, and you are feeling really satisfied... it is very difficult to say no. It is easier for the salesman to sell something to you. And Jesus is the greatest salesman. It is not just accidental that his religion has become the greatest religion as far as numbers are concerned. The greatest salesman ever.

He would go to people to take food with them or to drink with them, and that was the moment when he would try to infiltrate their being with his presence. That was his catalytic, magnetic power. When people are drinking... You have drunk a little bit – you become more relaxed. Then things are more easy, you are less defensive.

Gurdjieff used to do that – that was his everyday work. Just as every day I go on talking to you, every day he used to invite his disciples for food. That was the greatest thing. Every day, every night. And it was not an ordinary dinner. It used to continue for five hours, six hours, seven hours, almost half the night. And then drinking... and he would force you to eat and drink, and he himself would be serving and it would be difficult to say no; eating, drinking, laughing, you would be less defensive.

And he would be telling jokes, and people would become very very relaxed. The atmosphere would become very homely – utterly homely. They would forget who Gurdjieff was and who they were.

They would relax into his being, and his work would start.

That’s exactly what I am doing I go on talking to you. That is a kind of feast, a feast of words. You become involved in the words, you become utterly involved with the.words, and my work, the REAL

work starts. That is indirect.

So the first thing, the first word to be understood about Christ is ’catalytic’. He is not a great philosopher like Buddha. He is not a great scientist like Patanjali. He is not a singer like Krishna is.

But he has his own method and that method is of the catalytic agent.

In the East there have been many Masters like that, but Jesus is the ultimate in SATSANGA: just being with people.

The catalytic agent means that nothing is done to you, but something happens to you. The catalytic agent does not go into you, and does not do anything in you. But just the presence, just the very presence provokes you, inspires you, and something starts growing in you. Just as scientists say, if you want to make water, hydrogen and oxygen are needed; but they cannot meet unless electricity is present as a catalytic agent. It does not enter into them, it remains aloof, but its very presence helps them to meet. That is very miraculous. Science has not yet been able to know how the catalytic agent works, because nothing goes out of it, it is simply there. But you can understand it.

Sometimes I am simply here, and something becomes silent in you. And this can happen even when you are far away if you remember me. If you remember totally, immediately you will find something has changed. The vibe around you is no more the same, something has fallen quiet, silent. The turmoil of the mind is a little far away, not so close by. You are settled and centered.

Just the other day somebody asked the question ’While I am here listening to you and to your words, much is happening to me. But when I go back, will it continue to happen when I will be listening to your tapes or reading your books?’

It depends on you. It can’t depend on books, on tapes, but it depends on you. If in those moments of listening to the tapes or reading the books you can feel my presence, you can visualise my presence, you can think of me and remember me, it will go on happening. There will be no problem. Distance does not make much difference.

For the first time it is needed to be close. Once the contact has happened, then you can call me anywhere. And when I say you can call me anywhere, I mean you can simply fall into my presence anywhere, you can just remember me. Calm and quiet, remember me, be full of my presence, and suddenly it will be there, and it will function as a catalytic agent.

A catalytic agent is a miraculous thing. This is Jesus’ real miracle. Tao has a word for it, they call it WEI-WU-WEI, action without action. The Master does not DO anything to you, he does not interfere in your being, he simply is there. But he is pulsating and his pulsation is strong; his pulsation is vital.

He is like a great wind which goes on blowing, surrounding you. You are like a fragile tree; you start swaying in the wind and something starts happening to you – the dance. The wind is invisible, and in fact the wind is not doing anything to you, it is simply blowing on its own way. But it can give you the thrill, it can wake you up! This is what acid people call a ’contact high’.

It happens sometimes when somebody has taken LSD and is really deep into it, gone, and you are just taking care of the person. You have not taken LSD, you are just taking care of the person because it is dangerous to leave him, and suddenly you start feeling that something is turning on in you. This is now a universal experience, because so many people in this generation have taken LSD, marijuana, psilocybin and things like that. This is a universal experience now, that sometimes just by being in the presence of somebody who has gone deep in his LSD trip, you start feeling high.

Something starts moving in you. Wings grow, and you start flying. And you have not taken anything!

Then what is happening? Because that man’s pulsation is so powerful in this moment, that man is blowing like a great wind, he takes you with him unawares. You are pulled by him, you are taken by his stream of consciousness.

This is a new experience in the West, but in the East it is very ancient. And this is nothing, because LSD is LSD – such a small quantity you take. But a Jesus is pure LSD – just LSD and nothing else! He is made of the stuff LSD. A Buddha is absolute marijuana. Each single cell of his body is marijuana. It is not chemical, it is spiritual. It is such a vital force that there is no other force which is more vital. The only question is if you become available to it – then it turns you on.

The second word is ’catalepsy’ – the suspension of your old being. When you are in contact with a Christ or a Buddha, your old being is immediately suspended out of the very shock; you cannot function as you used to function before. The very presence of the Christ is such a shock that everything is suspended. For a moment all thoughts stop, all feelings disappear. For a moment you may miss a heartbeat. That’s why it happens that around great Masters you will see many people who look like zombies. They are in a kind of suspension.

Just the other day Divyananda came to me. He works in my garden. And he said ’What is happening to me? I have become almost like a zombie, and I am afraid. Should I go and do something else?’ And I told him ’You be a zombie. Be a perfect zombie, that’s all. You continue your work.’

Now something immensely valuable is happening, but he cannot understand it yet. This is what is happening: catalepsy. He is open to me, and working in my garden he has become even more open to me. He is in shock, he is forgetting who he is. He is losing his old identity, he is paralysed!

Why paralysed? – because the old cannot function and the new has yet to be born. So he is in the interval.

This is going to happen to many. Don’t be afraid when it happens! It will go, it is not going to remain, but it is on the way. It happens. This is a state of not knowing: you don’t know what is what, all your knowledge is lost, all your cleverness is gone. You become idiotic. You look like an idiot. People will say that you have become hypnotised or something, that you are no more your old self. That is true.

But it is a kind of shock, and good, because it will destroy the past, it will make you discontinuous with the past, and it will bring the fresh, the new. It will allow something original to happen. But before the original happens, the past has to go.

You are like a pot in which there has been poison for a long time, for many years, for many lives.

Now before something can be poured into it, the poison has to be thrown out and the pot has to be cleaned, utterly cleaned. Even if a little bit of poison remains hanging around, it will destroy the new that is coming, it will kill it.

That is the whole meaning of sannyas and disciplehood: that your past has to be completely washed away; your memory, your ego, your identity – all have to go. When you are just an empty pot, then something more is possible. That is the third state: catharsis. When your head is in shock, your heart becomes free, because the head is not allowing the heart to be free. It is keeping the heart as a prisoner. When the head has stopped in shock... And each Master beheads you, cuts your head mercilessly; destroys your reason, destroys your logic; brings you down from the head. And the only way is to cut the head completely.

This is the third state: catharsis. When the head is no more functioning, its control is lost and the prisoner is free, then the heart starts throbbing again – maybe after many, many lives.

And for many lives you have been repressing your emotions, feelings, tears, love – they all flood you.

That’s what catharsis is – the appearance of the heart. The repressed explodes and the emotional bursts out – a kind of earthquake or a heartquake, a volcanic situation. You are flooded by the unconscious and the irrational. That’s why a real disciple always passes through a kind of insanity around a Master.

The fourth state is catastrophe. When reason is gone and the heart goes mad it is catastrophe.

And then the ego starts falling into pieces, because the ego is nothing but control. The control of the head over the heart is creating the ego. When the head is no more functioning, it is in shock, catalepsy, and the heart is in catharsis. The ego disappears because the ego is no more there. It cannot be there, the control is gone. And when the ego falls it looks like catastrophe. All is lost, chaos arises and now one feels that one has really gone mad. It is not just a temporary madness. It looks now as if it is going to remain there forever. One cannot look beyond it.

This is what Christian mystics call ’the dark night of the soul’: a kind of hopelessness arises. One is utterly lost and there seems to be no possibility of getting out- of it. One is drowned and drowning.

And the powers that are drowning you are so vast that there seems to be no hope that you can get over them. The shores are no more visible; you are in the middle of the ocean.

And then comes the fifth: the cross. The ego dies on the cross.

In the fourth state it simply disintegrates, but goes on lingering in fragments, clinging here and there.

In the fifth it dies, the ego completely dies – no more identity with body or mind, a state of negation, death, emptiness. Great trembling, fear... one is on the verge of the abyss called God. That’s where Jesus found him – on the cross. That cross has to come to everybody. Jesus says everybody has to carry his cross on his shoulders.

Then comes the sixth: conversion. Only when you are dead does God become alive in you. Only when the seed dies does it become a tree, only when the river disappears into the ocean does it become one with the ocean: conversion.

’Conversion’ is a beautiful word very badly used by Christians. They think that if somebody is a Hindu and becomes a Christian, this is conversion. This is not conversion. A Hindu becoming a Christian, this is nothing. He has simply changed one prison for another, one priest for another, one book for another. But there has been no real change, no transformation. A Christian can become a Hindu; Hindus think this is conversion. This is not conversion. Conversion happens only when the ego dies and God is born in you. Conversion is when the human becomes divine, not when a Hindu becomes Christian or a Christian becomes Hindu. But when the human becomes divine, when Jesus becomes Christ, then there is conversion; when Gautama becomes Buddha, then there is conversion.

In the fifth, the cross, the ego dies. In the sixth, the self is born – the supreme self, the ATMAN, your real self. For the first time you know who you are. Mountains are again mountains, rivers are again rivers. All confusion gone... clarity arises. Your eyes become transparent, you can see things. Now there are no more any prejudices, no more any ideologies. One is neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor communist, nor fascist. One simply is... a purity of isness. This is where what Hindus call SATYAM, SHIVAM, SUNDERAM IS felt. SATYAM means truth, SHIVAM means good, and SUNDERAM means beauty. Not before that.

Before that, what you call beauty is nothing but lust. What you call good is nothing but conditioned morality. What you call truth is nothing but correspondence between you, your statement and things.

It is like you say ’In the room there are three chairs.’ And somebody goes and finds three chairs, so it corresponds, it is ’true’. This has nothing to do with truth, it is just correspondence, a true statement.

But what about truth? What is truth? – three chairs? If there are two chairs, it is untrue. This is only linguistic and logical truth.

Truth means that which is hidden behind the trees and the mountains, hidden behind people, hidden behind everything. That ’hidden’ becomes unhidden, then you come to truth.

Truth... and then you come to SHIVAM; your life becomes good. Not in the sense of being a moral person, a Pharisee, a puritan, no; your life becomes spontaneously good. Not that you try to do good. but whatsoever you do is good. You cannot do bad! The bad is impossible, because you cannot think of yourself as separate from others. How can you do bad? You cannot hurt anybody because now hurting anybody is hurting yourself. Your ego is gone. You hurt somebody and you are hurt. You kill somebody and you are killing yourself. You steal from somebody and you are stealing from your own pocket. Now goodness is just natural – not imposed – spontaneous.

And SUNDERAM. And only then, when you have known what is and you have become spontaneous, can you know what beauty is. Beauty is not only poetry, it is the vision of truth, it is the vision of God.

But one step more. It is like you are one thousand miles away from the Himalayas in the early morning and you see in the clear sky no clouds, and the Himalayan peaks are standing there.

Those virgin snows shining like gold in the morning sun... but you are a thousand miles away. It is beautiful, it fills you with awe, but you are still distant.

So in conversion: SATYAM, SHIVAM, SUNDERAM.

And then the seventh state is Christ-consciousness. You are no more away from the peaks, you have become the peaks! You are no more away from those virgin snows, you are those snows. You are not seeing sunrays reflected on the snow, you are those sunrays. Christ-consciousness is born: one becomes one with the whole. One becomes that which one really is. One becomes one with God. Buddha calls it NIRVANA, Christ calls it ’kingdom of God’, Hindus call it SATCHITANANDA.

Now again another trinity arises.

First in the sixth: SATYAM, SHIVAM, SUNDERAM – truth, good, beauty. In the seventh: SAT –

being, CHIT – consciousness, ANANDA – bliss.

Remember these seven words and meditate on them. Then you will be able to easily understand these immensely significant sayings of Jesus.

AND ONE OF THE PHARISEES DESIRED HIM THAT HE WOULD EAT WITH HIM. AND HE WENT

INTO THE PHARISEE’S HOUSE, AND SAT DOWN TO MEAT.

AND, BEHOLD, A WOMAN IN THE CITY, WHICH WAS A SINNER, WHEN SHE KNEW THAT

JESUS SAT AT MEAT IN THE PHARISEE’S HOUSE BROUGHT AN ALABASTER BOX OF

OINTMENT.

This woman is Mary Magdalene.

AND STOOD AT HIS FEET BEHIND HIM WEEPING, AND BEGAN TO WASH HIS FEET WITH

TEARS, AND DID WIPE THEM WITH THE HAIRS OF HER HEAD, AND KISSED HIS FEET, AND

ANNOINTED THEM WITH THE OINTMENT.

Just the presence of Jesus... He waLked on that street, he went into this Pharisee’s house, and this woman Mary Magdalene heard. This was his first meeting with Magdalene. She was a prostitute.

And something welled up in her heart.

Sometimes it happens that saints miss and sinners achieve, because saints are very proud of their sainthood. The ego is strong.

Now a saint has not come to see Jesus but a prostitute. Hearing that Jesus is so close by, knowing that he has come... Maybe she had always dreamt and always wanted to see him but was afraid whether she would be allowed or not. She may have felt embarrassed, may have felt shy. What would he say? How would she stand before him? But she must have dreamt, she must have desired. Now the opportunity has come.

AND STOOD AT HIS FEET BEHIND HIM WEEPING...

Now she is standing behind, weeping. This is the way to meet Christ. How can you encounter him from the front? It will be difficult to encounter him from the front – you will be dazzled. And encountering him from the front will be a kind of ego. No, one can only meet Jesus weeping, because the meeting with Jesus is not of the head, but of the heart. And one can come only from behind – hesitant, knowing perfectly well ’I am not worthy.’ The more you feel that you are not worthy, the more worthy you become. The more you feel you are worthy, the less worthy you are, because it is basically pride that hinders, nothing else. Rabbis won’t go to Jesus, saints won’t go to Jesus.

I have never heard... not a single story that any saint went to see Jesus. How can they go? It is impossible. They would like Jesus to come to them. They cannot go, their pride will not allow them.

If sometimes some respected people have come to Jesus, they came hiding. One professor came one night in the dark when everybody had left, because he was very respected. His name was Nicodemus. He was also a rabbi and a professor, and a member of the board of the great temple.

He was afraid to come in the daylight – people would come to know. And when people would see that he had come to see Jesus, then they would suspect his knowledge. ’So he is also following this madman? So he has also fallen into his trap?’ He comes in the dark night when nobody is there.

But this woman, this woman of the street, comes to see Jesus. She stands behind, is weeping.

... AND BEGAN TO WASH HIS FEET WITH TEARS...

And when she comes in front of him, what does she do? She washes his &et with tears. How else can the feet of a Christ or a Buddha be washed? You have to pour out your heart. Those tears are nothing but her heart. She is crying, weeping – she is utterly happy too. She is sad about her past, she is repentant about her past, but she is utterly overjoyed too because she has been able to come to Jesus, she has been able to touch his feet.

She must have been afraid, because no saint would allow himself to be touched by a woman of the street. She must have been afraid Jesus would say ’Woman, keep away!’ But he has not said anything. He is there utterly showering compassion on her.

... AND BEGAN TO WASH HIS FEET WITH TEARS, AND DID WIPE THEM WITH THE HAIRS OF

HER HEAD, AND KISSED HIS FEET, AND ANOINTED THEM WITH THE OINTMENT.

NOW WHEN THE PHARISEE WHICH HAD BIDDEN HIM SAW IT, HE SPAKE WITHIN HIMSELF, SAYING, THIS MAN, IF HE WERE A PROPHET, WOULD HAVE KNOWN WHO AND WHAT

MANNER OF WOMAN THIS IS THAT TOUCHETH HIM: FOR SHE IS A SINNER.

Now this woman is being transformed, and this Pharisee – this respectable man – is missing. He has invited Jesus but he is not pulsating with him. Now his mind, his knowledge, his prejudice are coming in the way.

... HE SPAKE WITHIN HIMSELF... THIS MAN, IF HE WERE A PROPHET...

Now he knows the definition of a prophet. Everybody thinks he knows the definition of God, prophet, Messiah, Christ, Buddha. You have not ever looked into the eyes of a Buddha, you have never tasted of it.

Just the other night a sannyasin was saying to me that in Vrindavan here, things like garlic and onions are used int he food – -’These are harmful to meditation’ – as if he knows what meditation is.

He has heard it. He runs a restaurant, so he knows about food – that is true; but he does not know anything about meditation. Who has told you that onion and garlic are against meditation? Have you meditated without onion and garlic and then with onion and garlic? Have you experimented? Just foolish ideas, fads, go on being given from one to another. One generation gives its foolishness to another generation. And the longer it has been transferred, the more powerful it becomes, because it has a history. The onion is so innocent. If you want to avoid, avoid apples not onions, because it is the apple which created the whole trouble.

But that story also seems to be wrong because I eat three apples every day just to see when God is going to expel me – he has not expelled me yet. My doctor had told me when I was young that an apple a day keeps the doctor away. So I started eating three to keep everybody away! But God has not expelled me yet, and he seems to be very overjoyed with me.

But the onion? It was not even forbidden to Adam. And if garlic is the problem, then Maitriji will never enter the kingdom of God – impossible. And he would not like to either, if he has to enter without garlic.

Fads! You don’t know anything about meditation. You don’t know anything about Christ, you don’t know anything about Buddha. But you have ideas, and you are not even hesitant. He was so certain about it that even I felt it would be very shocking to say anything to him. So I said ’You come back and you start improving things here.’

... HE SPAKE WITHIN HIMSELF SAYING, THIS MAN, IF HE WERE A PROPHET, WOULD HAVE

KNOWN WHO AND WHAT MANNER OF WOMAN THIS IS THAT TOUCHETH HIM: FOR SHE IS

A SINNER.

He must have been waiting. Now this is a good situation to judge whether this man is a Messiah, a prophet or just an ordinary pretender. Now he is a pretender. He has not even been able to know that this woman is a sinner. He should have shouted ’Keep away, you ugly woman! You want to pollute me? poison my being? Keep away your ugly and impure hands! Get out from here!’ Then the Pharisee would have been very happy. He would have recognised. ’Yes, this is how a prophet should be.’ He would have touched his feet – but if he fits with his knowledge, then only... He is not ready to fit with Jesus; Jesus has to fit with him. That has to be remembered always.

Many of you try, with me too – I have to somehow fit with your inner arrangement, with your ideas. I have to behave according to you; if I don’t behave, then I am wrong. But you are not hesitant about your ideas. If your ideas were right, then you would have arrived long before. You have not arrived, you are still searching and stumbling. And still you think your ideas are right?

This Pharisee knows nothing, otherwise he would have become a Christ by now. But knowledge is very stupid, very pretentious. It goes on believing in itself.

AND JESUS ANSWERING SAID UNTO HIM...

Jesus must have watched what happened, must have seen this man’s face changing, must have seen that he was feeling a little ashamed that he had called this man into his house. Maybe he would have to clean his house, and whitewash it again. ’And not only this man has entered, a prostitute has come... And he does not know a thing about anything. He seems to be completely ignorant of the scriptures.’

AND JESUS ANSWERING SAID UNTO HIM...

And he has not SAID anything.

Many times you don’t ask me things and I answer, because I feel the question is there. You are not gathering courage to ask it.

AND JESUS ANSWERING SAID UNTO HIM, SIMON, I HAVE SOMEWHAT TO SAY UNTO THEE.

AND HE SAITH, MASTER, SAY ON.

Now things have changed. Just inside he was saying ’this man’ and outside he says ’Master’. How man lives in hypocrisy! How man goes on living in two worlds – split, schizophrenic! And these people think they can even deceive Jesus. Inside he says ’This man is not a prophet at all’ outside he says ’Yes, Master, say on.’

THERE WAS A CERTAIN CREDITOR WHICH HAD TWO DEBTORS: THE ONE OWED FIVE

HUNDRED PENCE AND THE OTHER FIFTY.

AND WHEN THEY HAD NOTHING TO PAY, HE FRANKLY FORGAVE THEM BOTH.

TELL ME THEREFORE...

asked Jesus

... WHICH OF THEM WILL LOVE HIM MOST?

Jesus always talks in parables, small parables, but greatly indicative, symbolic.

THERE WAS A CERTAIN CREDITOR WHICH HAD TWO DEBTORS: THE ONE OWED FIVE

HUNDRED PENCE, AND THE OTHER FIFTY.

AND WHEN THEY HAD NOTHING TO PAY, HE FRANKLY FORGAVE THEM BOTH. TELL ME

THEREFORE, WHICH OF THEM WILL LOVE HIM MOST?

SIMON ANSWERED AND SAID, I SUPPOSE THAT HE, TO WHOM HE FORGAVE MOST. AND

HE SAID UNTO HIM, THOU HAST RIGHTLY JUDGED.

But just see the point. This man says ’I suppose...’ When he was thinking about whether Jesus was a prophet or not, he had not thought in the words ’I guess, I suppose, I think’. No, he was certain.

Now he says ’I suppose... I guess that the one who has been forgiven most will love more.’

Jesus says

THOU HAST RIGHTLY JUDGED. WHEREFORE I SAY UNTO THEE, HER SINS, WHICH ARE

MANY, ARE FORGIVEN; FOR SHE LOVED MUCH: BUT TO WHOM LITTLE IS FORGIVEN, THE

SAME LOVETH LITTLE.

Two things: first, if you are forgiven your many sins you will love more, naturally. If you love more, more of your many sins will be forgiven, naturally. It works both ways. It is not just that you love only because your sins have been forgiven. If you love, your sins will be forgiven. If your sins are forgiven you will love. They go together.

Jesus is giving one of the greatest criterions ever given. It is not a question of how many sins you have committed in your lives – millions! The question is: Can you bow down to God and ask for his forgiveness? Can you surrender? Can you say to him ’I alone am not able to pay your debts, I am helpless. I am lost. If you save me, only then can I be saved; otherwise, there is no hope.’ If you can say this from your very core of being: that is prayer. In that way Christianity is far more religious than Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism. Because Buddhism, Jainism, Hinduism depend more on man’s act, KARMA. They don’t depend on God’s compassion, on God’s forgiveness. That dimension is missing, utterly missing in Jainism. That’s why Jainism is very very dry, mathematical, calculating .

Sometimes I suspect because Jainism is so calculating, that’s why all Jains have become businessmen. There must be some relationship between the two. Very calculating! – you have done one thing wrong, you have to do one thing good to cancel it. It is a question of mathematics. It is not religion. It is more of a science, because love never enters anywhere. Forgiveness... the very word is not known in Jain scripture. There is nobody to forgive, and forgiveness cannot be possible because that will be favouring a few people. There is no question of favouring anybody. Everybody has to suffer his sins, and everybody has to pay for them. It appeals to the logical mind, but it has no religious quality; it is dry. Without love, no religion can be religion.

Christianity has one beautiful thing and that is: God’s compassion is our shelter. It is impossible to think that man will be able to get out of the mire of his actions on his own, all alone. He will get more and more into the mire. Man is helpless, unconscious, blind. To ask that he can get out of this LONG history of sins is almost to ask for the impossible. It is to ask for a miracle.

But there is a way – a way if you can surrender. In utter helplessness if you can- cry for God and say ’Save me! I am defeated. I accept my defeat, and I don’t carry any more pride that will ever succeed. My failure is utter. I fall at your feet.’

Compassion is always there, because we come from this source. This source is our mother, God is our mother. If God cannot forgive you, then who will forgive? If this existence cannot forgive you, who will forgive? Forgiveness is possible; that is the great message that Christ brings to the world.

Every Messiah brings a special message, a unique message. This is Christ’s special message.

WHEREFORE I SAY UNTO THEE, HER SINS, WHICH ARE MANY, ARE FORGIVEN; FOR SHE

LOVED MUCH: BUT TO WHOM LITTLE IS FORGIVEN, THE SAME LOVETH LITTLE. AND HE

SAID UNTO HER, THY SINS ARE FORGIVEN.

This is a miraculous statement! Just see the point of it. In his compassion, in his love, he simply says THY SINS ARE FORGIVEN. He is not miserly about it.

THY SINS ARE FORGIVEN.

Unconditionally! There is no condition attached to it. He is not saying ’You do this and do that, and then your sins will be forgiven.’ No, he says ’They are forgiven. You loved much. Your tears have shown your helplessness. I have seen into your heart. You may have sinned on the outside. You may be a prostitute, but deep inside you are one of the purest souls that I have ever come across.’

Jesus has penetrated into her being. The prostitute is no more a prostitute, the body is no more a body. The visible is no more relevant, he has looked into the invisible, into that pure source: the fountain of consciousness. And this woman is really fortunate that she could cry, that she could wash his feet with her tears, that she poured ointment – valuable ointment – on his feet. These are just symbolic of her heart. She is pouring her heart.

AND HE SAID UNTO HER, THY SINS ARE FORGIVEN. AND THEY THAT SAT AT MEAT WITH

HIM BEGAN TO SAY WITHIN THEMSELVES,

Now those Pharisees, those respectable people of the town – they started thinking and said ’Who is this man? How can he forgive anybody? What does he think of himself?’

And yes, I say to you, Christ can forgive – because he is not, only God is. He can forgive because HE IS NOT! He has disappeared, his ego no more functions there. It is God forgiving through him.

Just as God is a rose in a rose, God is a Christ in a Christ WHO IS THIS THAT FORGIVETH SINS ALSO? AND HE SAID TO THE WOMAN, THY FAITH HATH

SAVED THEE...

These people were thinking in their minds again. To answer them, Jesus says to Mary Magdalene THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE... He is not saying ’I have saved you.’ He is saying ’How can I? I exist not, it is thy trust, thy faith.’

THY FAITH HATH SAVED THEE: GO IN PEACE.

Now there is no problem for you. Go in trust. Keep this trust alive. You are pacified.

Now those who had invited him, missed him; and this woman of the street penetrated into his deepest core and allowed him to penetrate into her deepest core.

When Jesus was on the cross, all his male disciples had left. They were hiding. Only this woman was near the cross, unafraid. It was dangerous.

In the night when he was caught, Jesus had told one disciple ’Don’t follow me.’ He said ’I will follow you, Master.’ And Jesus said ’Don’t be foolish. I know you – before the sun rises you will have denied me thrice.’ And it happened like that. In the dark night when he was being taken by the enemies as a prisoner, that disciple followed, hiding in the crowd. But the crowd became suspicious, this man seemed to be new. In the light of the torches they saw that this man seemed to be new, they were not acquainted. They asked him ’Who are you? Are you a follower of Jesus?’ And he said ’No, I don’t know who Jesus is.’ And this happened thrice. And when it happened thrice, the sun had not risen yet. And Jesus looked back and said loudly ’So you see, you have denied me thrice!’

The only person who was close to Jesus at the moment of death was Mary Magdalene, because she loved deeply. She was utterly sacrificed, dedicated to Jesus. When he was taken down from the cross she was the first woman to help. There were two other women – his mother was there and Mary Magdalene’s sister was there – but not a single male disciple. Not a single one! Those wh-o had been discussing all along ’Who is the greatest?’ and ’Who will be next to Jesus in heaven?’ they were not there. They had escaped, afraid they might be caught they might be suspected of being followers of Jesus, they might be crucified too. Only love can remain to the very end. Only love can defy death.

Read these sutras very silently, and try to feel Christ through them. His message of forgiveness is one of the most significant.

And I also say to you, that if you are ready, if you pour down your heart, your sins are forgiven. They are forgiven in your very surrender. Not that I forgive them, they are forgiven in your very trust; you are free, you are saved.

CHAPTER 6

An Idea Whose Time has Come

5 November 1977 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

IS GOD OVERHEAD IN THE SKY, IN HEAVEN?

God is everywhere. God is everywhereness. God is not a person. You cannot locate him. God is the totality of all beings, of all things. But down the ages man has looked at the sky overhead for God, for a certain reason. The reason is not that God is overhead, the reason is that to search for God we have to go above our heads, that we have to transcend ourselves, that we have to look upwards.

Not that God is there, God is everywhere – below you, beside you, behind you, in front of you.

But we look up because we are low. We are living in a dark valley, and we look up. This is a kind of inner search. Just as the tree grows upwards, man grows upwards. Man is a kind of tree. But remember always, when the tree grows upwards its roots meanwhile are growing downwards. If the tree only grows upwards it will fall, it will not be able to remain rooted in the soil. The bigger the tree, the deeper it has to go low-wards, downwards. The roots go into the soil and the branches grow into the sky, and there is a great balance. It is almost in proportion. The bigger tree will have bigger roots, and the proportion is almost the same. There is a balance.

If a tree only goes downwards, it will be meaningless; and if a tree only goes upwards, it will not be able to exist. That’s what has happened to humanity. A few people live only downwards: in sexuality, in food, in the body – in the lower centres. They go on spreading their roots. Their life becomes meaningless, because meaning arises only when you start rising upwards. The higher you go, the more meaning, the more significance, because there is more light. Clouds become available to you, and the sun and the moon and the stars, and life starts taking the shape of poetry. Life starts becoming a song. You can sway and dance into the sky, and you can whisper with the stars, and you can love the wind and the rains, and you can have a dialogue with the sun – with the source of life and light. Roots remain dismal, sad, dark, lost into the soil. If a tree has only roots and no branches, no foliage, no leaves, no flowers, no fruits, how can it be meaningful? It cannot have fulfilment. Fulfilment comes only from fruition, flowering.

But if a tree simply goes upwards and forgets to grow its roots, it will fall down; it cannot grow very far. It will be at most seasonal. Flowers will come and within weeks they will be gone. It will be very tentative. There cannot be any eternal significance in it. It will be seasonal.

To be really into existence and into God, one needs this proportion. I bring this proportion to you!

That’s why I am not against the body, because the body is your soil. I am not against sexuality, because that is where your roots have to grow and become strong. It is there where your roots have to get nourishment, the waters of life. But to stop there is to commit suicide. Take the nourishment from the soil, take the vitality from the body, from sexuality, and then use it for higher purposes, for higher rhythms, for higher harmony. Then bloom. Bloom in meditation, in love, in ecstasy. Then let there be a great rejoicing and a dance.

Only then are you a total man. A total man is a balanced man; he is not extremist. So to look for God upwards does not mean that God is overhead, it simply means that if we grow upwards we will have closer contacts with God. Not that God is upwards, God is downwards too. But you will not have a closer contact with God unless you are fulfilled. In your fulfilment is the experience of God.

Don’t seek God. Seek fulfillment and you will find God. Seek God, forget fulfillment, and you will not find God. God cannot come like an accident, God can come as an inner growth. It is something that happens in your innermost core. But in the old days this metaphor of looking overhead, praying to the sky, became very very rigid. People took it literally. They started thinking God is overhead. That is a natural fallacy.

But times have changed; man has come of age. Man is more alert, man is no more childish.

Humanity has come a long way since the Vedas and the Talmud: humanity has passed through many stages. It is no more needed to take God and the metaphors associated with him literally.

Take them metaphorically. They are metaphors.

If you ask me ’Where is God – overhead?’ I would like to tell you that the metaphor has become a little bit rotten. Too much used, misused – the associations have gone wrong. That has to be dropped. Instead of saying ’God is overhead’ it would be better to say ’God is alongside.’ Let God become your ’alongsidedness’. Rather than thinking of God as a father-figure, think of him as a beloved, as a friend, and you will find the approach easier, you will find yourself more open.

Yes, one day it was so – to call God ’the Father’ was to bring him very close. When Jesus called him ABBA he was speaking the language of his day. The father was immensely respected, the father was very deeply rooted in the child, in the psyche of the child. To call God ’Father’ was valuable: it meant much. Now things have changed, utterly changed. ’Father’ is not a respectable word anymore. It smells of authority, authoritarianism. It smells of institutionality. It smells of a power structure. And the moment you say God is the Father, you fall apart rather than being joined by it. Father is no more a hyphen between you and God. The word has fallen, because the institution of fatherhood has deteriorated. You will have to find new words and new metaphors – new language to relate. Let God be your beloved, let God be your friend.

If you are a woman, think of God as your lover. If you are a man, think of God as your beloved.

This has also to be understood. There have been religions – for example, the Sufis – who call God

’the Beloved . But that is man-oriented, what is a Sufi woman going to call God? If God is taken to be a woman, then what is the Sufi woman going to call him? It will be difficult. In the East the BHAKTAS have called God ’the Lover’. But then if the man has to call God ’the Lover’ it becomes difficult: it does not sound right. Something seems missing.

There is no need for God to be man or woman. If you are a man, God is a woman; if you are a woman, God is a man. There is no need to have a fixed idea of God. Let the idea of God arise within your soul – whatsoever your need let God be that. So I don t say who God is – he or she, it depends on you. If you are a he, then he is a she; if you are she, then he is a he, Let God become meaningful to you – personally meaningful, intimate – so that you can hug him, so that you can embrace him, so you can have a love affair with him. Without the love affair, you will never find him.

So don’t say ’God is overhead’, it is no more relevant.

God is to be understood more as

’alongsidedness’.

Martin Buber calls the relationship between man and God an l-thou relationship. It seems a little stiff. It is stuffy and churchy: I-thou. ’Thou’ is no more used in ordinary conversation. You don’t call your woman ’thou’, you don’t call your lover ’thou’. It is out of use.

His understanding is right – man and God’s relationship is an l-thou relationship; that’s how prayer arises. But I would like to tell you: let it be an l-you relationship rather than I-thou. Let God come close. ’Thou’ keeps him far away. It is too respectful, and respect is always less than love. When love is possible, forget about respect! When love is not possible, then that is the second best. Let it be an I-you relationship, only then is dialogue possible; then man and God can move hand-in-hand.

Remember, words become useless after a certain time. Not only useless, but sometimes dangerous, harmful. The same words which used to mean much become meaningless. The same words which were very significant go out of-date after a time; then they lose meaning.Words also are born and die. ’God the Father’ has died – the word, the metaphor. ’God the Beloved’ still can ring bells in your heart.

Victor Hugo has said ’All the forces in the world are not as powerful as an idea whose time has come.’ And the time for God to become your beloved, your lover, has come.

We have tried all other relationships with God. There have been religions which have called him

’Mother’; there have been religions which have called him ’Father’; there have been religions which have thought of God as their child. But man now knows that there is only one relationship that goes to the very core; all other relationships are secondary. A child is born to you because you loved a woman or a man. The relationship of the mother or the father with the child is a secondary relationship. Somebody becomes your father because he loved a woman; somebody becomes your mother because she loved a man. All relationships revolve around the single relationship of love.

Love is the shrine, the innermost shrine of the whole temple of relationship.

Man has tried all other relationships. They did well for a time, but now only one relationship can be of any help. All other relationships look a little faint and dull. As man grows in understanding, in maturity, many things happen that go on changing his own world vision.

For example, after Freud, it is very difficult to call God ’the Mother’, because ninety-nine per cent of mental problem exist because of the mother. Now, Freud has to be reckoned with, Freud has to be taken in. You cannot neglect him; he has happened. Before Freud, ’mother’ was an absolutely pure concept. Nobody then had ever thought that the world was neurotic because of the mother; nobody had ever gone into it. It was taken for granted that the relationship of the mother and the child was the most divine, spiritual relationship. ’There is nothing like it. It is the purest love’ – that was thought before Freud. After Freud, things are totally different. And you cannot go on neglecting Freud, because he has some truth in him; it is not just fiction.

Man’s problem – almost ninety-nine per cent – exists because of the mother. Now the mother has become the source of all neurosis, schizophrenia, psychosis, madness, suicide, murder. How can you call God ’Mother’ anymore? It will be difficult.

After Marx, Engels and others; ’father’ is no more a natural relationship; it is institutional. Father has come because of private property. It is economical; it has nothing to do with love. And once the economic structure of the society changes, once there is no more private property in the world, father is going to disappear.

You will be surprised to know that ’uncle’ is an older word than ’father’. ’Uncle’ existed first, then

’father’. And sooner or later ’uncle’ will exist again and ’father’ will disappear.

People will live communes. The child will never know who his father is, but he will know that all the people who are of his father’s age are uncles. And have you watched it? The relationship with the uncle is always lovely. It is never so lovely with the father. With the uncle the child has a friend-ship.

It is always beautiful. It is very difficult to find a bad relationship between the child and the uncle; it is always a happy relationship. What is the matter? With the father there is possessiveness, with the uncle there is no possessiveness. The uncle cares, just like the father, but without possessing.

He is not authoritative; friendship is possible.

If the word ’father’ disappears, then for the first time God will be called ’Uncle’. Nobody has yet called him ’Uncle’, but things change.

To me, father is institutional, because in nature he doesn’t exist. Mother exists, mother is more natural. So religions who call God ’Mother’, are more natural religions. But that too is not possible because of Freud. Freud has looked deep into the mother and has found that all those fictions of the

’spiritual relationship’ and ’pure love’ etcetera are all nonsense. Mother has to be transformed and changed, otherwise the world will remain neurotic forever.

The mother goes on doing whatsoever she feels is right, but the question is ’What she feels right –

is it right? The mother cares about the child, but is the care unconditional, really unconditional. or are there hidden conditions in it?’ The mother brings up the child and sacrifices much for the child, but that sacrifice takes its revenge on the child. It goes on taking revenge on the child. The mother starts proving herself to be a kind of martyr – that she has sacrificed for you, now you sacrifice for her! That demand is constantly there – deliberately made or not, but it is always there. ’I have sacrificed my life for you.’ Consciously, unconsciously, that is always the message. ’I have destroyed my life, I have sacrificed my life for you – now what about you? Now I am getting old, you sacrifice your life to me!’

And really, she has done much, so the child feels guilty. Every child feels guilty. When a man falls in love with a woman he feels guilty; he is doing something wrong to his mother: because he is moving towards another woman, he is betraying.

Mothers are never happy with the wives of their sons – never! There is a competition, conflict continuous conflict: this other woman has taken their son away. And if the son wants to live his life he has to go away. otherwise the mother will suffocate him. He feels grateful, but that gratefulness does not mean that he has to remain hanging around her apron for his whole life. He has to go. And every mother makes the child feel guilty.

These things have to be transformed. So God cannot be called ’Mother’; and God cannot be called

’Father’ because the father has always been the disciplinarian. It was perfectly okay for Moses to call God ’Father’ because the whole concept was legal. God was the super-disciplinarian, he was disciplining everybody – punishing those who were going wrong, rewarding those who were following him. It was a kind of court. It was a continuous judgement. You cannot love your judge! You are afraid of the judge, you are always trembling before your judge.

And it is not just accidental that this century has to declare that God is dead – God as the judge is dead, certainly dead! I agree with it. God as Father is dead. God as authority is dead. Now God can be revived only as love – and not the love of the mother towards the child, or the father towards the child, or the love of the child towards the mother or the father.

There is only one natural love, and that is between a couple. That is the only love that descends –

one never knows from where; that is the only one that arises spontaneously.

Your love for your mother is not spontaneous, it is a conditioned love. If you had been taken away the day you were born and you were brought up by another woman who told you that she was your mother, you would have loved her. And one day, after twenty years, if you met your real mother, you would not have recognised her at all. It was a conditioning. It comes because you live in close contact with your mother, it is a kind of imprinting, continuous imprinting. She gives you milk, she gives you warmth, she gives you care; when you are ill, she serves you... she does so many things for you. She surrounds you from everywhere. Love arises, but this love is more like a liking than like love; it has no madness in it. It is a liking.

So is the case with the father. He protects you, he finances you – he sends you to the school and the college and the university – he prepares you for your life. You feel obliged. You have a respect for him.

But the only spontaneous love is between man and woman. Suddenly, out of nowhere, you come across a woman and something clicks. You come across a man and your heart starts beating in the same rhythm. You are possessed by something called love!

This is very mysterious. There is no reason for it – the woman has never done anything for you, the man has never done anything for you. There is no past to it, and there is no future either! You don’t know this woman – what she will do to you in the future. And you don’t know this man – how he is going to prove to you in the future. There is no past – you have met for the first time, and there is no guarantee for the future; still the thing is so tremendous that you forget the past, you forget the future, you start moving in the present. This moment is so valuable in itself that for no other reason you are ready to sacrifice all and everything for it. It is foolish, it is mad – that’s why all down the ages the so-called wise people have called love mad.

It is mad, because it has no reason in it. But that is the beauty of it, that is the depth of it. It comes from somewhere beyond the reason, beyond the mind. It has the same quality as God. That’s why Jesus says ’Love is God.’ Now love is going to be the metaphor for the future. Let God be your boy-friend or your girl-friend. And it will depend on you who he is, not on him. God has no fixed entity, he becomes what you need. He is liquid.

And the day for the idea has come. And when the day for the idea has come, then nothing is more powerful than that. And vice versa it is also true: when the day of the idea has gone, nothing is more impotent than that. God as Father is impotent, God as Mother is impotent. Those ideas will linger because a few people live in the past. You can’t help. A few people always live backwards; they only look in the rear-view mirror, they never look ahead. A few people have fixed minds about the past.

They are so afraid of the new that they don’t look ahead, they look backwards. All people are not contemporaries. Somebody lives two thousand years back, then for him Jesus’ idea ’God is Father’

will be appealing. Somebody lives even more backwards, then some other idea will be appealing.

But those who are contemporaries and those who are ahead of their time, for them a new metaphor is needed: the metaphor of love.

God as overhead is out-of-date.

A customs officer at Heathrow opened up the suitcase belonging to an attractive Frenchwoman and found six pairs of saucy panties. ’What are these for?’ he demanded.

’I tell you’ she replied. ’Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.’

’What about Saturday?’ he asked.

’Saturday – oh, la, la.’

He chalked her case and off she went. Next in line was a stout, motherly party from Yorkshire. In her case she had twelve pairs of red flannel drawers.

’What’s all this, Ma?’ he asked.

And she answered ’January, February, March, April...’

There are people who are not contemporaries.

But remember to be a contemporary, because life belongs to those who are contemporaries. The past is no more – don’t cling to it.

Question 2

HAVE I COME HERE TO ENJOY MYSELF OR GET ENLIGHTENED? DOES ONE NEED TO

SUFFER TO BECOME ENLIGHTENED? I SEEM TO FLUCTUATE BETWEEN THE TWO. I’M VERY

CONFUSED.

It is from Swami Anand Archan.

It is very simple. There is no need to be confused about it. If you are searching for enlightenment here, you will never find it.

If you search for enjoyment here, you will find enjoyment and enlightenment comes in its wake.

Enlightenment happens only to a person who lives in immense enjoyment of life. Only he is worthy of it, because enlightenment is a greater joy – the greatest, the highest. You have to train for it. You have to train for it by being happy, joyous, by being in tune with life, by being a celebrator.

Forget about enlightenment. You need not worry about it. It is useless to think about it. Just enjoy!

Get lost in enjoyment. That is the easiest way to lose your ego, and the shortest way to lose your ego. Once the ego is lost and you are really enjoying life, you are delighted with it, a great gratitude arises of its own accord. You suddenly start feeling you are grateful to God; whosoever God may be, whatsoever it means – that doesn’t matter anymore. Your life is such a joy, how can you feel ungrateful? Your life is such a joy, it is not possible for you to be complaining.

The complaining mind is the root cause of the atheist’s mind. When you complain, when everything is wrong, you cannot believe in God. And even if you try to believe, that belief will just be pseudo; it won’t have any depth in you, it vv-ill be superficial. Maybe out of fear or maybe just out of conditioning, but no reality is there in it for you. When you are joyous, when you are enjoying your life – the ordinary life, because there is no other life, only this life is there; when you start enjoying it

– your food, your sleep, your bath, your walk early in the morning, the song, the birds, the trees, the people; when you start enjoying all this, gratefulness arises. You start feeling very calm and quiet.

You start feeling a kind of contentment descending on you, slowly slowly.

That contentment becomes part of your being. You become suffused with it, immersed in it. Every cell of your body starts falling into a harmony. In that harmony you will have the first glimpses of enlightenment, not otherwise.

So if you ask me, I will say: Forget about enlightenment, otherwise the idea of enlightenment will make you more miserable. You are already miserable. Everything is wrong, nothing is ever right.

You are suffering. Now you bring another misery – enlightenment; and this is very difficult. The misery of not having enough money is not very big; make a little effort and you can have it, if not legally then illegally – but you can have it, and there are ways. You are not famous, and you are suffering, you can become notorious – that too is a kind of fame. If people don’t know you as a MAHATMA, they can know you as a devil, but you can make yourself known. And the difference is not much between the MAHATMA and the devil; between the saint and the sinner the difference is not much. Both are after fame: the basic urge is the same.

The saint is one who has made it legally. The sinner is one who could not make it legally – was not so clever, was not so intelligent – had to find some illegal ways, some criminal ways. But the reason is the same. These things are possible easily, so the suffering will not be much.

Now, enlightenment... You cannot make it legally, you cannot make it illegally; you CANNOT MAKE

IT! YOU AS YOU cannot make it, because you are the problem! So there is no illegal way to enlightenment; there is not even a legal way to enlightenment. In fact, those who know say there is no path to it; it is a pathless path. There is no gate to it; it is a gateless gate. There is no method to it. When all methods disappear, it happens.

So once a person becomes interested in enlightenment, he is getting into eternal trouble. Now, whatsoever he is going to do is going to fail – whatsoever! His failure is predetermined, it is built-in.

In the very effort is the failure. So you do this, you do that and you go on failing. And the more you fail the more DESPERATE you will become, the more and more anguish will be there, the more and more hopelessness will be there. More and more you will feel lost – more lost than ever before, and then you will feel that this idea of enlightenment has been a curse. It has taken your ordinary life from you. It won’t allow any other life, it takes possession of you totally, utterly. And the old life is gone, and the new has not happened, and you start hanging in limbo. You are neither here nor there; you become a question mark. Your whole life becomes split.

So remember, never become desirous of enlightenment, that will give you great hell.

This is my basic approach: that you should learn how to enjoy life. Enjoy it more and more, as deeply as possible. Go into it. Small moments can be transformed into eternities of joy. Small things can become celebrations – VERY small things. Just an unknown flower – and if you sit by the side of it, and you look at it, and you are open to it – will give you great ecstasy. You will start swaying and dancing, you will feel drunk. Any small thing is full of God! This ordinary reality is not just ordinary, it is carrying in it the extraordinary, the superb, the suprememost.

So love this life, and don’t think of THAT. THAT always brings misery, because that brings conflict.

Let THAT come through THIS! YOU love the woman, you love the man... Let God come through that love, let God center you when you are in a state of orgasm. Eat, enjoy the food; let God come to you as a taste. Listen to music, get lost in it, and let God come to you as sound, as harmony. Let God descend on you slowly slowly, without any hankering to catch hold of him, without any efforts to possess him in your hands. Just open yourself as much as possible – to the trees, to the birds, to the rains, to the sun, to the sands. Open yourself wherever you are, absorb, and gratitude will arise, and that gratitude will become your prayer. And you will not know TOWARDS WHOM this gratitude is arising. When you don’t know towards whom this gratitude is arising, it is towards God. When you know that it is towards God, you don’t know a thing. Then it is the Christian God, or the Hindu God, or the Mohammedan God – and these are not God.

God is basically hidden. Nobody knows his name. The Jews were right never to spell his name. The name of Yahweh was not allowed to be pronounced, because how can we pronounce his name? –

we don’t know his name. His whereabouts are unknown. Nobody has ever seen him. Whosoever has seen him has gone into him and disappeared forever; nobody has come back. Nobody knows where he is, who he is. But still, when life is flowing, when life has a flow to it and a dance to it, one feels gratitude. Gratitude comes first and God comes second, not otherwise.

People are trying to bring God first. First they create God, and that is THEIR created God, man-made, home-made, manufactured. Then they bow down to their own manufactured statues. This is utterly stupid – a man bowing down to a statue he has made himself, or has purchased from the market. God is not for sale anywhere! And nobody has seen his face: nobody can make his statue.

And nobody knows where he is: overhead, behind, in front, right, left – nobody knows.

But gratitude arises... just as fragrance arises out of a flower and goes on, not knowing where, unaddressed; so, in the same way – unaddressed – arises gratitude. That is prayer, real prayer, and you start feeling God in your heart. Because of this gratitude, because of this prayerfulness, because of this thankfulness enlightenment is not far away.

First, become joyous! And Jesus goes on saying it, but nobody listens. He says again and again: Rejoice! Rejoice! I say AGAIN rejoice!

You ask: HAVE I COME HERE TO ENJOY MYSELF OR GET ENLIGHTENED; You have come here to get enlightened, as far as you are concerned. As far as I am concerned, you have come here to enjoy. But through enjoyment comes enlightenment, and through enlightenment just suffering.

These are all ego trips. You find beautiful names, that’s all, but they are all ego trips. Now, you want to become enlightened. Why? For what? From where did you get this idea of enlightenment?

And this will create much suffering, because now you will be searching. What to do? Stand on your head to become enlightened? Fast to become enlightened? Go to the mountains to live in a cave?

Become a masochist – to torture yourself? Practise a thousand and one things – which will be of mind, and cannot lead beyond mind?

Just go and look at the people. The East has been on this trip very long. The West is new and unaware of the pitfalls. The East has been too long into it. Just go and see Eastern seekers after enlightenment and you will find all kinds of pathologies. Somebody is fasting for months, his body has become just bones, sunken eyes, no energy left, torturing himself in the hope that this is the way

– as if God were a sadist, as if God would like you to torture yourself. ’The more you torture yourself the more valuable you will become’ – this is just something that has gone deep in the psychology of the man.

The child learns this from the parents. Whenever the child is happy, the parents are not happy.

Whenever the parents are happy the child is not happy. The child learns one basic fundamental of life: ’The parents can be happy only when I am not happy.’ For example, the child is ready to go out.

It is raining and the rains are calling him. And it is so beautiful outside... and the sound of the rain...

and it is so cool. And he wants to go out and stand in the rain. But the mother is not ready to allow him, the father is not ready to allow him. They shout at him! He remains in the house. With greedy eyes he looks outside the window; it is so beautiful there, and the trees are so happy; and the trees are so moved by the rains. And he also would like to go into this world and he would like to stand like a tree, but he is not allowed. The parents are happy if he does not go, if he suffers. If he goes, then the parents suffer. When he comes back, then he has been a nuisance to the parents; he will be punished. And the parents will be angry for days together.

Now, one thing the child goes on learning every day: ’Whatsoever I feel is joyous, is wrong, and whatsoever I feel as painful, boring, is right.’

He is so full of energy he wants to play with the dog outside or he wants to go and run around the house – but the parents say ’Do the homework’. Now he does not like that homework. He hates it!

But parents are happy only when he is in some sad situation. So he has learned one thing – and God is ’Father’ so the logic reaches easily to this conclusion: that if you are enjoying food, God will be very angry at you, he will throw you in hell – God the Father. If you are fasting and suffering, God will be very happy, he will send you to heaven. If you love a woman and are feeling immensely happy, guilt arises. God must be watching!

God seems to be continuously watching! That’s what people have been told, that he is a kind of peeping Tom – whatsoever you are doing, wherever you are, he is watching. Just think of him also

– he must get tired of all this nonsense. And watching and watching and watching... he must have gone mad by now. Millions and millions of people have been doing... How many things are people doing? and he is watching! And he has nothing else to do, he is just a ’watcher’

But you have been taught: he is watching everywhere, wherever you go he is there, following you –

those two eyes, or, if you are Hindu, then three eyes, watching you. And continuous fear. You are happy, and he is watching. You will suffer for it. Have you not observed that whenever you are happy you feel a certain kind of guilt arising in you?

Every day somebody or other comes to me and says ’Osho I am feeling very happy. But why? Guilt arises in me, why?’ It arises because of your wrong association. You have been taught a very wrong philosophy of life. You have not been taught the grammar of joy, you have been taught the grammar of suffering.

So you ask: DOES ONE NEED TO SUFFER TO BECOME ENLIGHTENED? I FLUCTUATE

BETWEEN THE TWO. I’M VERY CONFUSED.

Naturally, you will have to be confused. You will have to drop one, otherwise you will continuously fluctuate. There is no enlightenment without enjoyment! Let this become your rule, the golden rule: that God comes through joy, that God comes only when you are happy, immensely happy, that God flows only towards those hearts which are glad, that God comes only to those who are dancing, that God comes to you or, if you are Hindu, then three eyes, watching you. And laughter.

Let your laughter be your only prayer. Let your joy be your only offering. Love life! Love small things!

Don’t miss a single moment. Go on getting more and more joyful, and you will find God is coming to you more and more.

Hindus are right when they say that God is ANAND, bliss. It is true: that is his ultimate definition.

So he can be attained only through bliss, not through suffering. The suffering will help your ego to become more strong, and the more the ego is strong, the farther away you are from God. Only when you melt in happiness, you become liquid in happiness, you start flowing in happiness, you are no more frozen... And when you are not frozen where can you flow? There is only God all around you!

Once you melt, you flow into him; and when you flow, he flows into you. It is reciprocal. God comes to you only in that proportion in which you go into him.

A man who is trying to achieve God, enlightenment, NIRVANA, becomes more and more egoistic, becomes more and more self-centered. His whole effort is how to attain and possess God. But how can you possess God? You can only be possessed by him, you cannot possess him. He is not smaller than you, he is bigger. How can the river possess the ocean? The river can only disappear into the ocean. The ocean will possess the river, and that is the only way for the river to possess the ocean. The man who is seeking enlightenment is trying to do the impossible. It is not possible in the very nature of things.

Here, being close to me, learn one thing, that is: joy. Rejoice! and forget all about enlightenment, otherwise that will create continuous suffering in you, anxiety And naturally, enlightenment can happen only in the future, so the future comes in. Then you start planning for it and you go on missing the present. Live the moment as if it is all, and enlightenment will find you. You need not find it.

Question 3

OSHO, YOU SAID THAT LOVE IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE PERSON. WELL, WHAT ABOUT

YOU? I LOVE YOU!

I am not a person. You can love me. I am love. If you think of me as a person, you have not seen me yet; you are missing. There is nobody here! Or, only nobody is here. Look on me as love, not as a person.

If you look to me as a person you will become attached, and attachment brings misery. If you look to me as love you cannot be attached, and if you look at me as love you can dissolve with me. You cannot dissolve with a person; you can dissolve only with an energy, not with a person. Persons collide: that is the misery of all the lovers in the world. Persons collide, because persons are two egos. When two egos come close, sooner or later, the clash, the conflict, because each wants to possess the other, and the other cannot like it. Nobody wants to be possessed. So the natural calamity of love arises because you have not understood love as energy. Don’t think of me as a person, otherwise you will start possessing me, and then there will be inner conflict. Think of me as love, as energy, as space; then you can dissolve in me, and you can allow me to dissolve in you.

Then there will be no clash.

That is the real relationship between a disciple and a Master – a non-clashing relationship. There is no conflict, there is only harmony, attunement. They move on the same wave length. I am not a person.

If you really love me, you will also become a non-person. And when you have also become a non-person there will be a meeting, not before it.

Question 4

DID JESUS FATHER ANY CHILDREN?

Shiva... again?

I don’t think so, because he would not go into that tedium. But there is a man... Just the other day I was reading about him, he lives in Srinagar, Kashmir, his name is Sahib Zadda Basarat Salim.

He claims that he is the direct descendant of Jesus Christ. He has in his possession even today, a complete genealogical table which traces his direct ancestry from Jesus Christ.

People go for non-essential things. Now this genealogy must be fictitious. It is true that Jesus lived in Kashmir for many years, but there is not any possibility of him fathering children, because once a Master starts creating disciples, they are his children. And then giving birth to children will simply be a conflict. It will create problems, it will not help anybody. And the Master is no more interested in his physical persis-tence through children, his whole interest has moved to a higher plane. Now he would like to persist as a spiritual force through his disciples. They ARE his children, they are his real children – spiritual children. And when you can have spiritual children, who bothers to have physical children?

The disciple is the real child. And only the disciple can take the message of the Master to the future.

So I don’t think that Jesus fathered any children. And my feeling is that the Bible is correct, because it stops at Jesus, the son of Mariam. It starts from the very beginning: fourteen generations – it gives the chart, and then it stops at Jesus. It seems to be perfectly as it should be.

With Jesus things have come to the climax. In Jesus the revolution has happened: the body has disappeared into the soul. Now Jesus no more functions like a body; to have children means that he still functions like a body. He functions as a spiritual force, as a spiritual magnetism; he functions as a soul, not as a body. The body is there but it is just the abode. The identity is no more there; he does not think of himself as the body.

So, don’t get involved in such unnecessary things. They are unnecessary, they don’t lead you to any understanding.

Question 5

WHY DOES THE BIBLE TALK ABOUT MAN’S STATE WITH METAPHORS SUCH AS LAMENESS, DEAFNESS, BLINDNESS, DRUNKENNESS, SLEEP AND DEATH?

You ask why? Just observe yourself and you will find all these things there – lameness... A man is lame if he has not yet reached God. What use are your legs if they have not led you to God? What use are they? – you are lame. A man is deaf if he has not yet heard the song, the music of God. It is all around, and you have not heard it yet?

Jesus has to say again and again ’If you have ears, listen! If you have eyes, see!’ To whom is he talking? To you! Don’t think that he is visiting some institution where only blind people live, or only deaf people live. He is talking to people just like you who have eyes and ears, but who have not seen the real and who have not heard the real; and who go on seeing dreams, and who go on hearing whatsoever they want to hear – not that which is.

Man is deaf, man is blind.

What have you seen? You have not seen the real, you have not seen the miraculous, the mysterious.

And the irony is that the mysterious surrounds you from everywhere – day in, day out, year in, year out. You will live in the mysterious like a fish lives in the ocean, and the fish has not seen the ocean yet!

Kabir says: I wonder and I laugh why the fish is thirsty living in the ocean.

And there is an old Hindu parable that a fish became philosophic and started inquiring ’Where is the ocean?’ And she moved in the ocean all the time: And she went from one place to another in search of enlightenment – she wanted to know where the ocean was – because she had heard that in the ocean we are born and into the ocean we disappear, and the ocean is our source and our goal: ocean is God. So she started searching for the ocean, and she asked many people and they said ’We have heard also, but we have never known.’ They were all living in the ocean, those philosophers, those professors – they were all fish. How do you know the ocean if you have never been out if it? To know, a little distance is needed. The fish sometimes comes to know when she is thrown out of the ocean. When somebody catches her in a net and takes her onto the hot sands, then she knows what the ocean is.

That is possible with a fish – for a fish, but what about man? Man cannot be taken out of God. There is no place which is outside God. So we are born in him, we breathe in him. We breathe him, we eat him, we love him, we are loved by him, we tight with him, we quarrel with him; we are young in him and we become old in him. And one day we die in him as one day we were born in him. You must be blind because you don’t see him and you go on asking ’Where is God?’

And you ask: WHY DOES THE BIBLE TALK ABOUT MAN’S STATE WITH METAPHORS SUCH AS

LAMENESS, DEAFNESS, BLINDNESS, DRUNKENNESS, SLEEP AND DEATH?

This life is not life. It cannot be called life yet because joy has not happened. What kind of life is this? Maybe just a preparation, a rehearsal for the real life, but the real has not happened because it does not show in the glow of your being. That splendour is not there, present within you, that aura does not surround you. Yes, you go on dragging, hoping that some day life will happen, but it has not happened yet.

So Jesus is right, the Bible is right that you are dead, that you are sleep. Jesus goes on saying again and again ’Awake! Be wakeful because one never knows when the Beloved will come. Don’t fall asleep. He may come and you may be asleep.

But there is no need for you to fall asleep, people ARE asleep! Only with conscious meditation, only with awareness, living moment to moment with absolute alertness does one come to be out of sleep.

And you ARE drunk – drunk with money, drunk with ego, drunk with power, prestige. And there are a thousand kinds of alcoholic beverages available: money is alcohol, power is alcohol, politics is alcohol. Beware of these things. And people are so clever, they can turn anything into alcohol.

Work becomes alcohol; there are ’workoholics’ who cannot remain without work. They have to do something. They feel good when they are involved in doing something. When they have a little gap and they don’t know what to do, they start getting crazy. They HAVE to DO! They will read the same newspaper again that they have read. They will rush to the TV or the radio and listen to the same news that they had listened to before. Or they may go to the same movie to see it again. Or they will start talking about the things that they have talked about a thousand and one times; and nobody listens, and they know it! They are bored, others are bored – but what to do? ’Workoholics’... a great organisation, greater than Alcoholics Anonymous is needed: ’Workoholics Anonymous’. Politicians will be there, scientists will be there, artists will be there, millionaires will be there – all kinds of people will be there. Anything that possesses you so much so that you cannot be without it is alcohol.

Mind is very cunning. Your MANTRA may become your alcohol; your TM may become your alcohol.

Every morning you have to do your MANTRA for twenty minutes, you have to repeat in a stupid way ’Ram, Ram, Ram’. If you repeat, you don’t get anything; if you don’t repeat, you feel lost. If you repeat you know nothing is happening, but if you don’t repeat then you feel you are missing something. Then a great urge arises to repeat the MANTRA – the same kind of urge that comes.to a smoker. He knows that by smoking cigarettes he is not getting anything – there is no need to say that he is not getting anything. And if he is getting something, that is wrong – maybe tuberculosis, asthma, great things like that he is getting; otherwise he is not getting anything. He also knows it.

But the problem is that if he does not smoke, he starts feeling a great urge. That urge becomes more and more powerful; it possesses him. He HAS to smoke. He knows it is not good, he has decided not to smoke, he has taken a vow, but it doesn’t help. He has to go and smoke, otherwise he feels very nervous, tense. Smoking helps him. Just an old habit...

Habits are very relaxing. You feel comfortable, cosy in them. Your MANTRA can become your alcohol. Beware. One has to be very conscious, otherwise anything can become your alcohol. And man is drunk.

Man is ordinarily like a person living in a trance induced by post-hypnotic suggestions. Jesus says there is only one cure: METANOIA – turning backwards, turning into yourself, turning your consciousness towards your inner being.

Unless you start looking into your being and become very very alert... And you can. You know there are moments when you are more alert and there are moments when you are less alert. There is the key! Why are you more alert in a certain moment? A beautiful woman passes by and you become more alert. What has happened? You wanted to see her well, you wanted not to miss the opportunity, that’s why you became more alert. If you can look at a tree in the same way... Because an opportunity may be missed – you may never come across this rose bush again. Who knows?

The rose bush may not be there tomorrow, you may not be tomorrow. Who knows? This may be your last meeting – the first and the last. Have a look, a total look at the rose and you will be alert.

The bird is singing. This may be the last time. You may never listen to the song of a bird again; you will be lying down in your grave tomorrow. It is not worth missing. It is so precious. How can you be unalert? Be alert.

A friend has come to your home. Be alert. Each moment has to be taken as if this were the last moment. And there is every possibility this may be the last moment! So use it totally. Squeeze the juices out of it totally. In that very totality you will be alert and the drunkenness will be gone. This is what Jesus calls METANOIA.

A drunk staggered up to a policeman, and said ’Officer, Officer, where am I?’

’You are in front of the Shree Rajneesh Ashram’ said the policeman. ’It is Koregaon Park.’

’Never mind the details’ said the drunk. ’What town am I in?’

A drunk is drunk. He is not interested in details. He is not even aware what town this is.

Are you aware of where you are? Are you aware of what planet this is? Are you aware of what life you have got which is slipping by through your hands without being used at all? Are you aware of the opportunity? Are you aware of WHO you are?

So if Jesus says you are drunk, he is perfectly right. Don’t feel offended.

A fire-engine, with its siren screaming, tore up St. Martin’s Lane towards New Oxford Street. At the same moment, a drunk staggered out of the Salisbury and immediately set off in hot pursuit. He was soon outdistanced, and collapsed, panting on the pavement. As the fire-engine receded into the distance, he shook his fist at it and shouted ’All right then! Keep your rotten old ice-cream!’

What are you running after? Please. first have a look, then start running. Your desire is not enough proof that things exist there to satisfy your desires. They may not exist, and then your whole life will prove a futile effort, in vain. That’s how it proves to millions of people. Rarely does a man come to fulfilment. You can also be that rare man. You can be a Jesus or a Buddha, but that is possible only if you drop your drunkenness.

During the match, the batsman heard a cry from the crowd ’Smith! Smith! Your house is on fire!’

He dropped his bat and ran off the field, through the crowd and into the road. Breathlessly he pounded along and then stopped. ’Why am I running?’ he said. ’My name is not Smith.’

Have a look again at who you are, and why you are running. Is YOUR house really on fire? Where are you going so fast? And people are going very fast. If they don’t reach, they think they have not been fast enough. So they develop, invent more speedy ways to reach, without knowing where exactly they want to reach! Man becomes more and more powerful TO REACH without knowing where he is going, without knowing where he really wants to reach.

Three drunks rushed onto the platform at Cannon Street Station just as the last train to Greenwich Was pulling out. With great difficulty, and with much shoving and pushing, two of them managed to get a door open and tumble in before the train picked up speed and disappeared. The man who was left behind collapsed on the platform, roared with laughter.

’Your friends just managed to catch the train, sir,’ said a porter who was watching.

’Yes, they did’ said the drunk, still laughing. ’And the funny thing is they came to see me off!’

And you ask why the Bible calls you drunk and asleep? You ARE, that’s why.

Question 6

I HAVE A QUESTION TO THE LECTURE OF NOVEMBER 2ND. WHAT DID JESUS WRITE IN THE

SAND?

In one of the ancient monastery papers, the following foot-note is recorded just opposite the passage where Jesus said: LET HE AMONG YOU WHO IS WITHOUT SIN THROW THE FIRST STONE. His mother, Mary, was also there in the crowd and he was afraid that she, being the Virgin, may throw the first stone. And he actually saw the thought cross his mother’s mind. So he was writing again and again on the sand: I really wish you wouldn’t do that, Mother!

Question 7

OSHO, HOW DO YOU ALWAYS MANAGE TO FIND THE APPROPRIATE JOKES FOR YOUR

TALKS?

It is just the other way round.

Little Tom and his dad went to the circus. After the show on the way home the father said to little Tom ’Wasn’t that clever to time the horses so finely with the music?’

’Yes indeed’ answered little Tom, yet not totally convinced.

Suddenly a few steps further, little Tom stops and facing his father, said in a sure voice ’What about timing the music with the horses?’

It can be the other way round, too.

It seems natural for you, as it looked to the father, that ’Wasn’t that clever to time the horses so finely with the music?’ But to little Tom, the horses are more important than the musicians.

Little children live in a different world; their perspective is different. He was not totally convinced of it. He said ’What about timing the music with the horses?’ Rather than the horses being timed with the music, it can be otherwise.

I love jokes. When I find a joke, I try to find a question for it. When I love a joke, then sooner or later somebody or other is going to ask the question which the joke is going to fit.

Question 8

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Now this is strange. It reminds me of a story.

A cricket fan took his girlfriend for a date – it was a full moon night and the beach was silent and they were sitting on the beach, and it was beautiful. They were holding hands and hugging each other. And the cricket fan continued to talk about cricket for three hours. Then, suddenly he became aware that he must be boring the girl. Three hours is too long! So he said ’Sorry, forgive me. I have been talking for three hours about my hobby. I am a fan, I am mad about cricket. I must have bored you utterly?’

The girl said ’Not at all, not at all. But do tell me what IS cricket?’

Now you ask ’What is meditation?’ and my whole life I have been talking about meditation. But still, I understand why the question arises. You listen, but you can’t get it. You understand intellectually what meditation is, but still it remains elusive. You cannot catch hold of it. And you CANNOT catch hold of it!

It is not that something is wrong with you. Meditation cannot be caught hold of, you have to allow it to happen so that it can catch hold of you. Meditation is not something that you have to do; meditation is something for which you have to wait! It is something that comes, and comes on its own. It is like a breeze. It is not that you can pull it in, that you can manage and order it. You cannot order anything that is valuable. Ordered things are ordered things.

You cannot order God. So meditation, SATORI, SAMADHI, enlightenment, NIRVANA, God – they cannot be ordered. The very idea is silly. You.cannot order. You can receive. Certainly you can receive. You can invite, you can wait in patience. So whenever you are feeling happy, whenever you are feeling joyous, whenever you are feeling harmonious, in tune, then just sit silently. Wait for it.

Just wait for it! Nothing else is needed to be done.

Meditation is not an action. You just wait. Relax and wait. Lie down or sit or stand – as you feel good

– and wait for it. Wait, alert, and soon you will hear the whisperings, the silent steps of something which is coming closer to you. Soon you will see something is entering into your heart, into your being. You cannot see it, but it is there. You can feel it. It is like a fragrance that fills your nostrils. It is like light. Keep the window open. That’s all you need to do: just keep the window open, so when the light arises and the clouds are not there and the sun is high, the rays can enter in you.

About meditation you can do only negative things. Keep the door open, keep the eyes open, keep yourself alert, and it comes. It certainly comes. It immediately starts flowing in you. It is a benediction. You cannot pull, you cannot manipulate it. A manipulated meditation will not be of any value. That’s what people are doing. Somebody is doing TM, somebody is doing something else –

trying to manipulate.

Here, when you are doing the Chaotic Meditation or the Kundalini or the Nadabrahma, these are not really meditations, you are just getting in tune. If you have seen them, it is like Indian classical musicians playing. For half an hour, or sometimes even more, they simply go on fixing their instruments. They will move the knobs, they will make the strings tight or loose, and the drum player will go on checking his drum – whether it is perfect or not. For half an hour they go on doing this. This is not music, this is just preparation.

Kundalini is not really meditation, it is just preparation. You are preparing your instrument. When it is ready, then you stand in silence. Then meditation starts. Then you are utterly there. You have woken yourself up by jumping, by dancing, by breathing, by shouting – these are all devices to make you a little more alert than you ordinarily are. Once you are alert, then the waiting.

Waiting is meditation – waiting with full awareness. And then it comes, it descends on you, it surrounds you, it plays around you, it dances around you, it cleanses you, it purifies you, it transforms you.

Question 9

OSHO, WHY DO YOU USE BIG AND DIFFICULT WORDS SOMETIMES?

Because I don’t know much English.

I somehow go on expressing myself. I am not at home with English. The problem is: first, I am not at home with any language at all – the first, the basic problem – because what I want to say is beyond language. Then. English is unacquainted to me, sol have to create my own English. And I know English through the books, so maybe sometimes big words filter in, but I don’t know smaller words for them; otherwise, I would have used the smaller, because the smaller word is more expressive.

The bigger the word, the less expressive; the bigger the word, the more scholastic.

Listen to this anecdote:

An African diplomat, paying his first visit to England, was met at the airport by the usual gaggle of media men.

’Did you have a good flight, Sir?’ asked one reporter.

’Wowie, ssssh! Yes, yes, very comfortable, thank you’ replied the African.

’And how long will you be here?’ asked another.

’Wowie, ssssh! About three weeks.’

’And will you be going straight to see the Prime Minister today?’

’Wowie ssssh! Yes, I am going as soon as I have answered your questions.’

’How did you learn such a distinctive style of speaking?’ asked another journalist, intrigued by the strange noises which preceded each of the African’s replies.

’Wowie ssssh! The English by Radio service of the BBC.’

CHAPTER 7

Man is an Empty Temple

6 November 1977 am in Buddha Hall

MATTHEW 24

1. AND JESUS WENT OUT, AND DEPARTED FROM THE TEMPLE: AND HIS DISCIPLES CAME

TO HIM FOR TO SHOW HIM THE BUILDINGS OF THE TEMPLE.

2. AND JESUS SAID UNTO THEM, SEE YE NOT ALL THESE THINGS? VERILY I SAY UNTO

YOU, THERE SHALL NOT BE LEFT HERE ONE STONE UPON ANOTHER, THAT SHALL NOT BE

THROWN DOWN.

34 VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU,

35. HEAVEN AND EARTH SHALL PASS AWAY, BUT MY WORDS SHALL NOT PASS AWAY.

42. WATCH THEREFORE: FOR YE KNOW NOT WHAT HOUR YOUR LORD DOTH COME.

43. BUT KNOW THIS, THAT IF THE GOODMAN OF THE HOUSE HAD KNOWN IN WHAT WATCH

THE THIEF WOULD COME, HE WOULD HAVE WATCHED, AND WOULD NOT HAVE SUFFERED

HIS HOUSE TO BE BROKEN UP.

44. THEREFORE BE YE ALSO READY: FOR IN SUCH AN HOUR AS YE THINK NOT THE SON

OF MAN COMETH.

45. WHO THEN IS A FAITHFUL AND WISE SERVANT, WHOM HIS LORD HATH MADE RULER

OVER HIS HOUSEHOLD, TO GIVE THEM MEAT IN DUE SEASON?

46. BLESSED IS THAT SERVANT, WHOM HIS LORD WHEN HE COMETH SHALL FIND SO

DOING.

47. VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, THAT HE SHALL MAKE HIM RULER OVER ALL HIS GOODS.

48. BUT AND IF THAT EVIL SERVANT SHALL SAY IN HIS HEART, MY LORD DELAYETH HIS

COMING;

49. AND SHALL BEGIN TO SMITE HIS FELLOW-SERVANTS, AND TO EAT AND DRINK WITH

THE DRUNKEN;

50. THE LORD OF THAT SERVANT SHALL COME IN A DAY WHEN HE LOOKETH NOT FOR

HIM, AND IN AN HOUR THAT HE IS NOT AWARE OF.

51.

AND SHALL CUT HIM ASUNDER, AND APPOINT HIM HIS PORTION WITH THE

HYPOCRITES: THERE SHALL BE WEEPING AND GNASHING OF TEETH.

Man’s evolution passes through three stages: the reform, the revolution and the rebellion. The reform is the most superficial: it only touches the surface, it never goes more than skin-deep. It changes nothing but the dressing of man; it changes man’s formalities. It gives man etiquette, manners – a kind of civilisation – without changing anything essential in his being. It paints man, it polishes man, and yet deep down man remains the same. It is a delusion. It is fiction. It gives respectability, and makes everybody a hypocrite. It gives good manners, but they are against the inner core. The inner core has not even been understood. But for the society it creates smoothness.

Reform functions like a lubricant. It keeps the status quo going, it helps things remain the same –

which will look paradoxical, because the reformist claims that he is changing society, but in fact all that he does is paint the old society in new colours. And the old society can exist more easily in new colours than it could have ever done with the old ones. The old were getting rotten. Reform is a kind of renovation. The house is falling; the supports are falling, the foundations are shaking, and you go on giving new props to it. And you can keep the house from falling a little longer. Reform is in the service of the status quo: it serves the past not the future.

The second thing is revolution; it goes a little deeper. Reform only changes ideas, it does not even change policies. Revolution goes and touches the structure, but only the outer not the inner.

Man has two structures, man lives on two planes. One is the physical, another is the spiritual. The revolution only goes to the physical structure – to the economic, to the political – they all belong to the physical. It goes deeper than reform, it destroys many old things, it creates many new things; but the being, the innermost being of man still remains unchanged. It creates morality, it creates character. Reform creates manner, etiquette, civilisation: the formal behaviour of the man is changed. Revolution changes man’s outer structure – really changes: it brings a new structure. but the inner blueprint remains the same, the inner consciousness is not touched. It creates a split.

The first, the reform, creates hypocrisy. The second, the revolution, creates schizophrenia, it makes man unbridgeable. Man starts falling into two beings. the bridge is broken. That’s why revolutionaries go on denying, the soul. Marx and Engels and Lenin and Stalin and Mao – they go on denying the soul. They have to deny it, they can’t accept it, because if they accept it. then their whole revolution seems to be very superficial, then their revolution is not total.

The reformist does not deny the soul, remember; he accepts it because it makes no problem for him

– he never goes up to that point. That point is not a problem. Gandhi accepts the soul, Manu accepts the soul – they are reformists. They never say no to anything, they are people who go on saying yes; they are polite people. Unless it becomes absolutely necessary they will not deny anything, they will accept. But revolutionaries deny the soul. They have to deny, otherwise their revolution looks partial.

The third thing is rebellion. Rebellion is from the very essential core: it changes consciousness – it is radical; it transmutes – it is alchemical. It gives you a new being, not only a new body, not only new dresses, but a new being. A new man is born.

And in the history of consciousness there have been three types of thinkers: the reformer, the revolutionary and the rebel. Manu, Moses, Gandhi – these are reformers, the most superficial. John the Baptist, Marx, Freud – these are the revolutionaries. And Jesus, Buddha, Krishnamurti – these are the rebels.

To understand rebellion is to understand the HEART of religion. Religion is rebellion. Religion is utter change. Religion is discontinuity with the past, the beginning of the new, the dropping of the old – the TOTAL. Nothing has to be continued, because if something continues it will keep the old alive.

Reform paints. Revolution destroys the old outer structure but the inner structure remains the same.

In Soviet Russia or in China the inner man is the same, there is no difference, not a bit. The same mind – the same greedy, ambitious, egoistic mind; the same mind that is found in America or in capitalist countries – no difference in that mind. But the outer structure of the society has been changed. And the outer structure of laws, state, economics, politics – that has been changed. Once the police force, the governmental power is taken away, man will fall back to his old pattern again.

The Russian society can be managed only by force, it cannot become democratic, because to allow people to be independent will be allowing them to bring their inner being again into their lives. That is there. They have been prevented, they have been obstructed; they cannot live it. They have to live by what the government says, they cannot live according to their being.

So communism is basically dictatorial. It will remain dictatorial, because the fear is that if man is given freedom, then because his consciousness is there – the greed is there, the ambition is there, and ALL that has always been is there – it will start working again. People will become rich, poor, powerful, powerless. People will start exploiting each other, people will start fighting for their ambitions. Those who are powerful in Russia, they are still doing the same. Krushehev used to brag about his cars, because he had many. Nobody else can have them in Russia, but everybody wants to have. It is just enforcement, not real revolution.

Real revolution is spontaneous. That revolution is called rebellion.

A few more distinctions between these three words, then you will be able to understand Jesus’

approach.

Reform does not require much from you. It says: Just make your front door beautiful, let the whole house be dirty. You live in dirt. but don’t allow your neighbours to see your dirt. Just the front porch should be beautiful, because your neighbours are not interested in your inner being, in your inner house. They pass from the outside and they see only the front door. Do whatsoever you want, but do it from the back door. So the front door becomes a facade, a window, a show-case for the neighbours to see. You live from the back door really, you don’t live from the front door. The front door is just there, artificial; you never enter from it, you never go out from it – that is there just to be seen by others.

Watch your front doors – everybody has them. They are called faces, masks, personalities because they are PERSONA: lipstick, and powder and cosmetics – they give you a PERSONA. You are not that. It is a make-up.

Revolution goes a little deeper, but only a little deeper. It changes your drawing-room so you can invite people to sit in your drawing-room. In India it happens very much. In India the drawing-room is beautiful, but don’t go beyond that. People’s kitchens are so dirty and ugly, their bathrooms are almost impossible. But in India nobody takes any care of the bathroom or the kitchen. The only care that is taken is of the drawing-room; it is there where you meet your guests.

This is false; it does not touch your real being, but it keeps your prestige. That’s what morality is: it is a beautiful drawing-room. And if you can afford it, you can have a Picasso painting in your drawing-room also. It depends on how much you can afford.

Just the other day I was reading a small story:

Charlie was taking his out-of-town pal, George, for a stroll through the city. They were admiring the scenery when George observed ’Say, will you look at that good-looking girl over there. She’s smiling at us. Know her?’

’Yes, Betty – twenty dollars.’

’And who is that brunette with her? Man, she’s really stacked!’

’Dolores – forty dollars.’

’Ah, but look what’s coming! That’s what I call really first-class.’

’Gloria – eighty dollars.’

’My God!’ cried George. ’Aren’t there any nice respectable girls in this town?’

’Of course’ Charlie answered. ’But you couldn’t afford their rates.’

Morality goes only so far, beyond that it stumbles and disappears. Everybody has his price. The moral man has a price. You watch yourself. If you are walking on the street and you find one thousand rupees, maybe you will not take them, but if you find ten thousand... then you hesitate... to take or not to take? But if you find one hundred thousand rupees, then there is no question, you take them That shows how deep your morality is – one thousand, ten thousand, one hundred thousand; everybody has a price. One can only afford that much, beyond that, it is too much. The morality is not worth it! Then you would like to choose the immoral.

The moral man is not totally moral; only a few layers of him are moral, beyond that the immorality waits. So you can drive any moral man into immorality very easily. The only question is that you have to find his price.

I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin was travelling with a woman in a first-class compartment. They were alone. He introduced himself, and then he said, ’Would you like to sleep with me tonight?’

The woman, who was really angry, said ’What do you think? Are you mad? What do you think of me? I am not a prostitute!’

Mulla said ’I will give you ten thousand rupees.’

The woman started smiling, she came close, she was holding Mulla’s hand.

And then Mulla said ’What about ten rupees?’

And the woman said ’What do you think of me!’

Mulla said ’I know who you are. Now we are haggling over the price.’

It is always a question of ’the price’. Ten rupees – and the woman is angry. Ten thousand rupees

– and the woman is willing. And don’t laugh at her, this is the situation of everybody. Morality does not transform you. It goes deeper than reform, it has a bigger price, but still, at the very core of your being, you remain the same.

Reform is partial revolution. Revolution is outer revolution. Rebellion is inner revolution. And only when the inner has happened, is it dependable; otherwise it is not dependable. Reform will make you a hypocrite, revolution will make you a schizophrenic. Only rebellion can give you your fullness of being, spontaneity, health, wholeness.

Reform will make you respectable. If you are after respect, then reform is enough. It will give you a plastic personality. From the outside you will start looking beautiful. From the inside you will be rotten and stinking, but nobody will be able to smell your stinking being; the plastic will protect you.

Inside you will go on getting dirtier and dirtier, but on the outside you will keep a good face.

Revolution will create a split in you. It will make you a saint, but the sinner will be repressed. The sinner has not been absorbed into the saint, the sinner has been cut off. Revolution will make you two persons: it will create two worlds in you. The natural will be repressed and the moral will be on top of it. The upper-dog, the moral, will try to control the lower-dog, the natural. And of course, the natural is very powerful because it is natural, so it will take revenge; it will go on sneaking into your life from the weak points. It will disrupt your morality, it will create guilt, and you will be in constant conflict because nobody can be victorious.

Your support, your intellectual support, is for the moral, but your whole being’s support is for the natural. The moral is in the conscious and the natural is in the unconsCious. The conscious is very small, and the unconscious is nine times more strong, nine times more big than the conscious. But you only know the conscious, so in the conscious the morality will go on singing its song, and in the unconscious, which is nine times more powerful, all kinds of immoralities will go on getting deeper roots in you. It will make you a saint AND a sinner – the sinner will be repressed, and the sinner will wait for his time, for the right time to erupt, for the right time to take revenge.

That’s why people look so sad, people look so dissipated because their whole energy is going down the drain in the conflict. Continuous tension is there. The saint is very tense, he is always in anguish and always afraid – afraid of his own being that he has denied. And the denied is there! And sooner or later it will throw the moralist, the egoist, the conscious pretender. It will throw – it will throw the pretender.

Hence, the saint is always on the verge of a kind of insanity. And you know... if you try to be a saint, you will know that you are always on the verge. A small thing can change your whole balance, you can lose all your sanity. Neurosis breeds, grows, if you are split.

Rebellion is inner revolution. Rebellion starts from the ’in’, reform starts from the ’out’. Never start from the outside. Start from the innermost core. Start from your very being. Reform will tell you what to do. Revolution will tell you how to be: more saintly, of a better character, of good qualities.

Revolution will make a hard crust around you, an armour which protects you from the outside AND

from the inside too. A hard, steel armour – that is what is called ’character’.

A REAL man has no character. Jesus has no character. That was the problem, otherwise the Jews would not have been so against him . He was liquid; he had no character, he had no armour. He was open, vulnerable, defenseless, because he was not a moralist. He was not a saint, he was a sage.

Reform makes you a gentleman. Revolution makes you a saint. Rebellion makes you a sage. He was a sage.What-soever he did was not done because of a certain morality, but because of a certain understanding; not because of given-rules from the past, but because of a spontaneous awareness.

Rebellion depends on awareness, revolution on character, reform on formalities.

Start by being more aware, then you start from the innermost. Let the light spread from there, so your whole being can be full of light. There is no way to go from the outside. The only way is to come from the inside – just like a seed grows from the inside, sprouts from the inside and becomes a b;g tree. Let that be your inner work too – like a seed, grow.

Reform is patchwork, a kind of whitewash – a little bit here, a little bit there, but the basic structure is not even touched. Reform can be for revolution or can be against revolution; it depends on you.

There are two types of reformists: those who are preparing the ground for revolution or those who are trying to prevent the revolution. Reform gives the feeling that things are getting better, so what is the need of creating a revolution? why go to that much trouble? Reform gives hope, and people stop. So it depends on you.

A man of right understanding can use reform also, but a man who is not conscious will not be able to use reform as a process for revolution – on the contrary, reform will become a hindrance for revolution. And so is the case with revolution. Revolution can be a door to rebellion, but only with awareness; otherwise it becomes a hindrance. One thinks ’Now the revolution has happened, what is the need to go any deeper? It is already too much.’ So reform can either be a hindrance or a help.

And so is the case with revolution.

All depends on your awareness, all depends on your understanding – how much you understand life.

So let this become one of the most fundamental rules of life and work: that everything ultimately depends on understanding – how you understand. Even something which was going to become a great help can become a hindrance if understanding is missing. And even sometimes that which was going to be poisonous, with understanding can be changed into something medicinal. All medicines are made of poisons: they don’t kill, they help people to remain healthy. In the right hands even poison becomes medicine; and in the wrong hands, even medicine may prove to be a poison.

Revolution is the change of the structure – bodily, social, outer, economic, political; but man is not disturbed at all. It can be against rebellion or for rebellion. Out of one hundred, ninety-nine cases are against rebellion. That’s why communism is so much against religion; it is not accidental.

Communism feels religion to be the REAL enemy. Why? – because religion goes far deeper than communism can ever go. That is the jealousy, that is the problem. If there is no religion, then communism seems to be the ultimate revolution. Then there is no higher. But if religion is there, then communism seems to be just so-so, lukewarm – it is not much to brag about. Communism wants to kill religion utterly, destroy religion from the earth. They have done that in Russia, they are doing it in China. They are doing it even in Tibet, which was one of the most religious countries, which had one of the most long-lived religions – alive, the purest; the spring was yet not dirty and polluted. Now they are destroying that too.

Communism is very much afraid of religion because communism car see the point that religion goes deeper and it changes man from his very inner core. And only when the new mall is born, is a new society really born.

We have tried all things. We have created ladies and gentlemen, and they didn’t prove to be much.

We have changed societies, we have tried utopias – they have all failed. Reform has failed, revolution has failed.

Rebellion has never been tried on a large scale. And whenever it has been tried on a small scale, it has always succeeded. With Buddha it succeeded: thousands of people went through rebellion, became new. With Jesus it succeeded, with Lao Tzu it succeeded, with Krishna it succeeded.

success has always been with rebellion, but very few people... It has never been on a large scale. It has never gripped the soul of humanity. And that is where work is needed now.

The greater part of humanity has to be given the vision of awareness, rebellion, only then can man really become human. Man is only human for the name’s sake; he is not yet human, because those humane qualities which make a man human are missing, are lacking. They are not there.

Compassion is not there, love is not there, meditation is not there. The prayer, the gratitude is not there, the celebration is not there. In short, God is not there.

Man is an empty temple: the God is missing. And God will go on being missing unless your seed dissolves and you start sprouting into God. God is your growth!

Remember, God has not to be found somewhere outside – not in the Himalayas, not in Jerusalem, not in a monastery; God has to be evolved in you, God has to be your growth. It is not an object outside that you are going to meet some day. Unless you become it you will never meet it. Only by becoming it, you will meet it. And that is the whole message of Jesus.

Reform brings new ideas, revolution brings a new structure to support those new ideas, and rebellion brings new consciousness, a new man, a new being to support those structures.

Start from the very foundation. Let rebellion be the foundation, then make the structure of revolution.

And then on top of that, let there be a dome of reform – not otherwise. Otherwise the whole process will be topsy-turvy.

The basic thing is to understand the whole situation: how has man been doing up to now? what has been going wrong? why is there so much suffering? why do we always start from the wrong end and can never reach the real core of the problem?

Understanding is missing, awareness is missing. You are living in a kind of unconsciousness –

Jesus calls it sleep. Bring yourself to more awareness.

It will be difficult because everybody else is fast asleep around you. If you start awakening, you will find difficulties arising for you, because those people who are asleep will not like it. It is a disturbance for them. They are having sweet dreams, and you suddenly become awake. You create a kind of disturbance. Not only that – once you are awake, you start shaking people to awaken them because you feel ’These poor people are missing the real joy of life.’ The sun is rising, and the flowers are dancing in the breeze, and the birds are singing, and you start waking and shaking people around you – particularly people you love, you feel for, you care for. You would like them to share this joy, this morning that is all around. And they are deep in sleep, in a slumber, snoring, not aware of what is happening all around. But they are having their dreams. Maybe somebody is earning great money, or somebody is just reaching to the highest post – one promotion more, or somebody is fighting the presidential election. And you wake them? – they will feel angry. Naturally, because they don’t know any other reality than their dream. Their dream is their reality, and things were going well, and here you come and disturb everything! Nobody will like you.

Nobody likes a man who is alert and aware. That’s why Jesus was crucified. He would have been crucified anywhere. Don’t blame the Jews. He was such a rebellious man that he himself is responsible for being crucified, not the Jews. He would have been crucified by somebody else.

Wherever he was he would have been crucified.

That much awareness nobody is ready to accept. That much awareness is disturbing. That much awareness hurts. And the man of awareness stands there and makes you feel guilty, because in comparison to him you are just a dark night. You hate that man, because without him everything was good; there was no comparison. You were thinking you were full of life – now here comes this man.

And in his presence you are reduced to being just a dark night and nothing else. In his presence you are a beggar. Here comes the emperor, the son of God. And in his presence you become ugly. The natural logic is that HE is making you ugly. When he was not there. you had never thought about your ugliness.

Now he will haunt you. Now he will create trouble for you. Now you will have to search for this beauty. You will have to go into many things. ’Now this is unnecessary.’ It looks unnecessary. ’Better destroy this man, better destroy this criterion.’ Once the criterion is no more there, nobody can prove that you are empty, impotent, a beggar; nobody can prove that you are ugly; nobody can prove that you are missing anything. Destroy Jesus and relapse back into your sleep! That’s what the Jews did.

But I would like to tell you again, that’s what would have happened anywhere else. Jesus was too much. Yes, I say, even in India Jesus would have been crucified.

A question may arise in you: Buddha was not crucified, Mahavir was not crucified, then why Jesus?

Yes, I say, still Jesus would have been crucified. Jesus brings a new message. Buddha is silent; his message is only for those who come to him, those who come to seek and search. He does not go to the masses, he is not active. His rebellion is a presence. Jesus goes to the masses, Jesus goes very active!

Buddha’s rebellion is inactive, passive. Jesus’ rebellion is very active, and that is the problem.

Mahavir’s rebellion was also very passive, so was Lao Tzu’s. These are people who are utterly at ease, silent in themselves, happy with themselves. If somebody comes and partakes of their being, good; if nobody comes, they are not going to invite. Jesus DRAGS you into awareness, he hits you hard. He comes searching for you whether you are ready or not. He has said to his disciples ’Go and stand on the tops of the houses and shout... because people are deaf. You will have to shout.

Give the good message, the good news, that I have come. shout from the housetops!’

Buddha cannot say that. Lao Tzu... not at all. It was even difficult to find where Lao Tzu was, people had to search for him for months together. And once he would come to know that somebody is searching for him, he would escape, he would remove himself from one village to another. He would create all kinds of problems. He would allow only those who REALLY were seekers, who were ready to sacrifice all.

With Jesus it is just the opposite – he haunts you, he goes searching for you. He says he is like a shepherd who comes home in the night, counts his sheep, finds that one is missing, leaves the ninety-nine there in the dark night, in danger, and goes with a lamp to search for the one which is lost in the jungle, in the dark night – shouting, calling, searching. Yes, Jesus is like that. He is a revolutionary rebel.

Buddha is rebellion, pure rebellion. Silent is his message. Those who understand, they will understand; those who don’t understand, they need not worry, they can ignore him. He allows people to ignore him.

Jesus does not allow people to ignore him. He shouts. He pokes his fingers into people’s eyes. His compassion is great. He is a surgeon. With Buddha you may have a little bit of medicine. Jesus is a surgeon, he operates; and of course the operation hurts.

The Jews are not responsible, they should be forgiven. Anybody – Hindus, Chinese, Tibetans –

anybody would have killed this man. This man was asking for it. He brings a new breeze into religion: ACTIVE, action. Rebellion also becomes revolution.

I was reading a parable, a beautiful parable. Meditate over it.

A parable of G. William Jones: THE INNOVATOR.

It had been a long, long time since such a crime had been committed and, as punishment, the Innovator would receive a sentence which had not been heard of for a long, long time – not since the days of the great-great-greats. It was a sentence at once so terrible and horrifying in its aspect that the High Court and the C.D.’s felt that it justly fit the nauseous and perverse crime of innovation.

The punishment was to be expulsion from the Dome!

The citizens lined both sides of the street, their expression a mixture of hatred and awe as their eyes followed the progress of the innovator, escorted by a cordon of C.D.’s towards the Lox. Gamblers in the crowd were busily making book on how long it would take the Innovator to die once he was outside the Dome, and on whether it would be death from Fallout, Poisongas, or perhaps even from a Wildbeast. There was no doubt that he would soon die (for imbedded deep in the mind of each citizen was the truism that no human life could possibly exist outside the. protection of the Dome

– that beloved plastic canopy erected by their great-great-great-grandfathers, which stretched over the city from limit to limit, cuddling it in a benevolent, airtight grip). The only question was how long would death take to come and in what form

Some of the sadists in the crowd had scraped through the thick crust of dirt on the Dome wall near the Lox so that they could see the Outside, and were selling places at these peepholes for a nice sum.

The C.D.’s and their prisoner had arrived at the Lox. The crowd retreated now in a minor panic for fear that some poisonous fume might enter the Dome when the Lox was opened. The mechanism was still good, although it had been unused for all these generations. At the press of a button from the Chief, the thick transparent door of the Lox swung jerkily open. The Innovator, with a last mournful look over his shoulder, was pushed rather roughly into the small compartment. The door was then shut, and the citizens held their collective breath as the Chief touched the next button. The outer door swung open with a great hissing into that unhealthy green Outside.

At his first breath of the Outside’s air, the Innovator fell headlong, coughing, doubled up with a giant convulsion. The C.D.’s nodded their heads, pleased, and there was a clamour almost like a cheer that arose from those at the peepholes as they watched him and their wristwatches to determine the exact second of his last gasp.

But then the terrible thing happened. The Innovator slowly raised his head from the dust and, with the beginnings of a smile of great joy upon his face, filled his lungs deeply. His eyes grew wide. He sat up, and they could see his chest bulging with gulp after gulp of that alien air. The people were so startled that they cried aloud when he suddenly jumped from a sitting position straight up, coming down in the first steps of a wild dance.

’It must have hit his brain first’ said one spectator, his nose flattened against the Dome wall.

The Innovator stopped his dance abruptly as he turned to see the faces peering out at him. He smiled at them – a broad, toothy smile with no malice in it at all. He even opened his arms wide to them, making a beckoning gesture!

At this point, many of those watching him could take no more, and turned away to go back to their homes, shuddering with a nausea of fear.

After making many gestures of well-being to those amazed and still uncomprehending faces, the Innovator snapped his fingers and stooped to pick up a stick. With it, he wrote in large letters upon the ground ’Come on out – the air is fine!’

One after another shocked faces left the peepholes, not to return.

Again he wrote in the dirt, this time with more urgency ’It is fresh air – not poison.’

Still more left.

This time, almost frantic to make him-self understood, he wrote ’You don’t NEED the Dome anymore.

You can live Outside! It is BETTER out here!’

With this, every face disappeared from the clear places in the grimy walls, and the Innovator was left alone in the Outside with his brilliant sun, its fresh and moving air, its trees and plants three times the size of those inside the Dome, and its birds and animals.

The newspapers the next morning carried grisly stories of the Innovator’s immediate death outside the Lox. The city fathers decided in an emergency session that the interior of the Dome should be painted opaquely to a height of twenty feet all around. And those watchers who could not be scared into abject secrecy were interned in the asylum, where talk of living outside the Dome could be taken for what it was – the raving of a lunatic.

A beautiful parable. And this is the situation of humanity. Down the ages this has been so: man has lived in a man-created dome of beliefs, ideas, dogmas. Your churches, your temples, your scriptures are just plastic domes. They are protecting you from nature; they are not helping you to go to God, they are preventing you from going. When a man like Jesus comes, he is the Innovator. He starts talking about strange things which exist outside the domes. He talks about fresh air and green trees, and birds and their songs, and the sun and the clouds – a thousand and one things he talks about.

And you have lived in a plastic dome; you have never been out of it. You have never been out of a church, out of? temple; you have never been out of the traps of the priests and the politicians. And he comes and starts saying things which are wild – things which appeal, things which have a great appeal, things which are magnetic, things which provoke and challenge! But those things you have not heard for ages. You become angry. You become angry because this man thinks you are all fools!

That’s why people go on asking Jesus again and again ’Do you think you are far wiser than our father Abraham? Do you think you are more knowing than our old prophets? Do you think that you have brought truth for the first time?’ People believe they have always had truth, that is in their possession. And there is nothing in their possession. So whenever a man of truth comes, a rebellion comes into the world, innovation comes into the world. And the people crush such a man.

We have to create a world where innovators can be accepted more easily, where innovators are not only accepted but welcomed – because it is these innovators who help you to go higher and higher in consciousness. They are the steps towards God.

Now the sutras:

AND JESUS WENT OUT, AND DEPARTED FROM THE TEMPLE...

He was visiting the Great Temple of the Jews, and whenever he used to go to the temple he was always sad and angry, because things were all wrong there. The temple had become a trade. The temple was no more a temple, it was dominated by the businessman. God was sold there, and of course God cannot be sold. So only the false god can be sold. The temple was no more the shrine for prayer, it was no more the place to meditate, it was no more the place where one connects with God. It was dominated by the priests, and the priest was dominated by vested interests. Whenever Jesus would go to the temple, he would always come out angry and sad. Once he got so angry that he threw out all the money-changers from the temple. He shouted at them and told them ’What have you done to my Father’s house? It has become a den of robbers!’

This story also starts:

AND JESUS WENT OUT, AND DEPARTED FROM THE TEMPLE; AND HIS DISCIPLES CAME TO

HIM FOR TO SHOW HIM THE BUILDINGS OF THE TEMPLE.

But he was not interested in seeing those buildings, because the God that used to live there at some time had departed from there. It was a ruin. The soul had left the body, it was a corpse.

AND JESUS SAID UNTO THEM, SEE YE NOT ALL THESE THINGS?

’You still call this a temple? Don’t you see all these things that are happening there?’ It is politics, it is no more religion. It is reformist, it is no more rebellious. It does not transform people, it consoles them. It does not hit people awake, it goes on singing lullabies so they can fall asleep in a better way.

Remember this.

Many times you go to the religious person not to be awakened but to be helped, consoled. You go begging for a lullaby, you go begging for a tranquilliser. A tranquilliser cannot help you awaken.

Yes, it may help you to be less uncomfortable in this uncomfortable world, to be less insecure in this insecure world; to be less anxious, less tense. Yes, it can help you relax a little bit, but that is not going to change you or transform you. In fact, the transformation can come only when you become UTTERLY tense, when anxiety comes to its peak – only then, and then only is there a revolution, a radical change.

The priest goes on consoling you, and the priests are very cunning, very inventive in creating consoling theories. For centuries in India they have been consoling the poor. ’You are poor because you committed wrong things in your past lives – this is a consolation. People are not poor because they have done wrong things in their past lives. People are poor because they are being exploited.

Now the priest is in the hands of the exploiters – naturally, because they are the power, they are the power-holders. The priest lives on the crusts that are thrown from the rich people’s tables. He has to help the masters.

Down the ages he has been teaching poor people ’You are in bad shape because of your bad KARMA, and people are rich because of their good KARMA. Rich people are rich because they have been saintly in their past lives; and poor people are poor because they have been sinners.’

Now this is a very tricky thing – great strategy, great politics in it. If you look at the rich people, they seem to be the sinners. They are! – exploiting, cheating, deceiving. And the poor people, who are innocent in a way, are not doing any harm to anybody, they are ’the sinners of the past’. This does not seem logical, because if a man has been a sinner for so many lives, he will be a sinner in this life too. More is the possibility of his being a sinner rather than being an ordinary, innocent, poor person.

And if people have been great saints in their past lives, then they cannot be black marketeers – that will not be logical. Then they cannot go on exploiting people; their sainthood will not allow that.

The situation is just the reverse, but the ideology helps console. Then the poor person no more feels the wounds. The priest has poured ointment on the wounds. He says ’Nothing to be worried about. Nobody else is responsible. In your past lives you have done something wrong.’ He gives the explanation; the explanation helps the poor person. He can find an explanation, he can find the cause – and he himself is responsible. And now nothing can be done, one has to go through it silently. That’s why in India there has never been a revolution. It is because of the priests.

How can there be a revolution if you are responsible? Then the only thing is to go on doing good things – whatsoever you can do. The poor man cannot afford much, hut whatsoever he can do he should go on doing. He can go to the Ganges once in his life to take a bath or he can contribute a little something to the temple of the village or, once in a lifetime, he can have some ritual arranged.

That’s all that he can do. And he can wait for the next life. In the next life he will be happy, he will live in palaces and he will enjoy all kinds of good things. So it is only a question of a little patience.

The priest has been teaching patience to people, consolation, giving explanations so that they know why they are poor – and hiding the real facts.

The temple has become the citadel of all that is wrong, and Jesus always felt this whenever he would-go to the temple. He would see things that were going on there. He could not believe why people were not aware, why they could not see.

SEE YE NOT ALL THESE THINGS? VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, THERE SHALL NOT BE LEFT

HERE ONE STONE UPON ANOTHER...

’This temple has to be destroyed! This so-called religion has to be destroyed! This religion of the priests and the politicians has to be utterly effaced from the earth!’

... VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, THERE SHALL NOT BE LEFT HERE ONE STONE UPON ANOTHER, THAT SHALL NOT BE THROWN DOWN.

He is angry. You will not find such anger in Buddha. That’s why Buddha was saved from crucifixion.

Even if he talks, he talks in great philosophical ways. Even if he says things, he does not say them in a raging voice, in anger; he is very polite.

Buddha’s message is like classical music – silent, beautiful, but no revolution in it. Jesus’ message is a slogan; it is not a coincidence, it is not an accident that all the great revolu-tionaries come from Jesus’ tradition. They come from the West not the East. The East misses revolutionaries.

The East has known great sages, but not revolutionaries. All the great revolutions and all the great revolutionary ideas come from the West. And the foundation of the West is Jesus’ ideology, his approach towards reality.

You will be surprised to know that even communism comes from Christianity, not from Hinduism, not from Jainism, not from Buddhism. Communism is also an off-shoot of Christianity, howsoever much they are against it – that doesn’t matter. A son can go against the father; that does not make him no more a son, that does not make him less of a son. He remains the son. Marx and Freud and Kropotkin and Tolstoy and Ruskin and Thoreau – they all come from the same seed, from the same approach towards life – that is Jesus’ approach.

Jesus is an off-shoot of the Jewish approach. That also has to be understood.

Nothing like the Jewish prophets have ever existed in India or in China – no, never. You cannot find a man like John the Baptist in India. Those great prophets of the Jews were all full of revolution, they were all hot, they were all burning fires! Prophets have never existed in India; saints, yes, sages, yes – but not prophets. When somebody calls Mahavir a prophet, he is not right. When somebody calls Buddha a prophet, it looks simply absurd. Buddha is not a prophet. He has no prophecy for the future, he does not bring any revolution. He brings a new consciousness, his own consciousness.

He makes it available, but he does not shout. He does not say that the temple should be burnt, that this temple should fall, that not even one single stone will remain upon another. Jesus has the quality of a Jewish prophet. He was a disciple of John the Baptist. John the Baptist was killed just like Jesus; he was beheaded.

And the Judaic tradition has given birth to other revolutionaries also. Marx is a Jew, so is Sigmund Freud. Whether it is sociology or it is economics or it is psychology or even physics, the revolution comes from the Jew. Albert Einstein is a Jew. There is some element in the Jewish consciousness that makes people revolutionary. Just think of a human history without three Jews – Jesus, Marx and Freud – and there will be no revolution. People will be patient, people will suffer, people will accept everything, people will go on dragging and finding explanations from the priests. This has to be noted, because this is specific to Jesus.

AND JESUS SAID UNTO THEM, SEE YE NOT ALL THESE THINGS? VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, THERE SHALL NOT BE LEFT HERE ONE.STONE UPON ANOTHER, THAT SHALL NOT BE

THROWN DOWN.

VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU,

HEAVEN AND EARTH SHALL PASS AWAY, BUT MY WORDS SHALL NOT PASS AWAY.

Because his words are not HIS words, that’s why they SHALL NOT PASS AWAY. Because his words are God’s words. He is just a vehicle, a medium: he is simply saying what God wants to say. But God has no mouth to speak with; God uses our mouths. God has no eyes to see with; he uses our eyes. And God has no legs to walk with; he uses our legs to walk.

God used Jesus as a medium. That’s why Jesus can say HEAVEN AND EARTH SHALL PASS

AWAY, BUT MY WORDS SHALL NOT PASS AWAY. ’This temple is going to be destroyed, this temple is going to be demolished to the very ground, because this temple has gone against the very spirit of being a temple. It is no more a temple, it is no more religious.’

But this happens again and again. Now the Vatican, the Pope – they are no more religious. They are in the same situation as was this temple which Jesus left. Again the same has happened. It always happens! The temple sooner or later becomes the den of the robbers, because the temple attracts innocent people. There is a logical necessity for why it happens. The temple attracts innocent people. Once the innocent people start coming, the clever and cunning start coming, because wherever the innocent are, there is the possibility to exploit.

Jesus attracts the innocent. Once the innocent are there, then the cunning people all around will see the point. When Jesus is alive they cannot come – Jesus’ presence is a prevention. Once Jesus is gone, then those cunning people will start infiltrating, then they will come and start mixing with the sheep – and these are wolves although they may have sheepskins to hide themselves. And sooner or later they will come out on top because they are cunning. The innocent people are not interested in being on top; only those who are cunning come for that. Once they are on top, they become the priests, the rabbis, the SHANKARACHARYAS, the popes. And then they start dominating the whole thing, and the whole quality changes.

A temple is a temple only while Jesus is alive. Once Jesus is gone, it is very difficult for the temple to remain a temple. Because Jesus will gather the innocent people: he will gather so many sheep.

While he is there he will protect; once he is gone, wolves will start coming. Because wolves only come once they see that so many sheep are there and the shepherd is missing. This is the chance for them – their life’s chance.

Now the same has happened in the Vatican, the same has happened in Puri, the same has happened at the Kaaba. The same has been happening down the ages. Remember it, because the same can happen here.You will have to be very very mindful.

So I don’t want you just to be innocent. Be innocent, but don’t be foolish. Be innocent, but don’t be childish. Be innocent, but let your innocence be illuminated by awareness. Then this cannot happen. Your awareness will make you aware if something goes wrong; otherwise this is going to happen. Somebody who is cunning will start manipulating you. Keep alert. The temple has been made again and again, and has been polluted again and again.

But man has changed down the ages very much. Maybe now this is possible. Maybe now the time has come – the time for the idea to become a reality.

VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU;

HEAVEN AND EARTH SHALL PASS AWAY, BUT MY WORDS SHALL NOT PASS AWAY.

WATCH THEREFORE: FOR YE KNOW NOT WHAT HOUR YOUR LORD DOTH COME.

Jesus says there is no point in going to the temple and the ritual and the rabbi and the scripture.

The only thing that you need to enter is watchfulness.

WATCH THEREFORE...

’This temple is going to fall; don’t go in it, otherwise you will also be crushed. Escape from it, it is already falling. I can see what is going to happen to it. Its soul has already left it It is no more glued together. These are just stones upon stones without any glue holding them together. That religion is not there. It is a miracle how this temple is still standing! It is going to fall any moment. A small wind, and it may fall; a little rain, and it may fall. Any excuse is needed, and it may fall. You escape from it, and let watchfulness be your temple.’

WATCH THEREFORE: FOR YE KNOW NOT WHAT HOUR YOUR LORD DOTH COME.

And the watchfulness has to be for twenty-four hours: You cannot afford to be watchful just for a few minutes once a day – in the morning you meditate and then you forget. That won’t help because nobody knows when God will knock at your door. And if you are not watchful you will miss; you will not recognise him. Only in immense awareness can God be recognised.

BUT KNOW THIS, THAT IF THE GOODMAN OF THE HOUSE HAD KNOWN IN WHAT WATCH

THE THIEF WOULD COME, HE WOULD HAVE WATCHED, AND WOULD NOT HAVE SUFFERED

HIS HOUSE TO BE BROKEN UP.

And the watchfulness has two purposes to it. One is: if you are not watchful you will not recognise when God comes and knocks on your door; you will miss him. And the second purpose is: if you are not watchful, you don’t know how thieves enter, when they enter, and when they rob you. To make it clear, Jesus is saying ’Be watchful so that the priest cannot enter in you – he is the thief. And when a Christ knocks on your door, you can recognise him.’

For one real Master there are ninety-nine false masters in the world. If you are not watchful, those ninety-nine are going to rob you. And one never knows when the real one comes. You may encounter him, but if you are not very alert you will miss, because only alertness can become a bridge between you and the real Master.

THEREFORE BE YE ALSO READY...

So double are the purposes. First: you should be ready so no thief can rob you, nobody can exploit you. And second: you should be ready so that when the real comes you can welcome him, and he can become a guest and you can be the host. The moment you become a host to God, you have become the real temple. That is the real temple, not these buildings. Jesus is saying.

WHO THEN IS A FAITHFUL AND WISE SERVANT, WHOM HIS LORD HATH MADE RULER OVER

HIS HOUSEHOLD, TO GIVE THEM MEAT IN DUE SEASON? BLESSED IS THAT SERVANT, WHOM HIS LORD WHEN HE COMETH SHALL FIND SO DOING.

God has given you a purpose, God has given you a certain destiny, God has given you a certain work to do here on earth. If you are not aware, you will be found unworthy.

God has given you a purpose. You may not be aware of the purpose at all. He wants something to be fulfilled through you. Maybe he wants you to sing a song that nobody else can sing except you.

Maybe he wants you to have a dance that is possible only through you. Only through you can he give that dance to existence. Only through you can God have that dance – there is no other way.

Maybe something else... But everybody comes here with a seed. It is just a seed and, in the seed, you cannot see what flowers are going to bloom. But the seed is there amd the flowers are waiting.

And unless you have bloomed, you will not be able to show your face to your God, to your Master.

Only fulfilled, bloomed, cam you offer yourself to him, can’ you bow down at his feet.

BLESSED IS THAT SERVANT, WHOM HIS LORD WHEN HE COMETH SHALL FIND SO DOING.

Otherwise people are doing other things. And God will come amd find you doing something else for which you were not sent, amd NOT doing that for which you WERE sent! This is the only sin: not to do that which is intrinsic to you and to go on doing things which others have put upon you.

There are many people who are putting their trips upon you – avoid them. Your father wants to put a trip upon you; he wants you to become the prime minister of the country. Your mother wants to put her trip upon you; she wants that you should become a great doctor, or this and that. And your teachers are putting their trips, and your friends and your society. Everybody is interested in you, because they are interested in putting a trip upon you. Nobody seems to be interested in YOU AS

YOURSELF.

If you can find a man who is interested in you AS YOURSELF – that is your Master. That is the criterion, the definition of a Master: one who is not putting any trip upon you, who is simply interested in helping you to be whatsoever you can be. He is not driving you in any direction, but simply nurturing you, nourishing you, so that you can have any direction that comes naturally to you; who is not pruning you, who is simply putting fertilisers onto your roots, so if you want to grow to the north or to the south, or you want to go high in the sky, or you want to become a thick bush, you become whatsoever you want to become. A Master is just a benevolent presence, a nourishment.

He does not guide you to be this or that, he simply helps you to be that which is hidden in you.

VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, THAT HE SHALL MAKE HIM RULER OVER ALL HIS GOODS.

If you have fulfilled God’s desire that he has put in you, you, your being, will be transformed. You will be no more a servant, you will become a Master. You will no more be a beggar, you will become an emperor. But you have to prove that you are capable of doing things.

A target has been given to you, but the target is put in your deep unconscious. You have to search for it, you have to dig for it, you have to discover it. It is not available there, it is very invisible. And it is beautiful that it is invisible; it makes you a seeker and a searcher, a discoverer. It gives you the challenge to explore, otherwise life would be very dull. Hence God has put the purpose DEEP in your unconscious.

You will have to dig like one digs a well. Layers and layers of mud... and for days together you don’t see any sign of water. Many times you become tired, exhausted, desperate.

Many times you are so frustrated you stop digging, you say ’It seems useless, futile. It seems there is no water here!’ Many times in your spiritual journey this will come, but if you go on digging, one day the first signs of water will show. The mud is no more dry, it is wet – that wetness is called love.

When in your inner being you go on digging and the mud becomes wet, you are getting love. Love starts flowing. It is muddy in the beginning, it is full of many other things. But one goes on digging...

the mud becomes less and less and more water will be flowing. One goes on digging... then the mud disappears and fresh water will be flowing. One goes on digging... and one has come to the source, to the springs. Now you can take as much water as you want and your well will never be empty. You can go on sharing, and the more you share the more you will be getting.

Jesus says ’Those who have will be given more, and those who have not, even that which they have will be taken away from them.’ So go on digging so that you can have more. The more you have, the more springs will be pouring water in you. The less you have, even that which you have will be taken away.

VERILY I SAY UNTO YOU, THAT HE SHALL MAKE HIM RULER OVER ALL HIS GOODS.

BUT AND IF THAT EVIL SERVANT SHALL SAY IN HIS HEART, MY LORD DELAYETH HIS

COMING;

AND SHALL BEGIN TO SMITE HIS FELLOW SERVANTS, AND TO EAT AND DRINK WITH THE

DRUNKEN;

THE LORD OF THAT SERVANT SHALL COME IN A DAY WHEN HE LOOKETH NOT FOR HIM, AND IN AN HOUR THAT HE IS NOT AWARE OF...

But if you think there is no hurry... That’s what everybody is thinking in the world: ’There is no hurry, we will see. Right now let us have more money, more sex, more houses, more cars. Right now let us indulge in the world! Tomorrow or the day after tomorrow we will think of God, we will think of meditation and prayer. What is the hurry?

Even people who are very old sometimes come to me and they say ’Yes, we would like to go into meditation, but the time has not come yet.’ Because old people also think that they are not yet old enough. Nobody ever thinks that he is going to die. That is one of the strange things in human mind – the strangest, because death is absolutely certain. Everybody is going to die; death makes no exceptions! So it is only a question of time – today or tomorrow or the day after tomorrow – but everybody is going to die. And still people go on thinking that their death is very far away, very very far away. They have enough time yet to fool around. And when they have fooled around and finished with their fooling, then they will meditate. But that day never comes. Even on their death bed, they go on continuing the old habits.

A Jew was dying, and he opened his eyes and said ’Where is my eldest son?’

The wife was sitting by the side and she said ’You don’t be worried, he is just sitting at the left. You be quiet, you relax and remember God, because the doctors say you cannot survive this night.’

He said ’Forget about doctors! Where is my other son?’

’He is sitting’ the wife said ’near your feet.’

’And where is my third son?’

’He is also sitting on this side.’

And the man started getting up and he said ’Then who is looking after the shop?’

Now the man is dying, and ’Are all the three sons here?’ His mind is still in the shop.

About this man I have heard another story too.

He was small, he was in his schooldays. And the teacher gave a question, she said ’One per cent interest on one thousand pounds given for five years – how much will the interest be?’

All the others started working, but this Manny Cohen, he was sitting there not doing anything. The teacher asked ’Why, Manny! Why are you not doing the question?’

He said ’I am not interested in one per cent.’

Now this is the beginning, and that is the end; and between also the same thing will be there. People start foolishly – that’s okay, that can be understood. How can one start wisely? But people END

foolishly – that cannot be understood. And the basic trick of the mind is: that my LORD DELAYETH

HIS COMING: ’That God is coming is true – but not today, so today we can enjoy. Tomorrow he will come, then we will see.’ Then the day after tomorrow... and one goes on postponing.

Postponement is the basic trick of the mind to avoid God, to avoid the essential, to avoid rebellion.

Never postpone. If you want to postpone, postpone that which is wrong. Postpone anger for tomorrow, but not meditation for tomorrow. Postpone hatred for tomorrow, but not love for tomorrow.

Postpone money for tomorrow, but not God for tomorrow. And people go on doing just the opposite!

Anger they do right now. If somebody insults you, you don’t say ’Okay, I will think over it, and I will come by at the end of the week and I will tell you what I think about the things that you have told me.’ You immediately jump upon him, you pounce upon him; you don’t give a single minute’s gap.

If somebody loves you, spreads his hands towards you to welcome you, you shrink. You say ’I will think. Let me think over it.’ You will brood over it, you will find a thousand and one reasons why not to fall into this trap: ’What is the motive of this person? Why does he want to hug Me? Maybe he is a pickpocket or something? Who loves without any motive? There must be some motive. He must want to use me for something or other.’ When love comes, you withdraw; when anger comes, you stick there stubbornly.

Change this whole attitude. Don’t delay that which is good, because good belongs to God. Delay that which is bad, because the bad keeps you away from God.

BUT AND IF THAT EVIL SERVANT SHALL SAY IN HIS HEART, MY LORD DELAYETH HIS

COMING;

AND SHALL BEGIN TO SMITE HIS FELLOW-SERVANTS, AND TO EAT AND DRINK WITH THE

DRUNKEN;

THE LORD OF THAT SERVANT SHALL COME IN A DAY WHEN HE LOOKETH NOT FOR HIM...

And God always comes when you are unaware. God always comes as a surprise. God always comes suddenly, abruptly. God does not come as a cause-effect chain, he comes out of the blue.

Suddenly he is there; he surrounds you and drowns you completely.

So unless you are alert – moment-to-moment alert – you will miss. It may have been that God has come many times to you, and you have missed because you were not aware.

In fact, this is how it is. I know that God comes to you many times. I have seen him surrounding many of you, but you are completely unaware. He is just by the side, ready to accept you, but you are not there, you are absent. He surrounds you like a cloud, but you are not there; there is just emptiness, so no meeting is possible. You are never at home, because you are never aware! You are somewhere else. Your body is in one place, your mind somewhere else.

Let your body and mind be together, let your whole being be in the moment – that’s what awareness is all about: PRESENCE OF NOW AND HERE.

THE LORD OF THAT SERVANT SHALL COME IN A DAY WHEN HE LOOKETH NOT FOR HIM, AND IN AN HOUR THAT HE IS NOT AWARE OF,

AND SHALL CUT HIM ASUNDER, AND APPOINT HIM HIS PORTION WITH THE HYPOCRITES: THERE SHALL BE WEEPING AND GNASHING TO TEETH.

There is. There is misery, and there will be misery. You live in misery and you will continue to live in misery, because God is bliss, and there is no other bliss. Unless you live in God, you live in misery.

Yes

... THERE SHALL BE WEEPING AND GNASHING OF TEETH.

And your whole being facing God will be the being of a hypocrite; you will be false, pseudo. And you have become accustomed, so much accustomed to your personality that you will carry your personality in front of God too.

God can be met only when you are nude – utterly nude, nothing to hide, no secrets to keep – when you are just an openness. God can be met only when in that openness there is nothing but one taste – the taste of awareness and presence. Jesus’ whole message is that of awareness.

CHAPTER 8

Significance is Inner Nourishment

7 November 1977 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

ARE THERE DIFFERENT LEVELS OF HEDONISM? I SUSPECT ’EAT, DRINK AND BE MERRY’

MEANS DIFFERENT THINGS TO DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

Yes, Anurag. There are two levels of hedonism, and they are almost polar opposites to each other.

Because of that, much misunderstanding has prevailed down the ages.

The lower hedonism is of the body, and the higher hedonism is of the soul. They both speak the same language: Eat, drink, be merry. They both propound the same philosophy of life: Live in the moment, don’t think of the morrow. They both want that one should not be worried about the past, should not be concerned about the future. This moment is enough unto itself. Their language is the same, their proposal is the same, yet they are diametrically opposite.

To the first hedonism – the material, the physical, the outer hedonism – belong the philosophies of Charvaka in India and Epicurus in Greece. To the second philosophy, the spiritual hedonism, belong all the great Masters: Buddha, Krishna, Christ, Zarathustra.

Where do they differ? Where do they go diametrically opposite?

If you live only as a physical being, then you will remain unaware of the non-physical dimension that is continuously penetrating you. Then you will know only the visible, and the invisible will remain unknown to you. And the invisible is far bigger, far more essential. The visible is just a covering, the visible is just a shell around the invisible. It is there to protect the invisible. The body is the shrine of the soul. If you live only in the body, and you only take care of the body and the physical sensations dominate you, you will never become aware of the non-physical dimension – the divine dimension.

If you are utterly lost in the body – as you will be if you think ’Eat, drink and be merry’ is the goal –

then you will live at the very superficial level.

It is as if you have been given the Bible and you go on looking at the cover, and you start worshipping the cover and you never open the book, and you never go inside and you never see what is there.

The cover can be beautiful – it can be leather bound, printed in gold, maybe diamonds are studded on top of it; it can be beautiful, it can be very precious – but still it is nothing compared to that which is inside the book.

Your body is only a cover. It is beautiful, it is precious, but it is carrying something far more precious in it. The man who thinks of ’Eat, drink and be merry’ in the physical sense is a man who receives a letter and worships the envelope. and forgets the message. The message is important. What a message you are carrying inside you! What a destiny you are carrying inside you!

The second level hedonism is not against the body, it is for the soul. It also lives in the moment, but when the first hedonist is eating, he is only. concerned with the food. When the second hedonist is eating, he is more concerned with the awareness of the taste of the food. That is where they differ.

When the first hedonist has gone for a walk, he looks around – the trees, the birds, the people, the dewdrops, the morning sun – but he does not look at WHO is looking at all these things. When the second hedonist goes for a morning walk, he enjoys the birds, the trees, the people, the sun, the sky, but he also goes on enjoying the one who is enjoying it all. He remains aware.

The first hedonist lives an unconscious life, the second hedonist lives a very very conscious life.

The second hedonist gets all that the first is getting... plus. The first hedonist gets only the bodily sensations, and he goes on missing the REAL life.

Because the first hedonist lives in the body, there are people who are against the first hedonist and they think they are spiritual. They are not. That’s a logical fallacy. Because the first goes on living in the body, there are people who Logically think ’We have to go against the body, then only can we enter into the second realm of our being, then only can we attain to happiness, to heaven, to bliss.

Because the first is missing – and the first is missing because he is too much obsessed with the body – the second, this so-called spiritualist, becomes obsessed AGAINST the body. This is not a real spiritualist.

The real spiritualist is a hedonist. Let me repeat it: He is not against the body, he is for the soul.

So now there are three kinds of people: the ordinary hedonist who lives in the body, the REAL

hedonist who lives in the soul. And naturally lives in the body too, and between these two is the spiritualist, the so-called spiritualist, the ascetic who fights with the body, who destroys the body, who is against the body, who tortures the body. And he thinks that in torturing the body he will attain to the soul; he cannot.

The first goes on missing, but the second – the false spiritualist – misses even more. So if you have a choice, then I will say it is better to be a physical hedonist than to be an anti-physical spiritualist, because at least you will be enjoying the body; the physical part of God will remain available to you.

To the spiritualist, even that is not available. He is completely blind.

But if you really want to enjoy life, then you have to choose the second kind of hedonism, the spiritual hedonism, the divine hedonism. The second is already available to the first if he starts becoming a little alert. It is not available to the false spiritualist. He is closed to both kinds of hedonisms.

The physical hedonist can rise to the higher hedonism because he has to grow in the same way but deeper. He has to dig a little deeper into his being. So if you are to choose between Epicurus and Mahatma Gandhi, choose Epicurus. But if you have to choose between Epicurus and Buddha, Jesus, then choose Jesus or Buddha. Never become a so-called saint. He falls from grace. He misses the body, how can he attain to the soul? The body has to be used as a stepping-stone. The body has to become a staircase, it has to become a boat for the other shore. Use the body.

I am a hedonist. My whole teaching is: love the body, use the body, go into the body as deeply as you can, be sensitive to its feelings, be available to its wisdom, its joys, but don’t be confined there.

There is MUCH MORE in your life. That is just a beginning. Use the body as a jumping-board. And the secret is the same. So the secret can be used on the second, higher, level too. Be in the present.

Live moment to moment. Don’t allow the past to interfere, and don’t allow the future to cloud your vision. Let the present moment be crystal clear. Enter into it with the body, with the soul. Enter into it as a unity of body and soul. Enter into it not AS body or AS soul but as a unity.

There are these two kinds of hedonism. The higher contains the lower. The lower cannot contain the higher. I teach you the higher hedonism.

Question 2

WHAT DOES ONE DO ABOUT UNREQUITED LOVE? WHAT DOES ONE DO ABOUT

UNREQUITED LOVE THAT SEEMS TO LIVE ON AND ON LIKE A WOUND THAT NEVER HEALS?

HOW IS IT THAT A MAN CAN GO ON LOVING ONE WOMAN YEAR AFTER YEAR BELIEVING, IN SPITE OF THE PAIN, THAT AND DAY SHE WILL FIND A PLACE FOR HIM IN HER HEART?

AM I A FOOL TO BELIEVE? I THINK THAT I AM A FOOL, AND YET I CONTINUE TO BELIEVE.

AM I CREATING THIS SITUATION? OR IS THIS SITUATION CREATING ME?

First you are not really in love with love. That’s why you got stuck on a particular woman. A real lover never gets stuck anywhere. His offering is for love, not for persons. He loves beauty, not the rose flower, not the lotus flower. He loves beauty wherever it is; he does not get confused, he does not think that the container is the content.

You got confused. You are not a real lover. You have not really loved. In fact, you are avoiding love in the name of that woman. Now this is a beautiful trick to escape from love.

What can you do? You loved a woman and she never responded to you, so what can you do? Now you can only go on playing with your wound. You are a masochist. I will not say that you are a fool, you are not. You are a masochist, a clever masochist, an intelligent masochist. You are arranging for your torture through the name of love, in the name of love You are playing the game of being a martyr. you are enjoying this crucifixion.

You loved a woman; there is no necessity for the woman to love you. Your love is not enough to make it sure. Love is a two-way street, it is not one-way. But down the ages, poets, novelists, people who go on playing with imagination, have been talking about love as if when you love the person, the other person has to love you! The only condition that you have to fulfil is that you should really love. Even then, there is no need for the other to love you. The other has freedom, the other is a living soul. If the other has to love you just because you love, then where is his freedom? Where is his soul or her soul? Then you don’t leave any freedom for the other. If the other does not want you, does not like you, if the other is not turned on by you, then you can go on loving and nothing is going to happen.

Just your love is not enough. In fact, the more you try, the more the other will go far away, because the other will become more and more afraid of you. You are dangerous! Even before love has happened you are not allowing freedom. What will you do when the love has happened? You will suffocate the woman or the man. You will surround the woman in such a way that it will become a prison. Even right now the woman has not responded, but you are waiting. And you are thinking and hoping that because you love, she has to love you. Why? There is no must in it, there is no inevitability in it. Just the reverse will be the case. The more you chase her, the more you will make her afraid of you and the more she will escape from you. You are dangerous. And the paradox is, the more she will be going away from you the more you will fantasise about her.

A real woman very soon loses all charm. So is the case with a real man, because with reality the fiction cannot be continued for long. All relationships settle down by and by – the honeymoon is only short. If you really get the woman, within seven days, fifteen days, three weeks, things will start settling; the fiction, the poetry, the fantasy will start disappearing. The real woman and the real man will come back to earth. You cannot go on moving in the clouds for long. The other’s reality will pull you back to the gravitation.

So when love is responded to, it is finished soon. When love remains unrequited, it can continue for your whole life, because there is no way for it to be finished. You can go on playing in your imagination – games, fantasies, dreams...

And the person who has asked the question is an author, Hal Musin. He must be imaginative, poetic.

He must be able to create fictions. Now he cannot lose this woman because this woman is giving him great fictions. And she will go on giving you. The only condition is: she should not respond to your love, then the love can continue forever. In that way Majnun was fortunate because he could never get Laila. The really unfortunate people are those who can get their Lailas. Once you get your Laila or your Majnun, things are finished.

One man went to see the madhouse. In one room a man was beating his head, crying. Great tears were flowing down his cheeks and he was holding a small picture very lovingly on his chest.

The visitor asked the superintendent ’What has happened to this man?’

And the superinterdent said ’You see the picture that he is holding? He holds it day and night. That is the woman he wanted, he had loved, but could not get. Hence, he went mad. He cries and sings songs to her, and goes on thinking of her. That is his whole life. The whole world has disappeared, only the woman... He talks, he talks from his side and the woman’s side, and the dialogue continues.’

Then they went to another room, and another man was beating his head and throwing himself against the wall.

And the visitor asked ’What has happened to this man?’

And the superintendent said ’This is the man who got that woman. Since he got that woman he has gone mad.’

You can go on living in your dreams, and you will think that you are a great lover – how much you are sacrificing! But you are simply a masochist. This can be done only by a masochist who wants to torture himself. Now you have found a good excuse to torture yourself.

I cannot appreciate this. I have no appreciation for any pathology, whatsoever the excuse. This is pathological.

You offered yourself, the woman denied – it is finished! There are millions of women in the world.

Why are you wasting your life? If you want to waste it that’s another thing, but then don’t befool yourself that it is because of love. Love is just an excuse, you really want to waste your life. You are afraid of love! You are depending on that woman. You don’t want to approach another woman. One woman does not mean anything. Neither does one man mean anything.

If you are hungry you will eat even if the food that you wanted to eat is not available. Or won’t you? If you are thirsty you will drink even if Coca-Cola is not available – plain Poona water will do! If you are thirsty you will drink, you will not say ’I will die, but I will not drink because I only drink Coca-Cola.

I love Coca-Cola!’ No, you will drink, you are thirsty. You are hungry, you will eat. If you are really hungry for love, then what docs it matter if one woman has refused you? There is no need to feel lost, because there are millions of women.

But one woman has denied you, then there are a few things involved in it. First, your ego is hurt –

as if you have some power over people. Just because you love, does somebody else have to love you? You can offer yourself, but the other has to decide. You took the initiative, but if the woman could not like you that does not mean that you are nobody, that simply means something was not fitting between you two. And it is good that the woman denied you. If out of politeness, or out of respect, or out of compassion, she had agreed to you, you would have been in far more trouble.

Because compassion can never become love, and politeness is hypocrisy. If she had not liked you and decided to go with you for some other motive, you would have been in far more trouble and anguish, because there would have never been that harmony that happens between two people who are in love with each other. She would always have been the compassionate one, the sympathiser; she would have felt for your misery.

That’s what you are doing. That’s what people go on doing. When one woman has refused, or one man has refused, they go on crying, they go on making themselves miserable in the hope that misery will create compassion in the other. Misery CAN create compassion, and that is dangerous because compassion is never love. And you cannot be fulfilled by compassion, because the one who is showing compassion remains higher than you. You are a beggar. The woman can give to you, but there will be no passion in it. When compassion has come, passion disappears. There will be no thrill in the woman’s heart, she will never feel ecstatic. She will always feel obliging. She will remain insensitive because her own heart will not open for you. She will pretend, she will do whatsoever is needed, she will fulfil the duty, but duty is not love.

Love is ecstasy, duty is dull. She will not dance because of you. She may become a good householder, she may take care of your children, she may 1(30k after you, she will be a good caretaker but these things don’t fulfil.

It is good that the woman didn’t show any compassion to you. And you are asking for compassion, that’s why you cannot allow the wound to heal. Once the wound is healed, then nobody will show compassion for you. You cannot get down from your cross! You have to hang there, and you have to go on shouting ’Look how much I am suffering! Come!’ You are trying to create a situation in the woman’s heart so that she starts feeling GUILTY, that it is SHE who is responsible for all your suffering. That’s why you cannot allow the wound to heal. This is not love. This is ego – one.

And second – this IS FEAR of love. You are afraid to knock at another door because you have been rejected once, so you are afraid you may be rejected again. You are hesitant, so you go on knocking on the same door, and your knocking on the same door will only create nausea in the woman. You will be a nuisance. She can’t love you, so you vv-ill become more and more of a nuisance.

Forget about her, and forgive her. And this is your life – don’t waste it. And this life is precious –

don’t let it go down the drain. Love can still flower. If it has not happened with A, it can happen with B, it can happen with C. The real thing is the flowering of love. WITH WHOM it happens is irrelevant!

But people become too obsessed with small things. It should happen only with this woman who has black hair.’ What is wrong with blonde or brunette? ’It should happen only with this woman who has such a long nose.’ These are obsessions! Foolish! You get too much involved in details, and you go on missing the real point. The real point is that LOVE should happen! And once it starts happening and your heart starts flowing, it is even possible THAT woman may become interested in you. Because people only become interested in people who are happy, who are flowing, who are blooming. If you start blooming, there is a possibility... I only say possibility, I am not saying certainty, otherwise you can even do that. If you start blooming, that woman may start thinking of you. She may start feeling that she missed an opportunity, she may start feeling that there is still time, she may start thinking ’How to make it?’ she may start knocking on your door.

But that is possible only when you are happy. Now you are a wound! Nobody loves a wound. And remember, if somebody loves a wound, beware of that person – that person is neurotic. Escape, because if the person loves the wound, he will never allow the wound to heal. He will go on creating bigger wounds in you, because he loves wounds.

There are people who love wounds because when somebody is wounded, they are always upper, higher, greater, better.

One man – he was one of my students in the University – told me that he would like to marry a widow. In India that is a problem. Nobody wants to marry a widow. So there are people who think that to marry a widow is a great sacrifice.

I said ’You can marry, but once you have married she will not be a widow. Then what will you do?

Then the whole charm will disappear because the charm is in her being a widow.’

He laughed – he thought I was joking. And he got married. And after six months he said ’You were right. I’m no more interested in her. My interest was basically in her widowhood. I wanted to show to the public that I am a great servant of people, that I am serving people even through my love. I am sacrificing my love for a widow. I am going against the society, I am going against the tradition.

I am doing something great. But now the marriage has happened and the widow has come, now there is no point.’

I said ’You do one thing. You commit suicide. She will be a widow again, and somebody else will have a chance to serve her again. If you are really a public servant, do this.’ Since then I have not seen him.

Don’t go on playing with your wound. This continuous fingering of the wound will not allow it to heal.

And I think the woman you were in love with has some sense. She will not look at you. WHO wants to look at a wound? Be happy, become a flower: bloom. Let her feel jealous. Let her feel that she missed an opportunity of finding such a beautiful man. Let your song burst forth, then there is a possibility she may come.

And whether she comes or not is not the point. You are riot here only to love that woman. This is a vast world, and with millions of beautiful people all around. Why get so obsessed with one person?

A real lover is never obsessed with persons, his devotion is towards LOVE ITSELF. He worships the god of love. Persons come and go, persons change; the god of love remains the same.

You ask: WHAT DOES ONE DO ABOUT UNREQUITED LOVE?

One forgets about it, one forgives the person. One does not make much fuss about it.

WHAT DOES ONE DO ABOUT UNREQUITED LOVE THAT SEEMS TO LIVE ON AND ON LIKE A WOUND THAT NEVER HEALS?

You are not allowing it to heal. The only way for it to heal is: fall in love with somebody else, because only love heals, because only love is a healing energy. Love is therapy. Fall in love, and it will be healed. But you have much investment in the wound; you don’t want it to heal, that’s why you won’t fall in love with somebody else.

This wound has become your prestige. This is your ego trip. You think it is love; it is nothing, it is an ego trip. You are feeling offended. You have to show this woman, even if you have to die; but you will show this woman. You WILL DIE crying for her, and then she will be miserable for you and then she will feel guilty about you. These are your hopes!

You don’t love this woman at all, otherwise you won’t think of making her guilty. If you really love her, you would like her to be happy. You will simply disappear from her world you will help her to forget you. You will become non-existent – at least for her – so that she can live her life without any interference from you. But that will heal your wound, and you will no longer be a martyr, and you will not be such a ’great lover’.

You are not interested in love, you are interested in being a ’great lover’ – that is the ego trip.

WHAT DOES ONE DO ABOUT UNREQUITED LOVE THAT SEEMS TO LIVE ON AND ON LIKE A WOUND THAT NEVER HEALS?

It is simple. You like certain food, and you have not got that food today, but if you don’t eat anything else, naturally you will become ill. Hunger will grow. Tomorrow you will be more hungry, the day after tomorrow you will be starving. And you go on asking ’What is one to do? When one cannot get the food of one’s own choice, what is one to do?’ Then the second choice, then the third choice

– whatsoever is available. And one never knows, because each person is carrying such divinity in him and in her, that one never knows! If you fall in love with another woman, you may start thanking God. ’It was good that the first woman had rejected me. If she had not rejected then I would not have been able to find this woman.’

This is my observation of thousands of people. Once you look backwards you will be surprised, everything fits perfectly. The first woman denied you and the second woman accepted you, and you can feel happy. If the first had accepted, the second would not have been possible. The second deserted you and the third became possible, and you are more happy. Otherwise the third would not have been possible.

Just a few days before, a sannyasin was saying to me ’I have lived with this woman for three months, and they were so beautiful. I have never known such moments. And now she is deserting me. What should I do?’

I told him ’Help her to desert you. Because three months before you were clinging to another woman. I remember perfectly well. And that time you were saying ”If this woman leaves me I will commit suicide. I cannot live without her.” And after just three months you have forgotten about that woman. You have not committed suicide. On the contrary, you are saying that THIS woman has been your greatest experience in life! Now she is deserting, help her.’

Why get so obsessed with personalities? Remain in love. And let your love be fluid. Don’t let your love become stale and solid and dead. Millions of flowers will bloom in your being, don’t go on weeping just for one flower that didn’t bloom.

HOW IS IT THAT A MAN CAN GO ON LOVING ONE WOMAN YEAR AFTER YEAR...?

Yes, if you don’t get, you can go on year after year, life after life. Because then you are living in fiction, then you are living in fantasy, then you are living in your dreams. You go on creating the woman – who is not the real woman. The beauty that you give to the woman is given by you. That woman is just a fiction. You can go on living with your fiction. Real women are difficult, as real men are. You are alone, and it is your fiction, you can paint it the way you want.

Your woman will never become old, the real woman becomes old. Now, Musin’s woman will never become old. He will become old, but his woman will always remain young. She will never become ugly, HE will become ugly! He will become old, ill, death will come, and she will always remain there fresh, like dewdrops in the morning, always fresh, always young, always beautiful.

Your woman will not stink ever, she will not perspire either. And she will not throw her panties all around the bathroom. It is YOUR woman, a fiction. She will not nag you, she will not fight you, she will not be jealous. You can do whatsoever you want, she will not hinder you. She will never come in your way, she will allow you all freedom Now, no real woman can do that, so one gets fed up with the real woman, one gets fed up with the real man. With the unreal, there is no problem.

So you are in a non-problematic relationship, Musin. You can enjoy it forever. But this is not a relationship, this is neurosis. It is like a madman who is talking with somebody who is not there. You will go on talking with your woman and you will go on doing things for the woman, and you will go on hoping. And your life will be slipping by through your hands.

Be a little more alert. It is your life. You owe yourself a few joys, a few celebrations. And the real celebration is always in reality. It cannot be only in dreams.

HOW IS IT THAT A MAN CAN GO ON LOVING ONE WOMAN YEAR AFTER YEAR BELIEVING, IN SPITE OF THE PAIN, THAT ONE DAY SHE WILL FIND A PLACE FOR HIM IN HER HEART?

You can believe. If you remain hungry and you don’t eat anything, you will have to believe that the food that you demand will descend from heaven. ’One day it is going to happen, I am doing so much sacrifice. A little more, a little more – I will sacrifice myself completely, then it will happen. How can my sacrifice go in vain?’

That is your logic. But you can go on starving – the food is not going to come from heaven. If you want to seek food you will have to accept the food that is available. Nourish yourself. Start moving, then maybe the food that you want may become available to you. But starving, dying in a comer, no energy to move and just hoping that something will happen is a deception. You are deceiving yourself.

Deceptions can be very beautiful and artistic and aesthetic, but still they are deceptions. Love the real. It is through reality that one grows. Beware of dreams and their power over you. They can take away the whole opportunity, they can destroy the whole opportunity.

AM I A FOOL TO BELIEVE? I THINK THAT I AM A FOOL AND YET I CONTINUE TO BELIEVE.

AM I CREATING THIS SITUATION?

Certainly, you ARE creating this situation. That woman may have forgotten about you. That woman may not be a part in it at all. She may not remember you at all. It is you who are creating the whole situation for yourself.

And naturally... OR IS THIS SITUATION CREATING ME?

It works both ways. First you create the situation, then the situation creates you; then you create the situation and the situation creates you. It is a vicious circle. And then you get more and more in the mire of it, entrapped, entangled, and it becomes very difficult to get out of it. You will need great courage to get out of it. You will need to jump out of it. It will not be gradual, you will just have to escape out of it. Fall into anybody’s arms just to get out of it!

And every person is beautiful, you just have to love the person and the beauty starts flowing. People ordinarily think that they have fallen in love because the person is beautiful. Just the contrary is the case: you see the person as beautiful because you have fallen in love. If somebody asks ’Why have you fallen in love with this man, or this woman?’ you say ’She is beautiful, that’s why.’ That is not true. The truth is just the opposite. You have fallen in love, hence, she looks beautiful. Love creates beauty.

Start falling in love again. And I don’t think that you are a fool. You are too clever, too wise. If you are a fool, then you will fall in love easily, because only fools fall in love. Wise people never do such things. You are wise – you tried once, and then you are finished for your whole life. Be a little more foolish. Try it once again.

And I don’t see that one has to go on being a failure forever. And remember, that if you succeed in love, only then will you be able to go beyond love. One has to go beyond love. But one can only go beyond when one has gone through it. You are struggling below love. It is far better to move into love and struggle there. One grows out of authentic, real experiences of love. One goes beyond.

Then a totally different kind of awareness arises. It is not that it is unloving, but it is no more a longing for love. It is a state of love: one shares one’s being. It is no more relationship then, it is your state. You ARE love, not loving.

So these are the three things: you are in the dark night of the soul, you are in a very unloving space.

The second thing is: be in a loving space. And a loving space is anxiety-creating; it is conflict, it is struggle, because a real person enters into your life. And there is clash and an overlapping of the boundaries; and all kinds of diplomacies and politics enter, and strategies to dominate, to possess.

There is great war. Lovers are intimate enemies.

Only out of that experience does one grow to the third state: one becomes absolutely independent.

Now there is no need for love. One can live alone, and one can live alone as happily as one can live in relationship. Now there is no difference. There is no hankering. Then a different quality of love arises in your being. You start sharing it.

Musin, you are struggling at the lowest point. Try to get out of it. And don’t wait for any miracle.

Miracles don’t happen.

Question 3

WHY ARE YOU SO MUCH AGAINST LOGIC?

Because it is logical to be against logic.

Logic proves nothing, that’s why I am against logic. It only pretends to prove; it proves nothing. It is an empty game, verbal. But the pretension is such that millions of people are befooled by it, and down the ages we have been trained for logic, so it has appeal.

But logic has never proved anything. Proof comes only through experience, never through logic.

Logic can help to explain your experience. No experience is ever derived out of logic. Yes, logic can be a servant. when you have attained to a certain experience, logic can help to explain it, logic can help to make it clear. Logic is secondary.

So, the first thing: logic proves nothing.

Reporter: They say the moon is made of green cheese. Is this correct?

Spaceman: We didn’t find any cheese on the moon.

Reporter: (laughing) Perhaps all the moon mice had eaten it.

Spaceman: We didn’t find any mice on the moon either.

Reporter: What do you expect with all the cheese gone?

Now this is how logic goes on moving: it is circular.

A famous Sufi story:

Mulla Nasruddin was seen by the people in the market-place throwing some seeds all around. From his bag he would take one fistful of seeds and throw. So a crowd gathered, and they asked ’What are you doing, Mulla?’

He said ’These seeds are very miraculous. If you throw these seeds, then no lion, no tiger, no elephant, no snakes, no wild animals ever come around.’

So they laughed. They said ’Mulla, there are no wild animals, no elephants, no tigers, no lions, no snakes here!’

And Mulla said ’See! They work! They are a miracle, they have miraculous power. It is because of the seeds they are not here.’

Logic is a game good only for small children to play. But a few people remain childish even when they have become old. They may be professors in the universities, but they go on playing with the game. It is a good game, an intelligent game like chess – but a game all the same.

First, logic never proves anything. And second logic can prove anything – this way or that, for or against. Logic is a whore! It has no grounds of its own. You can bribe logic, and it will be with you.

Your enemy can bribe logic, and logic will be with the enemy.

A certain French general named Guillard, who lived in the time of King Louis XV and was renowned for his gallantry towards women, said, on one occasion, that there was no such thing as an ugly woman. His remark was overheard by a lady whose face was disfigured by a squashed nose and who thereupon accosted him with the words ’Confess, General, that you are now face to face with a really ugly woman.’

’Not at all, madame’ replied the general. ’You are like all women, an angel fallen from heaven. You merely had the misfortune to fall on your nose.’

Logic cannot prove anything, that’s why it can prove ANYTHING. Logic has no truth in it. Logic is empty of truth. Truth is attained only by existential experience. I am against logic because logic is impotent. I would like you to go beyond logic. And that is the whole meaning of the word Jesus uses: faith.

It does not mean belief. It means trust in existence not belief in dogmas. Faith simply means that you are finished with logic. The day you are finished with logic, you are finished with doubt too because logic is a support to doubt; they are in a mutual conspiracy – doubt and logic. A doubter becomes a logician, a logician remains a doubter. They go together. Once logic is dropped, all the props for the doubt disappear, and doubt falls to the ground. And when you are free of doubt, then you are in faith.

Faith transforms. Trust transfigures. The sooner you can get out of logic and doubt, the better. A man is religious only when he has known the same of logic and is finished with it.

Question 4

HOW MANY RELIGIONS ARE THERE IN INDIA?

It is difficult to say. There are as many religions in India as there are Indians. Everybody has his own religion here. The religion is basically individual, it is not organisational.

So when you talk about Christianity, it is one thing. When you talk about Hinduism, it is quite another.

Christianity is a church, an organised religion. Hinduism is a chaos. It has nothing like the Vatican Pope, it has nothing like an authority. It is very chaotic, it is freedom. People are allowed to live their own ways, people are allowed to worship in their own ways. There is nobody to dominate it is a democracy. Christianity is dictatorial, so is Islam. Hinduism is basically democratic.

You can go and worship in the temple of Shiva, it is for you. You can go and worship in the temple of Rama, it is for you. You can go and worship in the temple of Krishna, it is for you. The man who worships in the temple of Krishna is a Hindu, and the man who worships in the temple of Rama is also a Hindu. And both are as opposed to each other as Christians are opposed to Muslims – or even more. But that does not make any difference, they both are Hindus.

Hinduism has a kind of freedom. It does not decide what your prayer should be. It has no official prayer like Christianity. It has no hierarchy – the bishop and the archbishop, etcetera; it knows nothing of that. It is an individual phenomenon. So it is very difficult to say how many religions there are in India. Each one is free to worship in his own way. In that way, it is difficult, because it is almost like chaos. If you want to find a system it will be difficult.

Thousands of philosophies are available there for people to choose from, millions of alternatives. All kinds of ideas are in the market. You can choose any. You can make your own. Choosing something from here, something from there, you can make your own mixture.

Hinduism is not one-dimensional, it is multi-dimensional. In one way it gives freedom, in another way it creates indiscipline. In one way it is democratic and beautiful, in another way it has no order, no system. Everything seems to be confused and unclear and vague.

I have heard...

When Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister, she went to Israel. And she was talking with Golda Meir

– Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel in those days. So both the women were talking, and chit-chatting about their countries.

Indira Gandhi said ’You don’t know my troubles. Six hundred million people! And you don’t know Indians. It is a chaos!’

Golda Meir laughed and said ’That’s nothing! You don’t know my people. Although the number is very small – only three million people – but it is far more difficult to rule three million Jews.’

Indira looked surprised. She said ’What are you saying? Six hundred million people... And you have only three million people, and you say it is difficult to rule over three million people?’

And Golda Meir said ’Yes, because these are no ordinary people. These are three million prime ministers!’

It may be so in politics, but in religion, in India, you have six million Masters – enlightened Masters –

six hundred million. Everybody knows! Everybody has his own creed, everybody has his own ideas and philosophy. For ten thousand years India has done nothing but philosophise. It has gone into the bones and the blood. It is not so easy to say HOW many religions there are in India, as it is about other countries.

I have heard...

A Pakistani went home on a visit to his family, and his old father said to him ’Are they good people in Britain, my son? Do they have religion in Britain?’

’Oh, yes, indeed, father mine’ said the Pakistani. ’They have three religions: the Church of England, the Church of Rome, and Bingo.’

’What is this Bingo?’ asked the old man.

’Well, father mine, the people go to the Bingo church every evening; the high priest stands before them calling out the holy numbers which the congregation mark off their prayer-cards. Then one of the faithful rushes to his feet and calls out ”Bingo!” and all the people say ”Jesus Christ!”’

Now it is simple if you are talking about Britain – they have three religions!

Question 5

OF WHAT VALUE ARE THE ’CATHARTIC’ THERAPIES: THE RELIVING OF ONE’S TRAUMATIC

MOMENTS OR ACTING OUT OF FEARS ETC? IS NOT INSIGHT ENOUGH? OR BLISS

METHODS, SUCH AS SUFI DANCE?

Mantra, insight is enough, but how to get the insight? It is hidden in much rubbish. The diamond is there, but it is hidden under much debris, dirt. The dirt has to be removed only then will the diamond be available, will the insight be available. The therapies do the spade work. If insight were available directly, it would have been very easy. Then you could become blissful any moment. But you are layers upon layers of repression. You have repressed your fear, you have repressed your anger, you have repressed your love, you have repressed your sex. You have repressed so many things! The insight is there, but these layers of repression have to be thrown out.

The cathartic therapies help. They will not produce your insight, they will only clear the way. They will only make the insight available to you. The insight is there. Everybody has brought it, that’s why we call it insight.

Have you observed these words: ’insight’, ’intuition’, ’instinct’, ’intelligence’? They all carry the word

’in’. It is there, built-in, but much has gathered around it. The rose bush is there, but hidden behind the weeds. The weeds have to be uprooted. And they have to be uprooted very skillfully, because there is every danger that you may uproot the rose bush itself. And the weeds are many, and the rose bush is one. You need to be helped.

The therapy group is a situation where you can be helped to sort out what is a weed and what is a rose bush. And slowly slowly, those rose bushes have to be protected, and the weeds have to be taken out. And it has to be very very skillful because the roots of the weeds are entangled with the roots of the rose. If you are not very careful you may destroy the rose itself. The insight is there; it has to be uncovered.

You ask: OF WHAT VALUE ARE THE ’CATHARTIC’ THERAPIES...?

Catharsis simply means throwing out that which should be thrown out, throwing out that which should not be kept in.

Now in ordinary life it is difficult. You cannot throw your anger everywhere and anywhere. You will get into so many difficulties. It will be too costly, and dangerous too. You need a special situation where you can throw your anger, where anger is accepted. A group is an artificial situation where everything is accepted. If you become angry, the group is not repressive. Rather on the contrary, the group helps you, provokes you to be angry, brings out all your violence and aggression, accepts it – WELCOMES even, gives you an opportunity and confidence that here you are not rejected, that here there is no expectation. Nobody’s expecting that you should not be angry or this and that.

Whatsoever you are, you are given total freedom to be THAT. A group is an artificial situation. The society cannot allow that.

Once your anger has started bubbling up, you will be surprised how much you have been carrying.

How much poison is there in your system. And only when this poison has gone, that smoke has disappeared, will you be able to find insight or bliss methods like Sufi Dancing. If a man who is angry participates in Sufi Dancing, his dance will have anger to it. You can watch, you can watch people, and you can see their dances have different qualities. Somebody’s dance is a kind of rage; anger is filtering through his dance, through his gestures. Somebody’s dance has grace to it, love is flowing, a kind of elegance. Somebody else’s dance has compassion in it. Somebody else’s dance has ecstasy in it. somebody else’s dance is just stale and dull, he is just making empty gestures, there is nobody behind them – mechanical. Watch. Why this difference? – because they are carrying different layers of repression.

When you dance, your anger will dance if it is there. Where can it go? The more you will dance, the more it will dance. If you are full of love, when you start dancing your love will start overflowing – it will dance all around you, all over the space. Your dance is going to be your dance, it will contain all that you contain. If you are sexually repressed, then your dance will have that.

Now it is a problem for Indians to participate in the Sufi Dance. Many have written to me. One Indian sannyasin, a very honest man, wrote a letter. He was participating in the dance. Three days afterwards, he wrote ’I am feeling very guilty, because I become sexually aroused. Whenever I go into the Sufi Dance, I become sexually aroused. I feel very guilty.’ He was asking forgiveness ’Osho, forgive me.’ And he became so afraid that he stopped dancing.

Now the whole life of repression... He may never have been able to hold the hands of any woman except his wife, and that too only in the night when everybody is fast asleep. He may not have been able to move with such dancing energy of women, men. It is very natural; there is no need to feel guilt. It is just the whole repressed life.

Now this man who becomes sexually aroused in Sufi Dance, is he going to feel any insight in it? He will feel great guilt, and he will not feel spiritual at all! He will feel sexual, and he will be in a turmoil.

He will be very much confused. His whole being will be on a volcano. He may start trembling, and he may become afraid that he may DO something. That’s what he wrote to me – ’I cannot participate in Sufi Dance any more, because I may DO something. I may not be able to control myself I become so aroused.’

This is bound to happen. If you are sexually repressed, then sex will bubble up when you dance. So you cannot go directly, you have to go through catharsis. Only then can blissful methods be of help.

Cathartic methods are modern inventions. In Buddha’s time they were not so needed because people were not so repressed.

People were natural, people lived primitive live – uncivilised, spontaneous lives. So VIPASSANA – VIPASSANA means insight – was given by Buddha directly to people. But now you cannot go into VIPASSANA directly. And the teachers who go on teaching VIPASSANA directly don’t belong to this century; they are two thousand years backwards. Yes, sometimes they may help one or two persons out of one hundred, but that can’t do much. I am introducing cathartic methods, so that first what the civilisation has done to you can be undone, so that you become primitive again. From that primitiveness, from that primal innocence, insight becomes easily available. Then bliss methods work – never before that.

Question 6

WHY ARE THE JEWS HATED EVERYWHERE IN THE WORLD?

Because they are clever, intelligent. Nobody likes clever, intelligent people. One feels inferior, hence, the hatred.

Adolf Hitler must have felt very inferior to Jews. He Was. He was almost idiotic, imbecilic. But he must have felt it tremendously – this inferiority. And Jews have a certain intelligence, and because of that intelligence they become rich fast. Put them in any situation and sooner or later they will be on top. How can you avoid not hating them? They simply go directly to the top; they don’t wait.

And particularly about money, they are the cleverest people in the world. For a certain reason: because after Jesus’ crucifixion, they lost all power – all political power; Christianity became politically powerful. There was no way for the Jews to be politically powerful, so their whole mind turned to the second power – money. They became focused on money. These are the only two worldly powers: either politics or money. Because they were not in the majority, they could not be politically powerful, so naturally their whole intelligence was channellised towards money. That was the only way for them to become powerful. And with money many things come. With money comes more education, with money comes more literature, more music, more drama, more art. With money Comes more intelligence. So down the ages they have been hoarding money, and money on its own creates more possibilities to be intelligent, to be clever. And when you are more intelligent, you earn more money, and so on and so forth it goes’ And people who have money are hated because ninety-nine per cent of people don’t have any money; they are very jealous. The poor people hate the rich, and if they can get an opportunity they will kill the rich. And whenever they get the opportunity, they kill – they will find any excuse.

Jews are hated because they have immense power over money, and money gives them power over other things – even power over politicians. Money is such a strange power... And it goes on creating more power, so they are hated. And they have turned the whole world into a market: they reduce everything to a commodity, they reduce everything to a certain market value. That too creates a little hatred, because if everything is reduced to money, if everything is reduced to the market and everything becomes a commodity, it creates an ugly world. Then there is no higher value. Then there is nothing more important than money. Then everything is reduced to money. That, too, creates hatred.

So poor people hate them, and rich people also hate them. Because money is a very low value

– powerful, immensely powerful! – but a lower value. And Jews don’t think that anything more valuable exists. And they have learned through experience that if they have money, then only can they survive.

So wherever they are they are hated. But they are hated because they are clever. Of course, their cleverness turned in a wrong direction, it became money-oriented. And the whole Judaic tradition fell slowly slowly – became very worldly. It lost the spiritual dimension. So the very word ’Jew’ has a wrong association.

Jews can only be free from this hatred of the world if they start looking for higher values than money.

I have heard...

The local synagogue was holding a raffle. The winner of the third prize stood delightedly as the curtain raised to show a gleaming Cadillac. The winner of the second prize held his breath as the curtain raised – to reveal a sponge cake.

’A sponge cake?’ he said angrily. ’The THIRD prize was a Cadillac. How can the second prize be a stupid sponge cake?’

’But this sponge cake is special’ said the Master of Ceremonies. ’You see, it was baked by the rabbi’s wife with her own lily-white hands.’

’Fuck the rabbi’s wife!’ yelled the man.

’Shut up!’ said the M.C. ’That’s the first prize.’

Now this mind which reduces everything to a commodity is bound to be hated.

But Jews are intelligent people. There is no doubt about it – one of the most intelligent races on the earth; otherwise they would not have survived. They have survived with no political power and with enemies all around and everywhere. They have been on the cross for two thousand years since Jesus’ death. They have suffered too much. For one man’s crucifixion it is enough punishment –

more than enough. They have lived in a Christian world, hated from every side. But because they were hated and they were always in danger and they were always helpless, that too has helped their intelligence to go high. Always remember: if there is danger for your life, you have to be intelligent; you cannot afford non-intelligence, otherwise you will be gone.

So in a way, the very challenge, the very danger, has helped them: they have been polishing their intelligence continuously. It-is not just accident that more Nobel Prizes go to Jews than to anybody else. And their number is small; it is out of all proportion. This century’s greatest thinkers – three: Marx, Freud, Einstein – all belong to Jews. The greatest revolutionaries ever have come from them.

They are in small numbers, but the situation has helped them. They had to fight, struggle, survive; they could not fall asleep, they could not go to rust. Their intelligence has been going higher and released towards God will bring a great revolution in the world.

I am very happy that fifty per cent – more than fifty per cent – of my sannyasins are Jews. What I am saying can have appeal only to very intelligent people. Stupids won’t have any attraction to me

– only very intelligent people can understand what I am saying.

But they have been hated, that is true. That hatred can be dropped only when Jews start changing.

There are a few things that they can do. One is that they accept Jesus back home. If they can welcome Jesus back home almost ninety per cent of the hatred will disappear. And Jesus is theirs –

more theirs than the Christians’. Jesus was born a Jew, died a Jew. He was the greatest Jew ever.

He was not a Christian. If Jews can accept Jesus back home, that will change the whole climate in the world. And if Jews can put their energies – as they have put them into money – if they can put their energies into meditation, they will become the greatest meditators on the earth. They can herald a new era!

Question 7

I MET A MAN TEN YEARS AGO IN JAPAN ON A TRAIN. THEN I MET THE SAME MAN IN

AFGHANISTAN ON A BUS. AND TWO DAYS AGO I MET THE SAME MAN AGAIN ON A PLANE

COMING TO POONA. IS IT JUST COINCIDENCE, OR IS THERE SOME HIDDEN SIGNIFICANCE

IN IT?

Because our life is so meaningless, we go on finding any excuse for any kind of significance. Our life has no significance, so we go on hoping in anything that there must be some significance in it. Man cannot live without significance. Significance is inner nourishment. And because we don’t create any significance in our life – because we are not creative – we don’t create God in our being, we remain empty. And to be empty hurts – hurts like hell.

Then one goes to the astrologer or goes to the palmist; one shows the hand, maybe there is some significance in the stars, or in the lines of the hand or in the birth chart. And one starts seeking and searching everywhere – desperately. Anything that can give you a feeling that yes, you are significant, that something special is happening to you, you pounce upon. That’s why astrology lives, palmistry lives, the I Ching lives; and people go on looking into these things. That’s why psychoanalysis has become so significant. Your life has no meaning, maybe your dreams have meaning? Go to the psychoanalyst, he will show you great meanings in your stupid dreams. You cannot find, but he will find, he will manage: he will show you what your dreams mean. And you will feel very very grateful, and you will feel very happy that you have significant dreams.

People go on hankering for significance.

One thing to be remembered: this hankering is not bad, but let this hankering become creative.

Don’t search in accidental things for any meaning. There is none! This is just accidental that you met somebody on the train, and then again on the plane, then again on the bus – it is just accidental!

This world is a small world, and becoming smaller and smaller every day.

It is nothing to brag about or to brood about, but it shows something: life is empty – utterly empty.

You would like to find some indication from somewhere – anything.

Just the other day one sannyasin wrote that she saw Teertha in her dream. ’Now what is the significance? There must be some significance’ she thinks. Ninety-nine per cent of dreams are just rubbish, just fragments of thoughts that you go on gathering during the whole day. In the dream those fragments go on moving in the mind. And then in the morning when you remember those fragments, you start looking for significance. Then you have to find some significance. Now the woman thinks whether it is a message that she should do Encounter because she has seen Teertha? or is there some other meaning hidden in it?

Life has no hidden meaning; life has obvious meaning, unhidden. There is not a thing hidden from the very beginning! Just you are not aware, so you cannot see it. And when you are not aware, still you hanker for it so you go on imagining. And then each and every thing can become precious because you want something to be precious in your life.

There is nothing much in it. This world is becoming a small village. Now here you can find people from all over the world. It is no more the old world; the distances are gone. You can go round the world within twenty-four hours. You can reach any place within a day, within hours. But what I see in it is a great desire for significance. That is good, but you are looking in a wrong direction.

Create some meaning. Dance the dance that you were born to dance. Sing the song that you are carrying in your heart. BE YOURSELF, and there will be significance. And then you will not need to go to any astrologer or palmist or tarot reader, or things like that. Then there will be no need – you will have significance.

But significance never comes passively. It comes only when you are creative. DO something. And I am not saying that significance is only when you are very famous – when you become a Picasso then there is significance, no. You can paint a small picture for your child, and if your child is happy there is significance. You can paint a picture for your husband. If he likes it, that’s enough. Or you can even paint a picture just for your own joy, and if you like it, or you like it while you are painting it

– you get absorbed into it – there is significance.

Significance comes only whenever you create beauty, whenever you create truth, whenever you create good: SATYAM, SHIVAM, SUNDERAM. These three things create significance: beauty, good, truth. Be true, and there will be significance. But you remain untrue, and you go to the astrologer to find significance. Become beautiful. Beautify your being, let grace surround you, and there will be no need to go to any tarot reader, you will know that you are significant. You will continuously find a blissfulness surrounding you, you will not feel that you are here unnecessarily. You will not think for a single moment that you are accidental. You will know that God’s hand is behind you, because he is breathing life in you.

The English words ’is’ and ’am’ come from a Sanskrit root ASMI. ASMI means: breath-life. Your

’isness’, your ’amness’, your being is nothing but God’s breath in you. But we have not recognised it, so we search desperately in every nook and corner for meaning. Stop this search.

This happened only as a coincidence. Don’t be much worried about it. Meditate over this story. This will show you that the world is really very small.

A flea phoned up a rental agency asking for accommo-dation, and the agent said ’Oh, yes, we have a very nice vacancy, just come in.’ But it turned out to be a Pole’s armpit, and after a few days the flea phoned the agency again and said ’I really can’t stand it – the noise, the smells, the crowded conditions – could you give me something nicer? Something really posh?’

So the agent said ’Well, yes, we do have something – just come in – it’s Omar Sharif’s moustache.’

’Lovely’ said the flea. ’I’ll take it.’ But after a week he phoned up the agency again and said ’Sorry, but I really must find someplace else. All the oysters and champagne are really getting to be too much, not to mention the incessant pulling, stroking and scratching. It’s really not liveable.’

’Very well’ said the agent. ’I do have one vacancy now – very very exclusive, very cosy and very expensive – it’s Raquel Welch’s pubes.’

’I’ll take it’ said the flea. The agent heard no more until a month later, the phone rang and it was the flea.

’What’s the matter?’ asked the agent. ’Don’t tell me you don’t like Raquel Welch’s pubes either?’

’Oh, yes, I liked it fine’ said the flea ’but I’m back in Omar Sharif’s moustache!’

CHAPTER 9

Ye Shall Live Also

8 November 1977 am in Buddha Hall

JOHN 14

JESUS SAID UNTO HIS DISCIPLES:

1. LET NOT YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED: YE BELIEVE IN GOD, BELIEVE ALSO IN ME.

2. IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS: IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD

YOU. I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU.

3. AND IF I GO AND PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU, I WILL COME AGAIN, AND RECEIVE YOU

UNTO MYSELF; THAT WHERE I AM, THERE YE MAY BE ALSO.

4. AND WHITHER I GO YE KNOW, AND THE WAY YE KNOW.

5. THOMAS SAITH UNTO HIM, LORD, WE KNOW NOT WHITHER THOU GOEST; AND HOW

CAN WE KNOW THE WAY?

6. JESUS SAITH UNTO HIM, I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE: NO MAN COMETH

UNTO THE FATHER, BU7T BY ME.

7.

IF YE HAD KNOWN ME, YE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN MY FATHER ALSO: AND FROM

HENCEFORTH YE KNOW HIM, AND HAVE SEEN HIM.

18. I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU COMFORTLESS: I WILL COME TO YOU.

19. YET A LITTLE WHILE, AND THE WORLD SEETH ME NO MORE; BUT YE SEE ME: BECAUSE

I LIVE, YE SHALL LIVE ALSO.

20. AT THAT DAY YE SHALL KNOW THAT I AM IN MY FATHER, AND YE IN ME, AND I IN YOU.

27. PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU, MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU: NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH, GIVE I UNTO YOU. LET NOT YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED, NEITHER LET IT BE AFRAID.

28. YE HAVE HEARD HOW I SAID UNTO YOU, I GO AWAY, AND COME AGAIN UNTO YOU. IF

YE LOVED ME, YE WOULD REJOICE, BECAUSE I SAID, I GO UNTO THE FATHER: FOR MY

FATHER IS GREATER THAN I.

Man’s evolution is from innocence to innocence.

The first innocence is ignorant, the second innocence is luminous. The first innocence is a kind of sleep, the second innocence is an awakening The first innocence is a gift of God, the second innocence is man’s own effort, his earning, his work upon himself. The first can be lost, the second cannot be lost. The first has to go – in the very nature of it, it cannot be eternal; but the second, once it comes, remains forever – it is eternal.

Remember, whatsoever you attain consciously, only that can you possess, ONLY that. Whatsoever is given to you, and you receive it unconsciously, will be taken away. Only that really happens to you for which you work hard. Only that belongs to you which you create in your being. You become Master of it.

The first innocence in Christian terms is called Adam. And the second innocence is called Christ.

And Jesus is just in-between the two. Jesus is the bridge between the first innocence and the second innocence. Hindus call the second innocence ’rebirth’: one becomes twice-born, DWIJA. And that’s what Jesus also said to one of the famous professors and theologians of his time, Nicodemus: Unless you are born again, you will not attain to the kingdom of God.

Unless you are born AGAIN...

The first birth has happened, the second birth has to happen. The first has happened without cooperation, the second cannot happen without your cooperation. The first birth was almost like an accident – it happened to you unawares. The second birth can only be in immense consciousness; it cannot happen unawares, it can happen only in deep meditation.

Jesus is a bridge between Adam and Christ. That’s why the story of virgin birth has a metaphoric meaning. Jesus is born innocent. Everybody is born innocent – there is no other way to be born.

Every child is born in innocence. But then that innocence is lost sooner or later, and the more intelligent the child, the sooner it will be lost. If the child is stupid, imbecilic, idiotic, then it may go on lingering for a long time; it may not be lost. If you are intelligent, you will start moving away from it. You will start exploring the world. You will start adventuring into the world, into the unknown; you will become a wanderer. And the more intelligent you are, the more is the possibility that you will not follow the crowd, you will find your own way – you would like to do your ’own thing’. You will not move on the superhighway, you will move on small footpaths into the jungle. Because intelligence wants to take risks. Intelligence wants to dare, intelligence wants to go into the unknown and the dangerous, because it is only in danger that intelligence comes to its peak. It is only when you dare that your intelligence becomes a crystallisation. It is only when you risk that you are. The more you risk, the more you are. Risk brings being. A man who never risks remains without a being.

George Gurdjieff used to say that not everybody has got a soul. Because you have never dared, how can you get a soul? The soul comes only through daring. The only right way to attain a soul is to go into dangers, to risk all, to be a gambler, to go into the dark unknown.

The first innocence is going to go, has to go. And it is good that it goes. If it continues, you will not really be a man; you will be a vegetable or a cow or a buffalo, but you will not be a man. That is where man is different from the whole of nature. Nature lives in the first innocence, only man is capable of losing it. It is great dignity, it is glory – only man is capable of sin, no other animal can commit sin. You cannot call a dog a sinner, you cannot call a lion a sinner and you cannot call a tree a sinner. Only man can sin, and because man can sin, only man can go beyond sin. Only man can go astray – that means only man can come back home. Except for man, all the animals, birds and trees still exist in the Garden of Eden – they never left it. That’s why nature has such beauty, such peace, such silence.

The Himalayas still exist in the Garden of Eden. So exists the rose bush of your garden, so exist the birds that come in the morning and sing songs around you. Nature is still there; it never left home, it never went astray, it never committed anything against God, it never disobeyed. It never dared; it is completely satisfied with the first birth.

To be satisfied with the first birth is to remain unconscious. It is only through sin that you become conscious. It is only by going wrong that consciousness arises. This HAS to be understood. So going wrong is not really going wrong, because only through it does the consciousness arise. All has to be lost. One has to come to the point where all is lost, God is lost, heaven is lost – one cannot believe in paradise, and one cannot believe that innocence is possible. Only from that peak of frustration, anguish, anxiety is there a possibility of a one-hundred-and-eighty degree turn.

Adam is perfectly at ease, so is Christ. The problem is with Jesus. Jesus is troubled. Zen people are right when they say for a man who has never heard of meditation mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.’ He is happy, he is in a kind of natural state. He has no anxiety, because God has not yet become a challenge to him. He has no future goals, he has no destination. Pie eats, drinks and is happy – the first hedonism I was talking about the other day: ’Eat, drink and be merry.’ He lives in the body, he IS the body; he knows nothing more than that. With the body there is a kind of peace and health that surrounds him. You can always see that happiness around a child. The child is the first kind of hedonist. He believes only in eating, drinking and being merry. He simply lives the moment. He. is completely abandoned in the moment – no anxiety, no clouds yet – his sky is clear.

The people who have not heard of meditation and enlightenment and NIRVANA and God, who have never pondered over these great problems – for them things are clean; they are not confused.

’Mountains are mountains and rivers are rivers.’

But once a man has become interested in

meditation, in growth, in spirituality, in the other shore, in the other reality – problems bubble up in thousands. Problems crowd. Mountains are no more mountains now, and rivers are no more rivers; everything becomes confused, everything becomes topsy-turvy. Man goes into a chaos. The old cosmos, the old innocence, simply falls into pieces; not even a trace is left.

This is the meaning of the Christian parable of Adam’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden. He became interested in higher things, he became interested in knowing things. He ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, he started becoming more conscious. He started trying to understand what this reality is. He moves into knowing, and suddenly the doors of the Garden are closed for him.

Suddenly he finds himself outside the Garden, and he does not know where the way back is. He has to go farther and farther away.

This is what Zen people say: Mountains are no more mountains, rivers are no more rivers. Then one has to go on a long journey. Tedious is the journey, full of miseries and nightmares. It is a wandering in a desert where oases are only dreams; they exist not. And then after a long long journey – it may continue for many many lives – one can come back. This time, coming back has a totally different meaning. Now one comes as a knowing consciousness. One is again innocent, but this innocence is no more ignorant, it is luminous, it is full of light. This is Jesus turning into Christ.

Adam finds himself outside the Garden. Jesus wanders in the world. Christ suddenly finds himself back in the Garden one day.

Adam,Jesus, and Christ – these are the three stages of human consciousness. Adam is absolutely unconscious. Jesus is half-conscious, half-unconscious – hence the conflict, the confusion. the division. the tension. And Christ is absolute consciousness.

Before we enter into the sutras, this has to be understood. because these sutras belong to the last night of Jesus’ earthly life – the departing message to his disciples. He is leaving them. He is going out of the world into God. He is going to die to the world, and will be reborn into God. He is going to become twice-born: the resurrection after the crucifixion. And the resurrection can only be after the crucifixion.

Adam dies to God and is born to the world. Christ dies to the world and is born into God again. And Jesus remains in the limbo – half-half, divided, split. Something he knows and something he does not know; something he understands and something he does not understand. It is kind of cloudy there in the Jesus-consciousness. Adam is clear but fast asleep. Jesus is half awake; his eyes are full of dreams. Yes, he can see a little bit because he is half awake. Just like in the morning when you are half awake and half asleep, and you can hear the milkman knocking on the door, and you can hear children getting ready for their school, and you can hear the neighbour’s radio. But you are not yet fully alert. Yes, these things go on like ripples, enter into you – you kind of hear, and vet you don’t hear. You go on swinging between sleep and wakefulness. Sometimes you hear something and again you are drowned in sleep. You cannot figure out what is happening. Then you are fully awake.

Adam dies to God, is born into the world. Jesus lives in the world. Christ dies to the world and is born into God again. And these sutras belong to his last night, the departing message to his disciples.

Before we enter into these sutras, a few things will be of great help.

Teilhard de Chardin believes that ’the evolution of consciousness depends on three steps.’ And Chardin is one of the most important Christian thinkers of this century. But still he remains confined to Christianity; he cannot soar higher than Christian boundaries. These are the three steps that he talks about. Ordinarily, consciousness is simple, innocent. After that there are three steps. First he talks about complexity. He says ’Consciousness grows through complexity.’

That is true. The original mind is absolutely simple, its taste is one, it has no duality. And because there is no duality there is no possibility of dialogue, argument. And because there is no possibility of argument and dialogue, there is no possibility of understanding. With the conflict, with friction, one evolves. So from one, man becomes dual; from unity, duplicity: from duplicity, triplicity: from triplicity, multiplicity. That’s how man goes on growing – complication.

Man’s consciousness is one in the original state, then it becomes many. Through the many... the growth; that is the Hegelian concept of growth, and Marxian too. Hegel calls it ’the dialectical process’: thesis creates its antithesis, antithesis and thesis join into a synthesis, and the synthesis becomes a thesis and creates its antithesis. And this is how it goes on.

You cannot grow if your consciousness is unitary. It has to create a conflict in itself. With the conflict, energy is created. Conflict creates energy, friction creates energy. You strike two stones and fire is born. You strike two dry woods and fire is possible. You rub your hands and electricity is born. All energy is created through friction. So the original human consciousness has to become divided, has to become split, has to become dual. And the more evolved a mind man has, the more fragments he will have. So a thinker is almost a crowd. He is not one, he is not two, he is not three, he is many.

The second state Chardin calls ’concentration’, because once the unity is lost and man has become many, there arises chaos and one loses one’s identity. One does not know who one is, then an identity is needed, a self is needed, an ego is needed to hold all these fragments together. Otherwise they will start falling apart and you will not be able to survive – hence the ego.

Ego is an effort to create a kind of unity inside yourself. The natural unity is lost. Now you have to create an unnatural, synthetic unity. The ego is a synthetic self, a created self, a managed self. One part of your being becomes the master and forces other parts to be slaves. A kind of government arises inside you.

Complexity creates energy. Concentration creates a possibility to use that energy; otherwise there will be no use for it. Energy will be there, and energy will kill you. It will be too much and it will be in so many directions. All those directions have to be focused in one direction, the whole energy has to be channelised into one. This is what Chardin calls ’concentration’; unification around a centre; a self is born, ego is born, discipline is born.

And the third he calls ’direction’. Once the ego is there, once you have a kind of self, a kind of unity

– although managed, but still a unity – then the goal is possible. You can become an arrow, you can have a target in the future.

These three steps Chardin thinks are enough to explain human consciousness. They are not. They are important but not complete.

The Hindu vision of life is far more complete. Chardin’s vision is linear: unity, then complexity, then concentration, then direction. And the direction goes on and on, the arrow goes on and on and on, and there is no end to it. It is linear. The arrow goes on for infinity, it never comes back. This is not true. This is logical, but not natural.

The Hindu vision is circular. Hindus say everything moves in a circle not in a line. Nature moves in a circle, seasons move in a circle, stars move in a circle, man’s LIFE moves in a circle. Everything natural moves in a circle. The circle is the way of nature. The linear is just a concept of the mind.

The line does not exist in nature. If you are aware of non-Euclidean geometry then you will know.

Euclid believes in line; non-Euclidean geometry says there is nothing like line in existence. The line also is part of a bigger circle, that’s all. No line is straight, and no line can be straight – you cannot draw a straight line. If you draw a straight line, that simply means you are sitting on a circular earth and drawing a straight line. Go on drawing the line from both ends, go on drawing it, and you will find one day that the line has become a circle around the earth. So that small straight line was just a part of a big circle.

Hindus say it is circular. To me, the Hindu concept is far more true than the Christian concept of linear progress. But still, my own suggestion is a little different to both. My suggestion is: spiral –

neither linear nor circular; evolution is a spiral. In that way both are joined together. In a spiral the progress moves as if it is moving in a line, because it never comes to exactly the same point again.

Christ never becomes Adam again, because Adam was ignorant and innocent, and Christ is innocent and fully aware. He never comes back to Adam, exactly to Adam. So the Hindu concept misses something. But in another sense he becomes Adam again because the innocence is the same, just that now it is fully aware. Then it was not aware, then it was asleep, now it is alert. In a sense Christ becomes Adam again because it is the same innocence. So Hindus are right. And in a sense Christ never becomes Adam again, because it is luminous innocence. In that sense Christians are right. But they are only half-half right.

To have the vision of the full truth, I would like to call evolution a spiral. It comes back to the original point but never on the same plane – on a higher plane. It comes again and again but always on a higher plane. If you have been trekking in the mountains you know what I mean. You go on a path; the path moves around the mountain. Again you come to the same point, the same rocks, the same valley, the same trees, but a little higher. it is a spiral To make it a spiral, I would like to add three more steps to it. Chardin says: complexity, concentration, direction.

These three more steps have to be added.

The first is: awareness, meditation.

Concentration is just the beginning. Concentration is not relaxed, it is tense. One cannot concentrate twenty-four hours a day; one will go mad. So concentration can never become natural, but one can meditate twenty-four hours a day. One can live in meditation. It can become natural, it can become like breathing. It can be relaxed.

Concentration is focused consciousness. Meditation is just aware consciousness. For example, if you are listening to me, you can listen in a concentrated way. That will tire you, that will exhaust you.

If you are listening very very tensely so that you don’t miss a single word, then it will be tiring. But you can listen in a meditative way. That means you are relaxed and open, vulnerable, that’s all. You will not be tired. Listening ,for one and a half hours, rather than being tired, you will be enriched, rejuvenated. You will feel more energy afterwards than before, and you will feel more flow in your being. So the fourth thing has to be awareness, meditativeness, openness.

Concentration is directional, meditation is non-directional. Concentration has an object, a content.

Meditation has no object, no content; it is just an opening. You are listening to me, a bird starts singing – that too you listen to, a train passes by – that too you listen to. You are not listening to me c. All is included. You are open from all the sides, not only open to me. This is a higher stage of evolution than concentration is: it is de-concentration.

And the fifth I call playfulness. Christianity has no idea of playfulness, and Chardin has no idea of playfulness. ’Direction’, ’goal’, ’purpose’ – that is very business-like, tiring, and makes man sad and serious. Something like playfulness has to be added, because a really grown-up person is capable of play. A really grown-up person is sincere but not serious. Seriousness is a kind of illness because seriousness will create tension in you; it will never allow you to celebrate. Only playfulness can become celebration and joy.

And there seems to be no space for joy in Chardin’s chart – nothing of playfulness. Complexity, concentration, direction – good as far as they go, but they don’t go far enough. And they don’t go into creating a happy, celebrating human being . And without celebration what is the purpose?

All purpose leads to a purposeless play. You work, but you work finally to relax. You work hard, just so that you are able to play. You work five days, so that at the weekend you can rest on the beach. All purpose leads to purposeless play. So the fifth I call playfulness, non-seriousness, non-purposiveness, celebration, joy.

And sixth I call egolessness. Ego is needed – because one falls into a chaos, and a synthetic self is needed. But that self is synthetic, plastic, it is not real. It has to be dropped one day. Use it, go beyond it, and throw it! One has to come to egolessness, one has to forget that one exists separately from existence. In that forgetfulness, in that dropping of the ego, one becomes Adam again in a totally new way. One becomes Christ – again unity, again simplicity, again innocence, but now luminous this time. You are twice-born.

This way one again comes back to the original simplicity, the original face. But it is higher than the first originality, hence I call it spiral. It is primal innocence, but not just primal innocence. It has immense light in it, it is not dark. It is not primitive, it is the highest point of consciousness. It is divine innocence. What Plotinus calls ’the One’ – this is the One. First the One was not aware of itself, now the One is aware of itself. God is born in you.

In Adam God was a seed, in Christ God has become a flowering. The seed has come to its full manifestation.

This is the difference between the child and the sage. Adam is the child, Christ is the sage. They both are alike and yet not alike at all. Something similar, and something absolutely different: similarity in innocence, dissimilarity in awareness, luminosity. Or you can call the first state ’nature’, and the second state ’God’. When nature realises itself, it becomes God. When nature recognises itself, it becomes God. The beginning and the end have to be the same in some way, and yet not the same in some other way. The alpha has to be the omega, and the omega has to be the alpha; and yet they have to exist on totally different planes. Adam is body, Christ is soul;Jesus is mind – a bridge just in between the two polarities.

This is the last night. Jesus is ready to depart. That scene of departure is one of the most beautiful scenes in the whole history of human growth – the Last Supper. Jesus has gathered his disciples, the twelve. Amongst those twelve is Judas Iscariot, the one who is going to betray him. He washes the feet of his disciples for the first time. They are very very embarrassed. And they ask again and again ’Why? Why are you washing our feet? You are our Master, our Lord!’

But he says ’Because I want to give you my last commandment. The last commandment is the commandment to love.’ And Jesus is giving it in a very existential way, not verbally.

Just the other night a new sannyasin, Lola, was there. A few days before, she took sannyas. I gave her the name Deva Lola. It means ’moved by God’, ’possessed by God’, but she was so thrilled on that day of her initiation that although I explained the meaning of her name she could not follow it.

She was so thrilled, she was so ecstatic – she was there and not there. She was flying high, she was drunk. So she heard it and yet she could not remember anything. Last night she was again there going back to the West, and she asked ’Please tell the meaning of my name again, because I could not remember what you had said the first day.’

She has great potential. So I told her ’Rather than giving you the meaning verbally, I will give you the meaning existentially.’ And I told her to raise her hands and be possessed by God, and whatsoever happens to let it happen. And within a few moments she started swaying – swaying like a flower or the stalk in the breeze. And then faster and faster movements... and her hands started moving, her whole body started moving. She was possessed by the divine. Now this is an existential meaning, not verbal.

Jesus touched the feet of his disciples because he wanted to give them an existential meaning of love. In love nobody is higher and nobody is lower; love knows no hierarchy. Jesus touched the feet of his disciples – the Master touching the feet of his disciples. Jesus is declaring that ’You are exactly like me, there is no difference. You and I are absolutely the same. I have known it, you have not known it, that is the only difference. But there is no difference in our beings.’

Those disciples are not yet twice-born, those disciples are yet seeds, they have not bloomed, and Jesus has bloomed. But one who has bloomed can see that those seeds are going to bloom too.

The seeds cannot recognise the flower because they have never known themselves blooming, but the flower can recognise the seeds because he has known both the states. He has known himself as the seed and he has known himself as the flower; he can recognise.

The same story happened in Buddha’s life. Buddha says: Once, many many lives before, when I was not enlightened and I was as ignorant as anybody, I went to see a Buddha – a man who had become enlightened. His name was Dipankara. And when I touched the feet of Dipankara I was surprised, because he touched my feet too. And I felt very embarrassed because there was a great crowd, and everybody started looking: ’What is the matter?’ And I was very shy. And I started feeling a little guilty too, and I said to Dipankara ’Sir, what have you done? You have touched my feet. I am an ignorant man, a sinner. You are enlightened, you are a great Master, thousands follow you. I had come just for your blessings, and you have touched my feet! What have you done?’

And Dipankara laughed, and he said ’You don’t know that soon you are going to become enlightened.

I can recognise. You are in the state which I was once in, and you will be in the state in which I am now. You cannot see, that I understand, but I can see.’ The higher can see the lower, the lower cannot see the higher.

Jesus touched the feet of his disciples. That is a rare phenomenon, a great message – that there is no higher, no lower; that all hierarchies are of the mind, are political; that in spirituality there is no hierarchy. It is all one, it is all the same. It is one being all over the place. It is one heart beating in millions of hearts. It is one consciousness in every consciousness. It is one moon reflected in millions of pools, oceans, rivers, tanks, reservoirs – but it is one moon.

Jesus says ’This is to give you my last commandment – the commandment of love.’ Then they ate, then they drank. Jesus never divided the ordinary life from the spiritual life: his second message

– what I was saying the other day, that the first hedonism has to be transformed into the second hedonism. Jesus is not an ascetic, Jesus is not in any way a masochist; he enjoyed life. There is no reason why one should not enjoy life. Enjoying life you will become capable of enjoying God. If you don’t enjoy life, you will become incapable of enjoying God too.

Life has to be a training ground for enjoyment. God is going to be such a big blessing that if you don’t taste life’s small blessings you will not be ready for it; it will drown you, it will kill vou. it will be too much. Increase your capacity.

Even on the last night Jesus is breaking bread, filling cups with wine for his disciples. They are enjoying, they are eating, they are in a merry mood. Death is coming close, but celebration has not to stop for it because Jesus knows that this death is going to be the greatest celebration. He wants to leave his disciples in celebration. He wants it to be imprinted on their consciousnesses that Jesus was a celebrant, that he was a man of feasting not of fasting; that he was a man who was thrilled by the small joys of life – the flowers, the birds, the rivers – that he liked the lilies in the field; that he liked people, that he was immensely thrilled – always immensely thrilled when looking into people’s eyes; that he loved, that he was not against life.

Still it happened: Christianity went against life. Still Christianity became monkish. Monasteries were created, masochists gathered there, self-torturers became dominant, and the feasting of Jesus disappeared, or it remained only as a ritual. Yes, it is repeated still.

Just the other night, Hal Musin took sannyas – the author that I talked about in the morning. Now he is Pramod, his name is Pramod – joy. He said to me that in his whole life these ten days that he has been here have been the happiest, he has never known such happiness. Now he is worried, because he has promised his daughter that he will be back home at the time of Christmas. I told him ’Here is Christmas. Where are you going?’

Christians have forgotten completely what Christmas is or should be. It has become a ritual. It has to be a kind of inner glow, it has to be a love for life. It HAS to be a search into the ordinary for the extraordinary, into the mundane for the supramundane. It has to be the search for the spirit in the body. It has to be the search for God into nature, for the invisible in the visible, Jesus’ last message is of love and joy. He left his disciples in a feasting mood, not crying, not making them sad. He hugged them all, he hugged even his betrayer. He KISSED Judas, because for a man of that consciousness there is no friend, no enemy.

But the disciples were feeling a little bit scared. Rumours were around; and when Jesus said ’Only a little while more and I will be gone – gone to my Father’ they became very frightened, afraid, sad.

To comfort them, to give them hope, to give them courage, these sutras were spoken. These are of immense value. Meditate on these.

JESUS SAID UNTO HIS DISCIPLES: LET NOT YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED: YE BELIEVE IN

GOD, BELIEVE ALSO IN ME.

Their hearts ARE troubled. Their Master is going to die, their Master is going to be tortured to death.

They will be lost into this dark night of existence, their light will no more be with them. One who has been guiding them, one who has been taking them out of the wilderness, one who was their path, one who was their guide, one who was their friend, will not be any more. And they have become so dependent on him that they cannot think of life without Christ. Their hearts are troubled. It is natural, it is human.

Jesus says

LET NOT YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED: YE BELIEVE IN GOD, BELIEVE ALSO IN ME.

He says ’You know what belief is...’ Belief is not the right translation for the Hebrew word. The right translation will be trust. ’You know what trust is...’ Trust means that God takes care, that we need not worry, that somebody is behind the scene caring for us, that existence is mothering us, fathering us – that we are not orphans. That’s what trust means: that we are not orphans, that we are not strangers in this world; this is our home because this is our God’s home – it belongs to us.

... YE BELIEVE IN GOD...

’You know what trust is’ he said. ’If you know what trust is you can trust in me too, because it is not a question of whom you trust. Once you know the quality of trust, you simply trust.’

It is not a question of whether you trust in God or you trust in Jesus or in Buddha – remember it. If you trust, you simply trust. If a Christian says ’I trust only in Jesus not in Buddha’, he has not known what trust is, because trust knows no distinctions. If you have trusted in Christ you will trust in Buddha too, because you will not see any difference. Maybe the languages are different, maybe their ways of expression are different, but trust will be able to go directly to the heart of the matter, to the very core, and will see that Christ and Buddha exist on the same plane. It is the same consciousness, the same awareness, the same enlightenment. If you trust Buddha, you will trust Krishna and Mohammed. If you trust me, you will trust Christ, you will trust Zarathustra.

Trust knows no address. It is not addressed. Trust is an inner quality. If it is there, it is there. It is like you bring a light, you bring a lamp into the room. Now the light will not fall only on the table, it will fall on the chair too. And it will not fall only on the chair, it will fall on the walls too, and on the paintings hanging on the walls. It will not fall only on the walls, it will fall on the floor and on the roof too. When you bring light into the room, light simply falls on everything that is there. So is trust. It Is a light. If trust is kindled in your heart, then it makes no difference. You trust God, you trust Christ, you trust your wife, you trust your husband, you trust your son, you trust your friend. you trust your enemy. You trust nature, you trust death, you trust insecurity. In short, you simply trust.

Jesus says

LET NOT YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED: YE BELIEVE IN GOD...

I know you trust in God.

... BELIEVE ALSO IN ME. IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS: IF IT WERE NOT

SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU. I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU.

Now these disciples were again and again discussing who was the greatest of them all. Even on that last night they were discussing who was going to take the second place to Jesus in the Kingdom of God.

Jesus says ’Don’t be worried...’

IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS...

’There is space for everybody. Nobody will be rejected, all will be welcomed and accepted. God is spacious. Don’t be worried about who will be next to God and who will be next to me. In God’s eyes everybody’s value is the same, and he is spacious. His love is such that he can love all alike. He has so much to give that it can’t be exhausted. So you need not be worried; there is no question of scarcity. It is not that he has only so much love that if I take love then you will not be able to get much. Or a few people have taken his love, so then a few people will miss, because no more love will be left.’

IN MY FATHER’S HOUSE ARE MANY MANSIONS...

’He is spacious, his love is spacious. It is infinite. You can take as much as you want, and still it remains infinite. You cannot exhaust it.’

... IF IT WERE NOT SO, I WOULD HAVE TOLD YOU.

’Don’t be troubled. Don’t become anxious. Don’t be worried.’

I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU.

Jesus says ’I am going so that I can prepare a place for you.’ He is consoling, he is giving them courage and hope. They will need it. Dark days are going to come. They are going to pass through great difficulties – they will be haunted, they will be tortured, they will be persecuted, they will be amongst wolves. And their Master is going, and their Master will no more be with them. And he has been their protection, their solace; he has been their security. He was like an armour around them; they were not insecure with him, they were sheltered. Now the shelter is going to disappear. Rains will come and hot days will come, and there will be summer and winter. And they don’t know what they are going to do. They will be too alone and too strange in the world.

Before any Master leaves his disciples he has to put down foundations so that in the days that will be coming... And they are going-to be difficult for them, because the people who are going to kill Jesus are not going to leave his disciples in peace. If they are going to kill Christ himself, many more difficulties will be there for the disciples to face.

He says

I GO TO PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU.

’You trust in God, trust in me too. I am going just for you – to make things ready there – in that other reality, on the other shore.’

AND I GO AND PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU, I WILL COME AGAIN, AND RECEIVE YOU UNTO

MYSELF...

’And don’t be worried. If you trust in me, I will be coming to welcome you unto myself.’

Yes, if you trust a Master, if you love a Master, he will remain available to you forever. HE IS

FOREVER THEN. The real question is: Do you trust? Do you love? Have you really fallen into that relationship where your ego has disappeared, where you are surreredered? Where you are not, only the fragrance of the Master fills your being? Then he is forever! Then the relationship between a Master and a disciple is not a temporal relationship, it is not tentative; it is eternal. It has the quality of deathlessness, the quality of timelessness.

AND IF I GO AND PREPARE A PLACE FOR YOU, I WILL COME AGAIN, AND RECEIVE YOU

UNTO MYSELF; THAT WHERE I AM, THERE YE MAY BE ALSO.

They are still wandering in the world. They are no more Adams, they are not yet Christs. They are in great turmoil, in great confusion. Christ has to pull them out of that confusion. Christ has to become the presence through which they can come out of the darkness. He has to become the catalytic agent, he has to become a symbol, a light, a star so they can look up to it and they can start moving out of their dark night.

... AND RECEIVE YOU UNTO MYSELF; THAT WHERE I AM, WHERE ye MAY HE ALSO.

That is the whole effort of a Master. The Master wants to destroy the disciple so that the disciple also becomes a Master. The Master’s work is complex. First he persuades you to become a disciple, he ’coos’ to you, seduces you to become a disciple. Once you are a disciple, he starts killing and destroying you, because unless you are destroyed as a disciple you will never become a Master.

And the real Master is one who wants you all to become Masters. That is the goal. Everybody should become an emperor, a king, a queen. The slavery – visible, invisible – has to be completely destroyed. All kinds of imprisonments around you have to be burnt down. Your freedom has to be made utter, ultimate.

AND WHITHER I GO YE KNOW, AND THE WAY YE KNOW.

THOMAS SAITH UNTO HIM. LORD, WE KNOW NOT WHITHER THOU GOEST; AND HOW CAN

WE KNOW THE WAY?

Thomas is one of the most-loved disciples of Christ, one of the most innocent. The others are a little bit knowledgeable.

When Jesus says AND WHITHER I GO YE KNOW, AND THE WAY YE KNOW, nobody else said anything. They must have kept quiet. Nobody knows where he is going, nobody knows the way which he is going to follow, but only the most innocent of them is ready to ask.

Thomas says

LORD, WE KNOW NOT WHITHER THOU GOEST; AND HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WAY?

We have never been there.

Thomas was one of the most intimate and closest disciples. When Jesus came to India, Thomas followed him. Indian Christianity is older than any other Christianity in the world. The Indian Church is the oldest Church in the world, because Thomas was the first apostle to come to India. Indian Christianity was started by Thomas.

Thomas asks ’We know not where you are going and which way you are going. And how can we know? – we are ignorant.’

The real disciple never pretends to be knowledgeable. If he does not know, he is ready to say he does not know, because that is the only way to learn from the Master. The knowledgeable disciples never learn a thing.

I have a few here too. When they ask questions, their questions have a different quality – as if they are asking for the others’ sake. They have no problems of their own. Sometimes they write in their questions too ’This is not my question – just for the others’ sake... People will be enlightened. Many people have this question in their minds and it will be good if you discuss it. But it is not any personal question!’ This is THEIR question, but they cannot even confess that this is their question. ’It will help others.’

Tricky people.

Once a man came to me and he said ’One of my friends has become impotent. Can you suggest some meditation that can be helpful to him?’

I looked at the man, and I went on looking at him. He started trembling and perspiring. He said ’Why are you looking at me so hard?’

I said ’Can’t you send your friend? He can say that one of his friends has become impotent. Can’t you say even that? Have you become so impotent that you cannot even say that a problem has arisen in your being?’

Now he wants to know what can be done, but he does not want to show that the problem is his. Some friend... Now he is being diplomatic. Many questions come which are diplomatic: the questioner himself knows already; there is no problem for him.

All the other disciples kept quiet, only Thomas asked. And because of these small gestures, Thomas became more and more close, intimate to Jesus.

LORD, WE KNOW NOT WHITHER THOU GOEST; AND HOW CAN WE KNOW THE WAY?

JESUS SAITH UNTO HIM, I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH, AND THE LIFE: NO MAN COMETH UNTO

THE FATHER, BUT BY ME.

This statement is of immense importance, and has been tremendously misunderstood by Christians, misinterpreted. This statement has become a protection for the priest, for the dogmatist, for the demagogue. Christians have taken it to mean that nobody ever comes to God unless he comes through Christ – that means Jesus, son of Mariam. Nobody comes to God unless he comes through Jesus. They have meant, or they have interpreted it in such a way, that Christianity becomes the only right religion. All other religions become wrong. All other religions are against God – only Christianity.

JESUS SAITH UNTO HIM, I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH AND THE LIFE: NO MAN COMETH UNTO

THE FATHER, BUT BY ME.

What does he mean? These priests and the missionaries and the Christians who go on converting the whole world to Christianity, are they right? Is their interpretation right? Or has Jesus something else? He has something UTTERLY else.

In the Bhagavad Gita also there is a statement which Hindus go on misinterpreting. Krishna has said to Arjuna... And almost the same quality of closeness existed between Arjuna and Krishna as between Jesus and Thomas – the same relationship. And the same flowering had happened, and the same statement had bubbled up out of that relationship. Krishna said to Arjuna: SARVA DHARMAN PARITYAJYA MAMEKAM SHARANAM VRAJA: Drop all religions, forget about all religions and come to my feet, because it is only through me that one reaches to God.

Now Hindus are happy with this statement. Krishna has said so clearly: Forget all religions. Drop all kinds of other religions and hold unto me. Hold to my feet – MAMEKAM SHARANAM VRAJA.

Come to my feet; they are the bridges to God – the only bridges.

Both statements happened in the same kind of situation. Arjuna must have been very very close when Krishna said this. And so is the case with Thomas – he must have been very close. Christ must have been showering like flowers on Thomas when he said this. You will need that loving understanding of a Thomas, only then will you be able to understand the meaning of this. You will need that loving intimacy of an Arjuna, only then will you be able to understand the statement of Krishna. Both are the same, both mean the same – and both have been misinterpreted.

The misinterpretation comes from the priest and the politician – those who try to convert religion into organisational, political strategies.

JESUS SAITH UNTO HIM, I AM THE WAY...

I AM... That has to be understood. It does not mean Jesus, it simply means the inner consciousness:

’I am’ – the inner life. This consciousness inside you, which you call ’I am’, this ’I am’ is the only way.

If you can understand this ’I am’, what it is, what this consciousness is, you have found the way. It has nothing to do with Jesus, it has nothing to do with Krishna. When I say to you ’I am the gate’

it has nothing to do with me! That I AM is the gate. The gate is within you, the way is within you, the truth is within you. You have to understand who this is calling himself ’I am’ within you, what this consciousness is, what it consists of.

If you can go into your consciousness, if you can feel, see, realise the nature of your consciousness, that is the way. Meditation is the way – not Christ, not Krishna, nor Mohammed. Who am I? – this question will become the way.

Raman Maharshi is right when he says that only one question is relevant: Who am I? Go on asking this question, let this question become a fire in you. Be aflame with it! Let every cell of your body and your being, and every fibre of your existence pulsate, vibrate with it. And let this question arise from the deepest core: Who am I? And go on asking; don’t accept any answer that is given by the mind. You have been reading the Upanishads, and in the Upanishads they say ’You are God’. And your mind will say ’Why are you asking again and again? I know the answer: You are God. And keep quiet!’ Or if you are a Christian and have been reading the Bible again and again, you know: The kingdom of God is within you. So, ’Who am I?’ – ’The kingdom of God. Now keep quiet!’

No answer from the head has to be accepted. No answer from the.memory has to be accepted.

No answer from knowledge has to be accepted. All answers have to be thrown in the whirlwind of the question ’Who am I?’ A moment comes when all answers have gone and ONLY the question remains, alone like a pillar of fire. You are afire with it! You are just a thirst, a passionate quest:

’Who am l?’ When the question has burned all the answers, then the question burns.itself too, it consumes itself. And once the question has also disappeared, there is silence. That silence is the answer. And that is the door, the gate, the way, the truth.

Please be careful. When Jesus says I AM THE WAY, he means the one who calls himself I AM

within you is the way. It has nothing to do with Jesus. Just by holding the feet of Jesus you are not going to go anywhere. Just by praying to Jesus you are not going to go anywhere. Listen to what he is saying.

Each Master throws you back to yourself, because ultimately God is hidden in you as much as in the Master. You are carrying your light within yourself. You just have to turn back, you have to look inwards.

I AM THE WAY, THE TRUTH...

Yes. In your very consciousness is the truth. When you become fully conscious you become the full truth. When you are absolutely conscious, it is not that you face truth as an object, you ARE the truth, it is your subjectivity, it is you. That’s what Upanishads say: TATWAMASI: Thou art that.

... AND THE LIFE...

Three things Jesus says: It is the life – I AM, consciousness, awareness. This is life – the life that you know, the ordinary life. Then the second: I AM THE WAY – the way that joins the ordinary life with the extraordinary life, the way that joins Adam with Christ, the way that joins body with soul.

And the third thing: I AM THE TRUTH. Jesus has said all the three things.

You are that right now, because I AM THE LIFE. And you have the way too, hidden behind you, within you: I AM THE WAY. And you are the ultimate goal too, the destiny. You are the beginning and the middle and the end. You are Adam, Jesus and Christ.

... NO MAN COMETH UNTO THE FATHER, BUT BY ME.

No man has ever entered into God unless he has entered into his consciousness, until he has entered into his ’I am’-ness. This is the meaning. This is the meaning of Krishna, and this is the meaning of Christ. This is the meaning of all the Masters.

IF YE HAD KNOWN ME, YE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN MY FATHER ALSO: AND FROM

HENCEFORTH YE KNOW HIM, AND HAVE SEEN HIM.

A tremendously important statement. And within the single statement there comes a revolution.

Meditate very very silently over it.

IF YE HAD KNOWN ME...

Jesus is saying to Thomas

IF YE HAD KNOWN ME, YE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN MY FATHER ALSO...

Because I and my Father are one.

While Jesus is saying IF YE HAD KNOWN ME. YE SHOULD HAVE KNOWN MY FATHER ALSO, something has changed in Thomas’ being. While Jesus is saying this... And you know, when I say some things to you something goes on changing in you. Sometimes you are very very close to truth.

Sometimes a single word hits you deep, shatters something; something changes. A radical change can happen sometimes. It happens all the time. That is the whole purpose of being in the presence of a Master. When Jesus was saying – he has not even completed the statement... The statement was half, but Thomas has changed, so he has to change his statement. This is why I say this is such a beautiful statement.

IF YE HAD KNOWN ME...

There was an ’if’ in it because Thomas was hesitant. IF YE HAD KNOWN ME, YE SHOULD HAVE

KNOWN MY FATHER ALSO. But when he made this statement, there was a radical transformation in Thomas’ consciousness; he turned inwards, he was converted – METANOIA And Jesus has to change his statement.

And he said

... AND FROM HENCEFORTH YE KNOW HIM, AND HAVE SEEN HIM.

The ’if’ has disappeared, because the ’if’ has disappeared in Thomas. You know the phrase

’doubting Thomas’? That comes from Jesus’ disciple Thomas. He used to doubt. But he was very innocent. If doubt was there, it was there; he would not hide it. But in this moment ’doubting Thomas’ is no more ’doubting Thomas’: doubt has disappeared.

Jesus had started with ’if’ because the doubt was there. Thomas was hesitant, Thomas was not agreeing, he was saying ’Okay, but it doesn’t appeal to me. You say that you are the truth? Maybe, but I am not convinced. You say that you are the way? I hope that it is true, but it has yet no validity in my being.’ Maybe not in so many words – that is not the question – but there was a lurking doubt.

Jesus has to use ’if’. Once he saw that lurking doubt has disappeared under the impact of Jesus’

great statement...

In India we call such statements MAHAVAKYAS – great statements. There are very few in the whole history of human consciousness. This is one of the great statements, a MAHAVAKYA. Jesus must have seen that the doubt has suddenly disappeared. The shadow of doubt is not there. Thomas has become trust. Something is transformed. Thomas is no more the old Thomas; a new being is born, a new man is born. He had to change his statement in the middle of it, because a Master responds to the disciple. A Master is a response. A Master is a mirror.

... AND FROM HENCEFORTH YE KNOW HIM...

Now there is no ’if’. Jesus says FROM HENCEFORTH – ’from now onwards you know him; and you have seen him because you have seen me, because I and my Father are not two. I represent him, I am just a reflection of him, an ’echo.’

I WILL NOT LEAVE YOU COMFORTLESS: I WILL COME TO YOU. YET A LITTLE WHILE, AND

THE WORLD SEETH ME NO MORE...

Listen. Jesus says

YET A LITTLE WHILE...

Only a few hours are left

... AND THE WORLD SEETH ME NO MORE...

and the world will not be able to see me

BUT YE SEE ME: BECAUSE I LIVE, YE SHALL LIVE ALSO.

Jesus says ’Just a few hours more and I will disappear for the world, but for you Thomas, never!

FOR YOU, never – because you have seen my reality which cannot be crucified. You have seen my truth which is immortal. The body will be crucified – a little while more and the body will disappear, the world will not be able to see me any more, because the world recognises me only as the body.

But you will see me still, because you have seen my luminosity, you have seen my eternity, you have seen the non-temporal being, you have seen my truth. Thomas you will go on seeing me. For you I will never disappear.’

Love has eyes, trust has eyes to see the invisible. Only trust can penetrate deer enough to see the deathless. Only love can give you a glimpse of that which is beyond time.

YET A LITTLE WHILE, AND THE WORLD SEETH ME NO MORE...

’Be happy Thomas, you are blessed, you will continue to see me.’

... BUT YE SEE ME: BECAUSE I LIVE, YE SHALL LIVE ALSO.

And in this moment let this seed be sown in you that when I am going to live – even after the crucifixion, even when my body is destroyed – if I am going to live, you will also live! Let this trust be born in you too. It is not that only I who will live... It is nothing special to me; everybody’s soul is immortal. If you can see my body disappearing and yet you can go on seeing me, let that become a new understanding in you that you will also live even when you have died.

Death is only of the garments, death is only of the covering. The innermost core goes on living. It is life itself. How can it die? How can life die? Life goes on changing its abodes, true; one house becomes rotten, old, dilapidated, a ruin, and you have to leave it to find another home. Your house is just a nest, an overnight stay.

YET A LITTLE WHILE, AND THE WORLD SEETH ME NO MORE; BUT YE SEE ME; BECAUSE I LIVE, YE SHALL LIVE ALSO.

That is where the secret of resurrection is. There are no proofs – no proofs as far as the world is concerned; but there are proofs as far as the disciples are concerned. Jesus died as the body but remained as the soul for those who had trust in him, who had seen his true reality, who had seen his true being.

AT THAT DAY YE SHALL KNOW THAT I AM IN MY FATHER, AND YE IN ME, AND I IN YOU.

Jesus says ’We are all intertwined, because we are all one.’ I AM MY FATHER, AND YE IN ME, AND I IN YOU. He is saying ’Thomas, you don’t know God, but you know me. I know God, you know me. I know that I am in my God, and you know that you are in me, because your love has made you part of me. And I tell you that I am in you. Hence, we are all in God, and God is in us all. We are all intertwined.’

The disciple only knows the Master, the Master knows God. The disciple loves the Master and by and by gets dissolved into the Master. The Master is dissolved into God. Through the Master the disciple is also joined with God. The Master goes on pouring himself into the disciple, and because the Master has become one with God, so God goes on pouring into the disciple in a very very indirect way. This is the real trinity: the disciple, the Master and God. And they go on pouring into each other. The disciple is not aware of what is happening.

When I touch you, do you think I touch you? God has touched you. If I am in God, then when I touch you, God has touched you. But to you it remains the Master’s touch. The deeper your understanding goes, the deeper you will be able to see that the Master is just instrumental – a flute through which God’s song goes on flowing.

AT THAT DAY YE SHALL KNOW...

Jesus says ’At the ultimate day of meeting when you will become enlightened, when you will also become a Christ...’

AT THAT DAY YE SHALL KNOW THAT I AM IN MY FATHER, AND YE IN ME, AND I IN YOU.

PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU, MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU: NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH, GIVE

I UNTO YOU.

because I am pouring my peace into you, and I am pouring it unconditionally, not as the world does.’

In the world nobody gives you anything unconditionally; in the world everything is a bargain. Even if people give love to you, they give only to get; it is a bargain.

PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU. .

Jesus says ’Don’t be worried. I will be gone, but my peace will linger around you, will surround you. And whenever you remember me you will find peace showering on you. My peace will remain available to you.’ To the trusting heart it is always available.

PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU, MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU: NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH, GIVE

I UNTO YOU.

Not like in the world where everything is given to get something. Jesus is simply giving. There is no bargain.

The Master only gives – but not to get anything. What can the disciple give to the Master? It is a one-way traffic. The Master goes on pouring. But that does not mean that he obliges you, because he knows God is pouring into him. What can he do with it? All that comes through God he has to share. With God there is no bargaining, it is pure gift.

PEACE I LEAVE WITH YOU, MY PEACE I GIVE UNTO YOU: NOT AS THE WORLD GIVETH, GIVE

I UNTO YOU. LET NOT YOUR HEART BE TROUBLED, NEITHER LET IT HE AFRAID

YE HAVE HEARD HOW I SAID UNTO YOU, I GO AWAY, AND COME AGAIN UNTO YOU. IF YE

LOVED ME, YE WOULD REJOICE, BECAUSE I SAID, I GO UNTO THE FATHER: FOR MY FATHER

IS GREATER THAN I.

Jesus says IF YE LOVED ME, YE WOULD REJOICE... Love knows no death. Love never comes across death. For love death exists not.

So Jesus says ’If you trust, if you love...’ This statement must have been made to all the disciples not to Thomas alone, because the ’if’ has entered again.

These are subtle points to be understood. Nothing is mentioned in the Bible about who he is speaking to now, but the ’if’ has entered again. To Thomas he has said ’From henceforth you have seen God because you have seen me.’ Now he says IF YE LOVED ME, YE WOULD REJOICE...

He must have turned to the other disciples, he must be saying to them all ’If you love me, then there is no death. Then I will be crucified and you will still see me resurrected in the divine body. You will see me going into God, disappearing into God. I am going to meet the ultimate. Your Master is going to meet the ultimate, you should rejoice. Let this be a celebration, a festival, a rejoicing.’

YE HAVE HEARD HOW I SAID UNTO YOU, I GO AWAY, AND COME AGAIN UNTO YOU.

’But I will come again and again, whenever you call, whenever you need. Whenever your heart will be in prayer without doubt, you will find me close by.’

IF YE LOVED ME, YE WOULD REJOICE, BECAUSE I SAID, I GO UNTO THE FATHER...

’So there is no question of being miserable, sad. I am not going to die, I am going to the divine.’

To the ignorant, death is the death of life. To the knower, death is the beginning of real life. To the knower, death is a door into the divine.

This his parting message is of immense value. Let it sink deep in you. Let it become your heartbeat.

That is the only way to meditate upon it. That is the only way to come to its meaning. Forget all that Christians have been saying. Those dogmatic assertions are all chauvinistic. Forget what the theologians have put on top of Jesus’ pure statements. Put aside all that has been taught and go directly into these sayings, and meditate. And immense will be the benefit. You will be blessed.

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9