Unio Mystica, Vol 2

Discourses on the Sufi Mystic, Hakim Sanai

Talks given from 11/12/78 am to 20/12/78 am

English Discourse series

CHAPTER 1

On the Road of Sighs

11 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

MY FRIEND, EVERYTHING EXISTING

EXISTS THROUGH HIM;

YOUR OWN EXISTENCE IS A MERE PRETENSE.

NO MORE NONSENSE! LOSE YOURSELF,

AND THE HELL OF YOUR HEART BECOMES A HEAVEN.

LOSE YOURSELF, AND ANYTHING CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED.

YOUR SELFISHNESS IS AN UNTRAINED COLT.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE:

HENCE YOUR LOVES AND HATES;

YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE:

HENCE FAITH AND UNBELIEF.

HOPE AND FEAR DRIVE FORTUNE FROM YOUR DOOR;

LOSE YOURSELF, AND THEY WILL BE NO MORE.

AT HIS DOOR, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE

BETWEEN MOSLEM AND CHRISTIAN,

VIRTUOUS AND GUILTY?

AT HIS DOOR ALL ARE SEEKERS

AND HE THE SOUGHT.

GOD IS WITHOUT CAUSE:

WHY ARE YOU LOOKING FOR CAUSES?

THE SUN OF TRUTH RISES UNBIDDEN,

AND WITH IT SETS THE MOON OF LEARNING.

IN THIS HALT OF BUT A WEEK,

TO BE IS NOT TO BE,

AND TO COME IS TO GO.

AND DOES THE SUN EXISTS

FOR THE COCK TO CROW AT?

WHAT IS IT TO HIM

WHETHER YOU ARE THERE OR NOT?

MANY HAVE COME, JUST LIKE YOU,

TO HIS DOOR.

YOU WON’T FIND YOUR WAY

IN THIS STREET; IF THERE IS A WAY,

IT IS ON YOUR ROAD OF SIGHS.

ALL OF YOU ARE FAR

FROM THE ROAD OF DEVOTION:

SOMETIMES YOU ARE VIRTUOUS,

SOMETIMES YOU ARE WICKED:

SO YOU HOPE FOR YOURSELVES, FEAR FOR YOURSELVES;

BUT WHEN YOUR MASK OF WISDOM AND FOLLY

AT LAST TURNS WHITE, YOU WILL SEE

THAT HOPE AND FEAR ARE ONE.

Truth is not a tradition. It cannot be, because truth is never old. It is eternally new, it is eternally fresh, as fresh as the dewdrops in the morning or the stars in the night.

The claim of tradition is basically anti-truth. The word ‘tradition’ comes from a root ‘tradere’. It means ‘handed by someone to somebody else, transferred’. From ‘tradere’ also comes the word

‘trade’. Truth cannot be transferred from one person to another person. It is impossible to transfer it. It is not a thing, hence it is not transferable. It cannot be traded, nobody can give it, nobody can take it. It arises in each individual’s own being, it is a flowering of your own heart.

Hence, Sufism is not a tradition. No true religion can ever be a tradition; every true religion is bound to be a revolution, a rebellion. Sufism is one of the most profound, most authentic experiments and inquiries into truth that has happened on this earth. And Hakim Sanai, into whose sutras we will be entering again today, is one of the three greatest Sufis in the whole history of human consciousness.

He makes up the trio of the three great masters, Attar, Rumi and Sanai.

For a few days, you will be moving again with one of the greatest souls. It is a pilgrimage, a holy pilgrimage; you will be walking on sacred ground. Be very alert, watchful, loving, open, vulnerable, then something can arise in you which can become a transformation; something can be triggered in you. But remember, it is not caused from the outside, it is not a question of cause and effect.

Hence it is beyond the reach of science. Science can only understand the law of cause and effect.

If something can be caused, it is bound to fall into the field of science. But truth cannot be caused.

Still, in the presence of the master it can happen. It happens uncaused; it is a synchronicity. It is as if somebody is dancing and something is triggered in you – not caused, remember, because no dancer can cause a dance in you, but you start feeling something. You start swaying, you suddenly feel a rush of energy, you would like to dance yourself. This is synchronicity: something has happened in you, parallel but not caused.

I will be here just like a hollow bamboo, available to Hakim Sanai so that he can sing his song and he can dance his dance. If you are open, something can start happening in you. It will not be transferred from me to you – it cannot be transferred; it will not be caused. I will not be the source of it, you will remain the source of it. But it can be triggered: I can function as a catalytic agent.

These few days, walking with Hakim Sanai, can be life-transforming. You will be here with one of the greatest human beings ever – a human being of the caliber of Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed.

But remember, the first thing, truth is not a tradition. If you believe in tradition, you will never come to know what truth is. Tradition is a belief, borrowed; it is knowledge but not experience. Tradition is scripture, philosophy, words and words – words and words about words. It is a great jungle of theories, and you can be deceived by it very easily. The mind is ready to fall into the trap of it.

Because truth is not a tradition, it cannot be approached through the mind. The mind is a tradition, the mind lives out of the past. The mind is always old; the mind is never original, it is never new, it is never fresh, it is never young, it is never alive. The mind is nothing but the accumulated past; all that you have known in the past has become a tape inside you. It is not the reality of this moment.

The mind is a tradition.

Hence if somebody says he is a Hindu or a Christian or a Jaina or a Mohammedan is not religious.

He is saying he belongs to the past, not to the present. He is saying he belongs to the mind and not to consciousness.

Consciousness is always of the here and now: it knows no past, it knows no future. And that is the beauty of consciousness – it is meditative. The mind is a thought process, a procession of memories, imaginations, dreams, projections. Consciousness is a purity, a mirror, that simply reflects the reality as it is.

All belief systems have to be dropped, only then can you be a Sufi. And to be a Sufi is the greatest thing that can happen to anybody.

Nobody else except man can be deceived by words; nobody except man can be deceived at all.

I have heard:

Marilyn had a parrot for a pet, but the parrot would embarrass her whenever she came into the apartment with a man. He would shout all kinds of obscenities, always leading off with, ”Somebody’s gonna get it tonight! Somebody’s gonna get it tonight!”

In desperation, Marilyn went to her local pet shop and explained her parrot problem to the pet shop proprietor.

”What you need,” he said, ”is a female parrot too. I don’t have one on hand, but I’ll order one.

Meanwhile, you could borrow this female owl until the female parrot arrives”

Marilyn took the owl home and put it near her parrot. It was immediately obvious that the parrot didn’t care for the owl. He glared at it.

That night, Marilyn wasn’t her usual nervous self as she opened the door to bring her gentleman friend in for a nightcap. Then suddenly she heard the parrot screech and she knew that things hadn’t changed.

”Somebody’s gonna get it tonight! Somebody’s gonna get it tonight!” the parrot said.

The owl said, ”Whooo? Whooo?”

And the parrot said, ”Not you, you big-eyed son-of-a-bitch!”

Only man can be deceived. You cannot deceive even a parrot, but pundits can be deceived and ARE deceived. Pundits are greater parrots than parrots themselves.

Beware.

Your mind is ready to fall into any trap of words.

It can create beautiful theories,

philosophies; it can go on manufacturing great systems of thought – all imaginary.

Truth has nothing to do with your imagination. Neither has truth anything to do with your inference, your guesswork. Truth is already here: truth is. All that is needed on your part is not to seek and search for it but to be available, open and empty like a mirror, so that you can reflect that which is.

Truth surrounds you; truth is within and without. Only truth is. you need not go anywhere, to Kaaba or to Kashi. You need not even go outside your room, you need not even go outside your body, you need not go anywhere.

Sitting silently, doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself.

Just sitting silently in your own room, when you are empty, it is revealed.

It was revealed to Mohammed when he was utterly silent and empty, it was revealed to Sanai when he was silent and empty, it was revealed to Mahavira when he was silent and empty. To be empty is to be religious.

But you are so full of knowledge, you are so full of unnecessary luggage, your mind is so much in a constant chattering. You may call it the Veda or you may call it the Koran, it doesn’t matter.

Unless you are empty, the Veda is not going to happen to you, the Koran is not going to flow through you. Unless you are empty, you will not contact truth – and truth is another name for God. I am using the word ‘truth’ so that even atheists are not offended, but truth and God are synonymous, interchangeable, they mean the same thing.

Then what is truth if it is not a tradition? It is a revolution, it is a turning-in. Tradition looks backwards, tradition looks at others, tradition wants something to be given to you. Revolution looks inwards.

Nothing has to be given to you from any source; you have already got it, it is already the case. Just turning in, just looking inside, waiting, watching, going inwards to the core of your being – and it is there.

Sufism is an inner journey. By revolution I don’t mean a political revolution. Political revolutions are not revolutions at all; they only substitute one slavery for another slavery. The only revolution there is, is religious. The only revolution there is, is turning away from tradition and turning inwards to the source of your being.

Knowing ”Who am I?” is the only revolutionary step – the first and the last, the alpha and the omega.

That’s the meaning of becoming a Sufi, or becoming a sannyasin. ‘Sannyasin’ is my name for the Sufi: one who is fed up with the outside world, who has known its frustrations, who has known its utter futility, who has known all the anxiety and anguish of it and is ready to dive deep within oneself to know ”Who am I?” Because unless one knows oneself, all knowledge is useless.

The foremost, the most fundamental thing, is to become aware at the core of your being. And it is a miracle to become aware of it, because at the core of your being you are always pure, always innocent, always virgin, always celibate. At the very core of your being, you have never left the Garden of Eden, you are still in paradise.

That is the name of Hakim Sanai’s book: THE HADIQA. It means ‘the Garden’ – the Garden of God, paradise.

Where is this paradise? There are foolish people who have been searching for the Garden of Eden.

A few think it was in Babylon, a few think it was on the continent of Atlantis which has gone down under the ocean – there has been a search. This is complete stupidity.

The Garden exists in YOU Adam has not been expelled from the Garden of Eden, he has fallen asleep. ‘The original fall’ simply means you have forgotten who you are. Adam has become knowledgeable and has lost his purity of consciousness.

That’s the meaning of the parable of the Tree of Knowledge. Adam has eaten from the Tree of Knowledge – that is the original sin. See the beauty of the parable: knowledge is the original sin, to become knowledgeable is to fall from grace. Then how to attain it again? Drop your knowledge, become innocent again. Be a child again, and you will be able to enter into the Garden of Eden.

Adam becomes knowledgeable, Christ becomes innocent. Becoming knowledgeable, Adam starts moving outwards, falls victim to philosophies, belief systems, theories, words. Jesus dropped all tradition; that’s why the Jews were so angry with him. The Jews are a very traditional people, they were angry because he was a revolutionary. He was a drop-out – he simply dropped all the knowledge of all the ancient rabbis and he became innocent. But in becoming innocent he again entered that original state of Adam before he had eaten the fruit of knowledge.

I have heard:

Two university professors are walking around the campus. They are well-known historians and are voicing their respective opinions about Jesus. When they are about to part, one says thoughtfully,

”You know, he was really a good fellow, but he didn’t publish.”

The professor, the pundit, the knowledgeable person, the scholar, has no understanding about inner experiences. All that he knows is the rubbish of so-called research work, all that he knows is about words. Those words are hollow, they contain nothing, they are meaningless – because meaning arises only out of one’s own experience.

Sufism is an experiment in existential experience. It is not a philosophy; rather, think of it as a ladder.

You don’t agree with or believe in a ladder; you don’t believe in it, you don’t disbelieve in it, either.

You climb it, and if it breaks you get a new one. Thus to treat Sufism as a system to be believed in or committed to or attached to, is to miss the whole point. It is a ladder, not a belief system. Use it, climb it, and go beyond it. It is a boat.

Buddha calls his system a raft: that’s exactly what Sufism is. Use it to go to the other shore, to the further shore, then forget all about it. The truth believed is a lie, the truth borrowed is a lie. My truth cannot be your truth; the moment my truth reaches you, it is no more the same thing. With me, in me, it had the meaning of my experience. When it goes to you, only words reach you – empty, hollow. You can cling to those words, you can believe too much in those words, and you will be lost.

This is something very basic to be remembered, that Sufism is a practical science, it is pragmatic.

It does not depend on philosophizing, speculating and guesswork; it points directly to existential experience.

You can know much about love. You can go and look in the libraries, you can look in the Encyclopedia Britannica, and you will know much about love. But it will be ABOUT love – it will not be love. To know love, you will have to fall in love; there is no other way, there is no shortcut.

Two Italians in Rome were talking when an airplane flew overhead and one said to the other, ”The pope is aboard that plane.”

”No,” said the other, ”he is in southern Italy at the summer Vatican.”

”No, he is aboard that plane,” said the other.

One word led to another, and before long, several thousand liras were bet on whether or not the pope was aboard that plane. The two men rushed to the airport in time to observe the pope emerging from the plane.

The one who lost the bet turned to his friend and said, ”Tell me, Tony, how could you tell, twenty thousand feet in the air, that the pope was aboard that plane?”

”Easy,” he said. ”It says so right on the outside of the airplane: TWA.”

”What does that mean?”

”Top Wop Aboard.”

Sometimes your guess may even work, but still it is never the truth. Truth has to be experienced.

You are guessing about God, you are arguing about God, speculating about God, fighting about God. And no time is left for experiencing him.

Being here with me, remember it always: we are not interested in any guesswork, we are interested in going to the real experience of it. And when the experience is possible, why bother arguing about it? Why go round and round? Why not penetrate to the very core? You can go round and round for centuries and you will never arrive anywhere. And you can arrive right now, this very moment, if you go inwards.

All these sutras of THE HADIQA are just preparing you to take the inner leap, the inner jump.

Sufism is an attempt to unfreeze habits of thinking, to replace them with less stiff and restricting ones.

Sufism is criticizing, dissolving and stepping over all prejudices, loosening all rigid and constricting moulds of thought. Sufism is relaxing into your own self; it is a let-go.

When all prejudices have been dropped, all concepts rejected, all scriptures, burnt, the whole tradition dropped, then you are innocent, you are unpolluted. In that purity of the present moment, the sun rises.

And that is from where one starts growing into a real human being. It is from there that one starts growing even beyond humanity; one starts surpassing, one starts transcending ordinary human limits. Real growth knows no limit. You contain something infinite in you, something oceanic, and unless you have known it, don’t be satisfied, don’t be contented. That contentment will be suicide.

I see millions of people: they are all dead, they have committed suicide, because they have become contented – and contented with futile things, contented with nothing.

Never be contented unless you have known your inner being, unless you have come to the innermost shrine. Remain discontented. Sufis call it ”the divine discontentment.”

Teilhard de Chardin says, ”The most real aspect of living is the passion for growth.”

Yes, be in a passionate affair with your own growth. Never allow a single day to pass without growing, otherwise you will remain a seed and you will never know the beauties of being a flower. The spring will come and go, and you will remain dead.

Millions of people are dead. They walk, they talk, they do their job, but all that is mechanical, utterly mechanical. They are moving in a kind of sleep, they are somnambulists.

A man took his wife to a Broadway show. During the first act intermission, he had to urinate in the worst way. He hurried to the back of the theater and searched in vain for the men’s room.

At last he came upon a fountain surrounded by pretty foliage. He realized that he had wandered backstage. Noting that no one was around, and in desperation, he opened his pants and pissed into the fountain.

He had difficulty finding his way back to the auditorium, and by the time he sat down next to his wife, the curtain was up and actors were moving about on the stage.

”Did I miss much of the second act?” he whispered.

”Miss it?” she said. ”You were in it!”

But that is the situation. People are moving unconsciously, mechanically, unaware; they don’t know what they are doing. How can they know what they are doing? because they don’t know who they are. If you don’t know your being, you can’t be aware of your doing; it is impossible. First, one has to be aware of the being – and that is growth. Growing inwards is growth, reaching inwards is growth.

The sutras.

MY FRIEND, EVERYTHING EXISTING

EXISTS THROUGH HIM;

YOUR OWN EXISTENCE IS A MERE PRETENSE.

NO MORE NONSENSE! LOSE YOURSELF,

AND THE HELL OF YOUR HEART BECOMES HEAVEN.

LOSE YOURSELF, AND ANYTHING CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED.

YOUR SELFISHNESS IS AN UNTRAINED COLT.

First, remember. Hakim Sanai addresses you as ”My friend.” That’s the attitude of all the great masters. The disciple thinks that the master is very very far away – and from the side of the disciple it is true, because he is fast asleep. In his sleep, the master is a faraway star.

But the same is not the case from the side of the master. The master knows that you may be asleep but you are a buddha, you may be asleep but you are a God. The disciple may not know that he is a God, but the master knows it. The moment he knows himself to be divine, he knows the whole existence to be divine. From the master’s side, nobody is a disciple, all are masters. A few are asleep, a few are awake; the difference is only that much. From the side of the master, it is only a question of time: tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow, or who knows – even today you may become enlightened.

The potential is there. From the side of the seed, the flower is far away. But the flower knows that the seed contains flowers, infinite flowers. From the side of the flower, the seed is a friend.

And if you find a master who does not think in those terms, then remember, know well, he is not a master yet. If he thinks that you are sinners, if he thinks that you are fallen souls, then he is not a master yet; he has not come to realize his own reality.

Buddha is reported to have said, ”The day I became enlightened, the whole existence became enlightened for me – even trees, even rocks.”

Hakim Sanai says:

MY FRIEND, EVERYTHING EXISTING

EXISTS THROUGH HIM...

God is the only reality – or call it truth, or nature, or Tao, or whatsoever you will. Names don’t matter.

Don’t go on fighting about names; X-Y-Z, anything will do. Just remember one thing, that something is there, miraculously present, which surrounds all, which permeates all.

Sufis say: As the absolute maximum, God contains all things. In fact that is the definition of God: one who contains all. He is their enfolding and their unfolding. God is in the seed, God is in the flower – in the seed hidden, in the flower manifest. God is in the sinner and is in the saint – in the sinner asleep, in the saint awake. But all is God: God is equivalent to existence.

Christian mystics use two words: one is COMPLICATIO, it means enfolding. God is COMPLICATIO, enfolding, and EXPLICATIO, unfolding. These are the two movements of God: enfolding and manifesting. Each seed becomes the flower, and then in its own turn the flower becomes the seed, and the circle is complete.

Just as every night you fall asleep, and in the morning you are awake again, so is God – in nature asleep, in Buddhas awake. Just to understand it is a great liberation. Suddenly you have self-worth; suddenly you are no more a condemned being. Suddenly you are an essential part of existence; you are not accidental, you participate in God’s work in your own way. You need God, God needs you; you are not unneeded.

In this century, millions of people are feeling unneeded, because God has disappeared from their lives. And this is one of the most fundamental needs, to be needed. If you feel needed, you feel worthy. If you feel not needed, you feel worthless, you feel like dirt.

That’s why people get married, because a woman will be there who will need them. Husbands don’t like their wives to work, because then they are needed less, then they are worth less. Husbands like their wives to be constantly in need of them; that gives them worth, a feeling of importance.

The wife also in her own way makes the husband utterly dependent; without her he will not be able to exist. Even if she goes away for one day, the husband is at a loss. He cannot find a thing in his own house; he comes to know that without the wife it is impossible to exist. Then they both bring children into the world, and both are happy because the children need them immensely, absolutely.

That’s why people like children – they are helpless, they are dependent. But sooner or later, the children will go their own way. And this is one of the problems in the world: when children have gone their own way and they have settled with their own families, then old people, aged people, start feeling worthless – nobody needs them.

Now this is a psychological truth, that once a person starts feeling he is not needed, he starts committing suicide, psychological suicide. He dies then years earlier. When he is retired from his job he starts shrinking – now he is no longer needed. He was a boss and so many people were clamoring around him; he was doing something essential for the society. That job is gone. Now if he dies, it will not make any difference, the world will continue as it is.

Children become grown-up, they go to live their own lives, and the old people simply feel discarded.

They start dying slowly, shrinking. They were healthy when they were in their work, when they were needed they were healthy. But now suddenly something disappears; the earth underneath their feet disappears, they are no longer needed.

We make arbitrary needs. But the man who has the sense that ”God exists, and I am needed by God,” never feels worthless – never. To the last moment, to the last breath of his life, he is functioning, serving something higher than himself. He has a context bigger than himself; in that context, meaning arises.

Meaning is always in a certain context. A single word is meaningless; when it is arranged in a poem it has tremendous meaning: now it has a context. The color in a tube is meaningless; once it is spread on the canvas and becomes part of a picture that is bigger than it, it has a context, suddenly meaning arises.

It is reported that once a very rich man asked Pablo Picasso to make a portrait of him, Picasso said,

”It will be very costly.” The man was so rich, he said, ”Don’t bother about it. You need not even talk about the cost, money doesn’t matter. Make my portrait and whatsoever you demand, I will give.”

After six months the portrait was ready. The rich man came, but the price that was asked was fantastic: one million dollars, just for a small canvas and a few colors! The rich man said, ”Are you joking? Just for a few colors and a canvas?”

Picasso said, ”Then okay, you can take an empty canvas and a few tubes full of color and you can pay as much as you want.”

The rich man said, ”But that is not the same.”

Picasso aid, ”That’s what I am trying to point out to you. I have created a context, I have created a gestalt, a pattern. And nobody else can create it, hence the price. It is a Picasso painting: nobody else can do it the way I have done it, it has my signature on it. The harmony of the colors, the music of the colors, the poetry of the colors – that is the thing. I am not asking the price for the colors but for something that has become expressed through the colors.”

A real painting is not just the sum total of the colors, it is more – and that ”more” is the meaning.

A real life is not the sum total of what you do; unless there is something more to it, you live an inauthentic life. That ”more” is God. That poetry is God, that music is God, that surrounds you and floods you.

People come to me and ask, ”Where is God?” It is not a question of asking ”where”; God is a meaning, not a person. I cannot indicate, ”There – go there, and you will find him.” God has no address, God cannot be located, it is a meaning. You have to create meaning in your life, then God is. God has to be created.

And the beginning of creating God is to start becoming more and more sensitive to the existence that surrounds you. The trees, the rocks, the stars, the earth – you are surrounded by great poetry.

But you remain separate, hence you go on missing it.

MY FRIEND, EVERYTHING EXISTING

EXISTS THROUGH HIM;

YOUR OWN EXISTENCE IS A MERE PRETENSE.

If you live as separate, if you think, ”I am separate,” if you live as an ego, then your existence is a pretense. Then your existence will remain meaningless. Then you will never know the glory and the grandeur of life; you will never know the splendors that have always been available to you but you went on missing.

If you exist as a separate individual, you have created a wall around yourself, you have become an island. And no man is an island, we are parts of an infinite continent: that continent is God. We are parts of an ocean. The moment you recognize it, that we are parts of an ocean, your life starts having a context bigger than you, higher than you. In that context is the beginning of meaning – and meaning is God.

NO MORE NONSENSE! says Sanai. LOSE YOURSELF,

AND THE HELL OF YOUR HEART BECOMES A HEAVEN.

Just a single step is enough: lose yourself. Don’t exist as an ‘I’, don’t go on proclaiming yourself as an ego. Drop the ego, and suddenly, immediately, instantly, the hell of your life turns into a heaven.

Misery disappears.

Misery is a by-product of your separation. Bliss is the shadow of falling back into the unity: UNIO

MYSTICA. When again you start feeling like a wave in the ocean, misery cannot exist. What is misery? The fear of death. But you can die only if you are separate, you cannot die if you are not separate.

If the wave thinks, ”I am separate from the ocean,” it is going to die; it will remain afraid, trembling. If it knows it is part of the ocean it is not going to die. It will fall back into the source, it will come again; it will go, it will come, it will appear and disappear, but it cannot die.

Birth is appearance, death is disappearance. But neither is birth the beginning nor is death the end: the ocean continues. To have this oceanic feeling is meditation, is prayer.

LOSE YOURSELF, AND ANYTHING CAN BE ACCOMPLISHED.

Then the impossible is possible, because nothing is impossible for God. We have unnecessarily become too narrow, too tiny; we have become mundane. We have lost our own heritage, we are not aware of all the beauties that we contain and of all the potential that is intrinsically present in us.

YOUR SELFISHNESS IS AN UNTRAINED COLT.

Your selfishness is nothing but your unawareness, your lack of discipline. Create an inner discipline, a little training in awareness, and your selfishness will disappear, because your SELF will disappear.

And when there is no self left, then real Self with a capital S, the Supreme Self, arrives. You disappear as a wave, you appear as the ocean. That is liberation.

Recognize the self – the self which is not the ego, the self which has nothing of the ego in it. Hindu mystics have called it the ATMAN. Buddha has given it a totally different name, not only different but diametrically opposite: he has called it ANATTA, no-self.

The self is a no-self, because there is no ego in it. To be an ego is to fall from your reality – the original sin. The self is not the ego, absolutely not; it is not personal, either. It is misleading to speak of ”my self.” The self is universal. The moment you say ”my self” you have lost track of the universal and you have become small. Now you will feel suffocated; you have created the suffocation yourself.

The self, the real self, the supreme self, is beyond any person, identification, form, process, position.

But they all arise in it and dissolve in it – it is the ocean. The self is the space in which everything appears and disappears. That space has to be found within yourself. Don’t get identified with any content, otherwise the ego arises.

For example, there is sadness surrounding you. Immediately you become identified, you say, ”I am sad.” That is stupid, unintelligent, you are unaware, you don’t know what you are saying. You are not the sadness, you are the witness. Sadness is there, but you are separate from it: you are the knower of it.

Say, ”I am seeing that sadness surrounds me,” but don’t say, ”I am sad.” Anger is there, but don’t say, ”I am anger,” or ”I am angry.” Simply say, ”There is anger, I can see it is there.” Anger is the content of your consciousness, it is not the consciousness itself. Consciousness is the space, the witnessing space.

This is the revolution, if you forget the content and remember the consciousness. Two things are continuously happening in you: the content and consciousness. A thought passes through your mind and you become identified with it; you say, ”I am it.” If you are hungry, you say,’I am hungry.”

Please be a little more aware: say, ”I watch, I am a witness, that the body is feeling hungry.”

When you have eaten well and you feel satiated, don’t say, ”I am satiated.” Again, remember.

Because of our ignorance we have created a wrong kind of language too. We say, ”I am satiated.”

You were never hungry and you are never satiated. Hunger was a content, so is satiation. Sadness was a content, so is happiness.

This mindfulness Sufis call ZIKR, remembrance.

Buddha has called it ”mindfulness, right

awareness.”

Just go on cutting yourself off from the content. Slowly slowly, the bridge is broken. The day you recognize the fact that you are never the content but always the consciousness, you have arrived home.

The English word ‘contemplation’ is very beautiful; it comes from a root ‘tem’. ‘Tem’ means ‘to cut off’. From the same root comes ‘temple’; that too is beautiful. ‘Temple’ means that which cuts you off from the world, and ‘contemplation’ means the process of cutting yourself off from the mind, from the content. Identification is the fall: you become Adam, you are expelled. Through disidentification, cutting yourself off from the mind and its contents, you become Christ. You are no longer outgoing, the inner journey has started. Adam has turned towards the source, is returning home.

The self arises out of identification, self with a lower-case s arises out of identification. Self with a capital S arises out of disidentification. And this is the whole art of religion.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE:

HENCE YOUR LOVE AND HATES;

YOU ARE WHAT YOU ARE:

HENCE FAITH AND UNBELIEF.

Right now you are a duality: your consciousness and its content. You are divided into these two.

Hence in your whole life there is a dualism. You love the same person and you hate the same person, you believe and you disbelieve. And they go together – belief and disbelief, love and hate, anger and compassion, happiness and unhappiness, there are two sides of the same coin. Because YOU are double, each act of yours is going to be double, dual. And in that duality is misery, because in duality there is tension.

You are always torn apart. You love a woman, and you hate the same woman. Hence couples go on quarreling continuously. It is something to be understood. why do couples go on quarreling continuously? They love, certainly they love, but why do they hate? It remains a mystery if you don’t understand the duality of man. He is dual in everything. Unless you become disidentified from the mind, you will never become non-dual.

That’s why I say that only one who has arrived can love, and he can love without hate. His love will not have hate at all in it, his flame will be smokeless. Your flame cannot be smokeless, your love will have smoke – your love will remain poisoned with hate. Your belief is nothing but hidden disbelief; behind your belief there is always doubt. You say, ”I believe in God” – but just search a little bit more and you will see that there is doubt.

When one is pure consciousness, there is neither belief nor disbelief. That state is called trust: there is no doubt and there is no belief.

A man, a professor of philosophy, came to Sri Aurobindo and asked him, ”Do you believe in God?”

And Aurobindo said, ”No, not at all.”

The philosopher was very much puzzled and confused. He had come a long long way from a faraway place to see this man, thinking that he had KNOWN God. And here is this man, and he says, ”I don’t even BELIEVE in God.” The philosopher asked, ”What are you saying? You don’t believe in God?”

Aurobindo said, ”Yes – I cannot believe in God, because I know him.”

When you know, you know; there is no question of belief. Belief is out of ignorance, belief is because of doubt. If you ask me, I cannot say I believe in God; I know.

You don’t believe in the sun, you KNOW. Do you believe this is day? If somebody believes, that will only show that he is blind. A man who has eyes need not believe that this is day – this is day! Only a blind man can believe this is day.

When consciousness is not contaminated by any contents moving around you, when your inner space is pure – it is always pure, you just have to recognize the fact – suddenly all duality disappears.

And with duality, hell.

Hell is nothing but duality. Loving the same man and hating the same man is hell, believing in God and doubting God is hell. You are moving in diametrically opposite directions, you will fall apart. It is a miracle how you go on holding yourself together at all, why you don’t fall from the wall like Humpty Dumpty.

HOPE AND FEAR DRIVE FORTUNE FROM YOUR DOOR:

LOSE YOURSELF, AND THEY WILL BE NO MORE.

Sanai says: Hope and fear are two aspects of the same coin. If you hope, there will always be fear. Hope is out of fear, it is not against fear. You are hoping that tomorrow something is going to happen, something great for which you have always been hoping. Now, can you be without fear? It may happen, it may not happen; you may be able to make it, you may not be able to make it. It is always a question of to be or not to be, it is always ambiguous, and there is fear.

Buddha says: Drop hope. And the first time he said to a disciple, ”Drop hope,” the disciple was puzzled. He said, ”If I drop hope then all is lost! Because it is hope I live through and I live for.”

Buddha said, ”Don’t be worried – drop hope!” And you will be surprised, because the moment you drop hope, fear disappears. And when there is no fear and no hope, on is integrated; there is no division.

Division is hell. To become integrated is heaven – to become crystallized, to be one: one piece, one whole, one unity; not even a union but a unity. Remember, a union is not a unity, it is an arrangement: you have many selves and they have all arranged to live in a kind of coexistence, they have decided not to fight. This is a union – but the fight can break out at any moment.

Hindus and Mohammedans lived for so many years in Aligarh silently; that was a union. Then one day, anything, any nonsense, and the union is gone. Hindus and Mohammedans had lived so long in this country together; it was a union, and now it is gone. Now there are two countries, India and Pakistan. Then Pakistan was divided into two countries, Bangladesh and Pakistan.

These are all unions. A unity means all the small selves have disappeared and the Supreme Self has arrived. Now there is no possibility of ever becoming divided again.

AT HIS DOOR, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE

BETWEEN MOSLEM AND CHRISTIAN,

VIRTUOUS AND GUILTY?

AT HIS DOOR ALL ARE SEEKERS

AND HE THE SOUGHT.

Meditate over these beautiful words of Sanai. At his door nobody is a Christian or a Mohammedan or a Hindu or a Buddhist. At his door you are a lover and he the beloved. At his door you are the seeker and he is the sought. At his door you are the river and he is the ocean.

And when the Ganges disappears in e ocean, do you think the ocean receives the Ganges in a different way than it receives other rivers? The ocean does not even know the name – which is the Ganges and which is the Brahmaputra and which is the Volga and which is the Amazon. When the river disappears in the ocean it loses all name, all form.

That’s why I say again and again that a really religious person cannot be a Mohammedan and cannot be Hindu and cannot be Jaina and cannot be a Sikh. A really religious person is only a lover, a seeker. He cannot become identified with any church; he cannot have any adjective.

Mohammed is not a Mohammedan, cannot be. And Christ is not a Christian, cannot be. And Buddha is not a Buddhist, cannot be.

And I say to you: Don’t you be Hindus and Mohammedans and Christians and Buddhists, either. If you become a Buddhist you will never be a Buddha, remember, and if you become a Mohammedan you will never be a Mohammed. if you become a Christian you have missed an opportunity of being a Christ – and to be a Christ is beautiful and to be a Mohammed is a benediction. To be a Mohammedan, to be a Hindu, is just ugly; it is just political, and nothing else. It has nothing to do with religion.

Listen to this great Sufi, Sanai:

AT HIS DOOR, WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE

BETWEEN MOSLEM AND CHRISTIAN,

VIRTUOUS AND GUILTY?

He says: There is not even a difference between the sinner and the saint. At his door, differences disappear. Nobody is a sinner and nobody is a saint, and nobody is virtuous and nobody is guilty.

You will not reach to God as virtuous, because that is the ego. To feel that ”I am virtuous” is the subtlest ego – to feel about oneself, ”I know, because I have crammed the Vedas; I know, because I can recite the Koran.” If you try to reach God as knowledgeable, you will never reach him; his doors will remain closed for you. His doors can open only when you are innocent. When you are neither virtuous nor guilty, when you are neither knowledgeable nor ignorant, when you are neither a man nor a woman, neither white nor black – only then.

I have heard:

A negro knocked on the door of a church one night. In the day of course he was afraid: the church belonged to white people, they wouldn’t allow him to. But he knew the priest, he was a nice man: maybe at night, when nobody was looking, he might allow him in – he wanted to worship in the church.

The priest opened the door. He WAS a nice man – but to be a nice man is one thing, and to be a real man is totally different. All those nice formalities are just pseudo, phoney. He had been saying great things, but when this negro knocked on the door and he opened the door and the negro said,

”Would you please allow me to come in? I will not tell anybody, but I want to worship God,” the priest was puzzled: what to do? His mask was that of a nice man, very religious, saintly; because of the mask, he could not say no. But deep down, the reality was that he was as much a sectarian, a believer in color segregation, as anybody else. So his deeper core was not ready to allow the man to come in – the church would be polluted, poisoned.

So he found a strategy, a technique, to avoid the situation. He said, ”Yes, you can come in but first you have to become pure. I will give you a prayer: do this prayer, it takes years before one becomes pure. When you have become pure, come back, and if I see that you have become pure, I will allow you to come in.”

The poor man believed him. This was just a strategy to avoid the situation, so that the priest need not say yes or no. And this was a tricky thing. If he ever comes, you can always say, ”You have not become pure yet: go and do the prayer some more.”

The man was simple; he went away and prayed. For three weeks, day and night, he was praying.

Even when he was working he was praying and praying.

And by the third week, the priest saw him coming towards the church and he became very much afraid, because the man had such a beautiful aura. He was so full of light that the priest was dazzled.

He said, ”Now it is difficult – what am I going to say? He has done it. He is coming as the purest person I have ever seen. I am not that pure myself; this aura has not appeared around me either.

And this man is coming full of light, radiating light.”

And when the man came closer, the priest was trembling. ”Now if he asks, I cannot say no. But I HAVE to say no!”

But the man never came. He just came close to the church, laughed, and went away.

The priest was even more puzzled. He rushed after the man, caught hold of him, and said, ”What is the matter? You were coming to the church, were you not?”

He said, ”No!”

”Then why did you laugh?”

He said, ”I laughed because last night God appeared to me, and he said, ‘Man, why are you trying to get into that church? I don’t live there anymore! And believe me,’ he said, ‘that they will never allow you to come in – because they don’t even allow me!’”

Churches are empty, temples are empty, mosques are empty. God lives there no more.

GOD IS WITHOUT CAUSE:

WHY ARE YOU LOOKING FOR CAUSES?

THE SUN OF TRUTH RISES UNBIDDEN,

AND WITH IT SETS THE MOON OF LEARNING.

God is without cause: why are you looking for causes? And people go on asking, ”HOW can I attain to God? How can I cause God to happen to me?” God has no cause. He is already here: he does not have to be caused, he does not even have to be called forth. He was here before you ever existed and he will be here long after you are gone forever.

God IS. No asceticism is needed. He makes no conditions on you: ”First you must fast, then I will come.” That will be a wrong kind of God who wants you to suffer hunger for many many days, only then will he come. That will be a sadistic God who wants to torture people: ”First stand naked in the hot sun for years and years, only then will I come.”

No mother behaves like that with her child. No mother asks the child to remain hungry for many days, only then will she give her love to me child.

God is the matrix, the mater, the mother. God is the mother out of which we all arise and into which we all disappear. God is love! How can he ask for the stupid things that ascetics have been doing down the ages!

Sufism is not ascetic. God wants you to celebrate. Look at these trees, how green they are and how juicy. Look at his roses, how red they are an dhow alive. Look at his birds on the wing, look at his stars – the whole existence is a dance, the whole existence is a constant celebration. Why should he ask you to become long faces, sad, shrunken? Do you think he wants you to become ugly – to torture yourself, to be violent with yourself, then you will be able to cause him, then you will be able to provoke him? He makes no conditions, remember. His love is unconditional. He has loved you already, that’s why he has created you. Now it is not a question of causing him; he has caused you.

Then what has to be done?

THE SUN OF TRUTH RISES UNBIDDEN...

You need not call him, you need not provoke him, you need not even prepare for him. All that is needed is that you become disidentified from something that you are not. Whenever you are your reality, your natural reality, God is – because that nature is God. And the moment you are disidentified from all the rubbish of the mind, the moon of learning sets and the sun of wisdom rises in you.

Uncalled, uncaused, he comes of his own accord. God is a happening, it is not something that you have to do. You have to allow it, that’s all. You have to become available, open – and he starts descending, he starts rising, he surrounds you from all nooks and corners, he overfloods you and he starts overflowing from you.

This is my experience, this can be your experience too. Sanai is speaking out of his experience; these are not the words of a philosopher, these are the pregnant messages of a mystic.

IN THIS HALT OF BUT A WEEK,

TO BE IS NOT TO BE,

AND TO COME IS TO GO.

Don’t become too attached to things here, because it is only a question of a week. Whether seven days or seventy years, it doesn’t matter: soon you will be gone, and all that you have accumulated will be lost. You come empty-handed, you will go empty-handed. Can’t you live empty-handed? If you can live empty-handed, God is all yours.

And by living empty-handed I don’t mean that you have to go to the Himalayas. It is only an awareness. You live as you live, you just change the attitude. I am not saying renounce the world; it is HIS world – if you renounce it, it is insulting to God. I am not saying renounce your family; it is HIS family – if you renounce it, you are behaving badly towards God.

Then what has to be done? Live in the world and yet not be part of it. Remain empty inside, continuously remembering that your consciousness is a pure mirror. In that awareness, God happens. God is a happening.

AND DOES THE SUN EXIST

FOR THE COCK TO CROW AT?

WHAT IS IT TO HIM

WHETHER YOU ARE THERE OR NOT?

MANY HAVE COME, JUST LIKE YOU,

TO HIS DOOR.

And don’t brag about your religiousness. Don’t brag about your disciplines, don’t brag that you have done this for God and that for God. Love never brags, love does things for the sheer joy of it. You do whatsoever is natural to you, for the sheer joy of it. If you want to paint, paint; if you want to sing, sing; if you want to sculpt, sculpt. Whatsoever you feel like doing, do – but remember, you are not the doer, he is the doer. Let him take possession of you.

You disappear. Let him act through you, and then each act becomes so beautiful, so incredibly beautiful, that you cannot imagine. Then whatsoever you do is holy.

YOU WON’T FIND YOUR WAY

IN THIS STREET; IF THERE IS A WAY,

IT IS ON YOU ROAD OF SIGHS.

ALL OF YOU ARE FAR

FROM THE ROAD OF DEVOTION:

SOMETIMES YOU ARE VIRTUOUS,

SOMETIMES YOU ARE WICKED:

SO YOU HOPE FOR YOURSELVES, FEAR FOR YOURSELVES;

BUT WHEN YOUR MASK OF WISDOM AND FOLLY

AT LAST TURNS WHITE, YOU WILL SEE

THAT HOPE AND FEAR ARE ONE.

You won’t find your way in this street. What street? The street of duality: the street of hope and fear, the street of love and hate, the street of darkness and light, the street of the Hindu and the Mohammedan. You will not find God on this street; he does not exist in duality. He is prior to duality, he is before the bifurcation happens. Then where will you find him?

... IF THERE IS A WAY, says Sanai,

IT IS ON YOUR ROAD OF SIGHS.

Tears. Tears of love, sighs of the heart. It is not on the street of the head but on the street of the heart. Sufism proposes a heart-wakefulness: become loving and aware in your heart. Sufism is the path of love.

ALL OF YOU ARE FAR

FROM THE ROAD OF DEVOTION...

Buddhism is the path of meditation, Zen is meditation. Sufism is the path of love, Sufism is love.

And there are only two ways to reach him: either through meditation or through love. And they both meet at the peak, they both become one at the peak. If you attain to one, the other is attained just as part of it; it is only a question of emphasis.

If you become meditative you will be surprised: after meditation, love comes of its own accord. If you love, you will be surprised again: meditation comes just as a shadow behind it.

Love is the heart of meditation, meditation is the heart of love. They are together, two names for the same phenomenon. The approaches are different, but the same peak, the same climax, is attained.

A few people will find it easy to follow the path of meditation – in fact fifty percent of people in the world will find it easy to follow the path of meditation: Zen is their way. And fifty percent will find love closer to their being: Sufism is their way.

In a real world, an intelligent world, there will be only two paths, Sufism and Zen, and all else will disappear. All else is futile. Why two? Because there are men and there are women. And remember, by ”men” I don’t mean biological men, because there are women who are psychologically men, and there are men who are psychologically women. I mean psychological men and women. There are men who are more capable of love than any woman, but they are few. There are a few women who are more capable of meditation than any man, but they are few. The majority of women will have to follow Sufism, and the majority of men will have to follow Zen. But biologically it cannot be determined; it is a totally different affair. You have to watch yourself: whichever feels good for you, whichever feels natural, spontaneous, that is your path.

Sanai has the heart of a woman. All Sufis have the heart of a woman.

ALL OF YOU ARE FAR

FROM THE ROAD OF DEVOTION:

SOMETIMES YOU ARE VIRTUOUS,

SOMETIMES YOU ARE WICKED...

But never devoted. Neither is virtue going to help, nor is your wickedness going to help; that keeps you divided.

I have heard:

A man was about to make his first parachute jump and was very nervous. The instructor tried to reassure him that nothing could happen because first the parachute would open by itself; and if by some remote possibility it didn’t, then there was a backup parachute he could pull the string on; and thirdly if both didn’t work he was to call out the name of the Devil three times.

To make the story short, he jumped and the first parachute failed to open, then the second failed to respond, and in desperation he yelled out ”Devil” three times and sure enough a giant hand appeared under him and gently carried him to earth and placed him on the ground. He fell to his knees and in prayer position cried out, ”Thank God!”

Whereupon the giant hand reached over and crushed him to death.

God or the Devil, it is again the same duality, and the duality is going to crush you. Virtue or wickedness, it is the same duality, and the duality is going to crush you.

God is not your God, because your God is something against the Devil. God is something beyond your God and Devil: God is transcendental, God is a transcendence. This transcendence is possible, easily possible; it is not arduous either. Let me remind you again: just change your gestalt from the contents to the consciousness, from the mind to the space in which the mind exists.

There are clouds in the sky: you can see the clouds, then you forget the sky. Change your gestalt: see the sky and forget the clouds. That brings transformation.

The sky is your consciousness, and your thoughts, your desires, are nothing but clouds; they come and go. They don’t touch your sky at all, your sky remains virgin. You are pure from eternity, and you will remain pure to eternity. Purity is your nature. To recognize this, to realize this, is to become enlightened.

And keep the fire of discontent burning. Unless you have become enlightened, don’t leave any stone unturned. You have to become that which you are, because only then is there bliss and only then is there freedom and only then is there benediction.

CHAPTER 2

Defeating Buddha

12 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

BELOVED MASTER, WHAT AM I LOOKING FOR?

Deva Parmita, man is a search for the self – not for A self but for THE self. Man is constantly seeking the lost paradise: somewhere deep in the recesses of human beings, the nostalgia persists. We have known something that is only a far faraway memory, The memory is not even conscious; we have lost all track of it, where it is. But the fragrance goes on arising.

Hence religion is not an accidental phenomenon. It is not going to disappear from the world; no communism, no fascism can make it disappear. Religion is going to remain, because it is very essential. Unless a man surpasses humanity, unless a man becomes a Buddha, religion remains relevant. Only for a Buddha is religion irrelevant. He has arrived: now there is no need for any search.

Parmita, there are not different searches for different human beings. The search is singular, it is one, it is universal. The search is for the self, the supreme self. One wants to know, ”Who am I?” because everything else is secondary. Without knowing oneself, whatsoever one is doing is pointless. Unless I know exactly who I am, my whole life is going to remain futile. It will not bring fruition, it will not bring flowering, it will not bring fulfillment.

The first step has to be that of self-knowledge. But the paradox is that if you start searching for A self you will miss THE self. By ”a self” I mean the ego, the process of egoing. That is a false self: because we cannot find the true, we start creating the false, just to console ourselves. It is a substitute. But the substitute can never become the truth, and the substitute becomes a bondage.

Truth liberates. Substitutes for truth create prisons. The ego is the greatest prison that man has yet invented; you are all feeling suffocated, crushed. It is not that somebody else is doing it to you: you are the doer of it. You have taken a wrong step. Rather than searching for that which is, you have started substituting something for it – a toy, a pseudo thing. It may console you, but it cannot bring celebration to your life. And all consolation is suicidal, because while you remain consoled, time goes on slipping out of your hands.

THE self is not A self. The self is exactly a no-self: there is no idea of ‘I’ in it, it is universal. All ideas arise in it, but it cannot be identified with any idea that arises in it. All ideas arise in it, all ideas dissolve in it. It is the sky, the context of all contexts, it is the space in which everything happens.

But the space itself never happens – it abides, it is always there, and because it is always there, it is easy to miss it. Because it is so much there and always there, you never become aware of its presence.

It is like the air: you don’t become aware of its presence. It is like the ocean that surrounds the fish: the fish never becomes aware of it. It is like the pressure of the air: the pressure is so much, it has always been there, but you are not aware of it. It is like gravitation: it is so much, but you are not aware of it. It is like the earth rushing with great speed round and round the sun: the earth is a spaceship, but nobody is aware of it. We are aboard a spaceship, and it is going at a great speed.

Still we are not aware of it.

Awareness needs some gaps. When there are no gaps you fall asleep; you cannot remain aware.

If one has always been healthy, one will not be aware of health. Awareness needs gaps – sometimes you should not be healthy. You should fall ill, then you can have a sense of health. If there was no darkness in the world and there was only light, nobody would have ever known light; people would have missed it.

That’s how we go on missing the original self – you can call it God or nirvana, it doesn’t matter.

Sufis have two beautiful words. One is FANA: FANA means dissolving the ego, dissolving the false substitute. And the other word is BAQA: BAQA means the arrival, the arising, of the real self.

The real self is universal. How to find it? It is not far away, so you are not to make a long journey to it. It is so close that no journey is needed at all. It is within you. Rather than journeying, you will have to learn how to sit silently.

That’s what meditation is all about – just sitting silently doing nothing. Thoughts arise: you watch.

Desires arise: you watch. But you remain the watcher. You don’t become a victim of the desires and the thoughts that are arising; you remain a watcher. You remain the context of all contexts, you remain the space before which everything appears. But the space never appears before itself – it cannot, it is impossible.

The mirror cannot mirror itself, the eyes cannot see themselves. I cannot catch hold of my hand with the same hand; it is impossible.

This is the most fundamental thing to remember, Parmita. You are the watcher and never the watched, you are the observer and never the observed, you are the witness and never the witnessed.

You are pure subjectivity. You never appear as an object – how can you appear as an object in front of yourself? Whatsoever appears in front of you is not you.

Go on eliminating the contents. Go on saying, ”NETI NETI, I am not this, I am not this.” Go on eliminating, and a moment comes when there is nothing left to eliminate. There is pure silence: no content moves in front of you, the mirror reflects nothing. That is the moment when self-knowing arises in you. You become illumined, you are enlightened.

So these few fundamentals are to be remembered: the self is a no-self. The self is not personal, it is universal. The self is the space or context in which all ”positionality” in life appears, occurs, arises.

It is the screen of life, but the screen itself never appears on the screen, it cannot. Everything else appears on it, it itself remains hidden. It is pure subjectivity.

This pure subjectivity is the ultimate goal everybody is searching for. But it seems difficult. We are so prone to become identified with the contents. So rather than searching for the real, we create something unreal, which is easy. The artificial is always easy, you can manufacture it.

Your ego is a manufactured phenomenon. And once you have manufactured the ego... How is the ego manufactured? ”I am a Hindu”: now you are on the way to creating an ego. ”I am beautiful, I am intelligent, I am this, I am that” – you are bringing more and more bricks to make the prison called ego.

And this is what we go on doing in our whole life. Earn more money, have a bigger bank balance, and your ego will feel more grounded, more supported, more secure. Become famous: the more people know about you, the more you will think you are.

Hence the constant search for attention. If nobody pays any attention to you, you are reduced to nothing. If you move on the street and nobody says hello, people go on passing by, not even taking any note of you, suddenly you start feeling the earth disappearing underneath your feet.

What has happened? They are not feeding your ego. But people feed each other’s egos, because that’s how THEY can be fed. Somebody says, ”How are you?” He is really saying, ”Ask ME, ‘How are you?’” He is simply asking for mutual gratification. And people do gratify each other; we support each other’s egos: somebody praises you, you praise him in return.

That’s what we call society. It depends on mutual satisfactions, and the greatest satisfaction seems to be ego-gratification.

Hence people are interested so much in politics, because politics can gratify you as nothing else can. If you become politically powerful the whole country is in your grip; the whole country has to pay attention to you. You can impose your will on people, you have power.

The power of a politician is the power of violence. Now he controls the whole mechanism of violence: he controls the police, the government, the military, he controls everything. He can impose his will on you. That’s why politicians tend to become violent sooner or later. Politicians hanker deep down for wars, because it is only in war that a politician becomes a GREAT politician. If you go through history you will see the point.

Winston Churchill would not have been such a great leader if there had been no second world war.

Neither would Adolf Hitler have been such a power if there had been no second world war, not would Mussolini. The war created the context: they were able to be as violent as possible. They were able to butcher people, to murder people, in millions.

People immediately pay attention when you are violent. If you live a peaceful life, no newspaper is going to report about you in your whole life. But if you kill somebody or you commit suicide, you will be immediately in the newspapers.

Just a few days ago, Reverend Jones committed suicide with all of his nine hundred disciples. You had never heard about this poor man before, nobody knew that there was anybody like that. Now the whole world knows.

They had lived in that commune for many years, but nobody would take any note of them. It is possible that had you taken note of them, they might not have needed to go to such an extreme, they might not have committed suicide. This is his way of making the whole world feel his presence

– this is a very pathological way, ugly, but this is the same phenomenon again. People are searching for the ego: if they cannot find it through being creative, they will find it through being destructive. If they cannot find it by being a great saint, they will find it by being a great sinner.

Somebody asked George Bernard Shaw, ”Where would you like to go when you die – to heaven or to hell?” He said, ”It all depends.”

The man said, ”What do you mean, ‘It all depends’?”

He said, ”If I am going to be the first in heaven, then to heaven. If I am going to be second there, no.

Then it is better to be in hell but be first.”

He is joking, but he is telling a truth – a truth about you, a truth about the whole humanity, the way it lives through ambition, through egoing.

Remember, the real self has nothing to do with anybody else paying attention to you. Note the difference: the false self needs others’ attention to be paid to you, and the real self only needs your attention – just your attention, and that’s enough.

If you turn your attention inwards, you will know the real self. If you go on seeking others’ attention, you will continuously live in a false entity which is always ready to disappear if you don’t feed it continuously. It has to be supported.

The ego is not an entity. It is not a noun, it is a verb. That’s why I am saying it is egoing. You cannot remain satisfied with any attention paid to you, you have to ask and hanker for more. You have to go on egoing; it is only through egoing that the ego can exist. It is a process – and it is so false and its demands are so ugly! It is a lie. It demands more and more lies from you, and to gratify it you have to become utterly false. You have to become a personality.

A personality means a false phenomenon, a mask. You have to become an actor; you are no longer a real person, you are no longer authentic. You don’t have any substance, you are just a shadow.

And because of this shadow there is always fear of death, because any moment this shadow can disappear.

Your bank can go bankrupt, and immediately you are gone, you are nobody. Your power can be lost, because there are other competitors pushing you. This whole life is a constant pushing and pulling, hence there is so much agony.

Do you know the root of the word agony? It comes from ‘ag’: ag means pushing. You are continuously being pushed, and in your turn you are pushing others; that creates agony.

The whole world lives in anguish and agony. Only the person who comes to know his real self goes beyond it and enters into the world of ecstasy. And there are the two states: agony and ecstasy.

Parmita, you are in agony, as everybody else is. And the search is for ecstasy. Remember always, your commitments, your ideologies, your so-called ultimate values, your theologies, philosophies and religions provide contexts, often valuable contexts, for individual existence. But they are not what you are.

You are not even your body. You are not your mind. You are neither black nor white, you are neither Indian nor German. You cannot be defined in any way, all definitions will fall short. You are indefinable; you are something that surpasses all definitions. You are the vast sky in which planets appear and earths appear, and sun and moon and stars – and they all disappear, and the sky remains as it has remained always. The sky knows no change. You are that unchanging sky.

Clouds come and go, you are always here.

When Raman Maharshi was dying, somebody asked, ”Bhagwan, soon you will be leaving your body; where will you go?” He opened his eyes, laughed and said, ”Where can I go? I have been here, I will be here. Where can I go – WHERE? There is nowhere to go. I am everywhere: I have been here and I will remain here for ever and ever.”

He is saying that he has come to know his being as the sky; he is no longer a cloud.

If you really want to search for the real self, don’t get attached to any commitment, to any program, to any idea. Remain unattached, flexible, fluid; don’t become stagnant. Always remain in a state of unfrozenness; don’t freeze. The moment you freeze, you have something ale in our hands; a cloud has arisen. Remain in a state of meltedness, don’t become committed to any form or name. And then something tremendous starts happening to you: for the first time you start feeling who you are.

The feeling does not come from the outside, it arises from the inner depths of your being. It floods you. It is light, utter light, it is bliss, utter bliss. It is divine. It is another name for God.

Never become crystallized; if you become crystallized in something, you are encaged. Remain free, remain freedom. All identity creates fixation; and every fixation, every identification, is a liability. The more fixed one’s identity, the less the experience of which one is capable. The point is not to lack a position, but not to be positional.

I am not saying to become unthinking. Remain intelligent, capable of thinking, but never get identified with any thought. Use the thought as a tool, as an instrument; remember that you are the master.

Not to be attached to whatever position one has at any particular moment is the beginning of self-knowledge. One IS, one experiences aliveness, to the extent to which one can transcend particular positions and can assume other viewpoints.

That’s what I mean by remaining fluid, flowing. One should remain available to the present. Die to the past each moment, so that nothing about you remains fixed. Don’t carry a character around yourself; all characters are armors, imprisonments.

The real man of character is characterless – you will be surprised by this. The real man of character is characterless: he has consciousness, but he has no character. He lives moment to moment.

Responsible he is, but he responds out of the moment, not out of past contexts. He carries no ready-made programs in his being. The more you have ready-made programs, the more you are an ego. When you have none – no programs, nothing ready-made in you – when each moment you are as fresh as if you are born anew, to me that is freedom. And only a free consciousness can know the true self.

This is the search, Parmita. Nothing else will ever satisfy, nothing else can ever satisfy. All are consolations – and it is better to drop them, it is better to become aware that consolations are not going to help.

This is what I call sannyas: dropping consolations, renouncing consolations – not the world but consolations – renouncing all that is false, becoming true, becoming simple, natural, spontaneous.

That’s my vision of a sannyasin, the vision of total freedom.

And in those beautiful moments of total freedom, the first rays of light enter you, the first glimpses of who you are. And the grandeur of it is such, and the splendor of it is such, that you will be surprised to find that you have been carrying the kingdom of God within you and you have remained so unaware, and for so long. You will be surprised that it was possible not to know such a treasure.

Such an inexhaustible treasure is within you.

Jesus goes on repeating again and again, ”The kingdom of God is within you.” Call it the kingdom of God or the supreme self or nirvana or whatever you will, that is our search – everyone’s, not only of human beings but of all beings. Even trees are growing towards it, even birds are searching for it, even rivers are rushing towards it. The whole existence is an adventure.

And that is the beauty of this existence. If it was not an adventure, life would be absolute boredom.

Life is a celebration because it is an adventure.

The second question:

Question 2

HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY TO FALL IN THE GRACE OF YOUR LOVE IN THESE TIMES OF

SUCH CONFUSION IN THE WORLD?

Prem Debal, the times of confusion and chaos are the greatest times to live in. When the society is static there is not much to live for, to live with. When a society is secure and there is no confusion and there is no chaos, then people live a dull, drab, dragging life – comfortable, convenient, stable, but not alive.

It is only in the times of chaos and confusion that great things happen, because people are loose.

They are loose, uprooted: they can search for new soils, they can search for new lands, they can search for new countries, they can search for new continents of being.

This is one of the greatest moments in the history of human consciousness. It has never been so; this is a crescendo.

Buddha said – and he seems to have detected it richly – that after each twenty-five centuries there comes a moment of great turmoil and chaos. And that is the time when the greatest number of people become enlightened.

Now twenty-five centuries have passed since Buddha. Again you are coming closer and closer to a moment where the past will lose all meaning. When the past loses ll meaning, you are free, you are untethered from the past: you can use this freedom to grow tremendously, to grow to undreamed-of heights.

But you can destroy yourself too. If you are not intelligent, the confusion, the chaos, will destroy you.

Millions will be destroyed – because of their unintelligence, not because of the chaos. They will be destroyed because they will not be able to find a secure and comfortable and convenient life, as was possible in the past. They will not be able to find where they belong. They will have to live from their own sources; they will have to be individuals, they will have to be rebels.

The society is disappearing, the family is disappearing; now it is very difficult. Unless you are capable of being an individual it is going to be difficult to live. Only individuals will survive.

Now people who have become too accustomed to slavery, accustomed to being commanded, accustomed to being ordered by somebody else – people who have become too much accustomed to father-figures – they will be in a state of insanity. But that is their fault, it is not the fault of the times. The times are beautiful, because the times of chaos are the times of revolution.

It is possible now to get out of the wheel of life and death more easily than it has been possible for twenty-five centuries since Buddha. In Buddha’s time, many people became enlightened; the society was in a turmoil. Again it is happening. Great times are ahead – prepare for them.

And that’s what I am trying to do here. Orthodox people cannot understand what is happening here; they have no eyes to see it and no heart to feel it. They only have old rotten values, and they go on judging me according to hose values. Those values are out of date. I am creating new people, I am creating new values, I am creating a new future. They live in the past; they cannot understand the future that I am trying to bring here to the earth.

My sannyasins don’t belong to the past, they don’t represent any tradition. They belong to the future: they belong to something that is going to happen and has not yet happened. Hence there are no criteria – they cannot be judged easily, and they will be misunderstood.

I am going to be misunderstood, because people have their values, and those values come from the past. And I am trying to create a space for the future to happen.

You say: HOW DID I GET SO LUCKY TO FALL IN THE GRACE OF YOUR LOVE IN THESE TIMES

OF SUCH CONFUSION IN THE WORLD?

It is not a question of luck, it is a question of intelligence. That is the only luck in the world –

intelligence. And remember, everybody is born with intelligence but people don’t use it, because to be intelligent is to live in danger.

The intelligent child will be a constant pain in the neck for the parents; they try to crush his intelligence. Nobody wants an intelligence child, because he creates suspicions in you, he creates doubts in you. An intelligent child asks questions you cannot answer. An intelligent child is a problem for the teachers in the school, in the college, in the university.

An intelligent person will always remain a problem, wherever he is. So the society tries in every way to destroy your intelligence.

I have heard:

The teacher told the students that they were going to play a game.

”I’ve got something behind my back and I’m going to describe it and you guess what it is,” she said.

”I’m holding something round and red. Can someone guess?”

”An apple?” little Herbie said.

”No,” said the teacher, ”but it shows you were thinking. It’s a cherry. Now I’m holding something round and orange. Can you tell me what it is?”

”An orange?” little Herbie said.

”No,” said the teacher, ”but it shows you were thinking. It’s a peach.”

Herbie raised his hand. ”Teacher, can I play the game too?”

The teacher said, yes, and Herbie went to the back of the room, faced the rear and said, ”Teacher, I’m holding something about two inches long with a red tip.”

The teacher said, ”Herbie!”

”No,” said little Herbie, ”but it shows you were thinking. It’s a match.”

Now, these intelligent children cannot be allowed to live!

Nobody likes an intelligent person.

Hence people start playing unintelligent roles in life, because an unintelligent person is accepted everywhere. That’s why millions of people have become mediocre. Nobody is born mediocre, let me remind you. God gives intelligence to everybody; just as he gives life to everybody, he gives intelligence. Intelligence is an intrinsic part of life.

Have you ever seen an unintelligent animal?

Have you ever seen an unintelligent bird, an

unintelligent tree? Every tree is intelligent enough to find the source of water to send out roots.

And you will be surprised, scientists are very much surprised, at how trees find places.

When a tree starts sending out its roots, sometimes it sends them hundreds of feet away in a particular direction to where water is. Now, how does it find it? The water is a hundred feet away towards the north: it does not send its roots towards the south, it sends its roots towards the north

– a hundred feet away! and not only to natural water sources – sometimes it sends its roots to the pipes, corporation pipes, hundreds of feet away; it detects them. It takes YEARS for it to send out those roots. It lives, in its own way, an intelligent life.

If there is too much competition, trees grow higher; they have to. That’s why in the jungles of Africa, trees grow very high. The same trees in India won’t grow that high; there is no need, the competition is not so much. In thick forests if the tree remains small it will die; it will be in the shadow of other trees. It has to reach the sun: it goes on and on moving upwards.

Trees are intelligent in their own way, birds are intelligent in their own way, animals are intelligent in their own way. And so is man.

You will find the mediocre and the stupid only in human beings. I have never come across a stupid dog – I have tried – but there are millions of stupid human beings. What has happened to human beings? Intelligence is not allowed.

The whole society and the pattern of the society is against intelligence; it supports mediocre people.

Everybody is happy with a mediocre person, because whenever you are around a mediocre person he is never a problem; he is always ready to be obedient, and he always gives you a feeling that you are superior.

If people live intelligently, everybody will be lucky. If you are not lucky, it is not that God has been unfair to you, it is only because you have compromised with the society.

Debal, you could come to me because you have been courageous enough to use your intelligence.

It is not a question of luck, it is only a question of guts, courage. And these days are really beautiful, fantastic. Use these days, these times: you can soar high, higher than has ever been possible before.

Millions of people are in the situation now where enlightenment can happen. We can defeat Buddha for the first time. The times are very favorable, because there is so much chaos and so much confusion, and all the old ideologies are dead and dying of their own accord. Man is becoming free, coming out of his shell.

The third question:

Question 3

BELOVED MASTER, I HAVE BEEN TO MANY GURUS BUT I HAVE NOT CHANGED A BIT. WHY?

To expect that just by being to many gurus you will be transformed is foolish. Nobody can transform you. The very idea, the very expectation that somebody else is going to transform you, keeps you unintelligent. When are you going to declare the mastery of your own being? When are you going to take the reins in your own hands? When are you going to say, ”I will now live according to myself”?

And those so-called gurus you have been to will make you more and more mediocre and stupid.

They want you obedience – and only stupid people can be obedient. They will not help you to become more intelligent.

It is very rare to find a master. Out of a hundred, ninety-nine are bogus, and the one who is not bogus will demand so much from you. First he will demand intelligence – and you have completely forgotten that you have that t all in the first place. He will demand awareness.

The false gurus, the false so-called masters, provide you with better sleeping-pills. They provide you with psychological strategies to remain comfortably asleep, they give you lullabies, so that you can live a drugged life. Their methods are nothing but psychological tranquilizers, non-medicinal tranquilizers. So for a few days you feel god, you repeat a certain mantra and you feel good, and then you become fed up and you start seeing the point that it is not leading you anywhere. Then you go to another guru, he gives you some other method, for a few days again the honeymoon, and then that disappears.

But one thing you should be thankful for: it is because of all those gurus that you have come here.

And now you cannot goof off; it is impossible.

I don’t give you any lullaby, I will give you electric shocks – because that is the only way you can come out of your drugged state.

Two drunks were sitting in a bar, thinking of things to do to pass the time.

”Let’s play television,” said one.

”Okay,” said the other. ”How?”

”I make believe I’m a great big TV star and you guess who I am.”

”All right,” said the first. ”I’m five-foot-four, got blonde hair, blue eyes, I’m 38-24-36 and I’m beautiful.”

The second drunk stared at him for a moment. ”Never mind who you are,” he said, ”Kish me.”

This is your state. You have to be shocked, you have to be brought to consciousness. Hence I don’t provide you with any consolations – you would like them, you would love them.

So those who come here for consolations can have no understanding of what is happening here.

And you can go and on, from one school to another school, from one guru to another guru; that is not going to change you at all. It is not a question of traveling from one place to another place; you will remain that which you are. Only if you are shocked, only if somebody is there who can destroy you, who can destroy you as you are, only then will your real being come out. The unreal has become a thick foliage around you.

A Hindu can become a Christian; nothing will change. Instead of Krishna he will start torturing Christ, that’s all. A Jew can become a Hindu; that will not help either. You go on changing your masks, your garments, but the change is needed somewhere deep in your being – not on the periphery but at the core.

Morgenstern lived in difficult times. Life was hard, especially if you were a Jew. So he decided to become a Roman Catholic and was baptized.

The first time he went to confession, he stole the parish priest’s gold watch! But he was honest, and so he immediately confessed:

”Father, I have stolen an expensive watch and now I feel very guilty about it. I confess that what I did was immoral and totally wrong. Please, Father, may I give you the watch?”

The priest was surprised but shook his head. ”No, I couldn’t possibly accept it.”

Morgenstern insisted. ”Please, Father, I feel so guilty, won’t you please accept the watch as a sign of my repentance?”

”That isn’t possible, my son,” said the priest, moved by Morgenstern’s deep sincerity. ”You must return the watch to its original owner.”

”Ahh!” said Morgenstern with a deep sigh. ”I’ve tried, Father, I swear I’ve tried, but I’m afraid the good man doesn’t want it.”

”In that case, my son,” said the priest, ”I see nothing wrong with your keeping the watch, and since you’ve now confessed, there’s no need at all anymore for you to feel guilty!”

You see the Jewish mind?

You can go on changing your religion, you can go on changing your philosophy – these are really ways to avoid the real change. The real change has to happen deep down in you. You are unconscious, and the only change that is going to help is to become conscious. You are living mechanically: the only thing that can help is to live life non-mechanically. De-automatize yourself, de-hypnotize yourself.

The society has hypnotized you. The society has dulled your senses, it has poisoned you. It wants skillful efficient machines; it does not want men. It has reduced you to a machine. You are a good clerk or a good soldier or a good stationmaster or a good deputy collector – it has reduced you to something which has a utility. It has made you a commodity. It does not want your intelligence, your awareness. You will have to rebel against it.

And the gurus you have been to are nothing but agents of the same society. Hence the society respects them, hence the society supports them.

I cannot be supported by the society. It is a sheer miracle that I am existing, it is very illogical. I should not be here at all. The society does not support me, it cannot support me. In every possible way it will create – it IS creating – hindrances for my work.

Just the other day I was reading in the newspapers, one man has suggested to the government that I should be expelled from India. He must be a very religious man, because he says I am destroying religion. And he is not satisfied with just my expulsion – he then suggests my tongue should be cut out, so that I cannot speak; and my hands should also be cut off, so that I cannot write. And he thinks he is a religious man.

But that’s what people have always done. They crucified Jesus, and they were thinking they were doing something very religious. They murdered the great Sufi master, al-Hillaj Mansoor, in exactly the same way. This man who has suggested this to the government may have been part of the crowd who killed Mansoor, because this was the way: his hands were cut off, his tongue was cut out, then his head was cut off. It seems the society goes on perpetuating its old stupidities. And he is thinking that he is suggesting this to protect religion, that religion is in danger – because of me, religion is in danger.

Religion is not in danger because of me, but pseudo-religion certainly is in danger. And the society needs pseudo-religions so that the real religion can be avoided, because real religion always creates trouble.

A Buddha, a Jesus, a Mansoor, a Sanai – whenever these people walk on the earth they create fire, they create revolution. They start transforming people, transforming their unconsciousness into consciousness. And then there is trouble.

It happens every day here: a couple comes here, and within seven days they have separated. Now, what has happened? And they had lived for twenty years together! For twenty years they were compromising and compromising and compromising. For twenty years they were suffering; they were miserable together. But they were carrying on somehow in a state of unconsciousness.

The moment they are here, they start meditating. They go into a few therapy groups, and they become alert and they say, what have they been doing? The man comes to see that he has never loved this woman, he has been deceiving – he has been deceiving the woman, he has been deceiving himself. The woman comes to see that she has never loved this man; this man seems to be a stranger, she does not know who he is. And why have they been living together and torturing each other? Suddenly they are awake and the marriage has gone to the dogs.

People will be afraid of such a place: their marriage may disappear, their old ways of living may be shattered. It is ultimately good that something wrong falls down and disappears, but in the beginning it is painful. Twenty years you have lived with a woman: it is difficult to unclinch yourself, it is painful, it is agony.

But if you don’t stop a false relationship, you will never be in any true relationship in your life. And a true relationship is a mirror: it helps you to see your face, who you are. But only a true relationship is a mirror. A false relationship is a stone wall; you cannot be mirrored in it, it is utterly futile.

Parents are afraid; they don’t want their children to come here, because I will teach them to be themselves. And if the child wants to be a musician, I will say, ”Become a musician, even if you remain a beggar.” And the parents wanted him to become a doctor or an engineer – now there is going to be trouble.

The child, if he becomes an engineer, will have much money, prestige, power, but he will miss his soul. He will never come to know any joy in his life; he will know misery, he will never know any rejoicing. But the parents are more interested in money and power and prestige. That’s what has been told to them by their parents; this is their tradition.

Each generation goes on corrupting the new generation. Each generation goes on loading the new generation with its own diseases, illnesses and pathologies.

If you come here, I am going to unburden you of all your pathologies. And they may be very traditional and very long-respected, and your parents may have carried them for thousands of years, but I will teach you to drop all that nonsense, all that rubbish, and simply become your own being, your own self. Now, the society cannot tolerate it. The society is bound to be inimical, antagonistic towards me. This has always been so.

You must have gone to the gurus who are agents of the same rotten society. How can they help you to change? They are there to protect the society. The society gives them respect, that is how the society goes on paying them for their services.

Your teachers are in the service of the past. Your priests are in the service of the past, your politicians are in the service of the past. And I want you to become aware of the present.

If you have some courage in your heart, and you don’t escape from this surgical energy-field, you will be transformed. And remember, I will not transform you, I can only create situations in which you can transform yourself. I am simply creating a field in which things can happen – they are happening. Now don’t escape from here. Just a few months, and then you cannot escape!

The fourth question:

Question 4

WHY ARE YOU SO MUCH AGAINST ASCETICISM? ISN’T ASCETICISM A VALID PATH TO GOD?

Path? It is a pathology. To be an ascetic simply shows that you are masochistic, that you are suicidal, that you enjoy torturing yourself. And by torturing yourself you can create a certain character, but the character will be only on the surface. It will not transform you, it will only be a pretension. It will be only a face, a facade, a camouflage.

Ascetics have existed in the world because there are suicidal people. And there is a death instinct in man – Sigmund Freud has called it ”thanatos.” Sigmund Freud’s contribution to human growth is immense. In his early life he discovered the life-instinct – sex, eros. And then in his later life, when he was getting old, he discovered another thing – thanatos, against eros.

There are two basic instincts in man: one is to live, another is to die. Both are there. If the instinct to live is not supported, the other instinct becomes powerful. If the instinct to live is supported, if life is affirmed, then the other instinct disappears. It is the same energy – either it will flow through eros, or it will flow through thanatos. It depends on you.

The religions of the world up to now have been death-oriented. And remember, when I say ”religions”

I don’t include Buddhas. I don’t include Bahauddin, Sanai, Attar, Mahavira, Jesus, Mohammed, no. But I include Mohammedanism, Christianity, Hinduism, Judaism, Jainism, Buddhism. All the organized religions of the world have been death-oriented. And this is something unbelievable: all the original beings were life-oriented.

Buddha is utterly life-oriented, but Buddhism is death-oriented. Mohammed is life-oriented, but Mohammedanism is death-oriented. How does it happen?

Just the other day, I was saying that truth transferred from one to another becomes a lie; it goes upside down. When Buddha says something, he means something totally different than that which is understood by the blind and unconscious people. Everything goes topsy-turvy. His life-affirmation becomes death-affirmation in the disciples. This has been a constant problem. Up to now it has not been possible to transfer truth, and I don’t think it will ever be possible to transfer it. Because the Buddha speaks from the peak of the Himalayas and you listen in the dark valley. By the time it reaches to you, by the time you have interpreted it, it has already gone sour, bitter; it is no more the same truth.

So all the original religious founders were life-affirmative. And all the religions that were born out of their teachings became death-oriented.

Asceticism is falling in love with death. It is a pathology, it is not a path. But people respect it, because the ascetic seems so different from you. You love food, he hates food. you love a good bath, he hates to take a bath. Jaina monks don’t take baths – not only that, they don’t clean their teeth either. They are against the body.

You love comforts, the ascetic loves discomfort. He is not at ease with comfort, he is at ease only when he is uncomfortable. You call it a path? It is a pathology. The man who is standing on his head, and feels comfortable only when he stands on his head, is ill, is abnormal.

All the animals laugh about it. Whenever animals see a yogi standing on his head, they laugh. They cannot believe what has happened to this man. People go on torturing their bodies, twisting their bodies.

I have heard:

Reggie owned an elephant, but the cost of feeding it was getting out of hand. Then he go an idea.

He had seen elephants lift one leg, and even two legs. Once in a circus he’d even seen an elephant lift three legs in the air and stand on just one.

So Reggie announced to the world that he’d pay ten thousand dollars to anyone who could make his elephant stand in the air on no legs. However, each person who wanted to try would have to pay a hundred dollars.

People came from near and far. They tried everything from coaxing to hypnotism, but no one could make the elephant rise up in the air.

Then one day a blue convertible drove up and a little man got out and addressed Reggie: ”Is it true that you’ll pay ten thousand dollars if I make your elephant get off all four legs?”

”Yes,” Reggie said. ”But you’ve got to pay one hundred dollars to try.”

The little man handed Reggie a hundred-dollar bill. Then he went back to the car and took out a metal club. He walked up to the elephant and looked him in the eye. Then he walked behind the elephant and swung hard, hitting the elephant smack on the balls. The elephant let out a roar and flew up into the air.

After the little man had collected his ten thousand dollars, Reggie was very depressed. He’d only taken in eight thousand dollars and now he’d not only lost a couple of grand but still had the problem of feeding and housing the elephant.

Suddenly Reggie got another inspiration. He knew that elephants could move their heads up and down, but he had never seen one move from side to side. So he announced that he would pay ten thousand dollars to anyone who could make his elephant move his head from side to side. However, each person who wanted to try would have to pay one hundred dollars.

People came from near and far. They paid their hundred and they tried, but of course none succeeded.

Then just when things were going well, a familiar blue convertible drove up and the little man came out. He addressed Reggie: ”Is it true that you’ll pay me ten thousand dollars if I can make your elephant move his head from side to side?”

”Yes,” said Reggie. ”But you’ve got to pay a hundred dollars to try.”

The little man handed Reggie the hundred dollars. Then he returned to his car and took out his metal club. He walked up to the elephant.

”Do you remember me?” he asked.

The elephant nodded by shaking his head up and down.

”Do you want me to do it again?”

The elephant quickly shook his head – no.

Even elephants understand it – but man is such a fool. Asceticism a path? It is a pathology.

Life has to be lived in its totality. Your energies have to flow through eros: eros is life, love is life.

And whenever your energy is flowing against love, against life, beware: you are falling astray, you are going away from God. God is life, God is eros.

Now see the point: all the ascetic people and all the ascetic schools are against love, against sex, against life, against food – against living a healthy life of rejoicing.

That’s why they are so much against me – because I would like you to live fully, totally, wholly. I would like you to accept life without denying yourself anything, without feeling in any way guilty. All guilt is a cunning strategy of the priests to divert your energy from life towards death.

Why have people done it? There are reasons. The politician wants people not to love life too much

– because if people love life too much then people cannot be forced to go to wars. Who wants to die? There would be no army left in the world. People have to be forced against eros, they have to be forced against life, they have to be taught to love death, respect death and feel death as sacred –

only then can there be armies. And great armies are needed. The politician is against love, against life, because he needs soldiers for death, to die and to kill.

The priest also wants people not to love life. If they love life they will not bother about the temples and the churches and the mosques. And if they really love life they will find God through life – the priest will not be needed. The priest is needed only when people have gone astray from life – only then can he become the guide and can he tell them, ”Now I will lead you to the right path.” First they have to be helped to go astray, then the guides come.

First people have to be made ill, then you can sell medicine. Otherwise you cannot sell medicine. If everybody is healthy, who will go to the physician and who will go to the druggist? And who will be able to sell medicine to people? It will be impossible. People have to be ill, only then can factories and factories of medicine go on manufacturing new drugs.

The priest needs people to go away from life. The moment they go away from life, they go away from God. Then there is a need for the priest and the temple and the church and the organization and the organized religion. The people would like to be Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans.

Otherwise life is so tremendously satisfying – who bothers? Who cares?

Reverend Jones was able to kill nine hundred people, innocent people, for a simple reason: he was training them for death. You will be surprised to know that in Jonestown, lovemaking among the members of the sect was not allowed. Celibacy was enforced. There were hard strict rules: the people were not allowed to go outside the commune, no contact with outsiders was allowed. They were living in isolation, they were all ascetics.

And it is because of this asceticism that they were ready to commit suicide. Now people are searching for the causes. Somebody thinks that he hypnotized people, somebody thinks something else – a thousand and one reasons are being found. The simple reason is, he diverted their eros –

that’s all. And eros can be diverted very easily.

Down the ages, religious people have been doing the same. He did it to the logical end. Ordinarily monks die slowly; they commit a slow suicide. He went fast and quickly. But there was a tendency, an atmosphere of death. They were practising death almost every month. Every month he would call the commune together and order them to die. And they were ready. They had said yes so many times that when it was really asked they could not say no. It had become an inbuilt program.

And their life was so ugly, that’s why they were ready to die.

I have always loved a certain story. An English diplomat went to see Adolf Hitler before the second world war. They were standing on the terrace of a three-storey building, talking. Just to show his power to the English diplomat, Hitler ordered one soldier to jump. The soldier immediately jumped, fell on the road and died.

The English diplomat was very much shaken. And Adolf Hitler laughed and said, ”My whole country is ready to follow my orders in this way.” To emphasize it more, he ordered another soldier to jump.

And before the English diplomat could prevent him, he also jumped. To make the thing absolutely clear, he ordered a third soldier – but before he could jump, the English diplomat caught hold of him and said, ”Are you mad? What are you doing? Why are you so ready to leave your life?”

And the man said, ”Leave me alone! You call this life?”

To be with Adolf Hitler is far worse – it is better to die. These people who committed suicide must have been living a worse life than death itself. This is the simple logic of it. And the ascetic attitude makes your life so ugly, so intolerable, that one starts thinking of death as a deliverance.

I am against ascetic attitudes, because they are ill attitudes, unhealthy, unwholesome. I am all for eros, I am all for life – because life is the temple of God, the only temple. And eros is the only way God is expressed in the world.

If you move totally into eros, into love of life, into life-affirmation, into rejoicing, you will find, deep down hidden in life, God himself. Life is his manifestation; he is the hidden source of it. Don’t go away from life – going away is going away from God. Hence my sannyasins are not to renounce but to rejoice.

Now people have asked me a few questions: ”Can the same thing happen here as happened in Reverend Jones’ commune?”

This will be the last place in the world where it could happen, because I teach you love, I teach you life. My whole effort is to make your energy move through life totally – nothing is left. And if you move totally through life, death disappears. Even when you die, you will not see that death is happening to you – you will see only that you are changing your abode, you are changing your garments. You are on an eternal pilgrimage.

I teach you life, I teach you abundant life. This cannot happen here – I am not teaching you suicide.

It can happen in any ascetic society, in any ascetic commune. But my commune is not ascetic at all. That’s why Christians are against it, and Hindus are against it, and Jainas are against it, and Mohammedans are against it, and everybody is against it – because they are all death-oriented.

And my love is unconditionally for life.

I teach you to love and to live. Death is impossible here – what to say of suicide? Even death is impossible here. If you die the way I am teaching you, if you live the way I am teaching you, you will never know death. Even dying, you will know that the flame goes on burning forever.

The last question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 5

INDIA IS THE ONLY COUNTRY IN THE WORLD WHICH TALKS ABOUT CELIBACY SO MUCH

AND YET EVERY FOUR SECONDS THREE CHILDREN ARE BORN IN INDIA. PLEASE EXPLAIN

THIS.

Kamal Bharti, ideals create hypocrisy. and if you want to be a hypocrite, the first requirement is to have great ideals. You cannot be a hypocrite if you don’t have any ideals.

For example, my sannyasins cannot be hypocrites; it is impossible. Hypocrisy is the shadow, the long shadow, of the great ideal.

India is one of the most hypocritical countries. And the reason is that great ideals are being taught to people. Those ideals remain only in their talk – life goes on in a totally diametrically opposite way.

People go on talking about truth and their life has nothing of truth in it. They go on talking about great morality, and their whole life is immoral.

You cannot find a more immoral country in the world than this country, it is impossible – because no other country preaches so many ideals. When ideals are great, you cannot fulfill them; they are so unnatural, they are so impossible. Then the only way is to go on talking about them and go on living in your own way. So you have to live a double life.

In talking, in sermonizing, Indians are great. In philosophizing, nobody can compete with them. They are great logic-choppers, hair-splitters, great masters of language. But their life is empty, hollow, and is just the opposite.

In fact, if you know the ideal of a person, just by knowing the ideal, you can know his life. Tell me what your ideal is, and I will know your life immediately. If celibacy is your ideal, then I know who you are: you are sex-obsessed. Only a sex-obsessed person has the ideal of celibacy. If you are not sex-obsessed there will be no question of celibacy. You will live your life: when sex is happening it is beautiful, when it disappears it is beautiful. Both are sacred moments.

Sex is sacred when it happens. When it disappears, that too is sacred. Both have their beauties.

When the tree blooms it has beauty, and when the tree is naked of all leaves it has a beauty. Yes, in the fall, trees have a totally different beauty, an austere beauty. Naked, without any leaves, standing against the sky, they look so meditative, so Zen-like. And then in the spring, with great foliage and many flowers, as if they are getting ready to be married – newlyweds... So much celebration, it has a beauty – the beauty of a Sufi.

The real man lives his life without any guilt. Sex appears one day and disappears one day.

Remember: anything that appears, disappears. Up to the age of fourteen, sex has not appeared.

Then suddenly one day, the spring: sex has come into life, with great joys, with great songs to be sung. If one lives it totally, then nearabout the age of forty-two it disappears one day. And the beauty of the fall, and the naked bare tree against the evening sky.

Sex has existence only from the fourteenth to the forty-second year, if things go naturally. But they don’t go naturally – the priest jumps in. He starts talking about celibacy. When all that was needed was the art of love, he starts talking about celibacy. He creates guilt. Sex energy becomes repressed, goes underneath into the unconscious.

Now even at the age of eighty-two it will remain. You will remain sex-obsessed; it can’t leave you now.

India is a so-called religious country. In fact countries can only be so-called religious. Only individuals can be really religious, countries can only be so-called religious. How can countries be religious? Religion is something that happens in the individual soul. Politics is that which happens in the collectivity. Religion is that which happens in your aloneness.

But great ideals go on torturing. India is very heavy-laden – great rocks are on the Indian heart. And because of those rocks the springs of life cannot flow.

So, Kamal, there is no contradiction in it. In fact there is a logical connectedness between these two things – talking of celibacy, and giving birth to three children every four seconds. The more you talk about celibacy, the more sex-obsessed you will become. If you accept sex as a natural phenomenon, you need not talk about celibacy; it comes in its own time.

Just as youth turns into old age, sex turns into celibacy. Celibacy is sex lived truly, is the fragrance of sex lived truly. Celibacy is sexuality become mature. Otherwise hypocrisy continues.

Meditate over this story.

This man was in bed with a married woman when they heard the door open. ”Oh my God,” she gasped. ”It’s my husband! Quick, hidden in the closet!”

The man hurried into the closet and closed the door. Suddenly he heard a small voice saying, ”It’s very dark in here.”

”Who is that?” he asked.

”That’s my mother out there,” the small voice said. ”And now I’m going to scream.”

”Please don’t!” the man said.

”Okay, but it’ll cost you money,” the boy said.

”Here’s five dollars.”

”I’m going to scream!” said the small voice.

”Okay, here’s ten dollars!”

”I’m going to scream,” the small voice said.

”Here’s twenty dollars.”

Finally, when the boy turned down thirty-five dollars, the man said, ”All I have is forty dollars.”

”I’ll take it.”

At last, the husband left and the man was able to get out of the closet and make a hasty exist.

That afternoon, the mother took the boy with her on a shopping trip.

”I want to get that bicycle,” he said.

The mother said, ”No, you can’t. It costs too much money.”

The boy said, ”I’ve got forty dollars.”

The mother said, ”Where would you get forty dollars?”

The boy wouldn’t talk, she began to berate him. He refused to respond. She slapped his face. He stood stoically. Finally, twisting his arm, she dragged him into the nearby neighborhood church and approached the parish priest. ”Father, my son has forty dollars and he won’t tell me where he got it.

Maybe you can find out?”

The priest nodded. He led the boy into a confessional booth. The boy sat on one side and the priest on the other. The boy said, ”It’s very dark here...”

And the priest said, ”Now, don’t you start that again!”

CHAPTER 3

The Death of the Seed

13 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

IF YOU KNOW YOUR OWN WORTH,

WHAT NEED YOU CARE ABOUT

THE ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF OTHERS?

WORSHIP HIM AS IF YOU COULD SEE

HIM WITH YOUR PHYSICAL EYES;

THOUGH YOU DON’T SEE HIM,

HE SEES YOU.

WHILST IN THIS LAND

OF FRUITLESS PURSUITS,

YOU ARE ALWAYS UNBALANCED, ALWAYS

EITHER ALL BACK OR ALL FRONT;

BUT ONCE THE SEEKING SOUL HAS PROGRESSED

JUST A FEW PACES BEYOND THIS STATE,

LOVE SEIZES THE REINS.

WHILE THIS WORLD REMAINS,

THAT ONE CANNOT BE;

WHILST YOU EXIST,

GOD CANNOT BE YOURS.

THE COMING OF DEATH

IS THE KEY WHICH UNLOCKS

THE UNKNOWN DOMAIN;

BUT FOR DEATH, THE DOOR OF TRUE FAITH

WOULD REMAIN UNOPENED.

IF YOU YOURSELF

ARE UPSIDE DOWN IN REALITY,

THEN YOUR WISDOM AND FAITH

ARE BOUND TO BE TOPSY-TURVY.

STOP WEAVING A NET ABOUT YOURSELF:

BURST LIKE A LION FROM THE CAGE.

MELT YOURSELF DOWN IN THIS SEARCH:

VENTURE YOUR LIFE AND YOUR SOUL

IN THE PATH OF SINCERITY;

STRIVE TO PASS FROM NOTHINGNESS TO BEING,

AND MAKE YOURSELF DRUNK WITH THE WINE OF GOD.

Mind is the original fall – the fall from the state of being. Mind is the original sin. To be in the mind is to be in the world: not to be in the mind is to be in God.

This much is the difference – but a difference that makes a difference.

The fall has to be understood. Meditate over three words: being, doing, having. From being to having is the fall, and doing is the process of coming from being to having. Being is God, having is the world, doing is the process of falling from being to having.

Hence, the mind is a doer. The mind constantly wants to be occupied. A great hankering to remain busy; that is the mind. One cannot sit alone; one cannot sit in passive receptivity, not even for a few moments. It is such a torture for the mind, because the moment you stop doing, the mind starts disappearing.

If you go to a Zen master and ask, ”What do you do here? What are these people, your followers, doing?” he will say, ”They just sit. They don’t do a thing.”

It happened:

A king came to visit the monastery of a Zen master. The master took him around; he was very interested in knowing everything about the monastery. He took the king to every place except one

– the central temple. And that was the most imposing building, and yet whenever the king asked,

”Why don’t you take me to the temple?” the master would behave as if he had not heard.

Finally, the king was very angry, because he was even taken to bathrooms and toilets. He said, ”Are you mad or something? Why don’t you take me to the temple?”

And the master said, ”For a certain reason – because you are constantly asking, ‘What do you do here?’ In the library we read: I can take you to the library. In the bathrooms we take baths: I can take you to the bathrooms. In the kitchen we prepare food. But to that temple I cannot take you because we don’t do a thing there! That is the place where we move into non-doing, into non-action.

And it will be impossible to explain that to you – that’s why. You are a great king, you are a great doer, and you are so much engrossed with having more and more. You understand the way of the mind, but you will not understand the ways which are not of the mind.”

The mind is a doer. Watch your own mind and you will understand. What I am saying is not a philosophical statement, it is just a fact. I am not proposing any theory for you to believe or to disbelieve, but something that you can watch in your own being. And you will see it – whenever you are alone, you immediately start looking: something has to be done, you have to go somewhere, you have to see somebody. You can’t be alone. You can’t be a non-doer.

Doing is the process by which the mind is created; it is condensed doing. hence, meditation means a state of non-doing. If you can sit silently doing nothing, suddenly you are back home. Suddenly you see your original face, suddenly you see the source. And that source is satchitanand: it is truth, it is consciousness, it is bliss – call it God, or nirvana, or what you will.

From being to doing to having – this is how Adam-consciousness arrives in the world. To move backwards, from having to doing, from doing to being – this is what Christ-consciousness means.

But Sufis have a very tremendously significant message for the world. They say the perfect man is one who is capable of moving from being to doing to having to doing to being, and so on, so forth.

When the circle is perfect then the man is perfect.

One should be capable of doing. I am not saying that you should become incapable of doing; that will not be of any value, that will be simply impotence. You should be capable of doing, but you should not be engrossed in it. You should not become involved in it, you should not become possessed by it, you should remain the master.

And I am not saying that all that you have has to be dropped, I am not saying to renounce all that you have. Use it, but don’t be used by it, that’s all. Then the perfect man is born.

I call that perfect man a sannyasin: he will be both Adam plus Christ. The worldly man is Adam, and up to now the otherworldly man has been involved with Christ-consciousness. But both are half-half.

Man needs to become a totality, a wholeness. And my definition of being holy is nothing but to be whole – capacity to come into the world and yet remain above it, beyond it; capacity to use the mind but yet remain centered in your being. Then the mind is a mechanism of immense value; then it is not a sin to have a beautiful mind. You have a beautiful instrument of immense complexity, and it is a joy to use it, just as it is a joy to drive a beautiful car which is a perfect mechanism.

There is nothing like the mind, if you can use it; then the mind is divine too. But if you are used by it, and your sky gets lost in the clouds of the mind, then you’ll remain in misery, in ignorance.

The arrival of the mind happens through getting identified with the contents of consciousness. Just a small change, a single step is needed, and that step bridges this to that. That single step bridges the world to God, the outer to the inner, the mundane to the sacred. What is that single step?

Non-identification.

Remain a witness. Always remember to remain a witness: whatsoever passes in the mind, know perfectly well you are not it. You are not the stuff called the mind. Once you become identified with any stuff of the mind, you are trapped in a prison. Then you can go on changing and re-arranging the stuff again and again, but nothing will happen.

That’s what people go on doing – improving upon themselves, creating a beautiful character, becoming saintly, religious, but the basic thing has not yet been done. They are simply rearranging the stuff of the mind.

You can go on arranging the furniture of your house; you can arrange it in better ways, far more aesthetically, but it remains the same stuff. The sinner and the so-called saint are not very different; both are different arrangements of the same mind.

The real sage is one who has become aware that he is not the mind at all. The idea of sin arises in him, and he remains aloof; and the idea of being a saint arises in him, and he remains aloof.

He gets identified with nothing – anger or compassion, hate or love, good or bad. He remains non-judgmental, he does not condemn anything in the mind. If you are just a witness, what is the point of condemning anything? And he does not praise anything in the mind – if you are just a witness, again, praise is just futile. He remains cool and collected and centered. The mind goes on raving around him, just from past momentum.

For thousands of lives you have remained identified with the mind, you have poured so much energy into it. It goes on revolving and revolving for a few months, even for a few years. But if you can remain a silent watcher, a watcher on the hills, then slowly slowly the energy, the momentum, is lost and the mind comes to a stop.

The day the mind stops, you have arrived. The first vision of what God is and what you are happens immediately – because once the mind stops, your whole energy that has remained involved with it is released. And that energy is tremendous, it is infinite: it starts falling on you. It is a great benediction, it is grace.

The so-called revolutionaries go on failing because they go on re-arranging the same stuff of the mind. Somebody believes in God, and then comes a revolutionary who says, ”There is no God and I don’t believe in any God.” But he is as much a fanatic about his idea as the people who believe in God.

Believers and disbelievers, both are fanatics. One has become attached to the yes, the other has become attached to the no, but yes or no both are part of the mind. You have chosen one part, somebody else has chosen another part. One is a Christian, another is a Hindu, but both are minds.

One has chosen the Bible, the other has chosen the Vedas, but both are part of the mind.

Then who is really religious? One who has not chosen out of the mind at all. You cannot call him Christian, you cannot call him Hindu, you cannot call him communist, you cannot call him theist or atheist. He simply is: indefinable he is. You cannot label him. Being is so vast that it cannot be labelled, no word is adequate enough to describe it. In that vastness is freedom, in that vastness is bliss.

This is real revolution: jumping from the mind to the being. And the process will remain the same.

If doing is the process of falling from being to having, then non-doing will be the process of coming back home.

Meditation is not something that you do: meditation is something that happens when you are not doing anything at all. You can sit apparently unmoving, apparently not doing anything, but deep down the mind can continue. That’s how it happens in the monasteries, how it happens in the caves. You may not have much to do, but you can go on doing just a few things again and again.

You can go on repeating a mantra: that will do, it is enough for the mind. It will go on doing the same act again and again, playing the same tape again and again, for years, and it will not die.

Three yogis are sitting in a cave meditating. A horse comes by, looks in, and goes. A few years pass and one of the yogis says, ”A horse came in.”

A few more years pass and another says, ”No, it was a mare.”

After a few more years the third says, ”If there is going to be an argument, I am leaving.”

Now, nothing has happened for so many years, a horse just came and looked in, but that is enough to keep you occupied for years. It is enough, the mind can live even on this much stuff. One has to be very aware that it is not a question of whether you are involved in many many works or you are just doing a few things; it is not a question of quantity. The question is of quality.

You may be very rich, you may be a king and have many possessions and have to remain involved in a thousand and one things, and then you may renounce the kingdom and all your possessions and become a beggar and live in a hut – this will not make any difference at all! To outsiders, to spectators, it will look like a great revolution has happened: the emperor has become a beggar, he has renounced so much. But nothing has happened inside.

First you were involved with the affairs of the kingdom, now you will be involved with the affairs of the small hut. Just the quantity has been reduced, but by reducing the quantity, the quality of your consciousness never changes. The poor man is worried about his bullock-cart, and the rich man is worried about his golden chariot. But the worry is the same; worrying is the same quality. The poor man is worried about tomorrow’s food, and the king is worried about the neighboring country; the object of worry is different, but the process of worrying is the same.

The question is, how to change your focus from the mind to the being. Doing has brought you into the world, doing is the ladder that has brought you into the world; non-doing will be the ladder... And non-doing is not inactivity. That point has to be understood well, then you will be able to understand Hakim Sanai’s sutras of today.

Non-doing is not inactivity, it is not inaction. Action is there, because action is life. If action completely disappears, you will be dead. Even to breathe is an action; to eat, to digest, to sleep – all are activities. To live is to be active. Then what is non-doing if it is not inactivity? If you understand non-doing as inactivity, you will have missed the whole point of it. Now inactivity will become your occupation. You will be constantly occupied with not doing this and not doing that. Your process will become negative, but it is still doing: ”I can’t do this, I can’t do that.” Now you are worried. The same tensions will still be there: ”I can’t eat this, I can’t eat that, I can’t wear this, I can’t wear that.”

Now you are becoming negative – but the process, the ego, is still there; the mind is still there. It is standing upside down, it is doing a headstand, but it is the same mind.

Non-doing is something which has nothing to do with action, but has much to do with the ego, with the idea of the ego. The doer is the ego: one has to become a non-doer. Then God is the doer.

Then you are in a let-go. Then you don’t push the river, then you don’t create agony for yourself by pushing.

Let me remind you of what I was telling you just the other day: agony comes from a root ‘ag’ –

ag means pushing. The more you push the river, the more agony is created. And while you are pushing the river, you are certainly trying to swim upstream. You are going against nature, against Tao, against God.

The non-doer is one who has relaxed with the river, who is floating with the river, flowing with the river, one who has become part of the river, who does not think himself separate at all; one who has no individual destiny. That is the meaning of non-doing. Now the destiny of the total is his destiny. ”Wherever the whole is going, I am also going – wherever, to whatsoever destination or no-destination. Wherever this beautiful existence is moving, I am part of it. I am a ripple in this great lake, just a small ripple. I need not have an individual destiny.”

Out of individual destiny arises fear, anguish, agony. Out of individual destiny – that ”I have to do something, I have to be somebody, I have to reach somewhere” – the mind is created. Doing means:

”I have some idea how I should be, what I should be.” Non-doing means: ”I drop all ideas of my being separate from existence.”

Non-separation is non-doing. Action continues, but it is no more your action. Now it is natural. If a snake passes by on the footpath, you have gone for a morning walk and a snake passes by, you simply jump out of the way of the snake. It is not that you have done it – action has happened, but it is natural. You did not think about it, you didn’t ponder over it. You were not ready for it; you may not have come across a snake ever before in your life. You had not practised it, it is not a program in your mind. You responded. In the form of the snake, there was death. You responded – immediately, instantly. The mind never came in, because the mind needs time to ponder, to think, to contemplate.

And there is no time, death is so close by: you simply jumped.

Sitting underneath a tree when the snake has passed, you may think about it; now you have enough time to think. But in that moment, in that momentous moment when the snake was facing you, you simply acted – not out of the mind but out of your totality. It was God’s act.

The man who really wants to become a non-doer starts acting as a vehicle of the divine, of the whole. Action continues, but the actor disappears. That is the meaning of non-doing. You live the same life, but now you have a totally different quality, a different flavor to it.

The sutras:

IF YOU KNOW YOUR OWN WORTH,

WHAT NEED YOU CARE ABOUT

THE ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF OTHERS?

A very fundamental thing. Sanai says: IF YOU KNOW YOUR OWN WORTH you need not be worried what others think about you, whether they accept you or reject you. If you are worried about others’

rejection and acceptance, that simply shows one thing – that you don’t know your own worth, that you don’t know your own being, that you don’t know God resides in you, that you are an abode of the divine.

Hence you are worried what people are thinking about you – because on their thinking, on their opinion, will depend much. Your ego depends on others’ opinions: your being depends on nobody.

That’s why the man of being is always a rebel, and the man who lives in the ego has to compromise very much with the society. The egoist has to compromise, because if he does not compromise, nobody is going to fulfill his ego. The ego needs others’ support, it needs props from others: the more people like you, the better and more polished and refined an ego you can have.

That’s why people read books like Dale Carnegie’s HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE

PEOPLE, or Napoleon Hill, and others. There are thousands of these so-called philosophers who go on teaching people how to polish the ego in a better way, how to decorate it.

The modern mind is very much concerned about it, how you look to others. Why? Because we have lost all sense of our own being. Now all that we have is the ego, and the ego needs others’ support.

If you don’t fulfill their expectations about you, they will withdraw their support. and the more you fulfill their expectations, the more of a slave you become. Whatsoever they want you to do, you do.

You are just obedient, constantly compromising. Whether you like it or not does not matter to you; the whole question is whether others like it. If they want you to smile, you smile. The smile may be phoney, but that is not the point – because people like it. And when they like your smile, they will love you. And when they love you, they will give attention to you, they will respect you. They will fulfill your need to be needed.

This is the whole process that we call our life. And if this life remains a constant frustration, it is not a wonder.

IF YOU KNOW YOUR OWN WORTH,

WHAT NEED YOU CARE ABOUT

THE ACCEPTANCE OR REJECTION OF OTHERS?

The man who knows himself is completely unworried about what others say.

When Jesus was carrying his cross, was he worried about what others were saying? They were all making him, or trying to make him, a laughing-stock. They were abusing him, they were making cutting jokes about him, they were throwing banana skins at him. They were ridiculing him in every possible way, in a very inhuman way. But was Jesus worried? Not at all, because they cannot take anything of his being. And what they can take, he has already renounced; he has dropped all that can be taken by others. Now he exists as a naked being, his own self, which not even death can take away. Fire cannot burn it, no sword can cut it. All that can be taken by others has already been dropped by him. Now people can laugh: he can watch. He can watch unperturbed undisturbed.

When Mansoor was killed, he looked at the sky and laughed loudly. Thousands of people had gathered to ridicule him, to abuse him, to condemn him. They could not understand why he was laughing. The situation was such that if he had been crying it would have been okay, but why was he laughing? And somebody from the crowd asked, ”Mansoor, why are you laughing?”

He said, ”I am laughing because you think you are killing ME! You cannot kill me. And the one you are killing, I am not that. I am laughing at your foolishness. You are killing my body, it is like burning my garments – and I am standing there and laughing at the foolishness of it all. The one you can kill, I have renounced myself. Only that which is indestructible, only that which is immortal, have I saved. Now there is no fear: no thief can steal it and no murderer can kill it.

”Hence, I am laughing. You people who have gathered here are all stupid – that’s why I am laughing.”

But th society, from the very beginning, starts taking your self-worth from you. The child – every child around the earth, in all the societies – is forced to renounce his being, is forced to accept others’

opinions about himself. Every child is born absolutely accepting himself as he is. He has no dislike for himself, he is utterly in love with himself. Each child is born with great love for himself; he has self-love, self-respect – because he is not yet a mind.

But the parents are afraid, the society is afraid: if he remains being-oriented he will never be a slave. And the society needs slaves, the society needs obedient people. The society does not need individuals, it needs phoney personalities. It needs people who are efficient, but not intelligent. It allows intelligence only to the extent that you remain efficient, but it does not allow your intelligence to grow to its maximum – because at the maximum, intelligence will be so rebellious, so revolutionary, it will be fire.

And the society is so rotten, it cannot allow that much fire to people, that much freedom to people. It needs dead people, dull people, unintelligent people, so they can go on and on working for others’

interests – for the priest, for the politician, they go on working. It needs millions of slaves. It’s really a miracle that, once in a while, a Buddha, a Jesus, a Sanai, escapes from the clutches of the society and becomes independent.

The society, from the very beginning, teaches you, ”Listen to what others say about you, because that is what you are.” Now this is so stupid, the whole idea. Others don’t know themselves, and they decide who I am. I don’t know about myself, who I am, and I decide about others, who they are. This is a mutual deception. I don’t know who I am, you don’t know who you are: you decide about me, I decide about you. Blind people deciding about each other. Blind people telling each other, ”You are beautiful; your face is so beautiful, or so ugly.” Blind people deciding who is a sinner and who is a saint.

And such great fear is created from the very beginning in every child that your whole life you are tortured by it. If somebody does not think well of you, you lose your whole night – you cannot sleep: somebody doesn’t think well of you. How does it matter? Who is he to decide about you? But the reason is that you have forgotten yourself; you don’t know who you are. You depend on him – if he doesn’t think well of you, then something is wrong with you; you start losing self-respect.

When nobody respects you, how can you respect yourself? Your self-respect is just a cumulative effect of many people pouring their respect towards you. And these are the ignorant people, as ignorant as you are. They know nothing, but this is their way of manipulating each other. ”I respect you, I am paying you, I am bribing you, to be manipulated by me. You respect me because you want to manipulate me.”

This is how it goes on. The man who knows his self-worth, the man who knows who he is, will remain absolutely unconcerned. And just see the point: when you are absolutely unconcerned with what people say about you, you have a freedom, a psychological freedom, you are out of the psychological slavery of the society. Your soul is born.

”I am afraid I have developed a terrible habit,” the patient told his psychiatrist. ”Wherever I am, I can’t help talking to myself. Is there anything you can do for me?”

”I suppose there is,” the psychiatrist replied. ”But I should warn you it will be a long, slow, painful treatment, and very expensive as well. But suppose you do talk to yourself – is that so bad?”

”No, I guess it isn’t,” the patient agreed. ”But I am such a bore!”

Nobody can live with himself, hence you need others. They cannot live alone themselves, hence they need you. They are boring, you are boring – and both are thinking that by being together the boredom will disappear? It will not only be doubled, it will be multiplied. Have you ever seen more bored people than couples?

You can see – if a couple is passing by on the road, you can know immediately whether they are husband and wife or not. If they are husband and wife, they both look so bored, utterly bored. If the man looks happy and the woman looks happy, then they are not husband and wife. She must be a wife to somebody else, and he must be a husband to somebody else.

Once I was traveling in a train; a woman was traveling with me, and her husband or friend was in another compartment. At every station, wherever the train stopped, he would come again.

Sometimes he would bring ice cream, sometimes sweets, sometimes this and that.

I asked the woman, ”Who is this man?”

She said, ”He is my husband.”

I said, ”Don’t lie!”

She said, ”How do you know?”

”Husbands are not known to do such things – at every stop! Once the husband has escaped from the wife, then only at the last stop does he turn up if at all. You are fortunate: at each stop he comes bringing this and that!”

She said, ”You are right. He is not my husband, he is just my boyfriend.”

I asked her, ”How long have you been together?”

She said, ”Nearabout seven years.”

I said, ”Wrong again!”

She said, ”How do you know this?”

”Seven years is too long a time! Honeymoons are finished within fifteen days – and this whole thing seems to be like a honeymoon.”

She said, ”You surprise me – we really are going on a honeymoon! I have known him only for seven or eight days.”

Everybody is bored with himself. That’s why when Buddha says, ”Sitting silently, I have arrived, and bliss has happened to me,” we listen to him but we don’t believe him. Or maybe he is just an exception – because when you sit silently, only boredom happens and nothing else.

Everybody has tried sometimes to sit silently like a Buddha, but within minutes you are so fed up with yourself, because the mind goes on churning and churning, the inner talk continues, and it is boring. you know these things: you have been boring others, now you are boring yourself. You have heard these things said by your mind so many times, and it goes on and on with no stop. And all that happens when you are alone is you become aware of your mind. When you are with others you forget yourself: you become interested in the other, the other becomes interested in you. That is a kind of self-deception.

All meditation techniques say that unless you are capable of being alone, you will never be able to know your being. It will take a certain time for the mind t slow down. But if you can sit silently for a few hours every day, unoccupied, doing nothing – the mind will go mad in the beginning, will go very crazy, round and round it will run, but if you can go on patiently waiting and waiting and waiting –

you will see that slowly slowly the momentum of the mind is disappearing. Thoughts are moving but not so fast – not running but limping, puzzled, looking at you: ”What has happened to you?” They are not so powerful, as if their life has disappeared; not so self-confident, but shaky, looking at you, puzzled, wondering, ”What are you doing?”

If you go on watching your thoughts for a certain time, one day the miracle happens: even if it happens for only a few moments, then you have looked into your being. In those few moments you have been with your being; the mind disappeared, there was not a single thought moving by. And once you have contacted your being, you will never be worried what others say. They can condemn you, they can think of you as a sinner or they can worship you, they can think of you as a saint – it is all the same. Success and failure are the same, fame or defame are the same. Whether anybody knows about you, or nobody knows about you, is the same.

And just contemplate on that quality when nothing affects you: for the first time you are rooted, for the first time you are centered, integrated, for the first time the mind is not and you are.

WORSHIP HIM AS IF YOU COULD SEE

HIM WITH YOUR PHYSICAL EYES;

THOUGH YOU DON’T SEE HIM,

HE SEES YOU.

And only when you have become completely indifferent to what people say about you will you be able to face God. Otherwise you remain facing people. When you have become utterly indifferent to what people say about you, you are capable of turning God-wards. Otherwise your eyes and your ears and your senses are all focused on others; they are outgoing, they are not ingoing.

Once you have become capable of dropping people and what they say about you, your energy is available to move God-wards. WORSHIP HIM... now let your energy become worship. And by

‘worship’ is meant wonder, awe, love. By ‘worship’ is not meant any formal worship: going to a temple and worshipping a statue – that is not meant. Worship is a new vision, a new insight into reality.

When the child looks at the sun rising, look into his eyes: that is worship – he is so mystified, in such awe. When the child looks at the starry night, look into his eyes: those stars reflected in his eyes, that is worship.

The child knows what worship is. We have forgotten, because we have forgotten the language of wonder. We have become too knowledgeable: when the sun rises, we know what it is. Nobody really knows, but we have been to school, to college, to university, so we have become knowledgeable.

When a flower blooms, we know what the name of the flower is, what species it belongs to, and from what country it comes. But all these things are meaningless, irrelevant.

Something wonderful is happening: the flower has opened, the fragrance is released. The flower is utterly beautiful, alive, and you simply label it. You say, ”This is a rose” – and you think you have known it just by giving it a name? You have missed. You have de-mystified the flower, and hence you have missed the wonder of it. Otherwise, each flower will give a thrill to your heart, each star will give it a new beat and each bird will start singing within you.

Life is so psychedelic, it is such a splendor. To feel the wonder of it, to feel the awe, is worship. And then in some unknown moment you may bow down to existence. You may kneel down on the earth, or you may fall on the sand, in great prayer, in great love, as if the earth is your mother – it is: the existence is your mother – and great love will upsurge in you. That upsurging love is worship.

WORSHIP HIM AS IF YOU COULD SEE

HIM WITH YOUR PHYSICAL EYES;

THOUGH YOU DON’T SEE HIM,

HE SEES YOU.

Whenever you are in a worshipful moment, you will be surprised: the whole existence is watching you, the whole existence is looking at you, is caressing you, is caring about you. You will feel some invisible hands caressing you, some invisible eyes looking at you, some invisible energy embracing you.

WHILST IN THIS LAND

OF FRUITLESS PURSUITS,

YOU ARE ALWAYS UNBALANCED, ALWAYS

EITHER ALL BACK OR ALL FRONT;

BUT ONCE THE SEEKING SOUL HAS PROGRESSED

JUST A FEW PACES BEYOND THIS STATE,

LOVE SEIZES THE REINS.

If you allow worship to happen, love soon arrives – and a love that you have not even dreamt about.

The love that you know is not real love, because there is no feeling of mystery in it, no awe, no worship, no prayer, in it.

If you really love a woman, you will love her as a goddess. If you really love a man, you will love him as a god. There is no other way to love. Love transforms everything into the divine; that is love’s chemistry. If love does not do that, then it must be something else. It may be lust, it may be sexual desire. It may be just a need – physical, psychological.

Love is not a need! Love is an overflowing of joy. It happens only to worshippers, to prayerful people. Otherwise, you remain in this futile world – THIS LAND OF FRUITLESS PURSUITS. From your childhood to your old age, what do you go on doing? Playing with toys.

The little boy was sitting on the curb, crying, and an old man who was passing by came over to him.

”What’s the matter, little boy?” he asked. ”Why are you crying?”

The little boy said, ”I’m crying because I can’t do what big boys do.”

The old man sat down on the curb and cried too.

There is not much difference: children are childish, but your so-called old people are just as childish as children, sometimes even more so. Maturity is very rare; people remain immature. If you are interested only in toys – possessing this, possessing that, becoming famous, reaching some political power, prestige, having money, becoming very famous in the world – if you are interested in these things, you remain part of this stupid world of futile fruitless pursuits. But those pursuits keep you engages, they keep you occupied. They are intoxicants.

And the most surprising thing is that from this fruitless futile world, the world of fruitfulness is not far away. It is very close by, just around the corner.

Jim and Joe were two friends who shared an apartment together in Chicago. One day, Jim came home to find Joe weeping into his hands. ”I am so unlucky! So unlucky!” he moaned.

”You are always saying that, and it is not so,” Jim said.

”It is! It is!” Joe said. ”I’m the most unlucky fellow you know!”

”What happened now?”

”Well, I met this beautiful woman on Madison Street. We go to talking and we stopped off at a small bar and had a few drinks. Wow! We got really mellow. When she suggested that I should go to her place, I thought my luck had changed.”

”It sounds like it did,” Jim said.

”Minutes after we entered her apartment I was in bed with her. I was just starting to climax when we heard the door bang open.”

”It’s my husband!” she said.

”I didn’t even have time to grab a towel. I bounded for the window and just managed to climb out, hanging on the ledge by my hands, when he barged in.

”He sized up the scene immediately, and then he saw my hands hanging on for dear life. He came to the window and started pounding my knuckles with a hammer. Then he pissed all over me. Then he slammed the window on my bloody fingers.

”Then, as if I did not have enough trouble, two old ladies on the street saw me hanging there stark naked and they started screaming for the police. The cops came and I was arrested. Now do you see what I mean when I say I am unlucky?”

”Nonsense,” Jim said, ”You are upset, but an experience like that could happen to anyone.”

”You don’t understand,” Joe said. ”When the cops came to arrest me, I looked down and my feet were only four inches from the ground. Now do you see what I mean when I say I’m unlucky?”

The other world is not far away! It is just around the corner – not even a distance of four inches. Just a little change of your focus, of your consciousness, of your awareness, and you move from this to that. And it can happen any moment. All that is needed is the understanding that whatsoever you have been doing up to now, and you are doing now, is futile. Let this sink into your heart as deeply as possible, that whatsoever you are doing is futile.

Money is not going to help, fame is not going to help, power is not going to help. Death will come and all will be snatched away from you. And what does it matter how much money you have got?

The only real thing in the world is how much being you have got.

Having is the fallen state: being is Christ risen, resurrected.

WHILE THIS WORLD REMAINS,

THAT ONE CANNOT BE;

WHILST YOU EXIST,

GOD CANNOT BE YOURS.

You can have only one world: this or that. Either you can have the world of dreams, then you cannot have the world with open eyes, the world of waking. If you have the world of waking, you cannot have the world of dreams. And people have chosen the world of dreams.

Why have people chosen the world of dreams? For one reason only: they have been forced to forget their reality. And when you do not know your reality, you have to create something to cling to, you have to create a substitute. Nothing is not acceptable: then anything is better than nothing, then even a dream is better than nothing. Then even remaining occupied in futile things is okay – at least one is occupied, one is not wasting one’s time; at least one is doing something, at least one is searching, at least one need not sit and cry for one’s fallen state.

At least it keeps you intoxicated: it keeps you hoping – ”It has not happened today, but tomorrow it is going to happen.” It goes on creating tomorrows. And you know it has not happened yesterday, and it has not happened today. Yesterday also you were thinking it would happen tomorrow, today also you are thinking it will happen tomorrow, and tomorrow also you will go on thinking and postponing.

It keeps you, in a certain way, sane. Otherwise nothing is happening – and that will drive you insane.

Zen masters, Sufi masters, Hassid masters, all the great masters of the world say one thing, that a disciple should not try sitting silently without a master. Why? Because if a disciple tries sitting silently without a master, soon he will start going crazy. The world of dreams will start disappearing.

That was his world, the only world he had ever known – it will start disappearing into the far faraway distance like clouds dispersing. And the other world has not come yet; it will come only when the world of dreams has completely gone away, totally gone away. Even if a slight thin layer of dreams is there, it is not possible to see the real.

You can have either the dreams or the reality; when all the dreams are gone, the reality will happen.

But that will take time. When ninety percent of the dreams are gone, still you have not known the reality. When ninety-nine percent of the dreams are gone, still you have not known the reality. And now you will start becoming very shaky: all that you had is disappearing down the drain, and nothing else has happened.

The mind will say, ”Rush and catch hold of the disappearing dreams.” Nothingness frightens, nothingness looks like death. You will need somebody to give you the feeling that ”Don’t be worried, it is perfectly all right, this is how it happens. This is how it happened to me too. Just a little more –

wait a little more, have a little more patience: that one percent of the dream will also disappear.” And it is very scary. The space is maddening.

The master is needed to keep you patient, the master is needed to help you not to become too frightened. The fear is natural: you are falling into an abyss, you are disappearing – because with your possessions your ego will disappear, with your doings your ego will disappear. And, slowly slowly, you will find a nothingness: you were looking for God, you were looking for truth. You were looking for something immortal, deathless – and instead of deathlessness happening, death is happening. There is every possibility that if you are alone, you will rush away. A master is needed.

And all the great masters have created Buddhafields. If a field can be created, it is even more helpful. When there are millions of people meditating, a great field is created. You are not alone: there are people ahead of you, there are people behind you. The people who are ahead are telling you, ”Yes, this happens, but it disappears.” And you can tell people who are behind you, ”Yes, this happens, what is happening to you, but it disappears.” You are in a chain.

That’s why communes have been created, down the ages. Around each great master a commune arises – it has to arise. It creates a certain energy-field: in that energy-field, people can grow more easily. It becomes the Garden.

Hakim Sanai has called this book THE WALLED GARDEN OF TRUTH: the HADIQA.

When there are thousands of trees blooming, new seeds can take courage and jump into the soil and die, because they know it happens. So many trees are saying, so many flowers are declaring,

”Don’t be worried. Disappear into the soil and you will resurrect. This happened to us.”

WHILE THIS WORLD REMAINS,

THAT ONE CANNOT BE;

WHILST YOU EXIST,

GOD CANNOT BE YOURS.

You have to disappear like a seed into the soil. That disappearance looks like death – it is not.

Only apparently do you die: in fact you are born for the first time. It is resurrection, it is rebirth, you become twice-born. And for the first time you know something of the immortal. You are carrying it in a seed form, and you can know it only when it becomes a flower, when it becomes a fragrance.

The seed is gross; the seed is only the potential. Unless it becomes actual, you will not be able to see it; it will remain hidden. And if you cut open a seed, you will not find it either. So if somebody goes to the surgeon and asks him, ”Is there God in me?” the surgeon can cut him open and look inside, but he will not find any God anywhere. No X-ray machine is going to give you a picture of your soul.

That’s why science goes on saying there is no God, no soul – they are simply dissecting the seed.

The seed has not to be dissected; the seed has to fall into the soil and disappear there in the darkness of the soil, in the womb of the earth. It has to disappear there.

The master is a womb, the commune is a greater womb: the disciple comes and disappears into the womb. And then one day when the season is ripe, when the spring has come, something sprouts –

something that you could never have imagined in the seed. Those two green leaves... and the tree has started growing.

THE COMING OF DEATH

IS THE KEY WHICH UNLOCKS

THE UNKNOWN DOMAIN;

BUT FOR DEATH, THE DOOR OF TRUE FAITH

WOULD REMAIN UNOPENED.

So don’t be afraid of this death that the seed has to face. Every disciple has to face it.

THE COMING OF DEATH...

So when death starts coming to you, don’t be afraid. It is the beginning of a new life, of life abundant.

That is the meaning of the story that Jesus is crucified, and after three days he is resurrected. This is not a historical fact. If you try to make it history you destroy its beauty, you destroy its poetry, you destroy its grandeur. You bring it into the world of facts. It is not a fact, it is an eternal myth. It happened before Jesus; it has happened to every master, it has to happen to every disciple. It is an eternal truth: the story simply depicts it, describes it. But don’t reduce it to historical fact.

Christians go on destroying the beautiful story of Jesus’ life; they try to make it historical. If this resurrection of Jesus is historical, you have brought it into time, into the ordinary world of facts where Adolf Hitlers and Mussolinis exists. You have brought it into the ugly world of history, of time, of events. It is not an event, it never happened – although it always happens.

It is the essential truth of every seeker’s life. Every seeker has to die on the cross, and after three days – those three days are of waiting, symbolically of waiting – the spring can come and the resurrection.

THE COMING OF DEATH

IS THE KEY WHICH UNLOCKS

THE UNKNOWN DOMAIN...

Only by dying does the seed unlock the door and the tree starts growing. Only by dying as Adam do you unlock the door of Christ-consciousness in you. Only by dying as a mind do you unlock the door of being.

THE COMING OF DEATH

IS THE KEY WHICH UNLOCKS

THE UNKNOWN DOMAIN;

BUT FOR DEATH, THE DOOR OF TRUE FAITH

WOULD REMAIN UNOPENED.

So death is also beautiful. And remember, we are not talking of physical death at all: we are talking of psychological death. We are talking of the death of the ego, of egoing.

IF YOU YOURSELF

ARE UPSIDE DOWN IN REALITY,

THEN YOUR WISDOM AND FAITH

ARE BOUND TO BE TOPSY-TURVY.

And this is how we are. Being has been forgotten – which we are. And we have become identified with the mind – which we are not. This is the topsy-turvy state: the real is forgotten, and the unreal is pretending to be the real.

In this state you cannot know that which is. God surrounds you, truth surrounds you, but you cannot know God, you cannot know truth, because you are standing upside down. First you have to become true. To know truth, you have to become truth: you have to reach back to the source, you have to search and grope.

You are lost in the world of having. You have come into the world of having by the staircase of doing

– now move backwards. When you move backwards on the same ladder, it is non-doing, because doing is less and less and less and then it disappears. And the first taste of being is the beginning of a totally new life – the life of eternity.

So there were these two blacks from a southern town, and they wanted women desperately but couldn’t find any. They were driving along the country road when they spotted a pig. One of the jumped out, scooped up the pig and stuck it on the seat between them.

They continued to chug along in their 1969 Ford when a police siren suddenly sounded behind them.

A glance at the rear-view mirror showed them that a police car was in hot pursuit. They pulled over to the side. Not wanting to be caught with a stolen pig, they tossed a blanket over it.

The officer came up to the side of their car. ”What are you up to?” he asked.

”We were just out looking for women,” one of the lads replied truthfully.

Suddenly the pig sticks its face through the folds of the blanket.

The cop stared, shook his head sadly, and said, ”Lady, can you tell me what a nice southern girl like you is doing with these two blacks?”

Man is in such an unconscious state! Man is almost drunk. He cannot see what is; he goes on believing what others say. He does not respect his own eyes, his own ears; he does not respect his own sensibilities. He has become very insensitive.

You go on believing what others say. Somebody says, ”This is the house of God. This is the temple, or the synagogue, or the church,” and you start believing them, and you go and start worshipping a stone.

And this foolishness, this utter stupidity, is thought to be religious.

Religion belongs only to

intelligence; religion is the flowering of intelligence. Just think about it again: what have you been doing in the name of religion? Repeating, imitating – what others have said, you have believed it.

When you are going to look for yourself? When are you going to think for yourself?

Only by thinking for yourself, only by looking into things for your own self, will you be able, slowly slowly, to awaken. Otherwise this dream is going to continue. It has continued for long, it can continue for eternity – unless you take hold of your own being, unless you start working on your intelligence, unless you start sharpening your own intelligence. Nobody will help, remember. And if you can find somebody to help, then that is your master.

People will help you to remain mediocre, because that is how they can go on exploiting you. If you can find somebody who is ready to help you to sharpen your intelligence, then be with that person: you have found a friend. It is very difficult to find a friend in this world, this world is very unfriendly.

Everybody is interested in his own exploiting – and people who want to exploit you cannot want you to become intelligent.

My effort here is to sharpen your intelligence as much as possible. The whole process of this commune is that of sharpening your intelligence, so that you can stand on your own feet.

Don’t go on repeating things like parrots, otherwise you will never become a man.

Mrs. Keller had a very talented parrot. At her dinner parties he was the center of attention, for she had trained him to repeat what the butler said when he announced the guests as they arrived.

The parrot had only one failing: he loved to make love to chickens. Every chance he got, he would fly over the fence into the yard of the farmer next door and make love to his chickens.

The farmer complained to Mrs. Keller, and finally she laid the law down to the parrot. ”Bertram,” she said, ”you better listen to me! The next time you go into Farmer Whalen’s yard I’m going to punish you plenty!”

The parrot hung his head to show he understood. But two days later, he couldn’t resist temptation and over the fence he went. He was deep into lovemaking with the third hen when Farmer Whalen spotted him and chased him. Whalen complained again to Mrs. Keller.

”Now you’re going to get it,” she said. She got a pair of barber’s shears and clipped all the feathers from the top of the parrot’s head.

That night, Mrs. Keller threw one of her gala parties. She put the parrot on top of the piano.

”Bertram,” she said, ”you’ve been a rotten old thing. Tonight you’re to sit here all night. No wandering around and no playing the way you usually do!”

And so, feeling rather disconsolate, the parrot sat on the piano. As the butler announced the guests, Bertram performed as usual, repeating the names. The butler said, ”Mr. Arnold Levy and Lady Stella,” and the parrot said, ”Mr. Arnold Levy and Lady Stella.” The butler said, ”Mr. and Mrs. Robert Salomon,” and the parrot said, ”Mr. and Mrs. Robert Salomon.”

Then two bald-headed men entered the room. Without waiting for the butler to announce them, the parrot shouted, ”All right, so you’ve also been caught making love to chickens? Ha, ha! Up here on the piano with me!”

Remember, you are not a parrot, you are a man. Respect your manhood, respect the intelligence that has been given to you. Respect the gift of God and sharpen it, grow into it, let it come to an optimum.

People use only five percent of their potential – that’s what psychologists have come to know. Even people who are thought to be very talented don’t use more than ten percent, and the people who are known as geniuses use only fifteen percent of their intelligence. Can you imagine what we have been missing? Can you imagine? If people use a hundred percent of their intelligence, this earth will become unique, this earth will be a paradise. There will be no need to think of a paradise after death, the paradise will be herenow.

It is possible – God has given you the potential. But the politicians and the priests have not allowed you to use it, and your so-called priests are all against it.

If you can find a man who helps you to sharpen your intelligence, who respects your intelligence, who wants you to grow it to the maximum so you can become aflame with intelligence, then you have found the master.

That is the only requirement that has to be fulfilled by a real master. And that is the only criterion by which you can understand whether you have come to a real master or not. And it is so simple, it is so obvious, when you come across a person who helps you to sharpen your consciousness, who helps you to go beyond the mediocrity that society has imposed upon you.

Drop your mediocre selves. Inside you is a source of great intelligence, of divine intelligence.

STOP WEAVING A NET ABOUT YOURSELF:

BURST LIKE A LION FROM THE CAGE.

This is how a real master gives his message. Sanai says:

STOP WEAVING A NET ABOUT YOURSELF...

Stop weaving the nets of thoughts, desires, ambitions, imaginations.

STOP WEAVING A NET ABOUT YOURSELF:

BURST LIKE A LION FROM THE CAGE.

The cage in which you have been put by the society. Burst forth! Give a lion’s roar! And come out of the dreams into which you have fallen, in which you are trapped. Become rebellious, be revolutionaries.

MELT YOURSELF DOWN IN THIS SEARCH:

VENTURE YOUR LIFE AND YOUR SOUL

IN THE PATH OF SINCERITY...

Only one thing has to be remembered: be authentic, be sincere to yourself. Declare your truth, whatsoever the cost. Even if life is risked, risk it, because truth is far more valuable than anything, because truth is true life. Risk all – be authentic! Whatsoever you are, stick to it! Don’t allow anybody to manipulate you, don’t allow anybody to enslave you. And MELT YOURSELF DOWN IN

THIS SEARCH – and let the ego melt.

You have become frozen ice cubes: let these ice cubes melt. And once they have melted, they start flowing, they become alive and dynamic.

MELT YOURSELF DOWN IN THIS SEARCH:

VENTURE YOUR LIFE AND YOUR SOUL

IN THE PATH OF SINCERITY;

STRIVE TO PASS FROM NOTHINGNESS TO BEING,

AND MAKE YOURSELF DRUNK WITH THE WINE OF GOD.

You have been drinking many kinds of wines of this world – of money, power, fame: they are all poisons. But there is a wine – the wine of God, the wine of love, the wine of meditativeness, the wine that pours from the beyond into your heart. Become available to it.

And how does one become available to it? Be open. And only an authentic person can be an open person. The person who is not authentic, who is not true to himself, who is pretending to be somebody he is not, cannot be open. He is a lie: he has to hide the lie in many ways.

Only a truthful person can be open – he has nothing to hide, he has nothing to protect. His whole periphery, his whole circumference, is open to existence; three hundred and sixty degrees of circumference are open to existence. He contacts existence from every direction, from all directions.

He is available to reality, totally available.

People who live as lies cannot be totally available; they are always afraid they may be caught lying.

They have to protect themselves, they have to create an armour around themselves. They are open only in small ways – maybe just a keyhole from where they look into the world, and through which the world enters into them. But it can’t be much of a world. Through a keyhole the sun cannot enter much, and the winds cannot come in, and the rains cannot come in. And behind the keyhole you are hiding yourself and looking through the keyhole – whatsoever you perceive is going to be very partial. And everybody claims his partial vision as the truth.

Bursts forth from this cage. And that is possible only if you respect yourself, if you feel the dignity of being here, if you feel that God has created you as a unique being. He has never created anybody like you, and he will never create anybody like you again. You are unique, you are incomparable.

Feel this gift, this grace, and respect yourself.

The man who respects himself is authentic. He cannot compromise: he would prefer to die but stick to his truth. And that is the price God asks for. Risk all that you have – because you don’t have anything, you only think you have. In reality, you are a nothingness.

Sanai says:

STRIVE TO PASS FROM NOTHINGNESS TO BEING,

AND MAKE YOURSELF DRUNK WITH THE WINE OF GOD.

Be open, and God starts pouring into you like wine from every nook and corner of existence. Then wherever you look, you find God. Then whatsoever you touch, you find God. Then whatsoever you drink and eat, you find God. And when God pours from everywhere, then life is a celebration.

CHAPTER 4

A Buddhafield in Spring

14 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

Question 1

BELOVED MASTER,

IN YESTERDAY’S LECTURE YOU SAID THAT PROGRAMS, NAMES AND LABELS AND

BECOMING CRYSTALLIZED AND IDENTIFIED ARE HINDRANCES AND LIABILITIES IN THE

SEEKER’S SEARCH FOR THE SUPREME SELF. THIS IS SO FOR ME. I DON’T WANT A LABEL. I WANT TO BE VAST, UNLIMITED. I DON’T WANT TO BE CRYSTALLIZED. I WANT TO FLOW LIKE

A MOUNTAIN STREAM. TO BECOME ACKNOWLEDGED BY THE ORGANIZATION AROUND

YOU AS A DISCIPLE, ONE MUST ACCEPT A PROGRAM WHICH IN PART CONSISTS OF

WEARING THE MALA AND ORANGE CLOTHES AND HAVING YOUR NAME CHANGED WHICH

SEEM TO FUNCTION AS BADGES OR LABELS IDENTIFYING ONE AS A SANNYASIN.

PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT A NEO-SANNYASIN IS AND WHAT, IF ANYTHING, IT REQUIRES TO

BE ONE. THIS IS IMPORTANT TO ME BECAUSE YOU ARE A LIGHT IN THE DARK FOR ME, BUT THE ONLY WAY TO GET CLOSE TO YOU, TO TALK TO YOU, IS TO BECOME A SANNYASIN

WHICH SEEMS TO INVOLVE CARRYING SOME EXTRA BAGS BEYOND THE SIMPLE WISH TO

STAND IN YOUR GUIDING LIGHT.

Roland Seeman, sannyas is not a program at all: it is a process of de-programming. But because you are programmed already, you will have to accept the process of de-programming.

You say you don’t want to get identified with a name – then who is this Roland Seeman? You say you don’t want to become a label, but you are one. The question is not of becoming a label, a name – you already are one. It is as if a hypnotized person says, ”I don’t want to be hypnotized.” Neo-sannyas is a process of de-hypnosis: the person who is already hypnotized needs to be de-hypnotized – if he says this again is a kind of hypnosis, then he is going to remain hypnotized forever.

The society hypnotizes you, the church hypnotizes you, your parents hypnotize you. You have passed through that process already; now you will have to go backwards. Neo-sannyas is a process of dropping all that has been forced on you; neo-sannyas is an anti-process.

Mulla Nasruddin has a signboard in front of his office saying that no salesmen are allowed in. If anybody tries to enter he will be prosecuted.

A friend asked him, ”Why are you so much against salesmen?”

He said, ”They bore me to death.”

The friend said, ”That’s true, that’s my experience too. From where did you get this signboard?”

And Mulla laughed and said, ”That is the only practical thing I have ever purchased from a salesman.”

Sannyas is not a new program. The orange and the mala and the new name are just a gesture from your side that you are ready to drop all the programs, a gesture from your side that you are open to me. It is just a gesture; that’s why it is so simple Anybody can take sannyas, with no conditions attached to it, no strings attached to it.

Have you ever heard of any spiritual tradition in the world giving sannyas so easily?

Great

preparation is needed. If you want to become a Hindu sannyasin you will have to go through a long process of preparation. If you want to become a Christian monk, the same. This is happening for the first time in the whole history of humanity: I am giving you sannyas without asking whether you are worthy of it, ready for it. Why? Because it is not a program.

To be a Catholic monk is a program. It will require that a few conditions be fulfilled before you can enter into it, it will take years of preparation. To be a Jaina monk will take even longer, because it is a process of becoming an ascetic. The more unnatural a program is, the more preparation will be needed.

I give you sannyas with no requirement, no condition, to be fulfilled on your side. It is a simple gesture. And you are only thinking about having a new name, about having to live in orange clothes.

But you don’t know: that new name will help you to become disconnected from your whole past.

Those orange clothes will declare that you are no more part of any religion, that you are simply religious – that you are neither Hindu nor Christian nor Mohammedan.

Sannyas is like when you have a thorn in your foot: you need another thorn to take it out. The other thorn is exactly like the first thorn. Sannyas is just a thorn to take out all the thorns that are in your being. You are not getting into some new identity. Sannyas is not serious; it is very playful, it is non-serious.

And I have told you that PROGRAMS, NAMES AND LABELS AND BECOMING CRYSTALLIZED

AND IDENTIFIED ARE HINDRANCES AND LIABILITIES IN THE SEEKER’S SEARCH FOR THE

SUPREME SELF.

Yes, I repeat it again. But you will still have a name: don’t get identified with it. I have not told you not to have any names – or have I? Without names it will be impossible to exist. They have some purpose to fulfill. Without names, without addresses, it will be impossible to exist where so many people are around you. You need a certain name; it is utilitarian, it has no ultimate truth about it.

When you start thinking that your name has something ultimate about it, then you have become crystallized, and identified with it.

I have said don’t get identified with your name, and don’t get identified with any label that you have to use in life. And you will have to use many labels. I am not against life. If you drop all labels and all names, you will have to go back to a very primitive state – to live in a cave in the Himalayas. There you will not need any name, because no postman will ever come to deliver your post, nobody will ever call you, nobody will ever address you. But that will be a kind of suicide. I am not teaching you any suicide. I am against renouncing the world.

I would like you to live in the world, to live more totally, to live more intensely. But then labels and names will be needed. Then what has to be done? Don’t get identified with them, that’s all.

And if you have carried a name for forty years it is good to change it, because with the new it will be easier not to get identified. With the old, forty years’ association has made it very crystallized; it has entered deep into your sleep and your dreams too. The new name will be just on the surface. Now, don’t do the same with the new name as you have done with the old one.

And the organization that exists around me is not really an organization but a device – a device which creates a certain space. You may not be able to see it right now, unless you enter the space.

Those who have entered, they know that the organization is there between me and the world, and it has some function to fulfill.

Roland Seeman, if there were no organization here, you would never be able to sit silently for even two minutes with me. There would be thousands and thousands of people always clamoring around me; no work would be possible. I lived that way for many years. It became impossible to work on people, because there was no possibility of any communion. Crowds were always there. Even when I was asleep in my room, people were sitting around; I was eating, and people were sitting around.

There was a continuous crowd. Nobody was able to ask any personal question, no intimacy was possible.

This organization has been created, not to be an organization but just to be there so the whole world does not start impinging upon me, and I can remain available to real, authentic seekers.

Now you are sitting in silence here with me, thanks to the so-called organization. Otherwise, it was impossible. It used to happen: thousands of people were listening to me; I was traveling around the country. A gathering of fifty thousand people would be there in the cities. And on one side people who were against me shouting, and people who were for me would also be shouting – and I was speaking! And the police standing there continuously, so that those people who were for and against didn’t start clashing.

It was almost impossible to work; that’s why I stopped traveling. Now I don’t go anywhere. Those who are really interested in truth will have to come to me. And the organization is just a device to screen people. If you are really a seeker, this is nothing – to wear orange, to become a sannyasin.

If you can’t pay even this much price for it, then you are not a real seeker – maybe curious.

And to be with a master needs a kind of participation with the master. That is the only way to be in communion. It is not only a question of talking to me: it is a question of sharing my being. You will have to give me an indication that you will remain open, that you will not be defensive.

Your question, Seeman, is nothing but a defence. You want to have all the opportunities that are given to those who have surrendered in trust, yet you don’t want to surrender and you don’t want to participate. You want all the benefits without paying for them in any way.

You say: IN YESTERDAY’S LECTURE YOU SAID THAT PROGRAMS, NAMES AND LABELS AND

BECOMING CRYSTALLIZED AND IDENTIFIED ARE HINDRANCES AND LIABILITIES...

Yes, they are. So, when you take sannyas, if you ever take it, don’t become identified with the name: think of it as a utility. And don’t become identified with the orange clothes: think of them as a gesture.

And you say: THIS IS SO FOR ME.

This is not so for you. If it was so, truth would have already happened to you. Then what is hindering the truth? If you have dropped all labels, all programs, all names, all labels – if you are not identified with anything – then what is hindering the truth from happening? In fact you are being very clever and cunning. You are identified with your name, you are identified with the programs, you are identified with your past and all the conditionings that the past has given to you. But listening to me, this idea felt very good, comfortable – so you need not change anything, you can simply say: THIS IS SO

FOR ME. If this is so for you, why are you here in the first place?

You say: I DON’T WANT A LABEL.

Who is this ‘I’ who does not want a label? It itself is a label – and the deepest label!

You say: I WANT TO BE VAST, UNLIMITED.

Who is this ‘I’ who wants to be vast and unlimited? This is the greatest ego trip! You can never become vast and unlimited. When you have disappeared, there is vastness, there is unlimitedness

– but it will not belong to you, remember. You will not be able to claim, ”I am vast.” If you are there, no vastness is possible. The ‘I’ is bound to remain limited. The idea of the ego can never be unlimited; the idea of the ego keeps you separate from the infinity of existence.

You say: I WANT TO BE VAST, UNLIMITED.

Your ego wants to go on the trip of being infinite and vast. Sannyas simply means that you drop your ego trips. You say, ”I don’t want to be anybody, I don’t want to be anybody in particular, I don’t want to have any goal.” The goal of infinity, the goal of vastness, are all in the future. And whenever there is a goal, the ego is strengthened.

The ego exists through goals; what name you give to the goal does not matter. You can call it money, you can call it power, you can call it prestige, or you can now call it infinity, vastness, God – it is the same ego trip. Now it has become even more subtle and more poisonous, because the more subtle the ego is, the more dangerous it is.

You are afraid, but trying to cover up your fear philosophically. This is what goes on continuously: I say one thing, you understand another. You understand according to yourself, you immediately start manipulating, distorting what you hear.

That’s why communication between light and darkness is so difficult. Between those who know and those who don’t know it is so impossible. You immediately jumped upon the idea, and you made a beautiful weapon out of it to protect yourself.

See the point. Sannyas means dropping all goals, sannyas means being happy as you are. Sannyas means living life in utter ordinariness. What nonsense you are talking about – becoming vast and infinite! Living life in its pure ordinariness is sannyas. And then one day it happens: suddenly boundaries disappear. But they disappear only for those people who are ready to live in an ordinary way – eating when hungry, sleeping when feeling sleepy; just living the ordinary life – chopping wood, carrying water from the well, with no pretensions, with no trips in the future, worldly or otherworldly; just living moment to moment, with no desire to proclaim oneself.

You must have great desire to proclaim yourself:

I WANT TO BE VAST, UNLIMITED.

You can never be vast, you can never be unlimited. you are the barrier! Now the disease wants to be healthy. The disease cannot be healthy: the disease has to go. When there is no disease left, health wells up.

You ask: WHAT IS NEO-SANNYAS?

It is creating a space in which melting becomes possible, creating a space where you see many many people melting, dissolving, and you see the beauty arising in them, and you see their benediction, and you see something mysterious surrounding them.

That triggers a process in you. Sannyas cannot cause God to happen in you. Sannyas does not believe in the cause-effect relationship; sannyas is a kind of synchronicity where many many people are flowering, and a great energy is released in you. It is not caused by others; it is simply triggered.

Somebody is singing a song, and suddenly a song arises in your heart and your lips start moving.

It has not been caused, there is no inevitability in it. It is not the effect of somebody’s singing, it is parallel to it. It is provoked, not caused; you have started responding.

And you know it happens, in ordinary life also it happens. Somebody comes who is very happy, laughing, jubilant; you were sitting in a kind of sadness, but suddenly seeing this person, his laughter, his bubbling energy, your sadness disappears. You start laughing. You have forgotten completely your misery, your agony, your problems, your worries. For a moment the other person has called up something from deep in you, just by his presence. He is a catalytic agent. So is the master.

And when there is an energy-field, a Buddhafield, when there are so many disciples around a Master, you are in garden in the time of spring. Thousands of trees blooming – suddenly your seed gathers courage: your seed starts feeling the potential, your seed is ready to risk. That’s what sannyas is.

If you have any courage, if you are really a seeker of truth, then take the jump into the unknown.

It is not a conditioning; it is an anti-program, it is de-conditioning. It is not hypnosis, it is de-hypnosis.

It is not a program, it is a de-programming.

The second question:

Question 2

WHAT IS LOVE?

It depends. There are as many loves as there are people. Love is a hierarchy, from the lowest rung to the highest, from sex to superconsciousness. There are many many layers, many planes of love.

It all depends on you. If you are existing on the lowest rung, you will have a totally different idea of love than the person who is existing on the highest rung.

Adolf Hitler will have one idea of love, Gautam Buddha another; and they will be diametrically opposite, because they are at two extremes.

At the lowest, love is a kind of politics, power politics. Wherever love is contaminated by the idea of domination, it is politics. Whether you call it politics or not is not the question, it is political.

And millions of people never know anything about love except this politics – the politics that exists between husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends. It is politics, the whole thing is political: you want to dominate the other, you enjoy domination.

And love is nothing but politics sugar-coated, a bitter pill sugar-coated. You talk about love but the deep desire is to exploit the other. And I am not saying that you are doing it deliberately or consciously – you are not that conscious yet. You cannot do it deliberately; it is n unconscious mechanism.

Hence so much possessiveness and so much jealousy become a part, an intrinsic part, of your love.

That’s why love creates more misery than joy. Ninety-nine percent of it is bitter; there is only that one percent of sugar that you have coated on top of it. And sooner or later that sugar disappears.

When you are in the beginning of a love affair, those honeymoon days, you taste something sweet.

Soon that sugar wears off, and the realities start appearing in stark nakedness and the whole thing becomes ugly.

Millions of people have decided not to love human beings any more. It is better to love a dog, a cat, a parrot; it is better to love a car – because you can dominate them well, and the other never tires to dominate you. It is simple; it is not as complex as it is going to be with human beings.

At a cocktail party the hostess couldn’t help overhearing the conversation of a suave gentleman.

”Oh, I adore her. I worship her,” declared the gentleman.

”I would too if she were mine,” agreed his friend.

”The way she walks and swishes. Her beautiful big brown eyes, her head so proud and erect...”

”You’re very fortunate,” commented his friend.

”I would too if she were mine,” agreed his friend.

”The way she walks and swishes. Her beautiful big brown eyes, her head so proud and erect...”

”You’re very fortunate,” commented his friend.

”And do you know what really thrills me? The way she nibbles my ear.”

”Sir,” the hostess interjected. ”I couldn’t help listening to those affectionate words. In this day of numerous divorces I admire a man who so passionately loves his wife.”

”My wife?” said the gentleman, surprised. ”No – my champion race horse!”

People are falling in love with horses, dogs, animals, machines, things. Why? Because to be in love with human beings has become an utter hell, a continuous conflict – nagging, always at each other’s throats.

This is the lowest form of love. Nothing is wrong with it if you can use it as a stepping-stone, if you can use it as a meditation. If you can watch it, if you try to understand it, in that very understanding you will reach another rung, you will start moving upwards.

Only at the highest peak, when love is not a relationship any more, when love becomes a state of your being, the lotus opens totally and great perfume is released – but only at the highest peak. At its lowest, love is just a political relationship. At its highest, love is a religious state of consciousness.

I love you too, Buddha loves, Jesus loves, but their love demands nothing in return. Their love is given for the sheer joy of giving it; it is not a bargain. Hence the radiant beauty of it, hence the transcendental beauty of it. It surpasses all the joys that you have known.

When I talk about love, I am talking about love as a state. It is unaddressed: you don’t love this person or that person, you simply love. You are love. Rather than saying that you love somebody, it will be better to say you are love. So whosoever is capable of partaking, can partake. Whosoever is capable of drinking out of your infinite sources of being, you are available – you are available unconditionally.

That is possible only if love becomes more and more meditative.

‘Medicine’ and ‘meditation’ come from the same root. Love as you know it is a kind of disease: it needs the medicine of meditation. If it passes through meditation, it is purified. And the more purified it is, the more ecstatic.

Nancy was having coffee with Helen.

Nancy asked, ”How do you know your husband loves you?”

”He takes out the garbage every morning.”

”That’s not love. That’s good housekeeping.”

”My husband gives me all the spending money I need.”

”That’s not love. That’s generosity.”

”My husband never looks at other women.”

”That’s not love. That’s poor vision.”

”John always opens the door for me.”

”That’s not love. That’s good manners.”

”John kisses me even when I’ve eaten garlic and I have curlers in my hair.”

”Now, that’s love.”

Everybody has their own idea of love. And only when you come to the state where all ideas about love have disappeared, where love is no more an idea but simply your being, then only will you know its freedom. Then love is God. Then love is the ultimate truth.

Let your love move through the process of meditation. Watch it: watch the cunning ways of your mind, watch your power-politics. And nothing else except continuous watching and observing is going to help. When you say something to your woman or your man, look at it: what is the unconscious motive? Why are you saying it? Is there some motive? Then what is it? Be conscious of that motive, bring it to consciousness – because this is one of the secret keys for transforming your life: anything that becomes conscious disappears.

Your motives remain unconscious, that’s why you remain in their grip. Make them conscious, bring them to light, and they will disappear. It is as if you pull up a tree and bring the roots to the sunlight: they will die, they can exist only in the darkness of the soil. Your motives also exist only in the darkness of your unconsciousness. So the only way to transform your love is to bring all the motivations from the unconscious into the conscious. Slowly slowly, those motives will die.

And when love is unmotivated, then love is the greatest thing that can ever happen to anybody. Then love is something of the ultimate, of the beyond.

That is the meaning when Jesus says, ”God is love.” I say to you: Love is God. God can be forgotten, but don’t forget love – because it is the purification of love that will bring you to God. If you forget about God completely, nothing is lost. But don’t forget love, because love is the bridge. Love is the process of alchemical change in your consciousness.

The third question:

Question 3

I WAS BROUGHT UP WITH THE TWISTED IDEAL THAT RAGE AGAINST EXISTENCE WAS

MAN’S DIGNITY. ALL MY LIFE I HAVE BEEN FIGHTING, BUT FOUND NO DIGNITY – ONLY

PAIN AND SUFFERING. LIFE IS LIFE – UNAFFECTED. FROM WHERE THIS STUPID IDEAL?

I WANT TO HOLD ON TO SOMETHING, ANYTHING, EVEN THE ANGER FOR BELIEVING LIES, LIES AND MORE LIES. I WANTED THEM TO BE TRUE. HOW CAN I BE SO STUPID?

Weechee, everybody is brought up with the ideal of raging against existence, because that is the only way to create the ego – to fight against existence. Only through fighting with existence is the ego created – because in fighting you become separate, in fighting you start swimming upstream.

Then the stream and you are enemies: you have to conquer the stream and any idea of conquering is very fundamental in creating egoing.

You have been brought up with the idea of fighting. Fight with nature, fight with people, compete, because that is the only way to survive. And only the fittest survive – so become a more and more competent fighter. The society wants to create the ego in you. Once the ego is created in you, you are a miserable person, false, phoney, and you can be exploited.

Then the society can exploit you, your parents can exploit you, the priests can exploit you. Then everybody is capable of exploiting you.

If you really want to get rid of the ego – and to get rid of the ego is the only freedom there is – then you will have to drop this stupid idea of constantly raging against nature, against existence. That is not man’s dignity, that is man’s original sin. That is man’s condemnation; it is a calamity, a curse.

Man becomes dignified only when man is not. When man

Man becomes dignified only when man is not. When man disappears as man, and allows the existence to flow through him, then there is dignity, exquisity, beauty, grace, splendor. When you are not, there is splendor. If you stop fighting you will disappear; automatically you will disappear.

And because you don’t want to disappear, you go on following the stupid idea that has been given to you. Then your whole life is nothing but constant warfare – and how can you be happy and blissful and celebrating when each moment is a fight? And you are fighting against so many: really the whole world is your enemy, and you are so alone. There is fear – bound to be – and trembling and anguish, because the whole thing seems to be so impossible.

How can you conquer this existence? It was there before you ever were, it will be there when you are gone. How can you win against this? And you are such a tiny part of it. The whole idea is absurd. A wave trying to win over the ocean, your hand trying to win over the whole body: the whole idea is absurd.

Relax, be in a let-go. Live with nature as an intrinsic part of it. Cooperate rather than conflict.

The very idea of survival of the fittest is utterly wrong. Survival in itself is not a value either. It is not a question of how long to survive; it is a question of how to live totally, deeply, intensely, passionately.

Then even a single moment of total life is more valuable than a long long life of a hundred years.

A single moment of passionate love, of passionate living, of passionate stillness, is more valuable than the whole of eternity. It is not a question of survival, it is really a question of how to live this moment. The idea of survival makes tomorrow more important than today, the idea of survival makes it easier for you to sacrifice today for tomorrow. And tomorrow never comes: whenever it comes, it is today. And your mind is programmed to sacrifice today for tomorrow, so you go on sacrificing your whole life.

Parents sacrifice their lives for their children. The children again in their turn will sacrifice their lives for their children, and so on and so forth. And nobody will ever live.

I am against the very idea of sacrifice. Never sacrifice! Live this moment; live it totally, intensely, passionately. And then a miracle happens: if parents have lived their life beautifully, if they are fulfilled, their very fulfillment creates the space for their children to live, to live in the right way. And by the right way I don’t mean the moral way, by the right way I mean the total way. To live partially is to live wrongly, to live totally is to live rightly.

If children are brought up by parents who have been living their lives afire, aflame, who have been celebrating their moments, these children will learn how to celebrate, how to live joyously, how to live affirmatively, how to live saying yes to existence. A deep yes will arise in their hearts: it will be triggered by their parents. And the parents were not sacrificing, not at all, and so the children will not learn the suicidal idea of sacrifice.

If parents are sacrificing for their children, then sooner or later, when the parents are old, they will demand sacrifice from the children. They will say, ”We sacrificed so much for you, now you sacrifice for us.”

The country demands sacrifice from the people who live in it, the church demands sacrifice, everybody demands sacrifice. Just look around you: they all are standing around you, asking for sacrifice. And they teach you that to sacrifice is moral.

To sacrifice is immoral! Whether you sacrifice for the country or for the religion or for the children, it is immoral. It is immoral because it does not allow you to live your life. You become sad, you become frustrated, and then in return you start coercing others to sacrifice for you. Then the whole life of the whole world becomes simply crippled and paralyzed.

A mother was teaching her small child the great truths of life and religion. She was a Catholic; she told her small son, ”God has created you to serve others.”

The little boy pondered over it, and he said, ”Okay, if you say so. But then why did he create the others?” To serve me? This looks so absurd, that I am created to serve somebody else, and somebody else is created to serve me; it looks so illogical. Why should I not serve myself, and he can serve himself?” That seems simply logical, mathematical.

I teach you a kind of self-love. You are not created to sacrifice yourself for somebody else, you are not created to serve others. You have been taught this because those others want you to serve them, to sacrifice. And because they want you to serve them, they have to serve you; because they want you to sacrifice yourself for them, they have to sacrifice themselves for you. So we are at each other’s throats continuously, demanding sacrifice.

The whole idea has to be dropped. You are created to live and celebrate, just as others are being created to live and celebrate. God is not a murderer; he demands no sacrifice from you. He demands that you bloom and flower.

Only when you have flowered will you be accepted. And the way to flower is the way of acceptance.

Don’t resist, don’t rage against existence: relax, surrender, go with the flow.

Weechee – and this truth you have learned from your own life – you say: ALL MY LIFE I HAVE

BEEN FIGHTING, BUT FOUND NO DIGNITY – ONLY PAIN AND SUFFERING.

Now it is time: if you have understood it, drop it! Drop it, immediately – don’t carry it even a single moment any more because who knows? The next moment may never come. Drop it this very moment!

Always see that whatsoever you have understood has to immediately become your life. Don’t postpone it.

The fourth question:

Question 4

I WANT TO BECOME A SANNYASIN BUT MY HUSBAND IS STUBBORNLY AGAINST IT. I WONDER WHAT MAY BE THE CAUSE OF HIS ANTAGONISM.

Denise felt very self-conscious about her face. ”I’m ugly,” she said to herself as she looked into the mirror. ”My nose is crooked, my chin is weak, my ears stick out, and I have bags under my eyes.”

In desperation she went to a plastic surgeon and had a face lift. Her chin was strengthened, her nose remodeled, her ears adjusted, and the bags under her eyes removed.

After months of suffering, the ordeal was finally over. She was now able to entertain friends, but she still sulked about herself.

One day her friend Joan looked at her in amazement. ”I don’t know why you look so sad. You now have the face of a movie star.”

”I know,” sobbed Denise. ”But now my new face doesn’t go along with my old body.”

That is the fear. If a woman wants to take sannyas the husband is afraid, if the husband wants to take sannyas the wife is afraid – because something new is entering. If you become a sannyasin, that means the relationship between you and your husband cannot be the same. Something new has entered; your husband will have to readjust.

He may have been a good husband to a non-sannyasin wife, he may not go well with a sannyasin wife: a maladjustment is feared.

It always happens; it is not new to you. This is happening almost every day. Any couple feels disturbed, because something new entering will be a disturbance; it will create chaos. You will have to start from ABC again. Somehow you have managed, somehow you have come to an adjustment –

and remember, it is always an adjustment. You have come to a compromise, you have learnt how to live with the woman. And now she wants to become a sannyasin. You don’t know what she is going to be like after she becomes a sannyasin, how she will behave. She will become unpredictable.

And there is danger, because sannyas means going through a revolution. She has lived with you: she may not be conscious that she has never loved you. There may have been other motives –

maybe you were rich and she wanted to live a secure life. Now she becomes a sannyasin: sooner or later she will discover – because this sannyas is a constant adventure into one’s own being, an exploration – sooner or later she will become aware that she has never loved you, she loved your money. And she may see that because of this she has missed the opportunity of love.

Sannyas may give her courage. It is bound to give courage. She may drop out of your life, seeing that her motive was wrong, seeing that she has been deceiving herself and you – although unknowingly, not deliberately, but once she understands and sees it, who knows what is going to happen?

She has lived with you; she may have become bored by now, but she cannot gather courage to get out of the boredom. The relationship may have gone stale. Sannyas is bound to make her aware not to live in a stale relationship.

This sannyas is not an ordinary religious thing like you have known in the past. This sannyas is really an exploration of your inner depths. It is to live according to your understandings, and to live authentically. If sannyas is anything it is the courage to live sincerely.

There is danger: she may leave you, she may fall in love with somebody else – she may have been repressing that idea up to now.

My sannyas is not repressive. It wants you to live naturally, a life of uninhibited joy, a life which knows nothing of repression. My sannyas is expressive, not repressive.

If you were becoming a Christian, going to the church, there would have been no trouble – because the church would make you even more repressed, the church would make you more of a slave. Your husband would have been happy; he might even have gone with you to church sometimes to support you. The church supports the status quo, the church supports things as they are. The church is anti-revolutionary – all churches, Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan.

I am not a church, I am not for the established, adjusted life. I am for real life: eve if it brings chaos, welcome it. Hence the fear.

And couples, slowly slowly, just become indifferent to each other. Seeing that there is no possibility of change, they lapse into a kind of coma. Their relationship is not alive, is not aware, is not radiant, all romance is dead.

I bring romance into your life again, because I can’t conceive that a life can ever really be life if it is without romance. Either you will fall in love with your husband for the first time, or you may fall in love with your husband AGAIN, or you may fall in love with somebody else. Or you may become so alert that you may not fall in love with anybody else again. You may simply be able to live alone, you may be able to enjoy the beauty of aloneness. Nobody knows; my sannyasins are unpredictable and that is the trouble.

Familiarity breeds contempt, but people go on dragging.

Marge often burned with anger because her husband Elmer seemed to ignore her.

”How do you like my new hat?” asked Marge proudly.

”Uh huh... It’s all right.”

”Don’t you think my new dress is cute?”

”It’ll do.”

”Do you think the white shoes will go with it?”

”Oh, I guess so.”

”Do you think the shell necklace clashes with the blouse?”

”It’s okay.”

”Why don’t you put down the newspaper, dear?” she hissed through clenched teeth.

”In a few minutes”

”Do you mind if I season your supper tonight with arsenic?”

”Whatever you wish, dear.”

Sooner or later, wives and husbands lose all possibility of communication. They live together, but not in togetherness. They become dull, insensitive. Hence the fear. The fear is that you will become alive again. And then who knows what is going to happen?

Sadie and George were having dinner when suddenly the lights went out.

”A power failure,” moaned George.

”What’ll we do?” groaned Sadie.

”I wonder if a car ran into a power line?” pondered George.

”Who cares how it happened?” declared Sadie. ”What’ll we do?”

”I know,” suggested George. ”But don’t be alarmed. We’ll light some candles.”

”Splendid,” agreed Sadie. ”We have a few in the cupboard.”

So they continued to eat by candlelight.

”Isn’t this romantic?” cooed Sadie.

”Yes,” agreed George. ”It’s a shame we’re married.”

Married people have completely forgotten what romance is. A real marriage will go on growing in romance. But our whole life is unreal, hence our marriages are unreal. Because our individualities are not there, we are phoney, then whatsoever we do with those phoney personalities becomes doubly phoney.

And whenever there is a possibility of coming across some truth, fear arises. The wife wants to become a sannyasin: the husband becomes stubbornly antagonistic. The husband wants to become a sannyasin: the wife becomes absolutely antagonistic.

The fear is that something new is there and it may disturb the arrangement. And people want to live in security, even if security means death. People want to live in comfort, even if comfort simply means nothing but dragging your life. Security, comfort, convenience, have become ultimate values.

In a society which thinks of security as a value, comfort as a value, convenience as a value, everybody remains afraid, nobody wants anything to change. Everybody is for the status quo: let things remain as they are, don’t touch them.

And sannyas is really a drastic step.

Your husband is simply representing all the husbands of the world. It is just fear – have compassion on him. Help him to meditate, help him to go through a few therapy groups. Help him, don’t argue.

And don’t be in a hurry to take sannyas – wait a little. Just let him come closer to me, and then he may want to take sannyas and you may become afraid. Then you will understand what was happening to him.

We are living such an ugly life – and for no reason at all, except that we have been brought up in that way.

It will be good if you both become sannyasins; but be a little patient, don’t frighten him too much. If you insist too much on taking sannyas, in the same proportion he will become antagonistic. Take things more relaxedly, take things easy. If you really want to become a sannyasin, it is going to happen. But help him also – that poor man also needs a revolution in his life.

If it was a question from a husband, my answer would have been different. Because it is a question from a wife, my answer is different. If the husband had asked to take sannyas I would have told him,

”Take it immediately” – because there is no way to persuade a woman, there is no way to argue with a woman. Only if you take sannyas may she be able to understand, otherwise not.

And I would have said also, if the question had been from a husband, ”Take it immediately. For the first time in your life, do something you want to do. Don’t be henpecked: do it! And your woman will respect you because you have done it. She will deep down feel very happy that she has got a real man. Otherwise, wives never think that their husbands have any integrity.”

But because the question is from a wife... I trust women very much: I know she will take sannyas, there is no fear about it. Today or tomorrow – she can wait, she will take it. This is my experience: when a woman decides, she decides. The husband can hesitate; tomorrow he may not be able to take it at all. So I cannot tell him to wait. The husband is always wavering. But once a woman has decided, she has decided – because the husband decides from the intellect, and the woman decides from the heart. And the quality of the decision is totally different.

When the woman decides, she is ready to go to any end. She can sacrifice her life too if she decides for something. She knows how to commit herself through the heart, she knows how to love. Her decision is not through intellectual conviction, hence it cannot be shaken. Her decision is more intuitive; it is total, it is absolute, because intuition is never divided, it is non-dual. And when you decide something through the intellect, it is always a parliamentary decision. Maybe the major part of your mind was saying, ”Go ahead,” – but today it may not be the major part; a few members may have crossed the floor. It is always a majority decision, and the minority is always there against it.

A woman decides through the heart. It is not a parliamentary decision, it is total. It is ultimate in a sense: she can wait for years, and still the decision will be there.

That’s why women are very patient in their love affairs; they can wait. I know women who have waited for years and years. But the man is very indecisive: today he is in love, tomorrow love disappears. It was not love, it was a thought of love.

To you I say wait. And I know you can also seduce your husband into sannyas – bring him with you!

When I have the opportunity of two persons becoming sannyasins, I can wait.

The fifth question:

Question 5

BELOVED MASTER,

KINDLY LET ME KNOW WHETHER THERE IS A LAW IN INDIA PROHIBITING INDIAN CITIZENS

TO INHABIT, DWELL OR LIVE IN A HOUSE OR HOUSES OR AN ASHRAM IN ANY PART OF

INDIA, TO STUDY AND LEAD A BLISSFUL HUMAN LIFE FOR THE GROWTH OF RELIGION

AND SCIENCE. IF YES, THEN WHAT IS INDEPENDENCE? IF NO, THEN WHY DON’T WE START

ESTABLISHING A VILLAGE FOR NEO-SANNYASINS, ”RAJNEESHDHAM,” BEYOND MUNICIPAL

JURISDICTION.?

Dharma Sharan Das, there is no law prohibiting us from establishing a commune. But the people who are in power always think they are beyond law. There is no law that goes against establishing a commune, an ashram. But the people who are in power can always find ways to delay it – that’s what they are doing.

In his books, TRAVELS WITH MY AUNT, Graham Greene tells the story of a retired income-tax official, Mr Pottifer, who was now set up as an income-tax consultant, and who delighted in advising his clients how they could outwit the income-tax laws by driving the income-tax bureau crazy.

”He was a great believer in delaying tactics. ‘Never answer all their questions,’ he would say. ‘Make them write again. And be ambiguous. You can always decide what you mean later according to circumstances. The bigger the file, the bigger the work. Personnel frequently change. A newcomer has to start looking at the file from the beginning. Office space is limited. In the end it’s easier for them to give in.’ Sometimes if the inspector was pressing very hard, he told me that it was time to fling in a reference to a nonexisting letter. He would write sharply, ‘You seem to have paid no attention to my letter of April 6, 1963.’ A whole month might pass before the inspector admitted he could find no trace of it. Mr Pottifer would send in a carbon copy of the letter containing a reference which again the inspector would be unable to trace. If he was a newcomer to the district, of course he blamed his predecessor; otherwise, after a few years of Mr Pottifer, he was quite liable to have a nervous breakdown.”

That is what is being done. Mr Morarji Desai has been a deputy collector: he still functions like a deputy collector. That’s what is being done with us – just delaying tactics. They go on asking about this, about that, and there is no end to it.

For example, the Maharajah of Kutch donated four hundred acres of land in Kutch. It is desert land, of no use; nothing can be cultivated on it. That’s why nobody has ever been interested in purchasing it, that’s why the Maharajah easily donated it to us.

Then the delaying started – it is almost one and a half years ago now. First they said they had to study the case, because the land is too close to Pakistan: in times of war they might need it. In times of war – when that war is going to happen, nobody knows – but in times of war they might need the land.

Somehow we convinced them that it was not likely. Then they started writing letters saying that because there would be so many foreigners and it is on the boundary of the country, it was a question of safety and security: spies might enter.

We convinced them. Then they started telling us that just close by it – not very close, thirty miles away – there is an army camp. And they didn’t want us to be so close to the army camp.

Now there is no law, but you can always find these things. So we dropped that idea. Still it is continuing, but we dropped the idea because this seemed to be too much of a hassle.

So we purchased seven hundred and fifty acres of land, just close to Poona – fifteen miles away.

Now problems have started – delaying tactics.

First they asked that we should produce a certificate from the medical board as to whether the climate is such that people can live there. Just fifteen miles from Poona! And just beside the land, two miles away, there are villages, and people are living there. Just close to the land, two hundred people are living.

So we produced a certificate. That took two or three months – because the board consists of six members and unless those six members meet and agree... So they delayed and delayed; finally it happened. Then they asked for another medical certificate to say whether the water and the land are such that people can live there.

There is no law against it, but these are tricks and strategies. They can’t say no, they don’t want to say yes.

We inquired. All the authorities said that this has never happened before. Nobody ever asks about the water and the land and the climate – but if they are asking then we have to fulfill their requirements. So the paper work goes on and on.

Now we have managed that. The land is barren, no cultivation has ever been done on it. But in their files it is mentioned as agricultural land. Now they have created some new trouble: we cannot construct on agricultural land; first we have to produce a certificate stating that it is non-agricultural land. Nobody has ever done any agriculture there; we took the officers to see, it is barren land, anybody can come and see – rocky, barren, absolutely useless. But they say that because in the file...

So first we have to apply to transfer the land from agricultural to non-agricultural. That is taking time; now they are delaying that. This could be done easily, within a single day – that is how it is done.

Four months have passed: all the officials have been ordered to delay as long as they can. And when they cannot delay any more and it becomes a legal problem over which we could go to court

– ”Now you are delaying us too much” – then that officer simply sends the file to a higher official.

He says, ”Because it is such a complicated phenomenon and a political issue, and your master is a controversial man; and I am such a small official, I cannot decide it. Go higher.”

Now the whole process starts again with the higher official. It was to be done by the Tahsildar, the lowest. It moved to the S.D.O. Now the S.D.O. has taken his time; now his time is finished and it has moved to the collector. And the people in the collector’s office say that it is going to move to the commissioner. And the commissioner is very friendly, he says it is beyond his power to do it: ”You will have to ask the revenue minister of Maharashtra.”

Now the revenue minister says, ”Your master is so controversial that I cannot take the risk of deciding anything, for or against, because there will be political repercussions from it. And I don’t want to lose my chair, so you had better decide with the chief minister.” And he said, ”Even the chief minister cannot decide on his own; he will have to ask the whole cabinet.”

And my feeling is that they will say, ”This cannot be decided by the Maharashtra government, it has to be decided by the central government in Delhi.”

And I am not only a nationally controversial figure, I am an internationally controversial figure. So my fear is that this will have to be decided by U.N.O.! So now as to when it will be decided, nothing can be said. These are delaying tactics and strategies. If they say no they can be caught immediately, because it is illegal to say no. But they don’t say no.

Dharma Sharan Das, I can understand your anxiety, your problem. That is the anxiety of every sannyasin. It is becoming so difficult here, the space is so small. And thousands and thousands more are going to come: I have given the invitation to them, they are on the way.

Even this land we are sitting on: we have been here for five hears, and have still not yet legalized it. We are already here, they cannot throw us out, but they have not legalized it. We don’t have the papers with us, the papers are with the government. They go on saying, ”We are going to do it, we are going to do it” – but it never happens.

This is how Morarji Desai is behaving, in a fascist way – but very legally; you cannot find any legal flaw. This is a very cowardly way. If you are against me, that’s okay. I am ready to get into any discussion with you, I am ready to argue with you. If he needs a public debate, it can be a public debate. If he needs me to answer, I can come to the parliament and answer the parliament, I will really enjoy it!

But very cowardly ways, cunning ways... he remains a deputy collector. He is not worthy to be a prime minister to such a big country. His mind is that of a deputy collector – a very small mind. I don’t call him Morarji-bhai Desai, I call him Mediocre-ji-bhai Desai.

My challenge is open. And even if he does not agree with me, then too there is no point in obstructing my work. Your agreement is not needed at all. That is the meaning of independence and democracy: people who cannot agree with each other can coexist. Otherwise what is the difference between a democracy and a dictatorial regime?

I can exist, I have every right to exist, even if Morarji Desai does not agree with me. His agreement is not needed at all – who cares? This is his problem. If he does not agree, so what?

But if because of his personal disagreement he obstructs my work in such cunning and vicarious ways, then he is destroying democracy from the very roots. And then independence is simply a slogan, to a reality.

I have not yet thought of leaving this country. But if this continues and the work becomes impossible, I will have to leave this country. And they should know perfectly well that once I leave this country it will prove to the whole world that this country only claims to be a democracy – it is not. And my leaving the country will not be only a single individual leaving: thousands will leave with me. That will show the whole world that the Indian claim of being the greatest democracy in the world is just hocus pocus.

If I decide any day to leave this country – which they are forcing me to decide – that will be a calamity.

Because my millions of sannyasins all around the world will become the living proof that this country is not independent, and this country is not democratic either.

Thirty years ago, when India became independent, Winston Churchill said in the British parliament:

”What we are doing is not right. Although it is every human being’s birthright to be free, to give freedom to India is not right, because the time is not ripe. And within thirty years it will fall a victim to rogues, scoundrels and thugs.”

And I wonder – thirty years have passed: it seems Churchill’s prophecy has come true.

CHAPTER 5

The Forgotten Shepherd

15 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

FROM HIM FORGIVENESS COMES SO FAST,

IT REACHES US BEFORE REPENTANCE

HAS EVEN TAKEN SHAPE ON OUR LIPS.

HE IS YOUR SHEPHERD,

AND YOU PREFER THE WOLF;

HE INVITES YOU TO HIM,

AND YET YOU STAY UNFED;

HE GIVES YOU HIS PROTECTION,

YET YOU ARE SOUND ASLEEP:

OH, WELL DONE,

YOU SENSELESS UPSTART FOOL!

HE HEALS OUR NATURE FROM WITHIN,

KINDER TO US THAN WE OURSELVES ARE.

A MOTHER DOES NOT LOVE HER CHILD

WITH HALF THE LOVE THAT HE BESTOWS.

YOU HAVE BROKEN FAITH,

YET STILL HE KEEPS HIS FAITH WITH YOU:

HE IS TRUER TO YOU

THAN YOU ARE TO YOURSELF.

HE CREATED YOUR MENTAL POWERS;

YET HIS KNOWLEDGE IS INNOCENT

OF THE PASSAGE OF THOUGHT.

HE KNOWS WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART;

OR HE MADE YOUR HEART ALONG WITH YOUR CLAY;

BUT IF YOU THINK THAT HE KNOWS

IN THE SAME WAY THAT YOU DO,

THEN YOU ARE STUCK LIKE A DONKEY

IN YOUR OWN MUD.

IN HIS PRESENCE,

SILENCE IS THE GIFT OF TONGUES.

HE KNOWS THE TOUCH

OF AN ANT’S FOOT

MOVING IN DARKNESS

OVER A ROCK.

HE ALWAYS KNOWS

WHAT IS IN MEN’S MINDS:

YOU WOULD DO WELL

TO REFLECT ON THIS.

Jesus says: God is love. But I say unto you: Love is God. ‘Love’ is a far more important word than the word ‘God’; ‘love’ has existential meaning. The word ‘God’ is utterly empty; it signifies nothing, it relates to nothing in you. It is a pure word, pure in the sense that it has no corresponding reality in your experience.

Although both words indicate the same truth: ‘love’ is the poet’s word, ‘God’ is the word of the theologian. But obviously the poetic insight is deeper, profounder, and the poet’s sensibility is also far more refined, far more subtle than that of the theologian. The poet’s vision is more aesthetic too, more beautiful, more exquisite; it has more grace, more meaning, more significance. And moreover, the theologian’s choice has been contaminated down the ages by so many people –

Hindus, Christians, Mohammedans – by so many churches, so many religions, that have pretended to be religious and were not.

Love still remains uncontaminated; it is still virgin.

So let me repeat: rather than saying God is love, say love is God, and you will be closer to the truth.

And not only closer – you will be immediately related to truth, because love is your experience. It may not be so profound that it becomes God, but still, even unrefined gold is gold. Even the uncut, unpolished diamond is diamond. The diamond may be lost in the mud, but it can be cleaned any moment; the mud cannot enter into its being.

Love is your being. And the moment we use the word ‘God’ great controversies arise. Use the word

‘love’, and theism, atheism, and all kinds of unnecessary arguments are discarded.

Love also represents the innermost core of existence itself. Existence is not indifferent to you, it is not detached. It is committed to you, it cares for you. It may not care the way you want to be cared for, but it still cares in its own way. And what you expect may not really be your need, it may be just the opposite.

Existence really fulfills your needs – not your likes and dislikes, not your wants, but your real, true, authentic needs are always taken care of. Existence cannot be indifferent to you: you are part of it.

To be indifferent to you will mean it is indifferent to itself – that is impossible. Existence would have disappeared long ago if it was so.

We are its waves. We are flowers of this tree of life and existence. Your desire to be loved, and your desire to love, is your suprememost desire. It must show something of your basic fundamental nature, it must represent your innermost core – it does represent it.

Once you understand love as God, your whole vision of life will change. Then you will not go to worship in a temple or a church or a mosque: then love will be your worship. And then you will not be afraid of existence, because it cares for you. Fear will disappear. You will not be afraid even of death, because death can take away only that which is not needed any more, but it cannot destroy you.

Existence is your mother, it cannot allow destruction. Nothing is ever destroyed. Now even physicists agree with it: nothing is ever destroyed and nothing is ever created. Not even a small grain of sand can be destroyed or created. Existence contains the same quantity of matter, life, love and energy as it has contained always, as it will contain always.

Martin Luther has said a tremendously significant thing. He says ”PECCA FORTITER: sin boldly.” It is strange. The statement seems to be unbelievable – a man like Luther saying, ”Sin boldly.” But the meaning is really worth pondering over. He is saying: Love permeates the whole of existence, so don’t be afraid. Even if you are in sin, be boldly in it, because existence is always ready to forgive, is forgiving. Love always is forgiving. He does not mean that you should go and sin. He is simply saying: Your greatest sin is nothing compared to the forgiveness that goes on flowing from existence towards you.

Just the other day, somebody asked me, ”I am a great sinner. Can I also realize God?”

You cannot be that great a sinner. You cannot be so fallen that God’s hand cannot reach you, you cannot be so weighted and burdened by sin that God cannot uplift you. The gravitation of sin cannot be more than the grace of God.

This is one of the fundamentals of Sufism, that God is unconditionally forgiving – he has to be, because his nature is love. Love is his reality. It is not that love forgives: love is forgiveness. There is no question of forgiving you. The question arises only if God has already becomes angry with you.

Only then does the question of forgiving arise.

But God cannot be angry with you. You are the way he has made you, you are not your own creation.

How can he be angry with you? That would amount to being angry with himself; that would be a self-condemnation.

But you start thinking about small things as if you are doing great sins. The ego always loves to do great things. Even if you are doing something wrong, you want to pretend that this is the greatest wrong that has ever been done or will ever be done. You want it to be unique, incomparable; you want it to be on the top. The ego always feels good if something great is being done. It may be a sin

– that doesn’t matter.

What great sin can you commit? All our sins are nothing but small things: we are small, our sins cannot be great. Our hands are small: whatsoever we do is going to remain small, because it will have our signature on it.

Your life, virtuous or wicked, is not going to be a barrier or a bridge – because you are already bridged, and there is no way of disconnecting yourself from God. And it is not a question that when you sin, God forgives you. He is forgiveness: he is continuously flowing in tremendous love towards you.

His love is like a flood, your sins are like straw: the flood will take them away. And the flood does not come to take your sins away; it is already there. To understand this, to see the point of it, is a great relief, as if a mountain suddenly disappears off your chest. You become light, weightless. And only in that weightlessness can you worship.

The sinner cannot worship, he is continuously frightened. Fear cannot create prayer. Prayer created by fear remains political, a strategy of the mind to persuade God; it is a kind of bribery. Real prayer arises out of understanding, out of love.

Luther is really right when he says, ”PECCA FORTITER: sin boldly.” Whatsoever you are doing, do it boldly. You belong to God and God belongs to you. This is your home. Don’t live like a stranger, don’t be here like a guest: you are part of the host. Live without fear.

But our egos continuously go on magnifying things.

A man was in love with a woman for many years. And the woman was waiting and waiting, ”Now he is going to propose. Now he is going to propose.” And one day he proposed. She could not believe her own ears, she could not believe her own eyes. She has waited so long that she had almost become settled into believing that it was not going to happen.

She hugged the man, she kissed the man, and she said, ”I cannot believe my own ears. I have waited so long for this!”

The man said, ”Will you marry me?” And she said, ”Yes, yes! A thousand times, yes!”

The man took out a small black box from his pocket, opened it, and gave her a ring. She looked very minutely at it – the diamond was so small that it was almost impossible to see it with bare eyes.

The man said, ”Don’t be worried” – because she looked worried, shocked too, that after waiting so many years this man brings a wedding ring with such a small diamond. And the man was very rich. The man said, ”Don’t be worried, don’t look puzzled.” And from another pocket he pulled out a magnifying glass, and he said, ”Look! Look through this glass.”

Our minds are continuously magnifying. That’s how the ego exists. We magnify our virtues, we magnify our sins, we magnify everything. We make much fuss about nothing, much ado about nothing.

This magnifying glass has to be dropped absolutely. And then suddenly you see things in their perspective. We are small: our virtues are small, our sins are small. Neither are our virtues of any worth, nor are our sins of any worth. All that we can do is so small that it is irrelevant.

Your sins are not going to take you to hell. All those priests who go on telling you that are simply magnifying. And your virtues are not going to take you to heaven either, because all those virtues are so tiny, so shallow.

Then is there any hope, or not? There is no need of any hope. You are already in paradise. All that is needed is an unburdened heart to look around. You are already in paradise: you need not go anywhere. You are in God. Drop the magnifying glass, and your sins and your virtues both will disappear, because they both are creations of the magnifying glass.

An elephant was having an awful time in the jungle because a horsefly kept biting her near her tail and there was nothing she could do about it. She kept swinging her trunk, but he was far out of reach.

A little sparrow observed this and snipped the horsefly in half with his beak.

”Oh, thank you!” said the elephant. ”That was such a relief.”

”My pleasure, ma’am,” said the sparrow.

”Listen, Mr. Sparrow, if there’s anything I can ever do for you, don’t hesitate to ask.”

The sparrow hesitated. ”Well, ma’am...” he said.

”What is it?” said the elephant. ”You needn’t be shy with me.”

”Well,” said the sparrow, ”the truth is that all my life I wondered how it would feel to make love to an elephant.”

”Go right ahead,” said the elephant. ”Be my guest!”

The sparrow flew around behind the elephant and began to make love immediately. Up above them, a monkey in the tree watched and began to get very excited. He started to shake the tree, and a coconut got loose and fell from the tree, hitting the elephant smack on the head.

”Ouch!” said the elephant.

At which point, the sparrow looked from behind and said, ”Am I hurting you, dear?”

Drop the magnifying glass, and there is neither sin nor virtue, and there are neither sinners nor saints – simple human beings, just simple human beings.

In that simplicity, God arrives. In that simplicity, existence starts pouring love. It is already pouring, but because of your ideas, great ideas about yourself, you are not receptive.

Hakim Sanai says:

FROM HIM FORGIVENESS COMES SO FAST,

IT REACHES US BEFORE REPENTANCE

HAS EVEN TAKEN SHAPE ON OUR LIPS.

See the beauty of Sanai’s statement. This sutra is worth writing in gold in your heart.

FROM HIM FORGIVENESS COMES SO FAST,

IT REACHES US BEFORE REPENTANCE

HAS EVEN TAKEN SHAPE ON OUR LIPS.

He is forgiveness, he is already flowing towards you. You need not even repent. You have just to be simple, unpretentious; you have to drop your sinners’ and saints’ masks. And even before repentance has taken any shape on our lips, even without that, you are forgiven.

This is the experience of all the great mystics of the world. Luther is right when he says, ”PECCA FORTITER: sin boldly” – because his forgiveness is immense, infinite. And whatever you do is just tiny straws: the flood will come and take them all away.

Sufism is the path of grace. No effort is needed on your part: only receptivity, openness, a loving heart, a state of surrender, a let-go. And all that so-called yogis cannot attain in millions of lives, you attain in a single instant. HIS FORGIVENESS COMES SO FAST: it is immediate, because God knows only one time, and that is now. God cannot postpone; he has no future. He cannot say

‘Tomorrow’, because there is no tomorrow for him – time means this time, this moment.

For God, all is the present. Because our vision is limited, that’s why something is past and something is future and something is present. Our vision is so limited that our present is very tiny. That is the proportion of our vision. We are looking through a keyhole into reality: we can see only this much, all else is the past.

Just sit behind a keyhole and watch. Somebody comes: you see a person suddenly emerge out of nowhere, because just a moment ago you were not able to see him. When he comes in front of the keyhole you see him, and then next moment he is gone, he has passed, again he is no more. Just a moment ago he was in the future, just a moment afterwards he is in the past.

Do you think that man has disappeared? Do you think that man suddenly appeared from nowhere and now suddenly disappears into nowhere again, and he appeared only for a single moment? It is our vision that is creating the fallacy. Come out of your hiding place, open the door, and you will be surprised: he was before you saw him, and he is after you see him. Now you will have a better vision.

For God, all is eternal now.

The thief who was crucified with Jesus asked him, ”Lord, will I be able to see you again some time in the future?” Jesus says, ”Today you will be able to see me in the kingdom of my God.”

The word is ‘today’ – that is very significant. ”Today you will see me in my kingdom of God.” There cannot be any question of tomorrow.

God is immediate, God is always present. So all that happens through God happens now. And it is not happening to you, God is not happening to you, because you live either in the past or in the future, and he is never in the past and never in the future.

Hence the science of meditation: it brings you to the present, it brings you to this moment. The past is a thought; it disappears when thoughts disappear. The future is also a thought; it disappears when you drop thinking. When you are in a state of no-thought – there is no past, no future, there is only the present – in that state of no-thought you are ONE, in tune with God. And suddenly the flood is there: you are flooded with light, with love, with grace. You are no more a man, you are divine.

You have surpassed humanity.

Humanity is in a state of deep sleep.

HE IS YOUR SHEPHERD,

AND YOU PREFER THE WOLF;

HE INVITES YOU TO HIM,

AND YET YOU STAY UNFED;

HE GIVES YOU HIS PROTECTION,

YET YOU ARE SOUND ASLEEP:

OH, WELL DONE,

YOU SENSELESS UPSTART FOOL!

God is our shepherd, he takes every care. We are unnecessarily worried, and we start trying to take care by ourselves. And that’s how we fall victim to the wolf – the mind.

The mind says: This way – this is more secure, more safe. Arrange life in this pattern, don’t live in insecurity. That is the constant message of the mind. ”Don’t live in insecurity, make life secure. Have a bank balance, have a family, be tethered to the earth. Make as many arrangements as possible so you are protected.”

And God is our protector. But the mind starts playing the protector – and the mind is the wolf, because the mind is created by all kinds of exploiters that exist in the world. The priest, the pundit, the politician – they create the mind, they create fear in you. They live on your fear, they create a constant trembling; your whole life you remain in anguish, trembling, afraid. They create worry in you, and worrying is the source of your mind.

If a person is ready to live in insecurity, the mind disappears. Then there is no need for the mind.

Sannyas means to live in insecurity, because God is our only security. Sannyas means to live without any fear, because we are part of this existence. There is nobody to be afraid of. The existence is not antagonistic to us, it protects us.

But the mind is the by-product of fear, and because of the fear it goes on creating its own security.

Have more money, have a bigger house, have respect, prestige, political power. Win friends, influence people, so you are secure. You have so many friends: they will be useful. They say a friend is a friend only when he supports you in times of need. So, have many friends, compromise.

Have a false face, smiling, so that you can influence people.

You put your security into something which is very fragile. And God is your only security. But to know the security of God, to know that he is your shepherd, you will have to trust, to live in insecurity. If you can’t trust, you will go on accumulating rubbish around you. People love rubbish, they go on accumulating rubbish.

The Kenmores were having dinner at the Harringtons. After dinner Mr. Harrington unveiled his pride and joy – his collection.

”What is that?” asked Mrs. Kenmore.

”They’re kind of rusty,” added Mr. Kenmore, unimpressed.

His face beaming with pride, Mr. Harrington said, ”This is my collection of barbed wire. I have barbed wire that dates back to the Civil War.”

Mrs. Kenmore reached out to touch one of the specimens.

”Please,” cautioned Mr. Harrington. ”Don’t touch. I’m mighty proud of these gems and one can’t be too careful.”

”Are these really valuable?” questioned Mr. Kenmore with a befuddled look on his face.

Mr. Harrington looked slightly stunned. ”Valuable?” and he held up his scarred hand. ”These samples are very hard to get hold of.”

Just look around yourself. Look at people, watch. People are accumulating rubbish. In the name of money, in the name of knowledge, in the name of virtue, people are accumulating rubbish, all kinds of rubbish. And that is their security; they think it is going to save them. In fact they will be drowned in it – they will be drowned because of it.

Carrying such an unnecessary burden you cannot reach the tops, sunlit tops, of the HImalayas.

Carrying such unnecessary luggage you will remain always in the dark valleys of life. You will never know what sunlight is, you will never know the experience of being on a peak, whispering with the clouds, being close to the stars, and the purity of it and the virgin innocence of it.

People are dragging; their life is a continuous boredom. And nobody else is responsible except themselves.

Arnold was an elderly hobo whose life was simple and uncomplicated. One day a wealthy gentleman found him asleep on his front lawn.

”Mister,” the gentleman said, ”this is my property.”

”I’m sorry,” apologized Arnold. ”I thought this was a park.”

The gentleman looked sympathetically at the ragged hobo. ”Mister, are you happy living this kind of life?”

”Sir, money and worldly goods do not make happiness,” preached the hobo. ”To me, happiness is the freedom to roam without the pressures of society and the economy. The sky is my roof and the world is my bed. Give me all this, a piece of bread, a can of baked beans, and my happiness is complete.”

”I admire your simplicity and I admire your sincerity,” said the gentleman and handed him a hundred-dollar bill.

”Sir,” commented the hobo as he took the money, ”you have made me very unhappy.”

Just look at people. The richer they get, the more unhappy they look. It should not be so; why is it so? It is so illogical. Why do they become so unhappy? It seems they don’t know how to live in trust, they don’t know how to live in joy. Their whole life they have been working to be more and more secure. And it is not difficult to accumulate much wealthy – but by the time you have accumulated much wealth your life has gone down the drain. And then suddenly one becomes aware: ”What have I been doing? I have wasted my life.”

With that realization – ”I have wasted my life in accumulating unnecessary things, and now all those beautiful days are gone and only death is there in the future” – a great frustration arises. One has failed, tremendously failed.

They say nothing succeeds like success, but I say nothing fails like success. The moment you have succeeded, then you will know the taste of utter failure.

HE IS YOUR SHEPHERD,

AND YOU PREFER THE WOLF;

HE INVITES YOU TO HIM,

AND YET YOU STAY UNFED...

His invitation is always coming. It comes in the sunrays every day in the morning, but you never dance to the tune of the sunrays. It comes in the calls of the birds, but you never sing with them. It comes with each rose flower opening, but you don’t open up with the flowers.

His invitation is constantly coming; it goes on coming, twenty-four hours, round the clock. But you have become deaf, you don’t hear. The still small voice inside you goes on saying to you, ”What are you doing? You are simply wasting your time, your energy.”

The best way to waste your energy, your time, your life, is to go on thinking of the past and the future.

And his invitation comes in the present, his invitation belongs to the present.

HE INVITES YOU TO HIM,

AND YET YOU STAY UNFED;

HE GIVES YOU HIS PROTECTION,

YET YOU ARE SOUND ASLEEP...

What is this sleep all the mystics talk about? What is this metaphysical sleep? You are unconscious of the present: this is the sleep. You are here, and yet you are not here. Your mind is roaming somewhere else – into the past which is no more, or into the future which is not yet. And that which is remains utterly unknown to you.

The whole earth is full of somnambulists, sleepwalkers.

Professor Peabody had just returned from his honeymoon and a trip around the world. At the airport he was recognized by one of his pupils.

”Dr. Peabody!” shouted the student. ”How was the honeymoon?”

”Superb.”

”Was the trip exciting?” she asked breathlessly.

”Sensational. I visited every great museum and art gallery. The Louvre was magnificent. My wife and I wined and dined in the best restaurants of the world. It was a physical, emotional, and gastronomical adventure.”

”What are you going to do now that the excitement is over?”

”The excitement is not quite over yet,” said the professor in a grave voice.

”You’re taking another trip?”

”No, I forgot my wife in Tokyo.”

Just watch your own life. You are constantly forgetting to live herenow, and that is the only life there is. You go on rushing towards the past or towards the future, which are both meaningless; this is a simple leakage of energy. And then you are impotent in the present, empty, hollow. You cannot connect with the present, and the present is the only door to the divine.

HE GIVES YOU HIS PROTECTION,

YET YOU ARE SOUND ASLEEP;

OH, WELL DONE,

YOU SENSELESS UPSTART FOOL!

Ivan was a worrywart. He worried night and day. ”How am I going to pay next month’s bill? I’m sure my daughter was on that plane that crashed. The economic situation is terrible. Will we all end up eating dog food?”

Then one day Ivan’s aunt died and he inherited a million dollars. Eventually he bought a new home, the most lavish furniture, and a luxury car. The world now seemed like a rosy place.

While visiting Ivan’s wife one day, a neighbor noticed Ivan sitting alone in his room and moaning like a wounded hyena.

”What’s wrong with Ivan?” inquired the neighbor. ”Is he ill?”

Ivan’s wife gave a knowing smile. ”Not really, except Ivan is worried that he has nothing to worry about.”

Yes, that too creates worry, when you have nothing to worry about.

You have become so

accustomed, mechanically accustomed to worrying, that if you have nothing to worry about you will worry about this.

People come to me, they say, ”Life is changing. We are feeling great joy arising, we are feeling silence happening. And now we are worried: what next? Now we are worried: is this joy really real?

In this silence not just a projection? Maybe it is just a kind of hypnosis we have fallen into.”

Now they are creating new worries. People cannot live without worries – why? Because worries are the food, the nourishment, for the mind. Whenever the mind sees that something is happening and you may get out of worrying, the mind pulls you back and creates new worries, absurd worries –

because without worries the mind cannot exist.

The Sufi message is: Leave everything to God, leave everything to the whole. Just see: this infinite existence is going so perfectly. The energy that takes care of millions of stars can also take care of you; you need not carry your burden on your own head, you can trust. And just a few experiences of trust, and then you will never get caught in the old trap again because you will know things are being taken care of.

And that does not mean that you become inactive. In fact you become MORE active, but your action has a different flavor to it, a new taste. You become VERY active, but it is no longer your activity: now God acts through you. You become connected with the present, and he starts flowing through you. Great creativity is going to happen, but it will not be your doing. He will be the doer, and you will remain utterly relaxed, with not a worry.

Just think of that space when not a worry exists in your being, not a tension. That relaxedness is what everybody is longing for. And everybody is destroying all the possibilities of it ever happening.

We go on creating a wrong space and we go on longing for something which cannot happen in this space.

You will have to create a different kind of space. A different space is needed: that space is called trust, surrender, let-go, faith, love, or whatever you want to call it. Once that space is created, you start moving on a totally different plane. You enter a new dimension: deathless is that dimension, fearless is that dimension. And then you live totally, boldly; and then whatsoever you do, you are totally in it, utterly in it. Each act becomes such a passionate affair, so creative that not only are things created outside you, but because of that creativity something integrates inside you too.

You may paint: a great painting will happen outside, and inside the painter is created. You may write poetry: outside, the poetry is created, inside, the poet becomes integrated.

Each act of creativity creates the creator. You become more centered, rooted. And the more rooted you are, the less and less you feel a stranger. The idea that ”I am an outside here,” disappears. The whole existence belongs to you, and you belong to the whole existence. Great celebration starts happening of its own accord.

HE HEALS OUR NATURE FROM WITHIN,

KINDER TO US THAN WE OURSELVES ARE.

A MOTHER DOES NOT LOVE HER CHILD

WITH HALF THE LOVE THAT HE BESTOWS.

This sentence will look a little erroneous, because the love of a mother and the love of God cannot be compared in this way, that God loves more than your mother, double your mother. The difference is not of quantity. And you have all known the love of your mother – it will not thrill your heart if God only loves double that, it may even make you very sad! It doesn’t look like much of a promise.

And people who have been reading Hakim Sanai have been continuously stumbling over this. And not even a single commentary exists which has found the right interpretation of this sentence. It is not what it appears to be; it has a very profound meaning, totally different than you will read in the lines. You will have to look between the lines.

First, God’s love is qualitatively different. Then why does Sanai say: A MOTHER DOES NOT LOVE HER CHILD

WITH HALF THE LOVE THAT HE BESTOWS.

He is bringing something which is given by the master to the disciple in privacy, in secrecy. But now it can be told, because now psychologists have come to know – they have stumbled upon a fact which has been known to the Sufis, to the Zen people, to the Tantra people, all along – that the mind is divided into two parts: the conscious and the unconscious.

A mother’s love is an unconscious love. She loves, but she is as asleep as anybody else; her love is unconscious. God’s love is conscious. If we divide the mind into two – consciousness and unconsciousness – then God’s love is double, because he is utterly conscious. Psychologists say that only one part of our mind is conscious, and nine parts are unconscious. God is a hundred percent conscious.

That’s why whenever a man like Jesus or Buddha or Mahavira has become totally conscious we have called him divine, we have called him a god. The reason is psychological: there no longer exists any unconsciousness in him: no corner of darkness is left, all is light.

God loves in a conscious way. The mother’s love is unconscious, and naturally when love is unconscious it is contaminated by all kinds of unconscious things. There is greed, there is anger, there is hatred, there is jealousy, there is domination, power-politics – everything is there. In fact, so many unconscious ugly things are there that the beauty of love is almost crushed, crippled, poisoned.

God’s love is totally conscious. Buddha loves you with no desire to dominate you, with no desire of getting anything back in return, with no desire of any future reward, with no motivation. He loves because he is love. In fact to say that he loves you is not right, because love is not an act on his part.

He cannot help it. Just as the river flows towards the ocean, love flows from him towards whoever he comes across.

Even if nobody is there, love goes on radiating from a Buddha. Even when a Buddha is asleep, love goes on radiating from his being. He is love.

We have seen a few such people on this earth: they are called messengers of God, incarnations of God, avataras, Buddhas, tirthankaras. These are just names, names to show that they are no longer human beings in the ordinary sense. They are in the body, but they are no longer bodies.

From a Buddha we can have a little glimpse of what God’s love will be like.

Hakim Sanai is right in a way. The mother only loves unconsciously, so her love is half. God loves consciously, so his love is double – in this way, it is double.

But when love becomes conscious, a qualitative change happens; it is not only a question of quantity.

Unconscious love is one thing; it is like groping in a dark night, the groping of a blind man. When love is conscious, it is full light, noontide; you are not blind, there is no groping at all.

But remember that the metaphor is significant. God is the mother, the matrix. Existence is motherly, it is a womb: it nourishes you, it is constantly flowing towards you with all that you need. But we have completely forgotten this nourishment that comes towards us; we have forgotten this protection, we have forgotten the shepherd.

And because we have forgotten, we have become very lonely, unprotected, unsheltered, lost. And to look at our lostness creates fear. We become scared, we have to protect ourselves, so we create our own small protections and shelters. Our whole life becomes nothing but an endeavor to create some security. And then comes death and destroys all that we have created.

All our palaces prove to be nothing but palaces made of playing-cards. And all our great boats prove to be nothing but paper boats. Our whole life is made of the stuff called dreams – because we are asleep.

Wake up!

YOU HAVE BROKEN FAITH,

YET STILL HE KEEPS HIS FAITH WITH YOU:

HE IS TRUER TO YOU

THAN YOU ARE TO YOURSELF.

We have gone astray, we have gone far away from God. But he has not left us – he cannot, it is impossible. From his side it is impossible. We can go as far away as we want, but from his side, we will not be far away. From his side, his love goes on pouring on us.

He goes on pouring on saints and on sinners, he makes no distinctions. He pours on the mountains and he pours in the valleys, he makes no distinctions. The mountains will not be able to keep the rain that falls on them, because they are too full and they have no space. So the valleys will become great lakes: they are empty, they have space, they are receptive; they open up, they receive and they can contain.

The religious person is one who creates space for God to enter him. He is knocking on doors, on everybody’s doors, unconditionally. But very few open their doors. Those who open them, they become really rich, they become kings, because the kingdom of God is theirs. And those who are too much involved inside their houses – arranging their furniture and putting things right and counting their money – they cannot hear the knock.

The knock is very silent, it is a whisper: you have to be silent to hear it. And you have to be unoccupied to hear it – and our occupations are such, it looks so absurd seeing human beings obsessed with such foolish and ridiculous things.

He had heard that a certain whorehouse in Great Neck, New York, had an unusual reputation for the bizarre. So he drove to the place and, once inside, asked the madam if she had anything unusual for him to try.

”Things are pretty slow today,” she said, ”but I do have one number you might enjoy.” She went on to describe a New Jersey hen that had been trained to do blow jobs.

”We’ve got her here, but only for the day.”

The visitor could hardly belive it, but he paid the fee and went into a room with the hen. After a frustrating hour of trying to make love to the hen, he figured out that he was dealing with nothing but a plain old chicken. He left.

Thinking about it later, he decided that he had had so much fun trying that he returned the next day and asked the madam, ”Do you have anything new today?”

”Come this way,” she said, and led him to a dark room where a group of men were looking through a one-way mirror. He saw that they were watching a girl trying to make it with a dog.

”Wow!” he said to the man standing next to him. ”This is really great!”

The man replied, ”Man, it ain’t nothin’! You shoulda been here yesterday and seen the guy with the chicken.”

Man seems to be mad. And how can such people hear the knock of God? People are involved in stupidities. And don’t laugh at that poor man – this is the situation of almost all. Details may be different but the story is the same. And it goes on and on to the very end.

An old man made it shakily through the door to Joe Conforte’s Mustang Ranch, outside Reno, Nevada.

The receptionist stared at him. ”You gotta be in the wrong place!” she exclaimed. ”What are you looking for?”

”Ain’t this the famous Mustang? Ain’t this where you allus’ got forty-five girls ready‘n’able?”

The receptionist looked perplexed. ”Ready for what?”

”I want a girl,” the old man rasped. ”I wanna get laid.”

”How old are you, Pop?” she asked.

”Ninety-two,” he replied.

”Ninety-two? Pop, you’ve had it!”

”Oh,” said the old man, a little disconcerted, as his trembling fingers reached for his wallet. ”How much do I owe you?”

Now even memory is not there, he has lost his whole mind. But something mechanical persists

– something that goes on, it seems, on its own. From the beginning to the end, people remain ungrownups.

To grow old is not to grow up, to become old is not to become mature. Maturity has nothing to do with old age, nothing to do with age at all. Maturity has something to do with becoming more and more conscious, becoming more and more silent and aware, becoming more and more watchful of what you are doing and why, where you are going and why.

Franklin D. Roosevelt said in his first inaugural address: ”We don’t know where we are going, but we are on our way.”

Everybody seems to be in the same state. Nobody knows where, but everybody is on their way and everybody is going faster and faster. Speed seems to be the only concern: make it faster, and never ask where you are going, because those questions are troubling questions, they create anxiety. So please don’t ask where you are going, ask how to go there fast enough. And make your journey so fast, and become so much concerned with speed, that all goals are forgotten – that you lose everything else and become occupied with speed.

Man is so much obsessed with speed, and nobody seems to ask, ”Where are you going, and for what? Because God is here! Where are you going?” And no speed is needed to reach God. In fact, unless you learn how to sit silently, how to be in a state of utter relaxedness, how to drop the speedy mind completely, you will never come to know the truth, the reality, that which is.

God is very close by, but you are in such a rush. You will have to slow down, and you will have to learn to listen to whispers.

YOU HAVE BROKEN FAITH,

YET STILL HE KEEPS HIS FAITH WITH YOU:

HE IS TRUER TO YOU

THAN YOU ARE TO YOURSELF.

You are very untrue to yourself. How has this happened that you have become so untrue to yourself?

You never really did it knowingly; it is a by-product. You have been trying to be untrue to others, and as a by-product it has happened that you have become untrue to yourself.

This is a basic phenomenon, that whatsoever you pretend to others, sooner or later you will start believing in it. If you go on smiling – a false smile, a painted smile – at everybody you meet, sooner or later you will start believing that you are a very very happy person. Because those people who see you smiling, always smiling, will start telling you that you are really happy, you are great: this will be their feedback. And you will become hypnotized by the feedback, and you will smile more, because it brings a good payoff. And you will go on smiling more and more.

I have heard that every night Jimmy Carter’s wife has to close his mouth, because he goes on and on in the night... it becomes mechanical.

And you learn about yourself through others. If an ugly person is given a mirror which makes him look beautiful, he will believe that he is beautiful, because there is no way to know your own face.

He will look in the mirror, the mirror will say, ”You are beautiful,” and he will start believing it.

And if sometimes he comes across a true mirror which simply reflects the way he is, he will think this mirror is wrong. He may even destroy that mirror, because it creates sadness in him; and moreover, it does not reflect the truth, it distorts.

That’s what happens. If you come across a true person you will be angry with him, because he will not support your lies and he will not support your masks. He will pull your masks down and he will try to show you your real face. He can only reflect that which is, he cannot reflect that which is pretended.

That’s why the man of truth is always thought to be a kind of trouble-maker. The society does not like him. The society does not want to hear the truth, they are perfectly happy helping each other’s lies. And whoever helps you lie, you call him your friend – he is your enemy, but you call him your friend.

And even if sometimes your friend starts telling the truth to you, the friendship starts breaking.

Sigmund Freud is reported to have said that if every person on the earth decided to be true, just for twenty-four hours there would not be even four friendships left in the whole world. If every person, just for twenty-four hours, was true, there would be millions of divorces, and friendship would disappear, and families would fall apart. There would be chaos – because we are living on lies.

The man who does not like you says, ”I love you.” He has his motives: by saying that, he is preparing ground for himself. We believe what others say to us about us. We have no direct approach, we have no immediate contact with our own being; it is via others.

And how can you come to know your real self via others?

The only way to know your real self is to forget others, to close your eyes and just be there inside yourself – and discard all the opinions that have been given to you, discard all that has been said about you, in toto, and become utterly empty of the opinions of others. This is what meditation is all about.

And one day when you are absolutely empty, you will come to know your real face. Zen people call it the original face. Sometimes it takes years, because there are so many false faces – false faces upon false faces, layers upon layers – that you will have to peel your onion for months, for years. It depends with what intensity and with what sincerity you work upon yourself.

YOU HAVE BROKEN FAITH,

YET STILL HE KEEPS HIS FAITH WITH YOU...

God still believes in you.

Rabindranath Tagore has written: ”Whenever I see a new child born, I look at the sky and I thank him, because the new child is a proof that God still believes in man. Otherwise he would have stopped creating. We have betrayed him, but he still hopes. His hope for us seems to be absolute.

We cannot change his hope; whatsoever we do, our doing remains irrelevant.”

Existence still hopes that man will arrive, that man will be able to surpass his dreams, his sleep, that man will be able to become conscious. Existence still hopes – that’s why it goes on creating you.

HE CREATED YOUR MENTAL POWERS;

YET HIS KNOWLEDGE IS INNOCENT

OF THE PASSAGE OF THOUGHT.

HE KNOWS WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART;

FOR HE MADE YOUR HEART ALONG WITH YOUR CLAY;

BUT IF YOU THINK THAT HE KNOWS

IN THE SAME WAY THAT YOU DO,

THEN YOU ARE STUCK LIKE A DONKEY

IN YOUR OWN MUD.

God knows in a totally different way than we know. Our knowledge is of the intellect. His knowing is not of the intellect; his knowing is simple, it is innocent. It is not through thoughts that he knows. He simply knows; knowing is his nature.

It is just as a mirror reflects: it does not think whether to reflect or not to reflect, it simply reflects. It is just as the sun rises and the earth becomes full of light: the sun does not think to wake people up because it is day now. The sun does not think, ”Now I have to reach each bird and provoke the bird into a morning song, and I have to go to each rose and open the petals of the rose.” No, there, is no thought on the part of the sun. The sun simply rises; it is its nature to radiate light.

God’s nature is knowing. His nature is intelligence, utter intelligence. He reflects like a mirror. And if you want to know God you will have to learn this way of knowing.

God cannot be know through scriptures, because that is not God’s way of knowing. You will have to learn his ways: you will have to become innocent. The man who is knowledgeable is cunning, clever, but not innocent. The knowledgeable man is full of information – and the more information you have, the less is the possibility of your intelligence functioning.

I have heard:

A woman had brought some gadget, a new gadget, for her kitchen, but she did not know how to make it work. So she went into the house, searched for the catalogue, and started reading about the device. When she had read it she came back and the cook had already started the device.

She said, ”How did you manage it?”

And the old cook said, ”When you are uneducated, you have to use intelligence. When you are educated, you need not. You went to look in the catalogue: I cannot read, so I had to use my intelligence.”

Ponder over it.

The more knowledgeable you are, the less the need of intelligence.

Hence

intellectuals remain stupid; they can brag much about their knowledge, but deep down they remain unintelligent. Scholars are always unintelligent. They may have great degrees, but if you look at their research work you will be surprised: they are just collecting rubbish. They go on collecting rubbish. Nobody ever reads their theses; they go on accumulating in the university libraries. The only function and purpose of those theses will be to help other foolish people to write more theses; those will be the only persons who will read them.

Millions of treaties are written every year, millions of Ph.D’s and D.Litt’s are awarded, and the world functions in such an unintelligent way. Our world is the most educated, and the most unintelligent.

This is the century when we have succeeded in educating people; particularly in the advanced, rich countries, education is universal now.

But what is the outcome? People are not functioning intelligently. If you know that a person is very very intellectual, you can be sure he will not function intelligently – he will not need to. Children function more intelligently than older people, because they don’t have any knowledge. They have to use their own resources; they cannot depend on knowledge, they have none.

If you want to know God, you will have to know his way of knowing. What is his way of knowing?

Intelligence, not intellect; innocence, not knowledgeability.

Meditation makes you innocent, because it helps you drop all knowledge.

Love makes you

intelligent, because love has nothing to do with knowledge.

HE CREATED YOUR MENTAL POWERS;

YET HIS KNOWLEDGE IS INNOCENT

OF THE PASSAGE OF THOUGHT.

HE KNOWS WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART;

FOR HE MADE YOUR HEART ALONG WITH YOUR CLAY;

BUT IF YOU THINK THAT HE KNOWS

IN THE SAME WAY THAT YOU DO,

THEN YOU ARE STUCK LIKE A DONKEY

IN YOUR OWN MUD.

His way of knowing is totally different, diametrically opposite, to your way of knowing. But you can learn his way of knowing. And the moment you have learnt his way of knowing, you have started moving closer towards him.

That’s why Jesus says, ”Unless you are like small children you will not enter into my kingdom of God.”

IN HIS PRESENCE,

SILENCE IS THE GIFT OF TONGUES.

That is the only language that God understands: silence. He does not understand Sanskrit, although Hindus believe that that is DEVAVANI, God’s language. He does not understand Arabic either, whatsoever Mohammedans may believe. He does not understand Hebrew, whatsoever the claim of the Jews. He does not understand Aramaic, although Jesus may have understood and spoken Aramaic.

What is his language? He understands only silence.

So if you are praying through words you will never reach him, your prayer will never reach him. Words are too heavy; they will not allow your prayer to soar high and reach the ultimate. Only silence can have wings.

He understands silence. The real prayer consists only of silence: silent tears, silent crying of the heart, silent laughter, a silent dance, a silent music inside your being. When you are utterly silent you are immediately in tune with God. So the Vedas are not going to help, neither is the Bible nor the Koran. In fact the Vedas were born to those who were silent.

That’s how the Koran descended onto the earth. Mohammed had been meditating for forty days in silence – praying, meditating, sitting silently in the hills – and one day suddenly something started descending. A light penetrated him, a song entered him. He was used as a vehicle; God spoke through him.

Of course, when God speaks through Mohammed he uses Arabic, because that is what Mohammed knows. When God speaks through Buddha he uses Pali, because that’s what Buddha knows.

But God’s own language is only silence. In fact, when he flows through Buddha it is the mechanism of Buddha’s mind that translates silence into Pali. It is the mechanism of Mohammed’s mind that translates silence into Arabic. And then there is great controversy: then the scholars of Pali and the scholars of Prakrit and the scholars of Sanskrit and the scholars of Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, they go on quarreling. And only one has spoken. Only one silence has flowed down. But it was translated; it was given shape and form, it became a language.

If you want to reach God, you will have to learn the way of silence.

IN HIS PRESENCE,

SILENCE IS THE GIFT OF TONGUES.

Only those who are silent, they know how to talk to him. They know how to communicate, how to commune.

HE KNOWS THE TOUCH

OF AN ANT’S FOOT

MOVING IN DARKNESS

OVER A ROCK.

HE ALWAYS KNOWS

WHAT IS IN MEN’S MINDS:

YOU WOULD DO WELL

TO REFLECT ON THIS.

There is no need to say anything to him. Just bow down – because he knows. He already knows, before you, what is in your mind: he knows it, he reflects it. Your conscious, your unconscious, your collective unconscious – all are reflected in him. There is no need to say anything, it is absolutely unnecessary. Just open up, just bow down. Be silent in his presence.

And one thing more: he is not a person, he is a presence. That’s why no image can ever represent him, no idol can ever substitute for him. He is a presence, a pure presence.

Have you ever felt the difference between a person and a presence? There are persons who have something around themselves – you can call it presence. For example, if you see Buddha walking, you will be immediately aware that he is not walking like others. In a way he is just like everybody else, but there is something mysterious surrounding him, a kind of presence. You cannot catch hold of it, you cannot measure it, you cannot weigh it, it is very elusive, but it is there.

Sometimes you feel it in ordinary people also: once in a while, you come across a person who has a kind of presence. When he is with you he transforms you just by being there. There are people who will make you sad by their presence, there are people who will make you happy by their presence.

They may not have said a single word, but just because they are there, a certain aura, a certain energy-field, surrounds them.

God is an energy-field. So don’t look for his face, he has none. And don’t look for his location, because you cannot locate him. He is like an energy-field. But you can feel it: if you are available, you can feel his presence. And once you have felt his presence, you will know; then you will come across his presence the whole day, in many ways.

The silent tree standing against the sky, and you will see something is present around the tree.

In the mountains, the mountains will look very meditative if you have known his presence. In the flowers and in the fragrances you will feel his presence, in the sunset and in the stars. In the eyes of people, in the laughter of a child, in the tears of a prayerful man, you will see the presence.

Presence has to be felt. It needs a silent, meditative, loving heart. You cannot touch it; it is not gross, it is very subtle – the subtlest. But it is there. It is always everywhere.

We live in the presence called God, we live in the ocean of God’s presence. Become a little more sensitive to it. And what are th ways of becoming sensitive? This sutra gives a few keys to you.

One: drop the magnifying glass of your ego.

Second: trust, surrender. He cares for you.

Third: he is constantly healing you from your own sources, from within. Go to the inner well of your being, and from there you will find his nourishment, his constant welling-up energy.

Fourth: be true. Drop your masks, your phoniness.

Fifth: learn God’s way of knowing – that is innocence.

Sixth: be silent, because that is his only language.

HE KNOWS THE TOUCH

OF AN ANT’S FOOT

MOVING IN DARKNESS

OVER A ROCK.

HE ALWAYS KNOWS

WHAT IS IN MEN’S MINDS:

YOU WOULD DO WELL

TO REFLECT ON THIS.

And the seventh and last: your prayer has not to be a demand. Don’t ask anything; he knows, before you ever know, what is your need. Just bow down. He is a presence – so wherever you bow down, you are bowing down to him. At whosoever’s feet you bow down, all feet are his.

If you bow down to the earth you bow down to him. If you bow down to the sun you bow down to him. Be a pagan – there is no need to go to any church or temple. Trees are beautiful temples, and mountains and people – the whole existence is his temple. He is embodied in this existence.

Don’t ask about his face, because all faces are his. And don’t ask for his location, because he is all.

He cannot be located, he cannot be addressed, he has no form and no name.

If these seven things are pondered over, he can happen immediately, this very moment.

FROM HIM FORGIVENESS COMES SO FAST,

IT REACHES US BEFORE REPENTANCE

HAS EVEN TAKEN SHAPE ON OUR LIPS.

HE IS YOUR SHEPHERD,

AND YOU PREFER THE WOLF;

HE INVITES YOU TO HIM,

AND YET YOU STAY UNFED;

HE GIVES YOU HIS PROTECTION,

YET YOU ARE SOUND ASLEEP:

OH, WELL DONE,

YOU SENSELESS UPSTART FOOL!

HE HEALS OUR NATURE FROM WITHIN,

KINDER TO US THAN WE OURSELVES ARE.

A MOTHER DOES NOT LOVE HER CHILD

WITH HALF THE LOVE THAT HE BESTOWS.

YOU HAVE BROKEN FAITH,

YET STILL HE KEEPS HIS FAITH WITH YOU:

HE IS TRUER TO YOU

THAN YOU ARE TO YOURSELF.

HE CREATED YOUR MENTAL POWERS;

YET HIS KNOWLEDGE IS INNOCENT

OF THE PASSAGE OF THOUGHT.

HE KNOWS WHAT IS IN YOUR HEART;

FOR HE MADE YOUR HEART ALONG WITH YOUR CLAY;

BUT IF YOU THINK THAT HE KNOWS

IN THE SAME WAY THAT YOU DO,

THEN YOU ARE STUCK LIKE A DONKEY

IN YOUR OWN MUD.

IN HIS PRESENCE,

SILENCE IS THE GIFT OF TONGUES.

HE KNOWS THE TOUCH

OF AN ANT’S FOOT

MOVING IN DARKNESS

OVER A ROCK.

HE ALWAYS KNOWS

WHAT IS IN MEN’S MINDS:

YOU WOULD DO WELL

TO REFLECT ON THIS.

CHAPTER 6

Back to Eros

16 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 1

I HAVE BEEN A DEVOTEE OF BABA MUKTANANDA AND RAN A CENTER FOR HIM. I EXPERIENCED A PERIOD OF EXTREME DIFFICULTY AND IT WAS NOT UNTIL I READ YOUR

BOOKS THAT I UNDERSTOOD ALL THAT WAS AND STILL IS HAPPENING.

I QUESTION THE NEED TO BE ATTACHED TO ANOTHER TEACHER, ALTHOUGH I FEEL

AND UNDERSTAND YOUR TEACHINGS DEEPLY. I KNOW I CANNOT GO BACK TO BABA’S

METHODS. I’M CONFUSED – CAN YOU HELP?

Bernadette Brown, only a disciple can be helped. And the disciple has to become involved, committed. Without commitment there is no possibility of any help. A tree has to be rooted in the soil, only then can it grow. If it starts talking about not getting attached to the earth, it will die.

Why are you afraid of getting attached to a new master? Do you think you have gone beyond attachment? Is it really non-attachment? Or is it just the attachment to the old teacher that is hindering your path?

You are still attached to a person to whom you think you cannot go back. Now, this is unintelligent.

Remain attached to him by all means, if you feel you are growing there – that is intelligence.

Wherever growth is happening, wherever you are getting more and more mature, more and more blissful, remain attached by all means.

But the moment growth has stopped, the moment you can see that you are not going anywhere, or going round in circles, it is time to become detached. Seek new soil, seek new lands, new pastures.

And one has to go on seeking till one becomes a master in one’s own right.

Why be afraid of the new? You are attached to yesterday’s sun, and a new sun has risen today. And because of your attachment to yesterday’s sun you are keeping your eyes closed! Your fear is that of betrayal. But what can you do? It is not that you are betraying anybody, it is simply a search for your own growth – and that is your responsibility.

And you will have to go on seeking, searching. On and on one has to go, till one arrives at one’s own being. And learn from everywhere, and don’t be so miserly. Now you want my help, but without becoming attached to me. It is impossible; you will have to be plugged in with we.

That’s what sannyas is all about. Unless you are plugged in, my energy cannot flow into you. You can go on reading my books, but that is quite a different matter. It will remain intellectual, it will never become existential.

It is a totally different phenomenon when you are a sannyasin and you listen to my words than when you are not a sannyasin and you listen to my words. They are the same words, but the meaning is totally different.

When you are in a love relationship with me, those words simply become aflame. They have a light in them, they are luminous. They are not ordinary words; they are words of your master, they are words coming from a source to which you have become devoted. They are really YOUR words – as if your own being has spoken to you. There is intimacy, there is love. And in that love, the miracle happens.

It is up to you. But don’t be clever; that cleverness will not help. To be with me means to be involved with me. You can be here, but if you are not with me, your being here is superficial. You will remain on the periphery, you will remain an outsider. And great secrets can only be delivered in deep intimacy. They can be only delivered through love.

You say: I HAVE BEEN A DEVOTEE OF BABA MUKTANANDA...

It is already a ”have been,” it is finished. You have learned whatsoever you could learn from him; you have grown out of it, you have passed that class. Now enter into a new class, enter into a new land, explore this new country.

You say: AND I RAN A CENTER FOR HIM. I EXPERIENCED A PERIOD OF EXTREME

DIFFICULTY AND IT WAS NOT UNTIL I READ YOUR BOOKS THAT I UNDERSTOOD ALL THAT

WAS AND STILL IS HAPPENING.

If just by reading my books you have been helped, then think what is possible if you get involved with me. Even the impossible is possible.

And Muktananda has helped you, that’s why you are here. It is not betraying him. He has helped in his own way; without him you would not have been here. But now you have to go beyond. You have used the boat, now you have to leave it behind. Don’t become too attached to the boat, otherwise the whole journey becomes absurd. If you are too attached to the boat you will not leave it; you will not get to the other shore, and you will be puzzled and you will be confused.

Reading my books is an intellectual way of communicating with me. Being a disciple is a non-intellectual, intuitive way of communing with me. Reading my books, listening to my words, is from head to head. Becoming a sannyasin is from heart to heart.

Yes, a few things can be communicated through the head, through words, but those few things are not really the heart of the matter. The real heart of the matter can be communicated only from heart to heart. Only in tremendous devotion, receptivity, passionate love, surrender, in trust, does the flame jump from the master to the disciple And the flame can jump only when you have come very close.

It is up to you.

You ask: I QUESTION THE NEED TO BE ATTACHED TO ANOTHER TEACHER.

If you are still attached to Muktananda, go back to him, forget all about me. Then I am not for you.

But don’t become confused, because I am a totally different kind of man. Then you will remain attached to the primary class, then you can go on playing the same game again and again.

Muktananda is a teacher – orthodox, conventional, a puritan, part of the status quo, traditional. I am just the opposite: I am not a teacher, I am not teaching you any doctrine, I am not giving you any creed.

The word ‘creed’ is beautiful, it comes from a root CREDERE: CREDERE means ‘to believe’. I am not giving you any belief-system, I am destroying all belief-systems.

Muktananda has given you a belief-system. He is an ordinary teacher, in the service of the society, in the service of the past, in the service of this rotten structure, establishment. He is not a master.

I have seen him, I have met him: there is no fire in him. Nothing has happened in him – or whatsoever has happened is very ordinary, can happen to anybody. Those type of things happen in India to thousands of people. He has no insight, he is not an enlightened person. You can remain attached to him and you can go on playing the game, but you will remain in a very primary state.

And I am not saying that he has not helped you – even a primary class helps, otherwise nobody would ever enter into the university. But I am a totally different kind of person, diametrically opposite.

I teach you rebellion. I am against the whole past, I am all for the present. And the future is going to be born out of the present.

I am not for the establishment. My whole work here is to create a totally different kind of humanity.

The humanity that has existed up till now is ill, abnormal, neurotic. I don’t belong to any tradition: I am not a Hindu, not a Christian, not a Mohammedan. I am utterly finished with the past, and I teach the same to you.

I don’t give you a doctrine, I give you an insight into reality. I don’t give you a belief, I take all beliefs and prejudices away from you, so that you can become a clean clear mirror and that which is can be reflected in you.

But this is possible only if you come close to me. The closer you are, the better. And by being closer I don’t mean a physical closeness, I mean a spiritual closeness.

You say: I QUESTION THE NEED TO BE ATTACHED TO ANOTHER TEACHER ALTHOUGH I FEEL AND UNDERSTAND YOUR TEACHINGS DEEPLY.

Now you will be in turmoil. You are creating a split in yourself. Your heart is finished with your so-called teacher, Muktananda; just your mind is clinging. Your heart will be with me now, and your mind will go on clinging to the past. The mind always clings to the past. The mind is absolutely against the present and the future; it lives, exists, on the past, on the dead. Now you will be in a great split; your mind will say one thing, and your heart will say another thing.

And my ways are so totally different from your other so-called teachers that the rift will become bigger and bigger every day. Either burn all my books and forget all about me – be at peace at least; you will remain stupid but there will be peace – or be finished with your old attachments. Then you can start growing again.

I can help you.

You say: I KNOW I CANNOT GO BACK TO BABA’S METHODS.

There is not much of a method to your Baba Muktananda. It is so childish, the whole thing is so unintelligent! But there are people who need it; there are people who can only understand a very superficial thing. It is fortunate that you have grown out of that need. Now please don’t go on carrying your childhood clothes with you: they won’t fit you, they will suffocate you.

And your devotion is towards truth. If your devotion is towards truth, then from wherever it comes, you have to bow down there, you have to surrender there.

You say: I AM CONFUSED – CAN YOU HELP?

I can help. But, Bernadette Brown, can you take my help? That’s the question. The crux of the matter is not can I help – can you take it, can you receive it?

Sannyas is just a gesture from your side that you are ready to receive it. And I can give it to you only when you are ready to receive it.

The second question:

Question 2

IF THE SELF IS THE SAME IN ALL MEN, DOES THIS MEAN THAT ALL MEN ARE IDENTICAL?

IF SO, HOW CAN ANY ONE MAN BE AN ESSENTIAL PART OF CREATION?

Richard Mitchley, the supreme self is the same in all men. And not only in all men but in all beings

– men, animals, birds, trees, rocks. The supreme self is the center of the whole existence. It is not my self or your self, it is simply THE self. It is universal, it is not personal.

And still every individual is different, every individual is unique. This is one of the most paradoxical things, but it is so.

All waves are part of the same ocean. And still each single wave taken, thought about, meditated over, is totally different from any other wave that has ever been, is, or will ever be. Both are true.

Each wave is nothing but part of the ocean, the same ocean: the ocean is the supreme self. But the wave has a form. One wave is so tidal and is trying to reach the stars; another is so small, so humble. They are different: their shape, their form, their manifestation, is different. No two waves are the same, and still the ocean behind each wave is the same. So I don’t see that there is any difficulty in understanding this simple truth, although it is paradoxical.

The self is one. And still the selves are all different. Self with a capital ‘S’ is one; selves with a lower-case ‘s’ are millions. And they are all different – they are waves. God creates out of the same stuff, but each time he paints differently, he sculpts differently.

I have heard:

An American art dealer traveling in China saw a beautiful hand-carved chair in an artisan’s shop and was enchanted with it. He asked the artisan how much he would charge to make eleven additional chairs.

”All different?” said the artisan.

”No, all exactly like this one.”

”Well,” said the artisan dubiously, ”If they must all be exactly alike, I will have to charge you more for each chair.”

”More!” exclaimed the American, who had hoped for a better price on a quantity order. ”Why more?”

”I would become bored making them all alike,” replied the artisan. ”I would be happier making each one different.”

God would have really become bored if he was to go on producing the same type of people again and again. God is not an assembly line. The production is not mass; it is always unique, whatsoever is created. You cannot find two pebbles alike on the whole of the earth, not even two leaves alike.

What to say about two human beings?

But the stuff is the same: it is the same universal consciousness out of which we are all made, sculptured, painted. It is the same, but still each one is given a different form. And the world is beautiful because each individual has a uniqueness – his own face, his own authenticity. Yet go deeper in him, and you will find the individual disappearing. And when you have reached to his very core, there is no individual left, but only the universal.

So let me say it in this way: on the circumference we are different, at the center we are the same. The center is one, the circumference is millions. And each circumference has its own way of expression, of being.

God is a creator, not a producer. And his creativity is infinite. He never duplicates, he never imitates, he never creates carbon copies. He creates each individual only once – and that is your grandeur, your dignity, your glory.

Mitchley, you ask me: IF THE SELF IS THE SAME IN ALL MEN, DOES THIS MEAN THAT ALL

MEN ARE IDENTICAL?

They are not identical. On the circumference they are absolutely unique. At the center there is no question of identity: it is one. There are not two, so how can they be identical? At the center there is only one universal existence; there is no question of being identical with anything else – there IS nothing else. On the periphery, on the circumference, there is no question of being identical: all waves are different, no two waves are similar.

And you ask: IF SO, HOW CAN ANY ONE MAN BE AN ESSENTIAL PART OF CREATION?

Each single wave is an essential part of the ocean; it is not accidental. By essential I mean it is needed by the ocean, otherwise it would not have been there in the first place. God needs you the way you are, he needs you exactly the way you are. So please don’t try to become somebody else.

Don’t try to become a Buddha, don’t try to become a Jesus, don’t try to become a Mohammed.

Just be yourself, because that’s how he wants you. If he had wanted Mohammeds he would have created many more Mohammeds; he does not want them. He is finished with Mohammed, Buddha, Jesus – whomsoever he has created, he is finished with them. Now he has created you. YOU are needed – not Mohammed, not Krishna, not Christ. You are needed, you are you are.

So don’t try to imitate any great ideal, don’t try to be a copy of somebody else. Be sincere to the form that God has given to you, because that is the only way to thank God, to be grateful to God.

Be authentically your individual being.

And if you are an authentic individual being you will be able to know the universal too, and more easily, because the universal is not far away from the authentic individual. The ocean is just there in the wave: a look inwards, and the ocean is revealed.

But if you have become false, you cannot look inwards. The mask cannot look inwards. The false cannot look inwards, because the false has nothing like an inner side. Only the real has two sides, the outer and the inner. The false has only one side, the outer. It has no inner side; it is just a mask, there is nothing inside it. It is just a painted face.

Please don’t be Hindus, don’t be Mohammedans, don’t be Christians. Be religious – and by being religious, I mean look inwards, search inwards. And you will find these two things: first, your authenticity, your individuality, and in the second step you will find your universality. First the small self has to be true, then you will find the supreme self.

From the small truth to the ultimate truth: that is the journey, the pilgrimage.

The third question:

Question 3

I BEGIN TO SEE MORE CLEARLY THE GAMES THAT I AND OTHER PEOPLE PLAY. ARE THESE

OBSERVATIONS TO BE TRUSTED, OR AM I WASTING TIME ON MIND GAMES AGAIN?

Prem Tusheer, trust only the pure consciousness when there is nothing left to be observed. If something is left to be observed, it is still a game. It is the same game, played with the new toys.

You say: I BEGIN TO SEE MORE CLEARLY THE GAMES THAT I AND OTHER PEOPLE PLAY.

Now, if you don’t become alert, you may start playing this game of observation. And you will be continuously observing.

I have heard about a psychoanalyst who went to see a beauty contest. Naked beautiful women were passing: the whole audience was excited, everybody was totally absorbed in watching the beautiful women. But the psychiatrist, the psychoanalyst, was watching people.

His friend who was sitting by his side asked him, ”What are you doing? The women are there on the stage, why don’t you look there?”

He said, ”I am looking at the people. I am watching how they are reacting, what is in their eyes.”

Now, this is the same game again. A few people are watching the naked women, and somebody is watching the people watching the naked women. Now the game has gone a little deeper. And there may be a third person who can watch this psychoanalyst watching people watching naked women...

and so on, so forth, it can go on and on.

Observation is good, but don’t let it become a game. It CAN become a game, and then it is all the same; what game you are playing is not the question. You can play religious games, you can play psychological games, you can play spiritual games – you can go on playing.

The worldly person is after money: he is playing a game. The otherworldly person is after renouncing money: he is playing another game. The worldly person is interested in being a great success, famous, well known. The religious person is escaping to the caves, so nobody knows him, so he becomes absolutely anonymous.

But whether you want to be known by others, or you want NOT to be known by others, you are focused on others: it is the same game.

A man triumphantly walked into his favorite bar after asking for and receiving a quite substantial raise in salary at his job. ”Joe!” he shouted to the bartender. ”Drinks for the whole house are on me, except for that Jew over there in the corner. Don’t give him a drop!”

The Jewish man, although a little hurt, remained quiet.

A short while later, the man cried out to the bartender again, ”Joe, another drink for everybody here!

But nothing for that Jew over there in the corner. I don’t want him to have anything!”

At this, the Jew could contain himself no longer and with great frustration he walked over to the man.

”What is it?” he yelled. ”What have we Jews ever done to you? Why do you treat me this way?”

With great contempt the man looked at the Jew and said, ”You sunk the Titanic, that’s what you did!”

”What!” cried the Jew in utter disbelief. ”What kind of nonsense is this? An iceberg sank the Titanic, you fool!”

The man nodded his head knowingly and replied, ”That’s right – Steinberg, Greenberg, Iceberg, you are all the same to me!”

All the games are the same. Play – but remember, all the games are the same. One has to come to a point where there is nothing left to observe, no content in the consciousness. Contentless consciousness is meditation.

And when there is no content, all games disappear, because you cannot play with nothingness.

There is no way to play with nothingness. When all games have disappeared, all contents have disappeared, you will be surprised to know, you will have also disappeared with your games –

because the ‘I’ exists only through games. You can change your games: the ‘I’, the ego, starts riding on other games.

When all games disappear – the game of observation included, the spiritual game included – when there is no content, and consciousness is there, just pure, with nothing to cling to, with nothing to hold on to, that is the moment when you go beyond games, beyond the world.

The world consists of games. Nirvana consists in going beyond all games.

The fourth question:

Question 4

IS THERE NOT SOMETHING LIKE A DEEP INBUILT LONGING IN MAN TO DIE AS AN EGO, TO DISAPPEAR, TO DISSOLVE – AND HOW IS THIS LONGING DIFFERENT FROM FREUD’S

THANATOS, FROM LIFE-NEGATION?

Sona, in reality, there is no ego to disappear. Disappearance is possible only if the ego is real. If the ego really exists, only then is disappearance possible. Then what is meant when it is said, ”Let the ego disappear?” All that is meant is this? ”Look deep down, and you will not find any ego in you.”

That is the disappearance. It is not that the ego disappears – it has never been there in the first place. You only believed that it was there; it was just a notion, an idea in you, nothing else.

It is as if it is evening and the sun has set and the night is descending and you see a rope, but it looks like a snake to you. Out of your fear you project a snake on the rope, and you start running, you are so frightened. There is no snake. If somebody catches hold of you, laughs, takes you to the rope, shows you that there is only a rope and nothing else, will you say that now the snake has disappeared, dissolved, gone away, died? That will be nonsense. You will also laugh; you will say the snake was never there in the first place. The rope was always a rope: you projected a snake on it. That snake was just a fear ripple in you.

So is the ego. Ego is just an idea, and if you start trying to drop the ego you will be in great difficulty.

It cannot be dropped. How can you drop something which doesn’t exist?

That’s why people who try to drop the ego are in such an absurd situation: they go on dropping it and it goes on bubbling up, popping up. They become very humble, but deep down in their humbleness there is ego. Humbleness itself becomes the cause of their ego. They start proclaiming to the world:

”There is nobody more humble than me, I am the tops.” Now humbleness has become another form of the ego.

The ego cannot be dropped, the ego can only be looked into. Once you look into it, it is not found, because it is not there. It disappears like a dream disappears when you wake up in the morning.

You can wake up, that’s all; the ego cannot be dissolved. And the whole effort is absurd, because in dissolving it you have accepted its existence – and the whole fault lies there.

Sona, you ask: IS THERE NOT SOMETHING LIKE A DEEP INBUILT LONGING IN MAN TO DIE

AS AN EGO?

No, there is none, because the ego is not there. Yes, there is a deep inbuilt longing in man to know,

”Who am I?” – that is there, but not to die as an ego. There is a great urge in man to know, ”Who am I?” It persists, it permeates your whole life.

Even small children start asking, ”Who am I?” The question is something very fundamental. It is an inbuilt phenomenon, the inquiry into one’s own being. And when you inquire deeply into your own being, the ego is not found. What is found is God. When you go in, the ego is not found, God is found. When you go out, God is not found, and you go on believing in the ego.

The ego is a belief of an outgoing consciousness, non-ego is the experience of an ingoing consciousness. It has nothing to do with Freud’s THANATOS; that’s a totally different phenomenon.

Man has a lust for life, that is EROS. But when this lust for life gets frustrated again and again, it is replaced by its antagonist, by its diametrical opposite.

Just as love can become sour and can turn into hate, the lust for life can become a lust for death.

You will be surprised to know that in poor countries very few people commit suicide. Logically it should be just otherwise: poor people should commit suicide more, there is nothing in their life to live for. But rich people commit suicide more. What is the secret of this illogical phenomenon? The richer a society becomes, the more people commit suicide; more and more people commit suicide

– why? The lust for life goes sour.

The poor man has not even lived – how can he be frustrated with life? Frustration is possible only when you have lived and seen that there is nothing in it. The poor man still hopes: he hopes for tomorrow, he still hopes for life.

The rich man knows everything about life; he has seen it, he has lived it. He has looked all around, he has searched everywhere, and it has not been found. In tremendous frustration, the EROS, the life-instinct, turns suicidal. The rich man wants to die, because there is no point in living, because there is no hope any more. He has all that the world can give, and still it is meaningless. So why go on prolonging it unnecessarily?

The biggest problem that the future is going to face is suicide. Science will make the earth richer and richer, and more and more people will be committing suicide, because they will see, ”Now what is the point of going on living the same life again and again? There is nothing that can fulfill one here: why not finish it?”

In the rich countries, in the rich cultures, it is always a very significant question: What is the meaning of life? But in a poor country nobody asks what the meaning of life is; people ask for material things.

The meaning of life is the last question: when you have known life, you can ask it.

In the West, people are asking about the meaning of life, and turning East. And people in the East are turning West, because they want more technology, better houses, better food, better roads, better cars; they want all that has become available in the West. The East is turning communist, the West is turning religious. The East is turning more and more materialist – why? Because in the East, eros is unfulfilled, so thanatos, the death-wish, cannot yet take possession.

In the West, eros has come to a saturation point. It has touched the highest peak; now there is no further to go. The circle is turning back, the wheel is turning back: it will turn into thanatos.

In fact the preparation for a third world war is nothing but preparation for a universal suicide. So much energy, so much technology, so much intelligence is poured just preparing for a third world war which will destroy all life on earth – not only human life, but ALL life. Why is there so much passion for war? It is just a vicarious way to commit suicide.

Thanatos is eros gone sour. Unless your eros can be again revived, unless your eros can be turned inwards, unless something that has nothing to do with material things, something of the ultimate, enters your life and becomes your inquiry, eros is bound to turn into thanatos. But it is not a necessary phenomenon. When your eros is dying, you can take a jump to an new quality of eros.

Jesus says, ”Come to me, I will show you the path of life abundant, life eternal.” And that has been the teaching of all the great masters of the world. ”You are finished with this life? Good,” they say.

”No need to turn sour. We will show you the way to eternal life which never turns sour because it is eternal and infinite. You can go on and on and on for ever, and there are always surprises.

That’s what religion is all about: the search for an eros which never turns into a thanatos. Real religion is always life-affirmative: it affirms the life of the earth, and when it is found that that life is no more fulfilling to somebody, it opens the doors to divine life. If those doors remain closed then there is a problem; then your energy will start turning into its very opposite.

Energy can always turn into its very opposite.

Love can become hate, anger can become

compassion, greed can become sharing, friendship can become enmity, and vice versa. Energies can always turn into their diametrically opposite, because all energy is a dialectical process. The thesis can turn into its antithesis.

You love a person and then you feel unfulfilled: you start hating the person. Marriage can turn into a divorce; only marriage can turn into a divorce. If you really want no divorces in the world, let marriage disappear and there will be no divorces. How can there be a divorce if there is no marriage?

Whenever you long for something with great expectation, and the expectation gets frustrated, there is a crisis. And two are the alternatives: either your energy will turn to its opposite, or your energy will take a quantum leap, and will change its plane – will move onto another plane.

Live the earthly life totally. And when you see that now it no longer fulfills you, then take a jump, a quantum leap, into unearthly life. Live the extrovert life to the full, and when you see that now you have matured, graduated from it, then turn inwards.

This is my whole process. And the moment of crisis is the greatest moment. In the moment of crisis you need somebody to guide you: you need a master. The psychotherapist cannot help you; he can only help you to get readjusted to your old life with which you are feeling frustrated. He may manage for a few months, a few years, again the same thing will happen.

Only a master can help you towards a quantum leap, a jump from a lower plane to a higher plane.

And there is no end: there are higher and higher planes, peaks and peaks beyond peaks waiting for you. When you have climbed one peak, you are surprised: there is another peak challenging you.

This is the eternity of life.

The fifth question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 5

HOW DO YOU KNOW THE INNER WORLD OF A PERSON? BECAUSE I HAVE ALWAYS FELT

THAT THE MOMENT YOU SEE SOMEBODY, INSTANTLY HIS WHOLE LIFE IS REVEALED TO

YOU. THIS IS MY OWN EXPERIENCE TOO.

There is not much mystery in it, it is very simple. If YOU are a mirror, if you are silent, if there is no turmoil within you, if there is no thought process and traffic of the mind inside you, the other is simply reflected. It is not a great secret.

If you go to the lake and there are no ripples and waves on the lake, you are reflected in the lake, the moon and the stars are reflected in the lake. The lake knows no art; it is not an art anyway, it is a simple phenomenon.

I am sitting here silently, with no traffic of the mind. You come in front of me, the mirror reflects you.

The lake of my consciousness reflects you: I see you, all and all, from one end to another end, in your totality. But this knowing is not knowledge, this knowing is just mirroring. It is as simple as this....

Donald Crowe stopped his camper truck along the Yellowstone National Park road. ”A bear!” shouted Donald with delight.

His wife cautioned him, ”Dear, the signs say, ‘Do not feed the bears’!”

”A sandwich or two isn’t going to hurt the bear.”

Donald jumped out of the camper and neared the bear with a sandwich in his right hand. He then tossed the sandwich which the bear caught and downed in one gulp. Finally he gave the bear his second sandwich.

Suddenly the bear growled ferociously. He wanted the third sandwich which Donald didn’t have.

Donald turned his pocket inside out to show he had no more food. ”No more. See? I’ve given you all my sandwiches.”

The bear began to rush towards Donald. Donald ran for his life. As he breathlessly tore the camper door open, Donald gasped, ”That bear just doesn’t understand English!”

There is no need to understand your language, there is no need to understand anything about you.

There is no need to understand you at all: you are simply reflected. A bear is a bear. How do you know that a bear is a bear? How do you know that a rose is a rose? There is no analysis involved in it, no technique, no technology.

They tell the story of the psychiatrist who had a plane to catch and who still had three women in his waiting-room together with their children. So he decided to treat them all at once.

He walked up to the first lady who was obviously very heavy and fat and said to her, ”Madam, it’s plain to see that your problem involves food, that is all you ever think of. What is your child’s name?”

”Honey,” replied the woman.

”You see, you even were subconsciously thinking of food when you named your child. My advice for you is to go home and stop thinking of food.”

The next woman he approached was dressed up with jewelry and very expensive clothes. ”Madam, it is plain to see that your priorities deal with the material things of life and that money is your god.

What is your child’s name?”

”Goldie,” she replied.

”You see, even subconsciously you were thinking of wealth when you named your child. My advice is to go home and forget about material things.”

As he approached the third women she got up, grabbed her son and in a loud voice said, ”Come on, Dick, we’d better go home now.”

Things are very simple. You just have to be a mirror, and people reveal everything themselves. You need not even ask a single question. The way they walk, the way they sit, the way they look, the way they talk, reveals everything. It is not revealed to you, because you are not looking at them at all. You are so preoccupied in yourself, you are so preoccupied with your thoughts, that you are surrounded by a fog.

Otherwise, everybody is revealing everything. Everybody is naked. You just need open eyes, a silent mind, and you will be surprised: nobody can hide anything from you, there is no way of hiding anything.

The sixth question:

Question 6

PLEASE EXPLAIN WHAT INTELLIGENCE IS.

Patrick Coughlan, intelligence is just an openness of being – capacity to see without prejudice, capacity to listen without interference, capacity to be with things without any a priori ideas about them – that’s what intelligence is. Intelligence is an openness of being.

That’s why it is so utterly different from intellectuality. Intellectuality is just the opposite of intelligence.

The intellectual person is constantly carrying prejudices, information, a prioris, beliefs, knowledge.

He cannot listen; before you have said anything, he has already concluded. Whatsoever you say has to pass through so many thoughts in his mind that by the time it reaches him it is something totally different. Great distortion happens in him, and he is very closed, almost blind and deaf.

All experts, knowledgeable people, are blind. Do you know the old story of the five blind people going to see an elephant?

A teacher was telling her students, small girls and boys, the old ancient fable. She told the whole story, then she asked a small boy, ”Can you tell me who the people were who went to see the elephant and then started quarreling?” She wanted to know whether the boy had heard while she was teaching the story.

And the boy stood up and said, ”Yes, I know. They were the experts.”

She was thinking he would answer, ”They were five blind people.” But the small boy said, ”Those were the experts.” He is far more right; yes, they were experts.

All experts are blind. Expertise means you become blind to everything else. You know more and more about less and less, and then one day you arrive at the ultimate goal of knowing all about nothing. Then you are completely closed and not even a window is open; then you have become windowless.

This is unintelligence. Intelligence is to be open to wind, rain and sun, to be open to all. Not to carry the past is intelligence, to die to the past every moment is intelligence, to remain fresh and innocent is intelligence.

Donald was driving his sports car down the main avenue when suddenly he noticed to his rear a flashing red light. It was a police car.

Quickly Donald pulled over to the side. ”Officer,” he blurted, ”I was only doing twenty-five in a thirty-five-mile zone.”

”Sir,” said the officer, ”I just...”

”Furthermore,” interrupted Donald indignantly, ”as a citizen I resent being frightened like this!”

”Please,” continued the officer, ”calm down, relax...”

”Relax!” shouted Donald, overwrought. ”You’re going to give me a traffic ticket, and you want me to relax!”

”Mister,” pleaded the officer, ”give me a chance to talk. I am NOT giving you a ticket.”

”No?” said Donald, astonished.

”I just wanted to inform you that your right rear tire is flat.”

But nobody is ready to listen to what the other is saying. Have you ever listened to what the other is saying? Before a word is uttered, you have already concluded. Your conclusions have become fixed; you are no more liquid.

To become frozen is to become idiotic, to remain liquid is to remain intelligent. Intelligence is always flowing like a river. Unintelligence is like an ice cube, frozen. Unintelligence is always consistent, because it is frozen; it is definite, it is certain. Intelligence is inconsistent, it is flowing, it has no definition, it goes on moving according to situations; it is responsible, but it is not consistent.

Only stupid people are consistent people. The more intelligent you are, the more inconsistent you will be – because who knows about tomorrow? Tomorrow will bring its own experiences. How can you be consistent with your yesterdays? If you are dead you will be consistent. If you are alive you HAVE to be inconsistent: you have grown, the world has changed, the river is flowing into new territory.

Yesterday the river was passing through a desert, today it is passing through a forest; it is totally different. Yesterday’s experience should not become your definition for ever, otherwise you died yesterday. One should be able to go on moving with time. One should remain a process, one should never become a thing. That is intelligence.

The seventh question:

Question 7

IN A LECTURE YOU SAID THAT THE REALLY AWARE WERE ABLE TO LIVE ALONE. HOW

DOES THIS FIT WITH THE DREAM OF A COMMUNITY?

Sitaro, the really aware person is certainly one who is capable of living alone. But that is only half the truth. The other half is that the one who is really capable of being alone is also capable of being together with somebody In fact only he is capable of being in togetherness.

The person who is not able to be alone cannot be together with somebody, because he has no individuality. The person who has no individuality cannot be together with somebody – why? There are many problems. First, he is always afraid that if he comes too close to the other person he will lose himself. He has no integrity yet: he is afraid.

That’s why people are afraid of love, of too much love. People are afraid to come too close, because if they come too close they may dissolve in the other. That is the fear. The other may overpower them, the other may become their whole reality. They may be possessed by the other – that is the fear.

Only a person who knows the beauty of being alone is capable of coming as close as possible, because he is unafraid. He knows that he IS, he has an integrated being in him. He has something crystallized in him, because without that crystallized something he would not be able to be alone.

The second thing: when a person is not capable of being alone he is always dependent on the other.

He clings – because he is afraid the other may leave, and then he will have to suffer loneliness. He clings, he exploits the other, he creates all kinds of bondages around the other.

And whenever you make the other your possession, you become the possession of the other. It functions in both ways. When you reduce the other to a slave, the other reduces you to a slave. And when you are so afraid of the other’s leaving you, you are ready to compromise; you are ready to compromise in any way.

You will see this happening to all husbands and wives. They have compromised, they have sold their souls, for a single reason: because they cannot be alone. They are afraid the woman may leave, the man may leave – and then? They very idea is so frightening, scary.

The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it is not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of the other person – without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not give by the other.

Then why do they want to be together? It is no longer a need, it is a luxury. Try to understand it. Real persons love each other as a luxury; it is not a need. They enjoy sharing: they have so much joy, they would like to pour it into somebody. And they know how to play their life as a solo instrument.

The solo flute player knows how to enjoy his flute alone. And if he comes and finds a tabla player, a solo tabla player, they both will enjoy being together and creating a harmony between the flute and the tabla. They both will enjoy it: they will both pour their richnesses into each other.

And, Sitaro, you ask: HOW DOES THIS FIT WITH THE DREAM OF A COMMUNITY?

That is the difference between the so-called society and a commune. The society consists of people who are needful, who are all dependent in some way or other. The children are dependent on the parents – but remember, the parents are also dependent on the children. It may not be so obvious, but it is so – just search a little more. The mother cannot be without the child; of course the child cannot be without the mother, but the mother also cannot be without the child.

Family members are dependent on each other, they cling to each other. It gives a certain comfort, security, safety. Then the family depends on other families. People depend on the church, people depend on clubs, people depend on societies. It is a great world of dependent people, childish ungrownups.

A commune is a totally different world. It is not a society. A commune is a gathering of people who are all capable of being alone, and they would like to be together to create a great orchestra of being. A commune is not a dependent phenomenon, it is an independence.

That’s why many times in this ashram people come and tell me, ”Everybody here seems to be so happy with himself that it looks as if nobody is interested in anybody else.” Particularly the newcomers feel it, that it is as if people are indifferent. It is not so; they are not indifferent. But you are coming from a society where everybody is dependent on everybody else. This is not a society – not like your old society. Here, everybody is enjoying HIS being, and nobody interferes in anybody’s life, there is no interference.

My whole effort is to make you so alert, so loving, that you don’t interfere. Love never interferes, love gives total freedom. If it is not giving freedom, then it is not love. It is not indifference that newcomers feel – and, slowly slowly, they understand. By the time they have lived here for a few weeks, they know what is happening. People are not indifferent, people are very loving. But they are non-interfering, so they don’t impinge upon you. And they are non-needy, they are not greedy, they don’t cling to you.

Of course, you have known only that kind of people, so this new type frightens you. You think that you are not needed, that nobody cares, that these people are very selfish, that they are too self-occupied. It is nothing like that; that is not the case at all, it is absolutely untrue. But to you it may appear so in the beginning.

A commune of sannyasins will be a celebration, a gathering of people who are not in any way needy of the other. It is beautiful if two persons are together; it is good if it continues and they can sing a song together, it is good to sing a chorus. But if things go wrong, if it becomes heavy, if being together interferes with your freedom, then you can go and sing your song alone. There is no need to be part of a chorus.

And the commune is a space where this much freedom is allowed. There will be couples, but there will not be husbands and wives. There will be FRIENDS in the commune.

That’s why the Indian government, the Indian society, is very much afraid of me, because I am going to create a totally different kind of community which will shatter all their ideas – their so-called morality, and their traditionally cherished ideals of marriage, and all that nonsense.

People can live together if they enjoy being together, but only just for that joy of being together – it is not a need. If at any moment a person decides to get out of a relationship, he can get out of it without any trouble, without any turmoil, without any crying and weeping and fighting and making things ugly, without any nagging and prolonging.

People have to be true. If they feel good being together, good. If they feel it is no longer ”growthful,” it is no longer maturing, they say goodbye to each other. They feel grateful to each other: whatsoever has been shared was beautiful, they will cherish the memory for ever, but now the time has come to depart. They lived in joy, they will depart in joy; their friendship will remain intact. And it may happen again: they may start living together again. They will not leave any scars on each other, they will not wound each other, they will respect the other’s freedom.

My commune particularly – and whatsoever I am saying, I am saying about my commune – my commune will create individuals who are capable of being alone and who are also capable of being together – who can play solo music and who can become part of a chorus.

The last question:

Question 8

I HAVE BEEN A HINDU MONK FOR SEVEN YEARS. I HAD BEEN TOLD TO BE A CELIBATE, SO I FORCED IT UPON MYSELF. IT WAS VERY ARDUOUS BUT SOMEHOW I SUCCEEDED, AT LEAST PHYSICALLY, IN IT. BUT THEN THE WHOLE THING WENT INTO MY HEAD. NOW I CONSTANTLY THINK OF SEX AND NOTHING ELSE. I AM IMPRISONED IN IT, AND WHENEVER

I SEE A WOMAN I START TREMBLING INSIDE.

BELOVED MASTER, PLEASE HELP ME TO COME OUT OF IT.

It is natural. This is not the way to get beyond sex. Repression is never the way; repression really makes things more complicated. Sex is simple. Repression makes it very complicated, because repression shifts the whole sexual energy from the genital organs to the head. And when sex has entered into the head, it is an ugly phenomenon. It is not sex, it is sexuality. It is pornography.

When sex has entered into your head you are creating your own private pornographic blue films.

That’s why you are afraid of a woman. The moment you see a woman, fear arises, because all that you have repressed is there like a volcano, and you are sitting on top of it. It can explode. The woman can be the triggering point; she may be like a spark, and you may explode.

You have become very inflammable, you are carrying a great dangerous energy. Sex is beautiful, lived naturally; repressed, it becomes ugly and moves into the head. And when sex moves into the head, there is no way of getting out of it. You can get out of it only by going through it: the way out is THROUGH.

You are fortunate that you have come here, otherwise your Hindu monkhood would have destroyed you totally. All monks become sexual, more sexual than ordinary people. Their whole thinking centers around sexuality. And remember, whenever some energy moves from its natural center to some other center, then things are very difficult. First your energy has to be brought back to the sex center.

That’s the whole process of Tantra. Your energy has to be brought to the natural center where it belongs. From the unnatural center there is no possibility of release.

But this happens: when you repress something where will it go? Only your head has some empty space, only in your skull is there emptiness. So whatsoever you repress is bound to go, slowly slowly, to the head. The pressure will be felt only as a tension in the head. And the more it is there, the only way that will be suggested by your so-called teachers – Muktanandas, et cetera – will be: Repress it more.

And they will give you methods to repress it more: go on a fast, stand on your head... It will go more into the head if you stand on your head! Even gravitation will pull you towards your head. And you will get into more and more difficulty.

It was an exciting moment: the two friends’ wives were going to give birth on the same day and at the same hospital. The doctors came and told the first man, who was Jewish, that he had a new baby son and that there were no complications.

Within minutes the doctor came again, telling the second man that he too had a new baby boy, but the boy had a skin problem around his neck and they would need to do a skin graft.

The first man asked the doctor, ”Tell me, would the skin from my son’s circumcision be helpful?” The doctors thought it a great idea and the graft was performed and things turned out beautifully – not even a scar.

Having moved to separate cities, the two friends hadn’t seen each other for over eighteen years when they met at a restaurant while each was vacationing in Miami Beach. Enthusiastically they exchanged stories. Finally, the Jewish man asked, ”Have there been any problems with your son’s neck?”

”Nothing to speak of,” said the other. ”With the exception of one mysterious thing – even the doctors cannot figure it out. Every time my son sees a pretty girl, he gets a stiff neck.”

Now it is very difficult! No doctor can help now, unless further surgery is done.

Your seven years of monkhood have done it: you are getting a stiff neck! But you have come in time, we will do the surgery. Don’t be worried; we will teach you how to stand on your feet and not on your head, and we will teach you that each center has to function normally in its own way; no other center has to interfere.

But the head has become a substitute center. A few people go on thinking about food, a few people go on thinking about sex, a few people go on thinking about something else. And by thinking, you are not living it, by thinking you are creating a false appetite, and by thinking, it cannot be fulfilled. By thinking your hunger will not go; and by thinking, sex and your natural desire for it will not disappear, it will become accumulated. And the more accumulated it is, the more poisoned it becomes. It becomes stale energy.

I would also like you to go beyond sex, because going beyond sex is a tremendously beautiful experience of freedom – freedom from the body, freedom from that continuous obsession. When sex really disappears, without any repression, when it disappears through meditation, for the first time it gives you the taste of total freedom. You don’t need anybody any more; you are out of the grip of biology.

In fact when sex has disappeared you become a man for the first time, because with sex you remain part of the animal world. But the way to go beyond is through it: you cannot bypass it, there is no shortcut.

So drop your monkhood, your celibacy, and drop all the nonsense that has been fed to you. Start from ABC again, because this is a NEW sannyas: this has to be a new birth. Forget all that has been conditioned into you. Seven years is a long time, and to be with the wrong people, to be with poisoners for seven years, is to be conditioned by them in a particular way. It will be difficult for you to drop it, but it has to be dropped.

And if you have understood that those seven years have not helped you at all, then there is no problem. If you have understood, don’t cling to those ideas, simply drop them. Forget all about it, start again. Be a simple, ordinary human being.

And if you can live naturally, in that very living, God comes as a grace. God comes through nature, never against nature. God comes through nature – and his coming transforms. When his energy descends in you, sex disappears. And when sex disappears of its own accord, it is a beautiful phenomenon, it is a benediction.

But live it, and live it totally – that’s the only way to go beyond it. No repression any more, no inhibition any more. Accept is as a gift of God – it is. And if you accept it, you will become ready to receive more gifts, better gifts.

CHAPTER 7

The Sacred Explosion

17 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

LOVE’S CONQUEROR IS HE

WHOM LOVE CONQUERS.

APPLY YOURSELF, HAND AND FOOT,

TO THE SEARCH;

BUT WHEN YOU REACH THE SEA,

STOP TALKING OF THE STREAM.

WHEN HE ADMITS YOU TO HIS PRESENCE

ASK FROM HIM NOTHING OTHER THAN HIMSELF.

WHEN HE HAS CHOSEN YOU FOR A FRIEND,

YOU HAVE SEEN ALL THAT THERE IS TO SEE.

THERE’S NO DUALITY IN THE WORLD OF LOVE:

WHAT’S ALL THIS TALK OF ‘YOU’ AND ‘ME’?

HOW CAN YOU FILL A CUP THAT’S FULL ALREADY?

BRING ALL OF YOURSELF TO HIS DOOR:

BRING ONLY A PART,

AND YOU’VE BROUGHT NOTHING AT ALL.

IT’S YOUR OWN SELF

DEFINING FAITH AND UNBELIEF:

INEVITABLY IT COLORS YOUR PERCEPTION.

ETERNITY KNOWS NOTHING

OF BELIEF OR UNBELIEF;

FOR A PURE NATURE

THERE IS NO SUCH THING.

AND IF, MY FRIEND, YOU ASK ME THE WAY,

I’LL TELL YOU PLAINLY, IT IS THIS:

TO TURN YOUR FACE TOWARD THE WORLD OF LIFE,

AND TURN YOUR BACK ON RANK AND REPUTATION;

AND, SPURNING OUTWARD PROSPERITY, TO BEND

YOUR BACK DOUBLE IN HIS SERVICE;

TO PART COMPANY WITH THOSE WHO DEAL IN WORDS,

AND TAKE YOUR PLACE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE WORDLESS.

THE WAY IS NOT FAR

FROM YOU TO THE FRIEND:

YOU YOURSELF ARE THAT WAY:

SO SET OUT ALONG IT.

YOU WHO KNOW NOTHING OF THE LIFE

THAT COMES FROM THE JUICE OF THE GRAPE,

HOW LONG WILL YOU REMAIN INTOXICATED

BY THE OUTWARD FORM OF THE GRAPE?

WHY DO YOU LIE THAT YOU ARE DRUNK?

HOW CAN YOU GO FORWARD?

THERE IS NO PLACE TO GO;

HOW WILL YOU LEAP?

YOU HAVE NO FOOT.

Hakim Sanai says:

LOVE’S CONQUEROR IS HE

WHOM LOVE CONQUERS.

A tremendously pregnant statement: meditate over it. The moment you start searching for God, remember, he is always the initiator of the search. If you choose God, that simply means he has chosen you already. It is only by his grace that the search begins. You may think in your egoistic way, ”I am searching for God” – that is utterly wrong. Unless he searches for you, you cannot choose him.

You are always chosen by him. But that phenomenon happens in such depths of your being that you never become aware of it, unless you have arrived.

This statement is the statement of one who has arrived. Now he knows his whole being. Knowing it, he knows that it was God who initiated the whole search: ”I could love him because his love has stirred my heart in the first place.”

And this sutra also states the very fundamental of Sufism, of the path of love: Love never tries to conquer, yet it conquers. Hate always tries to conquer, but never conquers. Hate is impotent, it cannot conquer; it aspires, it is very ambitious, but it is doomed to fail. Love has no idea of conquering, love has no idea of dominating, love has no idea of becoming the first in the world. Yet love becomes the first, the conqueror.

Jesus says: Those who are the last in this world will be the first in my kingdom of God. And vice versa.

Lao Tzu preaches the way of water, the watercourse way. He says: The rock is strong, is in every way trying to conquer, is aggressive, resistant, but ultimately is defeated, is destroyed, becomes the sand and disappears into the ocean. Water is very humble, non-pretentious, non-resistant, has no motivation for conquering anybody or destroying anybody, is always ready to bow down, to surrender. But whenever there is a conflict between water and rock, the rock is ultimately defeated

– water, never.

Sanai is saying:

LOVE’S CONQUEROR IS HE

WHOM LOVE CONQUERS.

To conquer in the world of love – and the world of love is the world of God – to conquer in the world of love, one needs to be in a very deep total surrender. One needs to be conquered by love. And when love conquers you, you are enthroned, you are crowned, you are victorious. But only when love conquers you.

Never resist. Resistance is doomed to fail, because resistance dissipates your energy.

Lao Tzu again says: Don’t be like a big strong tree – because when the storm comes and the great wind blows, the big tree will resist, and because of that resistance, will fall down. The fault is not of the great wind, the fault lies in the great tree’s egoistic resistance: it does not want to bend, hence it dies.

And look at the grass. The wind comes and the grass simply goes with the wind, bends with the wind. If it is going towards the south, the grass bends towards the south – with no resistance at all, in tremendous surrender, in trust. When the wind is gone, the grass is back again in its original place; the wind could not destroy it. And the grass is humble, weak, feminine, soft. And the great tree was hard, masculine, arrogant.

Learn from the grass the ways of love.

Jesus says, ”Blessed are the meek, for theirs is the kingdom of God.” This is one of the most significant sayings of Jesus: ”Blessed are the meek.” And remember, he does not say, ”Blessed are the meek, for theirs will be the kingdom of God” – no. He says, ”... for theirs is the kingdom of God.” It is not a question of attaining something in the future; in their very meekness, in their very humbleness, they have arrived, they have achieved. This is the meaning of surrender.

God cannot be conquered: you can only allow yourself to be conquered by God. Don’t be aggressive with truth – that is the sure way to miss it. That’s why science goes on missing God, and will go on missing, unless it takes Tao as its foundation. It will go on missing.

Science will never come to know that God exists; it will not have even a glimpse of the divine. And the reason is in its masculine methodology. Science is aggressive; its whole effort is to conquer nature. In that very idea of conquering, conquest, it has made it clear that God will not be available to it. Its very methodology has prevented God from exposing himself, revealing himself.

Religion comes to know about God – but the way of religion is just the opposite of the way of science.

Science is aggressive, masculine; in a subtle way, rapist. Science rapes nature, religion teaches you how to love.

And remember, from the outside, rape and love may look alike. The act may look similar. But it is not the same; it is totally opposite, diametrically opposite. The act of rape has nothing of love in it, and the act of love has nothing of rape in it. So don’t be deceived by appearances.

And we all have been trained in the ways of science; that has become our conditioning. That is one of the greatest problems humanity is facing today: we have lost all track of religious approaches, and we have become so much attuned to the scientific method that we go on trying the same method in the world, in the dimension of religion. It is inapplicable there, it is utterly inadequate there, but we cling to the method.

And anybody who clings to any method whatsoever is not a seeker of truth. The method is not the goal, one need not cling to the method; one has to search for the right method. And if some method is not working, drop it!

If science is not revealing God to you, that simply means that the method is inapplicable there.

Somewhere the sword is needed, and somewhere else just a needle will do. Where a needle is needed, please don’t use the sword.

It is reported in the life of a great Sufi mystic, Farid, that a king came to see him. He had brought a present for him: a beautiful pair of scissors, golden, studded with diamonds – very valuable, very rare, something unique. He brought those scissors to present to Farid. He touched Farid’s feet and gave him the scissors; Farid took them, looked at them, gave them back to the king, and said, ”Sir, many many thanks for the present that you have brought. It is a beautiful thing, but utterly useless for me. It will be better if you can give me a needle. Scissors I don’t need: a needle will do.”

The king said, ”I don’t understand. If you need a needle, you will need scissors too.”

Farid said, ”I am talking in metaphors. Scissors I don’t need because scissors cut things apart. A needle I need because a needle puts things together. I teach love. My whole teaching is based on love – putting things together, teaching people communion. I need a needle so that I can put people together. The scissors are useless; they cut, they disconnect. Next time when you come, just an ordinary needle will be enough.”

Where a needle is needed, a sword is dangerous. And one has to be aware about methods. We are so much attached to methods that rather than changing the method, we are ready to drop God.

We are ready to say there is no God, because our methods are not able to reveal him. But we never think it may be that our methods are wrong.

You cannot hear music with the eyes. Because eyes say there is no music, that does not mean that music is nonexistential. You cannot see colors with the ears. That does not mean that colors don’t exist; that simply means that ears are incapable of knowing colors and eyes are incapable of knowing music. For music, ears are needed; for colors, flowers, rainbows, eyes are needed.

Religion is the way of surrender, not of conquering. But the paradox is that...

LOVE’S CONQUEROR IS HE

WHOM LOVE CONQUERS.

The paradox is that those who are ready to be defeated by love become victorious. But remember one thing: this should not be your unconscious motivation, otherwise you will miss again.

Sanai says: If you want to conquer, be conquered. And you do want to conquer; deep down the desire is always there to conquer. So you say, ”Okay. If this is the way to conquer, that I have to be conquered, then I will be conquered – because I want to be a conqueror.” You will miss. The subtle motivation will destroy the whole beauty, the whole approach: you are still trying to conquer. No, the motivation has to disappear completely.

Victory is a consequence, not an effort. It is not an effect that you can cause, it is a consequence.

When there is no motivation of conquering, victory comes. When you are not on a conquest trip, on an ego trip, victory comes. It is a consequence, a natural consequence, of the heart which is humble, meek, surrendered.

What does it mean to be meek, humble, surrendered? It means remaining in a let-go; it means going with the whole, not struggling against it. If you are sad, don’t struggle against it. Then be sad, rejoice in your sadness, because this is the gift of God at this particular time. It must be a need, because nothing happens without your need. You must need this climate this moment: this is how God wants you to be.

So if you are sad, be totally sad – with not even a slight lurking motivation to fight with it, to drop it, to go beyond it, to be not sad. No, just relax with it, and you will see a miracle happening inside you: when you relax with sadness, sadness becomes luminous. Yes, even sadness becomes luminous, because acceptance is such a magical phenomenon. Experiment and see.

Buddha says: IHI PASSIKO – come and see, experiment and see.

When you are feeling anything, just be with it, utterly with it, with no judgment of good and bad. It is so, so be with it. Buddha calls it tathata, suchness. Such is the case in is moment. This is what God is pouring into you. He knows better, so it must be your need, whether you can understand it or not. Your understanding is not the question, your acceptance is the question. In utter relaxed acceptance, you have the key of transforming everything.

To be in trust means that whatsoever happens is good because it happens through God. Whatsoever happens is good because it comes from the whole. It is a gift: it has to be taken with great gratitude.

And then who can prevent you from being victorious? Then no power can prevent you from being victorious: all victory is yours.

APPLY YOURSELF, HAND AND FOOT,

TO THE SEARCH;

BUT WHEN YOU REACH THE SEA,

STOP TALKING OF THE STREAM.

God needs you to be involved totally with him, a partial involvement won’t do. A partial involvement is not a true involvement; true involvement is always total.

APPLY YOURSELF, HAND AND FOOT,

TO THE SEARCH...

The search has to be passionate. All that you have been searching for up to now – you have been searching for money and power and prestige and a thousand and one things – god has not to be one item on the long list of your desires. Even if you put him first on the list, then too, you will go on missing him. He has to be your only search. All your desires should become one desire, all your desires should pour as if all the rivers are pouring into the ocean. God should become your only search – only then, and only then, the revelation.

Millions of people think of God, but they are never capable of penetrating to that mystery, are never able to have a real experience of God. And the reason? The reason is simple; God is only one item on their shopping list – just one item. They are not really ready to be totally devoted. And in this world, only total devotion succeeds.

In your ordinary mundane life too, whenever you see a great poet you will immediately see his total devotion to his art. That’s why he’s great. Totality brings greatness. His whole life has only one meaning, one center, and it revolves around that center: his art.

When you see Van Gogh or a Picasso, then you will see, all his life is nothing but his painting. He thinks about it, he meditates about it, he dreams about it, he is constantly fascinated by it. Not even for a single moment does he forget it.

If a painter is walking on the street he does not see people’s faces just as faces: he is constantly thinking of how to paint them. If he looks at flowers it is not just that he looks at the flowers: his whole concern is how to paint them. Even in his dreams, a great painter watching a colorful dream has an undercurrent: how to paint it? It is his very breath, his very heartbeat; that’s what makes him great.

In ordinary life also, whenever your devotion is total you attain to great talents. So what to say about God? God is the very center of existence. You can only have energy enough to reach that center if you put all that you have at the stake. It is a gamble, it is not a business. You have to put all at the stake, this way or that, whatsoever happens. You have to risk.

And the love affair with God has to be passionate, hot. It cannot be a cold philosophic speculation.

And that’s what happens: many people think about God in a very cold way. But God is the life of all life, he is the hottest thing in existence. You cannot reach him if you are so cold, philosophically cold.

The scientist is very cold; his work is that of dispassionate effort. It is part of his training that he has to remain aloof, that he has to remain detached, that he should not become committed, that he should not become involved, that he should always be a watcher, an outsider, and very cold, analytical.

The poet cannot be that cold, otherwise his poetry will be cold, otherwise his poetry will not have any breath in it. It will not pulsate with life. The poet has to be involved.

And the mystic has to be totally involved. The poet is involved once in a while, hence only once in a while is he a poet. No poet is a poet twenty-four hours. If he is a poet twenty-four hours, he is a mystic. Then poetry is his prayer. If a painter is twenty-four hours a painter, then he needs no other meditation; he need go to no other temple. He can forget all about the Vedas and the Bibles and the Korans: he has found his Veda, his Bible, his Koran. Painting is all. If he can be twenty-four hours hot about it, if it can become just a circulation, a constant circulation in his being, just as blood circulates in the body, then he is a mystic.

The poet only once in a while becomes passionate. Then he falls back into the ordinary mundane world of cold figures, calculation, arithmetic; he loses track of poetry. Once in a while the window opens and he can see the sun and the moon and the stars – but only once in a while.

The mystic is twenty-four hours a poet. Remember it: if you really want to know what God is, you will have to be utterly passionate. It is not a scientific search, it is a love affair. It is a question of life and death – and not only a question really, it is a QUEST. It is not curiosity, not an intellectual inquiry, it is an existential thirst.

Think of a man lost in a desert, thirsty. It is not an intellectual question – he is not worried about the components of water. If you start giving him a long discourse on the element water, on its chemistry, how it is composed, and you try to explain to him the formula of H2O, he will jump on you and kill you. He is not interested philosophically, scientifically. He wants water: it is a question of life and death. And you are talking about H2O! How can it satisfy him?

When the search is passionate, no scripture can satisfy you. And people are satisfied by scriptures because their search is untrue, pseudo. They are reading their Gitas every morning, reciting their Koran – their search is pseudo. IF their search is real, they will not be satisfied by words – they will do something. They will start looking for God. They will be ready to go to any length, on any pilgrimage. They will be ready to risk all their security, safety, comfort, convenience, because then God will be their only life.

APPLY YOURSELF, HAND AND FOOT,

TO THE SEARCH;

BUT WHEN YOU REACH THE SEA,

STOP TALKING OF THE STREAM.

When a river reaches the sea, it forgets itself completely. It dissolves itself in the sea without any hesitation. It does not declare to the winds and the sky: ”I am Ganges” or ”I am Amazon” or ”I am this, I am that, and look – I am renouncing all, and I am going into the sea.” It simply slips into the sea without any noise, without any fuss.

Search for God with a total passion. But when you have arrived, dissolve slowly into his presence.

Then don’t brag – because that is the last strategy of the ego, to brag that ”I have arrived,” that I have become a Buddha,” that ”I have become a SIDDHA,” that ”Now I know.” That is the last citadel of the ego: beware of it. And because it is the last, it is the most subtle.

Your ego will pretend to become a great saint; it will pretend that it has attained to the ultimate truth.

But unless all pretensions disappear, unless the river loses itself into the ocean, nothing has been achieved.

The Upanishads say, ”Those who say they know, they know not.”

Socrates says, ”When I was young I thought I knew all. When I became a little older, I started to understand that I know very little. When a little more maturity was attained, I came to know that I know nothing – or, I know only one thing, that I know nothing.”

The day Socrates declared this – ”I know only one thing, that I know nothing” – the oracle at the Delphi temple declared: ”Socrates is the greatest wise man alive.” Those who heard this rushed to Socrates. They said, ”Now, this is a paradox. You say you know only one thing, that you know nothing. And the oracle of Delphi has declared: ‘Socrates is the wisest man on earth’ – and on the same day! Now please explain it to us; we are puzzled.”

Socrates said, ”Go and ask the oracle again. There must have been some misunderstanding –

because I know only one thing, that I know nothing.”

People went back and the oracle was asked. And the oracle said, ”Yes, that’s why I have declared that he is the wisest man in the world – that’s WHY I have declared it. His coming to know, ”I know nothing” is the ultimate knowing. The river has disappeared into the ocean. There is no knower now, so who can clam? There is no separation left, Socrates is no more. That’s why he is the wisest man alive on the earth.”

The ego is continuously with you like a shadow, it follows you wherever you go. You are in the world, it follows you. You go to the temple, it follows you. You become religious, it follows you. And it is so clever that whatsoever garb is needed, it puts on. If you are religious your ego becomes religious; if you are ascetic your ego becomes ascetic. It is your shadow; it goes on following you, it imitates you, it is your reflection in the mirror.

And remember, unless your reflection in the mirror completely disappears, you have not come face to face with God, because God is not a mirror. God is an ocean to the river: one simply dissolves into him. You cannot address God as ‘thou’ when you have known – because there is no ‘I’ to address him as ‘thou’.

A great Jewish thinker, Martin Buber, continuously thought of religion as a dialogue. His famous book is I AN THOU... and he thinks prayer means a dialogue between the ‘I’ and the ultimate ‘thou’.

In the primary stages it is true, it is a dialogue; but not in the ultimate state. In the ultimate state it is not a dialogue at all, because there are not two persons left. It is a silence, not a dialogue at all. It is absolute silence. The seeker and the sought have become one, with not even an inch’s distinction, difference. Who is going to say ‘I’ and who is going to address God as ‘thou’?

Martin Buber is right as far as the beginning of prayer is concerned, but this is not the end. He must have remained on the periphery of prayer – a good man, a rare man, but somehow got lost on the periphery, became too much attached to the periphery. And the reason was the Judaic conditioning of the mind. Had he been in this country he would not have written this book, I AND THOU. Or, he would have also written another book to declare the ultimate communion where silence prevails.

Prayer is not a dialogue, in the ultimate sense, remember it. It is dissolution, disappearance: you are utterly gone and gone forever and there is no return possible, you have crossed the point from where one can return. But be watchful of the ego.

The elephants and mice are in the middle of a football match. It suddenly happens that an elephant steps on a mouse and pushes her to the ground. After a while the mouse comes out and the elephant says in deep sadness, ”I’m very very sorry!”

The mouse answered with great friendliness, ”Oh, it doesn’t matter. It could happen to me too!”

From the lowest to the highest, the same ego persists. From the mouse to the man, the same ego persists; and from the mundane to the sacred, the same ego persists.

The real sacred explosion happens and you enter into the holiest of the holy only when all trace of the ego is gone.

WHEN HE ADMITS YOU TO HIS PRESENCE

ASK FROM HIM NOTHING OTHER THAN HIMSELF.

WHEN HE HAS CHOSEN YOU FOR A FRIEND,

YOU HAVE SEEN ALL THAT THERE IS TO SEE.

THERE’S NO DUALITY IN THE WORLD OF LOVE:

WHAT’S ALL THIS TALK OF ‘YOU’ AND ‘ME’?

HOW CAN YOU FILL A CUP THAT’S FULL ALREADY?

God is not a person, let me remind you again. God is a presence.

Think of these three stages: the seed, the flower and the fragrance. The seed is very gross, hard, looks almost like a pebble. It is ugly, you cannot find any beauty in it – even if you cut it into parts, you dissect it, you will not find any flowers there, not even miniature flowers, and you will not find any fragrance of course. The seed is the grossest state.

Then comes the flower. When the seed has died, disappeared, then comes the flower. The flower is more subtle, more delicate, more feminine, more soft, more beautiful. The flower brings something of the sky to the earth. The flower is a bridge, a midway-house between the earth and the sky, between the known and the unknown, between the visible and the invisible.

But there is still a higher stage – that of fragrance. The flower is beautiful but still visible, tangible, material. It is made of more subtle stuff than the seed but is still part of the physical world – maybe just on the boundary of the physical and the metaphysical. But fragrance is pure invisibility.

If the flower falls, it will fall back to the earth. It is still part of the earth – it has gone high, has attained to great beauty, has been whispering with the stars and the moon and the sun. But if it falls, gravitation will claim it back, the earth will pull it back, and it will fall downwards. It can rise only for a day into the air and the sky. Its rise is momentary – by the evening the petals may have started falling, by the night it may have withered away, in the morning you will not find a trace of it.

But the fragrance has left the earth. The earth cannot reclaim it; it has become so subtle that it is beyond gravitation. The fragrance rises upwards, it is claimed by the sky. And between the fragrance and the seed is the flower.

These are the three stages of human consciousness too. The majority of people live in the seed form; they never become flowers. Very few people, one in a million, become flowers. Even to become a flower is such a miracle in the world. But among thousands of flowers only one becomes a fragrance. A Buddha, a Sanai, a Sosan, a Zarathustra – only one in millions becomes a fragrance, pure fragrance, just purity, pure grace. That grace is just a presence.

When Buddha died, for years his disciples felt his presence. He was with them. In fact his presence is still there, but there are no more disciples of his who can receive it, who can be open to it. The more time passes, the more and more it becomes impossible to contact it.

Whenever it has happened that a man has attained to God, he has become a presence. When he is in the body, the presence surrounds his body. Painters have depicted that presence as an aura surrounding the enlightened person – that is just a way of painting it, of painting something which cannot be painted. But a presence surrounds him. And that presence has nothing to do with the body; when the body is gone, the presence still remains. But now it will be visible only to those who are deep in meditation, deeply surrendered to the master, utterly in trust – for them the master never dies, for them the master remains always a living presence.

God is the eternal presence, from the beginning to the end. Buddhas only represent, once in a while, the eternal presence. Once in a while, a person becomes so pure, so alert and aware and so loving and compassionate, that the eternal starts flowing through him. Once in a while, a person becomes so surrendered like a flute, so hollow like a flute, that God starts singing through him. But God is always singing.

It is like this: while we are sitting here, many many radio waves are passing, but we are not able to listen to them. Bring a radio set, tune it to a certain station, and immediately that which was invisible become visible.

God is like radio waves, always present. Once in a while, a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna, a Mohammed, exists on the earth like a radio set – tuned, connected, plugged into God. Then you become more aware of the presence. But God is a presence, not a person.

That’s why Mohammed insisted that no image could be made – and his insistence is right. Jews are right that no image can be made of God. The reason is: how can you make an image of a presence?

A person can be represented: you can have a photograph of a person, you can make a statue of a person. But how can you make a statue of something which is only a presence/ Yes, you can have a photograph of a flower, but you cannot have a photograph of the fragrance.

WHEN HE ADMITS YOU TO HIS PRESENCE...

When you are allowed the great gift of becoming a guest in his presence...

... ASK FROM HIM NOTHING OTHER THAN HIMSELF.

Because if you ask something else, you have missed the whole point.

It is said of a great Sufi mystic, Bayazid, that one night, Khidr, the great angel who goes on helping people on the path, appeared to him. The dark room where Bayazid was meditating became suddenly illuminated. He opened his eyes; the light was so much that he could see it even with closed eyes. He opened his eyes: Khidr was there.

And Khidr said, ”God is very happy with you. You can ask for anything, and your desire will be fulfilled.”

Bayazid said, ”But you came a little late. All my desires have disappeared; now I have no desire.”

Khidr insisted. He said, ”This will be insulting to God. You have to ask! You can ask for anything, but you have to ask. This will be an insult to God, because when he offers, you have to ask for something.”

He insisted so much. Again and again, Bayazid looked an thought, but no desire was arising. And he would say, ”But what can I do? I cannot find a thing to ask. All is always fulfilled. His compassion is such that before I can feel the desire, it is already fulfilled; before I can even formulate the desire in my head, it is fulfilled. Before it reaches me, it reaches him – so what can I ask for?”

But Khidr was insisting and saying, ”This is insulting, and God will be very angry.” So Bayazid said,

”Okay, if you insist, and if you think that this is not adab – that this is not the right manner to behave with God – then tell him that I desire only him and nothing else.”

Khidr laughed, and said, ”You fool – you missed!”

Even to say, ”I want God” is to ask. Even to desire God is a desire. Sanai is saying to first drop all desires. And if you are admitted into his presence...

... ASK FROM HIM NOTHING OTHER THAN HIMSELF.

This is just not to shock you too much. When you have attained to this state that you ask only for God, then the ultimate truth will be given by the master. Then the master will say, ”Now don’t even ask for him – because all asking is still ego-oriented. Just be in his presence, with no desire. When there is no desire, there is no smoke between you and him. Desire creates the smoke, and smoke can become a China Wall.

Don’t ask for anything Be thrilled, dance in ecstasy, that he has allowed you into his presence. But if you are not yet capable of that much desirelessness, then the second best is – but remember it is only the second best – ask for him.

WHEN HE HAS CHOSEN YOU FOR A FRIEND,

YOU HAVE SEEN THAT THERE IS TO SEE.

What is there to ask for, what is there to see, what is there to get, when he has chosen you as his friend? And he has already chosen you as his friend, otherwise he would not have given you birth at all. He has already chosen you by creating you. See the grandeur of it, see the glory of it. See how blessed you are.

YOU HAVE SEEN ALL THAT THERE IS TO SEE.

THERE’S NO DUALITY IN THE WORLD OF LOVE...

So who can ask, and of whom?

WHAT IS THIS TALK OF ‘YOU’ AND ‘ME’?

Now Sanai is bringing you closer and closer to the point where it will be clear to you that even to ask for God is to create duality: I am and thou. Who is there as ‘me’ and ‘you’?

HOW CAN YOU FILL A CUP THAT’S FULL ALREADY?

What can you ask for? He has already given all that can ever be received by you. Your cup is full!

Just look within: your cup is full, nothing is lacking.

That’s why I go on saying to you: You are gods already, all is fulfilled. See it! Nothing is missing, nothing is lacking in you, you are perfect as you are. This is the greatest declaration, and of all the mystics of the world, that you are perfect as you are.

The Upanishads say, ”Out of perfection, only perfection can come.”

How can you be imperfect if God is perfect? And if you are imperfect how can God be perfect?

The tree is known by the fruit. Nobody is imperfect; but your priests go on telling you that you are imperfect, that you are sinners, that you are unworthy, that you will be condemned to hell. This is all hogwash, this is all just nonsense. There is no hell: all is paradise, and sinners and saints are all perfect as they are. Once you have recognized this, your life takes a new color, a new dance, it becomes a song, a celebration. This is what I teach to you.

HOW CAN YOU FILL A CUP THAT’S FULL ALREADY?

BRING ALL OF YOURSELF TO HIS DOOR:

BRING ONLY A PART,

AND YOU’VE BROUGHT NOTHING AT ALL.

Another tremendously pregnant statement. Man is an organic unity. You cannot dissect man; if you dissect, you kill him. If you dissect a rose flower to find out where the beauty resides in it, you will destroy the flower and you will never find its beauty. Beauty is an organic unity; you cannot find it by dissection, the only way to find it is by participation with the flower.

You cannot know the beauty of a woman by dissecting her, by taking her to a surgeon. You can find the beauty of the woman only if you love her, if you participate in her being, if you drink of her energy, and if you allow her to drink of your energy. When you drink from each other’s being, you will know beauty; in deep intimacy and participation, beauty is known. Beauty is an organic unity.

So is your consciousness an organic unity. Nothing has to be discarded. If you discard something, you will be half – and the half will not be accepted.

In Afghanistan there is a folk tale, a folk story, a beautiful story. The Afghans believe that you have to die complete – they don’t like to be operated upon. If the doctor says, ”Remove a kidney” an Afghan is never ready, because he says, ”I have to go total to God. He will ask me, ‘Where is your kidney?’”

There is a story: In Peshawar, in the days of the British Raj, an Afghan was hospitalized. One of his hands was to be removed. His whole life was in danger, if the hand was not removed he would die.

It was very difficult to persuade the Afghan, but the doctor said, ”Don’t be worried, we will keep your hand intact. We will preserve it in chemicals, and when you die we will put the hand with you.”

This looked logical. ”So you can present God with the hand. You can say, ‘Here it is?’” Afghans are simple people, very simple. He said, ”This is right. But remember that my hand should not get lost, and you have to preserve it.”

The doctor promised. Of course he was not very serious about it, but he promised. Seeing the innocent joy of the Afghan, he managed to preserve it. In a big jar, the hand was preserved in chemicals. But after two years the hospital caught fire and everything was burned and the hand was also destroyed. The Afghan never came to know about it.

The doctor was retired, he went back to London. One night, he was awakened by somebody. He was surprised, because the doors were closed. He opened his eyes, and he remembered – it was the same Afghan, and he was very angry! The Afghan was very angry and was shaking him violently, and said, ”Where is my hand? I have died! And now God is asking, ‘Where is your hand?’”

For a moment the doctor could not figure out what to do. But he said, ”Wait. Come tomorrow night.

I have got a great collection; your hand is there, but I will have to find it. So tomorrow I will find it.

You come tomorrow night.”

And the next day he searched in all the hospitals of London to find a hand. He found a hand; he was very happy. The next night he waited for the ghost to appear again.

The Afghan came, he was very happy that he was going to get his hand. The doctor took him to the room where the hand was. The Afghan looked, opened the jar, took the hand out, and threw it on the floor. He was very angry – because his right hand was missing, and this was a left hand.

I don’t know how far this story is true... but there is a point. The point is: don’t discard anything.

And your priests have been telling you to discard: discard your sex, discard your anger, discard your greed. Your priests have been telling you to discard a thousand and one things. If you listen to your priests, you will go to God almost empty. He is going to ask, ”Where is your hand?” He is going to say, ”I gave you so many energies: what have you done with those energies? – because those energies could have been transformed. They were not to be discarded but transformed.”

Your sex has to become your celibacy, and your anger has to become your compassion. Whatsoever is given to you has a great potential in it: you have to live it very artfully, intelligently. Just by discarding anger you will remain only a part – and the part cannot reach the whole. To the whole, you will have to go as a whole.

This statement is beautiful:

BRING ALL OF YOURSELF TO HIS DOOR:

BRING ONLY A PART,

AND YOU’VE BROUGHT NOTHING AT ALL.

My effort here is to help you to remain whole. Whatsoever he has given, there must be a meaning in it. Your sexuality must be keeping something hidden in it – you have to explore it. Your anger is pure energy: if it can be destructive, it can also be creative. Anger is neutral, it depends on you how you use it.

And the religious people have been telling you, ”Discard anger.” That’s why all religious people become uncreative, they live a very very uncreative life. Their lives are nothing but long stories of impotence; they don’t create a thing. They are not creators, they are just burdens on the earth.

Your saints, your so-called sages, ore just burdens. They don’t contribute anything to existence; they don’t make it a little more beautiful, they don’t add a single song to life. They live here like parasites.

And the reason is that they have discarded the energies which could have been transformed into creativity. The man who discards anger becomes non-rebellious – and to be non-rebellious is to be dead! Anger has to be transformed into great rebellion – rebellion against all that is wrong, rebellion against all that is rotten, rebellion against the past rebellion for the future, rebellion to bring something new into the world.

Sex is creativity. It is not only that children are created out of sex, all great works of art are by-products of sexual energy. All great artists are very sexual people: poets, painters, singers, dancers, all are sexual people. And the greatest mystics have more sexual energy than anybody else, but their sexual energy is no longer in the seed form: it has bloomed, become a flower, and is not only a flower, it has become a fragrance. Then whatsoever they do brings new benedictions into existence.

They are a blessing.

When you go to God, go as an organic unity, go as a whole. Partial, you will look very ugly. Partial, you will not be accepted.

IT’S YOUR OWN SELF

DEFINING FAITH AND UNBELIEF:

INEVITABLE IT COLORS YOUR PERCEPTION.

ETERNITY KNOWS NOTHING

OF BELIEF OR UNBELIEF;

FOR A PURE NATURE

THERE IS NO SUCH THING.

Your beliefs, your unbeliefs, your theism, your atheism, your ideologies, are all ego products. In reality there is neither belief nor disbelief, in reality there is only innocence. The really religious person is neither theistic nor atheistic; he does not believe, he does not disbelieve, he is simply open to whatsoever is the case. He has no ideology. Ideologies are of the mind, and they sustain the mind, they nourish the mind.

The heart knows nothing of ideologies: the heart knows only love. And love is the door to the divine.

IT’S YOUR OWN SELF

DEFINING FAITH AND UNBELIEF:

INEVITABLY IT COLORS YOUR PERCEPTION.

You go on dreaming that you are a Hindu, you are a Mohammedan, you are a Christian, you are this and you are that, a Catholic, a communist – these are all your dreams. Reality has nothing to do with Hinduism, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism. Reality is simply real.

A flower is simply a flower. Ask the flower, ”Are you a Mohammedan?” and he will laugh at you. Ask a lion, ”Are you a Hindu?” and he will laugh at you.

Just look at existence: except for man, nobody seems to be neurotic. Except for man, nobody seems to pay much attention to ideas.

A young lady had a dream in which a handsome male angel flew into her bedroom and scooped her up in his arms. They flew out of the window together and travelled through the air for some time.

Finally they reached a castle in the sky and soared in through an open window. He gently tossed her onto a luxurious bed.

”What are you going to do now?” she asked in a frightened voice.

”That’s up to you,” he said. ”It is not my dream.”

All your ideologies are nothing but your dreams. Drop dreaming, come to your senses. Drop from the head, come to your senses. Senses are innocent. Be more sensitive to existence, its beauties, its joys.

ETERNITY KNOWS NOTHING

OF BELIEF OR UNBELIEF;

FOR A PURE NATURE

THERE IS NO SUCH THING.

AND IF, MY FRIEND, YOU ASK ME THE WAY,

I’LL TELL YOU PLAINLY, IT IS THIS...

Listen attentively.

... TO TURN YOUR FACE TOWARD THE WORLD OF LIFE,

AND TURN YOUR BACK ON RANK AND REPUTATION;

AND, SPURNING OUTWARD PROSPERITY, TO BEND

YOUR BACK DOUBLE IN HIS SERVICE;

TO PART COMPANY WITH THOSE WHO DEAL IN WORDS,

AND TAKE YOUR PLACE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE WORDLESS.

The first thing Sanai says is:

AND IF, MY FRIEND, YOU ASK ME THE WAY,

I’LL TELL YOU PLAINLY, IT IS THIS...

And what he says is the absolute truth.

... TO TURN YOUR FACE TOWARD THE WORLD OF LIFE...

That’s what I am saying to you: Be life-affirmative.

... TURN YOUR FACE TOWARD THE WORLD OF LIFE...

Towards the trees and the birds and the animals and the stars and the rivers and the oceans and the people. And your priests have been telling you just the opposite. They say, ”Turn your back towards life.” They say, ”Be life-negative.” They say, ”Renounce life.”

Sanai says, ”Rejoice in life.”

Your priests are just poisoners. The greatest enemies humanity has known are its priests: they teach you death.

Reverend Jim Jones is not the first priest who has helped his disciples to die. This is the ancientmost trade secret of all priests: they teach you suicide. Reverend Jones did it in the American way, fast and quick, that’s all. Other priests do it slowly slowly slowly – it takes seventy, eighty years. But the process is the same; they all teach you that life is wrong. When life is wrong, then death is right.

They all teach you that to live is a sin. Then not to live is saintliness. They all teach you to escape away from life to the monasteries, to the mountains; they teach you escapism.

Now, what is suicide? Suicide is ultimate escapism.

And now you will see, all the priests of the world will condemn Reverend Jones – they are condemning him. Christian and Mohammedan and Hindu, Catholic and Protestant – they all are condemning him. And in fact what he did is simply a logical conclusion of their teachings. That’s what they have been teaching: they have been teaching that life is ugly, that to live it is to be a sinner.

Then it is a logical conclusion to die, to commit suicide; then suicide seems to be the most spiritual act.

Jainism even permits it – not only permits but appreciates it. Just the other day, I was reading about a Jain monk who committed suicide. They don’t call it suicide, they have beautiful words for it – they call it santhara: santhara means one who leaves the body by fasting.

Now, this man was fasting for many days. And santhara is a fast unto death, no food, no water – if the man is really healthy it will take at least three months to die.

Now this seems to be a more ugly death, more torturing, more prolonged misery. In that way, Reverend Jones did a good job: he did santhara in a scientific way; instantly he did it. And if a thing can be done instantly, then why prolong the misery for three months? Why torture yourself? If you can reach some place by plane, then why go by bullock cart?

I would like to say to the whole world: what Jones has done, please don’t condemn it! You have no right to condemn him, because that’s what all your churches and all your temples have been teaching, down the ages.

Only I can condemn him, nobody else has the right to condemn him – because I teach life. He was mad, neurotic. as have been all your priests – mad and neurotic, sado-masochistic, pathological.

Sanai is right. He says that this is the only way:

... TO TURN YOUR FACE TOWARD THE WORLD OF LIFE,

AND TURN YOUR BACK ON RANK AND REPUTATION;

AND, SPURNING OUTWARD PROSPERITY, TO BEND

YOUR BACK DOUBLE IN HIS SERVICE;

TO PART COMPANY WITH THOSE WHO DEAL IN WORDS,

AND TAKE YOUR PLACE IN THE PRESENCE OF THE WORDLESS.

He says: If you want to renounce something, renounce prestige, renounce power, renounce rank and reputation. That is not renounced by your priests and your monks. In fact they renounce the world to get more reputation, they become ascetics so that they can be worshipped like saints.

They cling to reputation – that is their ego trip. They renounce life to get more and more respect, respectability from people.

Sanai is saying just the opposite. That’s what I am doing here. I say: Renounce respectability, it is all bullshit. It doesn’t matter whether people respect you or not. All that matters in the ultimate sense is whether you respect yourself or not. And you can respect yourself only if you have lived totally, passionately. And if you respect yourself, and you are courageous enough to live life in all its dimensions, God is happy with you. And when you enter into his presence you will enter whole, you will enter healthy, you will enter as a total, orgasmic, organic unity.

And he says:

... PART COMPANY WITH THOSE WHO DEAL IN WORDS.

There are priests, pundits, scholars, whose whole work is to deal in words. Reality has to be an experience, not just speculation.

Before Buddha entered ultimate nirvana, before he was leaving his body, a disciple asked him to preach again. Buddha scolded him and said, ”I have lived in the world for forty-nine years and I have never said a word. Now you ask me to preach again. Do you mean I have preached before?”

He was preaching for forty-nine years – morning, afternoon, evening, for forty-nine years continuously. In fact no other man except me has talked as much as Buddha did. But still he says, ”What do you mean, preach again? Do you mean I have been preaching in my life? I have not uttered a single word.”

And I say to you, I have also not uttered a single word. Because you cannot understand silence, there is no other way to communicate with you. But all the words are used just to create more and more silence in you. The words are irrelevant: the silence contained in them is the real thing. The words are just capsules: inside the capsule is silence, a wordless message.

THE WAY IS NOT FAR

FROM YOU TO THE FRIEND:

YOU YOURSELF ARE THAT WAY:

SO SET OUT ALONG IT.

There is no other way. You are not to go somewhere, you are not to follow some outward path – you are the way. You have just to go in, and then the friend is not far away.

Another story.

One day, Buddha saw Manjushree, one of his greatest disciples, standing outside the gate. He said,

”Manju! Manju! Why don’t you come in?”

Manju said, ”My Lord, there is no way to come in.”

Buddha laughed and said again, ”Enter through the gate!”

Manju also laughed and said, ”My Lord Bhagwan, you must be joking, because there is no gate either!”

Buddha showered his grace on Manjushree and said, ”My son, you have understood me well. There is no way, and there is no gate.”

Because he is inside you, already inside you. You are not to pass through some gates, and you are not to follow some paths. He has already arrived – he has arrived as YOU. The seeker is the sought.

You are it.

THE WAY IS NOT FAR

FROM YOU TO THE FRIEND:

YOU YOURSELF ARE THAT WAY:

SO SET OUT ALONG IT.

YOU WHO KNOW NOTHING OF THE LIFE

THAT COMES FROM THE JUICE OF THE GRAPE,

HOW LONG WILL YOU REMAIN INTOXICATED

BY THE OUTWARD FORM OF THE GRAPE?

WHY DO YOU LIE THAT YOU ARE DRUNK?

People who are reciting the Koran go on pretending that they are getting drunk. That is not possible

– how can words make you drunk? Just looking at the form of the grape, you cannot become drunk: you will have to taste the juice of it. Only experience, existential experience, can liberate you.

Words will become new bondages – beautiful bondages, very very cultured, decorated bondages, but words will be bondages.

All your scriptures are nothing but imprisonments. Get out of them.

And remember, what I say about scriptures includes my words too. Listen to my words, but don’t be caught by them. Listen to my words so attentively that you can listen to the wordless message that is just between the words, between the lines. And then discard the words: throw away the shell and drink the content.

WHY DO YOU LIE THAT YOU ARE DRUNK?

Stop lying! Just by words, scriptures, knowledge, nobody can be drunk. The only way to be drunk is to go deep in your being and to drink there at the very source of your consciousness. And then you will be drunk, and drunk for ever.

And that drunkenness has a paradoxical quality to it: you become unconscious as far as the ego is concerned, and you become conscious as far as the self is concerned. You forget yourself in that drunkenness, and God is remembered in that drunkenness. On one side is forgetfulness, on the other side remembrance.

HOW CAN YOU GO FORWARD?

THERE IS NO PLACE TO GO;

HOW WILL YOU LEAP?

YOU HAVE NO FOOT.

Consciousness has no foot, it cannot leap. And you cannot go anywhere, because there is nowhere to go.

All is here! All is now! God has only one time, and that is now. And God has only one space, and that is here. There is no need to go anywhere.

Don’t think in terms of ‘then’, and don’t think in terms of ‘there’, and don’t think in terms of ‘that’.

God is this-ness, such-ness. This very moment, God is here, as he is always here. Just be silent and have a taste of him.

And only the taste of him can liberate you.

CHAPTER 8

Dying in Wonder

18 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 1

YOU APPEAR TO HAVE MADE A POINT OF ATTACKING THE PRIME MINISTER, MORARJI DESAI, AND BACKING INDIRA GANDHI, THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER, WITH ALL THE

SPIRITUAL POWER AT YOUR COMMAND. WHAT IS THE BACKGROUND? DO YOU WISH TO

REPLACE MR. DESAI WITH MRS. GANDHI? IN ANY CASE, IS SUCH AN INTERVENTION IN

INDIAN POLITICAL AFFAIRS BY A SPIRITUAL PERSON JUSTIFIED?

R.K. Karanjia,

Editor, BLITZ.

My dear Karanjia, I am not personally against Morarjibhai Desai. But I am against the rotten mentality that he represents, I am against the Hindu chauvinistic mind that he has. I am against his obscurantist attitudes, and approaches. I am against his stubbornness in imposing his personal fads upon the whole country. I am against his bureaucratic, autocratic, dictatorial methods. I am against his unscientific attitudes towards life. I have nothing to do with Morarjibhai Desai, but all these things combined together are a calamity for the country.

Basically I am against politicians. But we cannot discard politicians absolutely. Humanity is not yet in that state of growth and intelligence where politicians can be discarded. So they will be needed –

it is a necessary evil.

But evil it is. So it is better to choose a politician who at least has a flexible mind, scientific attitudes

– one who at least has a contemporary mind.

Morarji Desai is just out of date. He does not belong to this century, to this time. All that he goes on saying is sheer superstitious nonsense. He is at least one thousand years back.

But once you are in power, whatsoever you believe, you can impose it on others. That is the danger.

He is cunning, shrewd and unintelligent. A politician is bound to be cunning and shrewd and unintelligent, because only unintelligent people are cunning and shrewd. That is their substitute for intelligence.

If you are intelligent, that’s enough. There is no need to be cunning, there is no need to be shrewd, there is no need to use back-door methods.

A story:

A politician was teaching his little son to be less afraid, to have more courage, by having him jump down the stairs. He placed his boy on the second stair and said, ”Jump, and I’ll catch you.” And the boy jumped. Then the father placed him on the third stair, saying, ”Jump, and I’ll catch you.” Though the boy was afraid, he trusted his father, did what he was told, and jumped into his father’s arms.

Then the father put him on the next step, and then the next step, each time telling him, ”Jump, and I’ll catch you.” And each time the boy jumped and was caught by his father. And so this went on.

Then the boy jumped from a very high step, just as before, but this time the father stepped back and the boy fell flat on his face. As he picked himself up, bleeding and crying, the father said to him,

”That will teach you: never trust a politician, even if it is your own father.”

I don’t trust politicians. Something is basically wrong in the being of a politician. A politician is suffering from a pathology, he suffers from an inferiority complex. Now this is a well-established fact: that people who search for power are the people who suffer from an inferiority complex. And the people who suffer from an inferiority complex, once they are in power, are bound to prove dangerous to the people.

Morarji Desai has been suffering from an inferiority complex his whole life. His whole life has been devoted to a single aim: to become the prime minister of this country. And now he has become the prime minister. And these past twenty months have proved that you cannot find a more incompetent man than him. These twenty months have proved that he has attained his goal and now he does not know what to do with it.

The politician is skillful in coming to power, but then what to do with that power? He has been after it his whole life; that was his only desire. Now it is fulfilled. He is spent. Now he does not know what to do, except to cling to the chair.

He is clinging hard. And the country is going down and down every day – becoming poorer and poorer, becoming more and more chaotic, becoming more and more violent, destructive. People are butchered, killed, murdered, their properties destroyed, whole villages burnt, women are being raped. There is no order, no law.

And Morarji Desai is only interested in one thing: how to go on remaining in power. This is a very very retarded mind. If a young person is interested in power, he can be forgiven. But at the age of eighty-three or eighty-four, if one is interested in power, he cannot be forgiven.

Bertha was so concerned about her son that she sought advice from a family psychologist and counselor.

”Sir,” she said desperately, ”I am worried about my son. He has strange ways of amusing himself.”

The psychologist took out his pad. ”Go on.”

”First of all,” she continued, ”he plays with boats when he takes a bath.”

”That’s not so unusual,” said the psychologist, smiling. ”Years ago, as a boy, I used to have a fleet of boats in the bathtub. I would play admiral and sink all the ships.”

”He also pulls wings off flies.”

”Perfectly normal – he’s just releasing some hostility.”

”He skates on roller skates from room to room in the house so he can get to the dinner table more quickly.”

”Your son sounds very amusing,” laughed the psychologist. ”How old is your boy?”

”Thirty-nine.”

Somebody clinging to power at the age of eighty-three: it looks really pitiable. And doing nothing with that power – doing only one thing: trying to cling to it, trying to keep it, trying to maintain it.

Such an unproductive man, such an uncreative man, should not be there.

The country needs a younger person with more brains, with more vision of the future; only then can this country be saved. The country needs a scientific approach towards life – not out-of-date sermons and puritanical, moralistic preachings. The country does not need a preacher; it has thousands of preachers, there is no need of any more. The country needs somebody who has the scientific capability to transform dreams into reality.

Morarji Desai does not have that capacity, that’s why I have been criticizing him. And it is difficult for him to reorient himself at this time; it is too late. He is closed, frozen, everything in him has become stone-like. He cannot flow with the times, he cannot relax with reality as it is. Rather than flowing with the times and with reality as it is today, he would like reality to follow him. He is asking the impossible. And in asking that impossible, he shows his dictatorial attitudes.

This country calls itself a democracy, but it is not yet, because this country does not have the consciousness for being democratic. Democracy is just talk – deep down, there is just dictatorial bureaucracy.

And the whole mind of the past has been that way. Democracy is a new phenomenon. Democracy is a by-product of a scientific attitude – and this country lacks scientific attitude.

Try to understand this. Democracy could not have happened in any other time in the past, because all the religions have been dogmatic. Every religion claims the truth and the whole truth. Every religion claims: ”I am right and everybody else is wrong.” All religions are closed.

And I am not including Buddhas, Christs and Krishnas; they are exceptions, and they are not part of your so-called religious traditions. Buddha is not dogmatic, he has a very scientific openness.

He approaches every fact of life with an open mind. He told his disciples, ”Don’t believe in what I say. Unless you have experimented with it and unless you have experienced it, and unless you have become a witness to it, don’t believe it.”

But Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism – all these ideologies are dogmatic: everybody claims the whole truth. That very claim is inhuman, that very claim is egoistic. And because this country has no scientific mind, it lacks the democratic spirit.

A few days ago, Krishna Prem saw Morarji Desai. He made it a condition that whatsoever was said to Krishna Prem was to be absolutely private and off-record.

Why? Why this condition? If it is true, let it be on record. And if it is a lie, there is no need to say it.

But I understand he made that condition – because he told Krishna Prem,’If it was in y power I would have demolished Acharya Rajneesh’s work, his ashram, everything.”

You see the mind? It is the mind of a dictator. And why does he say that if it was in his power...? It is in his power, and he is doing whatsoever he can do.

Just the other day, from very reliable sources, it became known that he has informed the authorities that somehow, in any way, we have to be trapped into some legal problems, traps. ”You have to find something or other so that we can proceed legally against this commune.”

Twice they have checked all the files, all the records, and twice they have decided that there is nothing wrong. Now again, a third time, they have asked for all the files and all the records to be reopened; the issue has to be reopened, because there is pressure from New Delhi.

The chief minister of Maharashtra was willing to help. Just the other day, he said to a friend, ”I was willing to help at least as far as the land is concerned, I was going to help the commune. But now the pressure from Delhi is too much. Now it is beyond my capacity; I cannot help.”

Why does Morarji Desai say that it is beyond his power? He is doing everything that he can do.

But remember, these attitudes are not going to win. Democracy has become part and parcel of the modern mind; the days of this type of thing are over. You are clinging to corpses, Morarji Desai. You are clinging to dead things which no longer have any future.

A dictator had his picture printed on postage stamps. When he learned the stamps were not selling very well in the country, he called his postmaster-general and asked why.

”It’s because the stamps won’t stick to the envelopes,” explained the postal chief.

The dictator demanded why unsatisfactory glue had been used.

”It’s not the glue,” explained the postmaster. ”It’s because they spit on the wrong side.”

This is going to happen to all kinds of dictatorial minds. Morarji Desai, beware of it!

And when I criticize him I am not criticizing him personally, remember always, I have no personal grudge against him; there is no question of any personal grudge. He is just a symbol of something very rotten. And when I criticize him, in fact I am simply talking about the facts. If the facts are against him, what can I do?

Now, the twenty months that he has been in power are writ large. His incompetence, his impotence, is writ large. Everybody can see it; it is not a secret, the whole country is feeling it. But this country is very lethargic, this country is very fatalistic, this country always goes on blaming fate. If nothing is going right, then too this country remains in a kind of contentment. This has been its traditional approach.

This country is not rebellious. In the whole five thousand years of its history there has not been a single revolution. This country does not know how to revolt, this country only knows how to go on obeying. Because of this, this country has remained so long a slave.

My approach is that of a rebel. I condemn this country’s past, because I can visualize a better future.

And that better future is possible only if the past is condemned. It is not going to be a continuity with the past: the future has to be absolutely new, fresh, young. This country has to go through a rebirth, this country has to become young again.

When I criticize Morarji Desai, it is not really criticism – I simply mirror him... whatsoever he is.

A modern artist once showed his latest painting – a big splosh of orange on the canvas with little black blobs – to a prominent lady art critic.

”Well,” said the artist, ”what do you think of it?”

After staring in puzzlement and disgust at the picture for a long time, the lady said, ”I’m afraid I must confess that I think it’s a pretty poor work of art.”

”Huh!” snorted the artist. ”It so happens that it’s a portrait of you; and I can’t help it if you’re a pretty poor work of nature!”

I am not criticizing Morarji Desai, I am simply mirroring whatsoever he is. And it is needed: this country needs to be made alert and aware, otherwise the misery will continue. Morarji Desai represents a non-technological mind. He represents the Gandhian bullshit.

This country needs technology, otherwise this country cannot survive. And I know perfectly well that the way technology as happened in the West has also been a calamity in its own way. It has destroyed the ecology. The West is suffering from technology, and the East is suffering from lack of technology. And the Eastern obscurantists take great joy in asserting the fact: ”Look what has happened to the West through technology.”

But that is not the only way of bringing technology in. We can learn from the Western experiment –

we can bring in technology which is not against ecology. There is no necessity, there is no inherent necessity, that technology has to be against nature. It can be for nature – it can be friendly to nature, it can be part of nature, it can be in communion with nature.

The technology has to be based on Taoist approaches. Technology as it exists in the West, if imported, will be another error, another fatal error. But the West has gone through a great experiment; we need not make all the mistakes that they have made. We are in a better position now. We have suffered without technology, the West has suffered through technology. Now there is a possibility to create a new vision of technology and nature in communion, hand in hand together.

And that experiment will become an example for the whole world. India can do it, India can create that space – because five thousand years of meditativeness, prayer, love for God, and search for God, is enough of a background to transform technology, its flavor – to make it more natural, rather than being something against nature.

India needs people who know what meditation is, and who know what science is: it needs a synthesis.

Morarji Desai simply represents the rotten, dead past. He has no vision of what has happened in the world; he is not a contemporary. I am against his non-contemporariness, I am against his non-modernness. And it is not only that he is not a contemporary: he is anti-modern. He is dogmatic –

and any dogmatic person becomes a rock in the flow of a nation’s life. He has to be removed.

I know it is too late for him to change, so he has to be removed.

Jan Lebanc envisioned himself as becoming another Luther Burbank, the great horticulturist and plant breeder.

”Some day I will become famous,” he boasted. ”With my agricultural experiments, I will revolutionize the eating habits of the world.”

”Perhaps you are great,” remarked his cynical wife, ”but so far all of your great experiments have failed.”

”How can you say that?”

”Remember that skinless banana of yours? The flies ate the bananas before the people could.”

”The people didn’t eat them fast enough.”

”And the seedless raspberries. They turned into liquid at the touch of a finger.”

”We needed more tender hands to pick them.”

”And now? What marvel do you offer the world?”

”I have crossed corn and peas.”

”And what does that give you?”

”Peas on the cob – my answer to senior citizens with false teeth.”

”Jan, may I give you some candid advice? Why don’t you cultivate some brains?”

But I cannot give that advice to Morarji Desai, it is too late; the river has already reached the end.

And the more he remains in power, the more time is wasted. Not only is time wasted, but whatsoever has been done in thirty years’ independence, he is undoing it.

It is better the country becomes alert to it immediately, otherwise he will have done great wrongs.

And then to put them right will take a long time.

You ask me, Karanjia: YOU APPEAR TO HAVE MADE A POINT OF ATTACKING THE PRIME

MINISTER, MORARJI DESAI, AND BACKING INDIRA GANDHI, THE FORMER PRIME MINISTER, WITH ALL THE SPIRITUAL POWER AT YOUR COMMAND. WHAT IS THE BACKGROUND? DO

YOU WISH TO REPLACE MR. DESAI WITH MRS. GANDHI?

Yes. Absolutely yes. Again I would like to remind you that I have no personal attachment to Indira Gandhi. But she represents something far better than Morarji Desai represents. She has more progressive policies, a better vision of the future, and more understanding of the present. She is a contemporary woman, with immense intelligence and grace. She is not a faddist, she is not a dogmatist. She is flexible, open, vulnerable, ready to receive anything new, ready to understand anything that is happening in the modern world. Her doors and windows are open to the sun, to the moon, to the wind, to the rain.

I have met both persons. The meeting with Morarji Desai was not a meeting at all. We were sitting on the same sofa, very close, touching each other’s body – but far far away, millions of miles’

distance. There was no communication possible – centuries of difference. He was not capable of understanding what I was saying to him.

I have met Indira Gandhi. She was so open; it is very rare to meet a person who is so open. And more difficult to find a person who is in power and yet so open. Power blinds people, power closes people, power makes people dogmatic.

She was at the zenith of her power, but she was utterly humble. She was drinking in every single word that I was saying to her, and she understood immediately. She said, ”I would like to do what you are saying, but I am surrounded by such people that it is almost impossible to do anything.”

Morarji Desai was then deputy prime minister. I asked her, ”Whom do you mean when you say, ‘I am surrounded by such people’?” She said, ”You know I mean Morarji Desai, and others. It is impossible to bring anything new into the life of this country, because they all obstruct it.”

I told her, ”Then it is better that either you drop these people or you drop out.” The idea sank into her heart, and within seven days Morarji Desai was dropped. But still others were there.

This country chooses people who represent its past. This country is very much obsessed with the past.

While Indira Gandhi was prime minister, thrice she wanted to come to this commune. Thrice she informed us, ”I am coming” – and again and again it was postponed. And the reason was that the people who were around her would not allow her. They said to her, ”It is dangerous to go to Acharya Rajneesh; it will affect your political future.”

Even to come to see me seems to be dangerous. And I can understand: if she had come here, then all the shankaracharyas and all the pundits and all the priests would have been against her. So her advisers wouldn’t allow her to come here. Again and again, she wanted to come.

Even the desire to come, even the desire to be here and meditate and sit silently with me, shows a great openness. She has been reading almost all the books that are published, and she has been listening to the tapes.

When I say it would be better if Indira comes back, I simply mean that I would like an open mind, contemporary, modern, humble, receptive to the new waves that are arising in the world so that this country also becomes contemporary and modern – which this country is not yet.

I have great appreciation for her courage in implementing new programs even though those programs were against the traditional mentality of this country. I would like her to be back. In fact, anybody, any tom, Harry and Dick, would be better than Morarji Desai.

I have heard a story: it comes from very unreliable sources, so I don’t know whether it is true or not.

Before the election, Morarji Desai visited an aboriginal tribe in Assam where he made a fine speech full of promises of better things.

”We shall see,” he said, ”a new era of opportunity.”

To this, the aboriginals, adivasis, gave a raining cry of ”Hoya Hoya!”

Encouraged, he continued, ”We promise better schools and technical training.”

”Hoya Hoya!” exclaimed the audience with much enthusiasm.

”We pledge better hospitals and medical assistance,” said Morarji Desai.

”Hoya Hoya!” cried the poor and uneducated aboriginals.

With a tear running down his cheek, Morarji Desai ended, ”We come to you as equals, as brothers, so trust us!”

The air shook with one long, mighty ”Hoya Hoya!”

Greatly pleased by his reception, he then began to tour the village. ”I see you have fine breeds of beef cattle here,” he said. ”May I inspect them?”

”Certainly! Come this way,” said the chief. ”But be careful not to step in the hoya.”

Wherever Morarji Desai goes, greet him with ”Hoya Hoya!” Drop the old slogans: ”Down with Morarji Desai! Morarji Desai murdabad!” I give you a new slogan: ”Morarji Desai, Hoya Hoya!”

And, Karanjia, you also ask: IN ANY CASE, IS SUCH AN INTERVENTION IN INDIAN POLITICAL

AFFAIRS BY A SPIRITUAL PERSON JUSTIFIED?

I am not a spiritual person in the ordinary traditional sense of the word. In fact, all your so-called spiritual persons are in deep conspiracy with the politicians. There has always been a conspiracy between the priest and the politician, a subtle strategy to dominate people.

Your so-called spiritual persons don’t say anything against the establishment. That does not mean that they are not political – in fact they are FOR the establishment; they are political. They never say anything against it – their silence is their support.

In India, we have a saying: Maunam Sammati Lakshanam – to be silent is a sign of agreement, not to say anything is to agree.

Karl Marx is perfectly right as far as these so-called spiritual persons are concerned, that religion has functioned as an opium for the people. Your so-called religious people have been teaching others to submit to the establishment, to obey the establishment, to never go against th established order whatsoever it is.

I am not a religious person, a spiritual person, in that sense. I am a rebel. You cannot categorize me with anybody else. And, to me, life is an organic unity; it cannot be divided, it cannot be split. I will comment on poetry, and I will comment on politics too, because life consists of all these dimensions.

I am not a politician, true. But when I see something going wrong, I have to make people ware of it.

I have every right to speak on poetry, although I am not a poet; I have every right to speak on music, although I am not a musician. But I can show my likes and my dislikes, I can indicate where things are going.

I am simply a light. And if the light is there in the room, it lights everything that is there – the furniture, the painting on the wall, the ceiling, and everything. I am just a light, a mirror: I will reflect everything that is happening.

So please forget that old division. It has really been a compromise; down the ages, the politician and the priest have bargained. This has been the bargain, that the politician will not interfere with the priest; he will pay his respect to the priest, to the church. And the priest should not interfere with the politician; he should pay his respect to the state, and help people to be obedient to the state.

I am in no conspiracy, in no contract, with anybody. I will say things as I see them, and I don’t care whether you think me spiritual or not. Who cares? I know perfectly well that thousands of Indians will be puzzled, because they think a spiritual person should not talk about politics. They really don’t understand.

Do you think Krishna did not talk about politics? He not only talked about politics – he participated.

In fact, Arjuna was trying to escape from the war. It was Krishna who persuaded him, convinced him, that it was a war which had to be fought. Because when it is a question of evil and good forces, you have to be with the good forces.

When I criticize Morarji Desai, it is a question of the past and the future. And you have to be with the future, because the past is gone and gone for ever. Forget all about it. Create the future, forget that which has been. Don’t waste your time with it: create the future.

And the future has much thrill in it; a great adventure is awaiting you. And this country goes on looking backwards. This country never looks forwards. Its golden age has passed; it was once, thousands of years ago. If your golden age is in the past, then life is going to remain a drag, because you will be falling and falling farther and farther away from the golden age.

This is not a right vision of things. The golden age has to be in the future; it always has to be created. Your eyes should look towards the future. And when you look towards the future, your present becomes meaningful, because then there is a possibility of great adventure, exploration.

Then the thrill of creativity grips you, and the soul is created through it.

I am not a spiritual person in the ordinary sense; I am a class unto myself. You cannot categorize and label me with others; I represent nobody else but myself. What you call me – spiritual, religious, or anything else that you want – does not matter. These labels are useless.

I will go on destroying your labels. I will go on trespassing over your labels and your boundaries.

That’s what I have always been doing: you try to define me, and I destroy your definition, because any and every definition is a bondage. And I am not here to fulfill anybody’s expectations.

And to me, to divide life is to create a schizophrenic world. Politics and poetry and religion and music and painting – all are together. These are all dimensions of the same life. I accept life in its totality.

Remember, life is an organic whole, it cannot be divided; if you divide it, you destroy it.

I believe in totality, I believe in wholeness. To me, to be whole is to be holy, and there is no other kind of holiness. To me, the totality of life is God. Worship it in every possible way.

I am not a politician; that is not my choice. I have far better things to do. I am not interested in political power, because to me, power is never there outside. Power is something inside you, power is your inner reality. And to be powerful over others is ugly, violent.

Be a master of your own self. That is true power. And a power that never destroys is intrinsically creative, and a power out of which great poetry arises.

Politics is the concern with the outside, politics is the concern to change the circumstances. There is a higher world than politics; that higher world is of spirituality. It is a concern not with the circumstances, but with the inner space. Change the inner space of man, and you will be changing his circumstances automatically.

But still, people who are trying to change the outer circumstances are doing something; it has its own importance. This is not my interest. I would not like to go into active politics, never. I am finished with all toys, I am not childish. That does not mean that I cannot comment on toys. I am not a small child to play with toys, but if a child is playing with toys I can comment. I can say, ”Better toys are possible.” I can say, ”This toy is dangerous, don’t play with it. This toy can harm you; don’t play with it – throw it away.” This much I can say.

And that’s what I am doing. When I say Morarji Desai is a wrong person to be in power, I am simply saying that there are better possibilities, and it will be good if the country chooses a better person.

But this is not my interest.

So I don’t become a politician just because I have commented on politics. And I will go on commenting, because I cannot just be a spectator when millions of people’s lives are going slowly slowly into darkness, into poverty. I cannot just be a spectator. I always wonder – your so-called spiritual persons who are just spectators, what kind of spirituality do they have? What kind of compassion do they have? They are cunning people; they have made secret deals with the politicians. They keep quiet, and they always keep people in such a state that they never become rebellious, that they never become revolutionaries.

The politicians are always afraid of the rebels. And my sannyasins are going to be rebels, total rebels, against all kinds of nonsense and stupidity, against all kinds of bondages.

My sole concern is religion, my major concern is religion. But I will comment on other things too, because I take life in its totality. I love life. To me, life means God.

But let me remind you again that I am not a politician, and I don’t want you to become politicians. I would like you to be aware of the whole life as it is. And a part of it is concerned with politics; you have to be aware of that too.

The Pope blessed Adolf Hitler. Now, this is what I call subtle politics. Blessing Adolf Hitler is simply getting into a contract, getting into a conspiracy.

All politicians are evil. Then what should be done? Choose the lesser evil.

Morarji Desai is a bigger evil than Indira Gandhi. Indira Gandhi is a lesser evil; that’s why I say it will be better if she comes back. If I can find somebody else who is an even lesser evil than Indira Gandhi, then I am going to support him. But my support simply means a spiritual sympathy.

I am not going to the masses to tell them to vote for this or that; I am not going into any activity. I have far better things to do: my energy has to remain involved with my sannyasins. I am here to create millions of mystic sin the world. That’s my sole purpose, and that’s my joy and my celebration.

On the margin I am going to comment on many things, but those are all just marginal things. And I am a spiritual person, not in the sense that I am against the world; I am a spiritual person because I rejoice in the world. The world is the manifestation of God.

My whole teaching is: Rejoice – never renounce. Rejoice in the totality of life, the wholeness of it.

Rejoice, and rejoice again.

It is natural; people have always thought that spiritual persons have to remain far away from worldly affairs. To me, there is no affair which is worldly; all affairs are the same, all affairs belong to the one center. The ordinary life is also the extraordinary life. It is only a question of seeing, right seeing; then even pebbles on the street are transformed into diamonds.

I love life in its totality, as it is. Politics is also part of it. It is not my concern – but because it is part of life, I am going to comment on it.

The second question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 2

I DON’T HAVE ANY SENSE OF WONDER IN ME. WHY?

It happens to almost everybody. The more knowledgeable you become, the less wonder is felt. And parents, schools, universities, society, they all go on forcing you to become knowledgeable. Their whole effort is to give you knowledge. Your inner space becomes so full of knowledge that wonder disappears, wonder has no space left to abide in you.

A child has the yes of wonder. He feels awe, he is mystified by each and everything, small things surprise him. Hence his bubbling joy, because his life is a constant discovery.

You become knowledgeable, the society wants you to become knowledgeable. Knowledge is very very needed, knowledge has much utility. And wonder is dangerous, because a person who wonders is bound to become either a philosopher or a poet or a mystic, and all these three kinds are useless for the society.

Society needs machines, skillful machines. By giving you more and more knowledge, making you full of knowledge, society turns you into an automaton, into a robot. And the more you think you know, the more wonder becomes impossible – because when you know, how can you wonder?

A small child can wonder why the trees are green. But how can you wonder? You know it is because of chlorophyll – although you don’t know much, because another question can be raised as to why chlorophyll makes trees green, and you will have to shrug your shoulders. You have simply pushed the question back a little.

The more you know, the less you wonder. But the moment wonder dies in you, religion dies in you, because religion consists of wonder and awe. Knowledge demystifies life and existence, and religion exists only when life is a mystery. Hence you will have to learn wonder again.

In fact a right kind of education will never do this. It will give you knowledge, but it will not destroy your wonder; that will be the right kind of education. It will give you knowledge, but it will keep you alert that no knowledge can destroy wonder. In fact, on the contrary, knowledge can make you more wondering.

The small child cannot wonder about chlorophyll. If you are rightly educated, you can wonder about the greenery of the trees, you can also wonder about chlorophyll.

Albert Einstein’s last words were, ”I have been thinking the whole of my life that I would demystify the universe. But what has happened is just the contrary. The deeper I went into existence, the more the mystery deepened. I am dying full of wonder, I am dying in wonder.”

But this is rare; this is the quality of a genius. The genius is one who does not allow the society to reduce him to a robot: that’s my definition of a genius. Everybody is born as a genius, but people start compromising very soon. And when they compromise, their talents disappear, their intelligence dies. They go on selling their souls for mundane things, for useless things – useless in the ultimate sense; they may be useful here, but death comes and all those things are taken away with you.

If you can die like Albert Einstein – mystified, with full wonder, with prayer in the heart, with poetry arising in you – you have lived rightly and you are dying rightly. And a man who lives rightly and dies rightly is a spiritual person.

Albert Einstein is far more spiritual than your Vatican pope and your shankaracharyas – far more spiritual. Before he died, somebody asked him, ”If you are born again and God asks you, I am certain you would like to become a great physicist and mathematician again.” He said, ”No, never! If another opportunity is given to me, rather than being a physicist I would like to become a plumber. I would like to live a very very ordinary kind of life, anonymous, so that I could enjoy life more easily with nobody coming in my way. My fame, prestige, research – nothing coming in my way, so that I could have a deeper communion with existence.”

You say: I DON’T HAVE ANY SENSE OF WONDER IN ME. WHY?

You must be very knowledgeable.

An aspiring variety artist walked into an agent’s office looking for work. The agent said, ”What do you do?”

Without a word, the artist lifted up his arms, flew around the office, out of the window, across the street and back in through the window, making a perfect two-point landing in front of the agent’s desk.

”Okay, okay,” said the agent. ”So you do bird impersonations. Anything else?”

This is what happens to the knowledgeable people. Nothing surprises them. Even if God stands before them, they will say, ”Okay, okay, so you are God. Anything else?”

Drop your knowledgeability.

The theatrical impresario, Maxie Doldum, was once approached by a man in his theater.

”I’ve got an act to offer you that is really unique,” said the man. ”It will take London by storm. All you have to do is put then thousand pounds in the bank for my wife, and I’ll commit suicide on the stage of your theater.”

Somewhat astounded, Maxie pondered the offer. ”Hmmmmmm,” he finally said, ”But what will you do for an encore?”

There are people who are so constantly utilitarian that their whole thinking consists of utilities. He asks, ”But what will you do for an encore?” People have become so much concerned with the worldly things – utilities, commodities, usefulness – that nothing surprises them, nothing shocks them into awareness. They go on like sleepwalkers.

The rosebush brings flowers, they don’t see; they are blind. The birds sing in the morning, they don’t hear; they are deaf. They have lost all sensitivity. They have become so dead and dull that nothing thrills them to a dance, nothing brings a song to their lips, nothing gives a dance to their feet. And the culprit is knowledge.

In a more understanding world, knowledge will still be given to you, but you will also be taught how to go on protecting your capacity to wonder. Your poetry will not be killed, crushed, under the weight of knowledge. In a real university, only half the time will be devoted to utilitarian objectives, and the other half will be devoted to non-utilitarian objectives: poetry, music, painting, dance, meditation, prayer – or just relaxing under a tree, just sitting silently under a tree, doing nothing. Half the time of schools, colleges and universities should be devoted to non-utilitarian activities, done for no purpose at all but just for the sheer joy of it. Then only will we have a whole man in the world.

Up till now, there have existed two types of men: one is the worldly, he is a hundred percent utilitarian; another is the monk, he is a hundred percent non-utilitarian. Both are lopsided, both are missing something. The monk is missing the beauties of the world – the beauties of relationship, the beauties of people. The monk is poor, spiritually poor, because he is missing all the enriching experiences of life, of love, of friendship, of enmity, of anger, of compassion: he is missing all that variety that enriches the soul. He is just an empty blankness, a kind of blank canvas; nothing has been painted on him, he is spiritually poor.

I have seen so many saints that I can say to you, it is very rare to come across a saint who has some richness of the soul. He is so monotonous, he is so boring, his whole life is nothing but boredom.

How does he manage to live such a bored life? He can manage it only because he has dulled all his senses; he has dulled even his intelligence, so he cannot feel the boredom.

Do you know? Except for man, no other animal feels boredom. Buffalos are never bored, donkeys are never bored; they don’t have the intelligence to feel boredom. It is only man who feels boredom, and it is only man who has the capacity to laugh. Boredom and laughter are two sides of the same coin. But your monks, your so-called religious people, are not bored and cannot laugh either. They have fallen to the state of buffalos and donkeys.

I have heard about a philosopher who used to walk on the streets looking at the sky, the stars, the moon, the sun, clouds and birds on the wing. It was natural that many times he would bump into people or stumble into something. And it was his habit that whenever somebody bumped into him or he bumped into somebody he would say, ”Are you a donkey or something?” And he was very much respected, he was a well-known philosopher, so everybody tolerated it, nobody took any offense.

One day it happened, he bumped into a donkey. He was just going to say his usual, ”Are you a donkey or something?” – he was just going to way it. But then he looked, and he laughed, and he said, ”Sir, you are just yourself. What else can I say to you?”

People who escape from the world become donkeys and buffalos; they fall below human awareness, human sensibilities. That’s why they cannot live even a bored life – no laughter, no boredom. They have become animals. They have lost the glory of being a human being; they have fallen back. Of course, the life of an animal is less anxious; there is no anxiety, no anguish. Hence you will see a kind of serenity around them – but a serenity without intelligence is not of any worth.

When serenity happens with intelligence, a Buddha is born. When serenity happens without intelligence, you have gone back to the world of the buffalos. But this has been the case. A few people have moved away from the world, a hundred percent to non-utilitarian activities – praying, praying, meditating, meditating, alone. This is not, and cannot be, a total life. And the others, the millions, are living only utilitarian lives, having more and more things, having bigger and bigger bank balances, and they don’t know anything of play. Even if they play, they become very serious in their play; even their play becomes a business.

People cannot simply play cards, they have to put money into it; then it becomes something serious, because it takes the form of a business. Something has to be staked, only then can they play. You see players who even in their play are so dead serious, it is a question of life and death. Nobody seems to be playful.

The world is full of utilitarian activities, and people have lost all qualities of meditation, prayer, play, wondering, feeling awe, watching stars, looking at the flowers, playing the guitar or singing a song, for no other reason but the sheer joy of it. These people are also very poor.

I want to create a totally new man in the world, who will not be poor in this way or that, who will be really rich – who will have all the richness of the world, of relationships, of all the challenges of existence, and who will also have the capacity to be silent, the space of playfulness, meditativeness.

This is my idea of a sannyasin: be in the world, and yet don’t be part of it. Be in the world, and yet go on surpassing it. Don’t be an escapist.

The right education will create sannyasins in the world – sannyasins in my sense – it will create holy men. Fifty percent of education should be devoted to the world, and fifty percent to the beyond, and both should remain in a harmony, in a deep synthesis. Then you can be knowledgeable, and yet wonder continues to flow in you. Then you can know, and yet you are mystified by existence.

The last question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 3

WHAT IS THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY?

I am not a physicist, I am not a scientist. But I can tell you two stories that will show what the theory of relativity is: I am a story-teller.

I have heard that when Hitler came to inspect one of the concentration camps and the inmates were standing at attention, he was interested to get an idea of their weight. He picked out three, and scales were brought. The first turned out to be five kilos, the second seven kilos and the last eleven kilos, upon which Hitler responded, ”There’s a chubby one!”

This is what the theory of relativity is. No statement in itself has any meaning; it has meaning only in context and contrast with some other statement.

The theory of relativity is a very complicated thing. It is said that while Albert Einstein was alive, only twelve persons in the world were able to understand it. Even Albert Einstein, when asked what it was, used to feel very puzzled – how to say what it is? He himself used to give examples. He used to give this example, that if you are sitting on a hot stove, one minute will look like one hour; and if you are sitting with your girlfriend, one hour looks like one minute.

A man who was frightened of dentists delayed seeing one until he only had six teeth left in his mouth.

The dentist examined him and said, ”These teeth are finished. Let me pull them out. Let me do root canal work and all those other things I do, and you’ll have a complete new set of choppers in your mouth. Beautiful you’ll look, and chewing problems you’ll no longer have.”

The man was dubious. ”I’m a physical coward, Doctor. I can’t stand pain.”

”Who said anything about pain? I’m a painless dentist!”

”You say it, but how do I know if it’s true?”

”Not to worry,” the dentist said. ”I did a job exactly like this for another man. I’ll give you his name and you can phone him right now. Ask if I caused him any pain.”

So the man telephoned George Kaplan in Brooklyn.

”Mr. Kaplan,” he said, ”my name is Al Goldstein. You don’t know me, but I’m in the office of your dentist and he says he did a big job on your teeth. Is that correct?”

”Correct it is,” Kaplan agreed.

”Okay,” said Goldstein. ”Now I want you to tell me the honest truth. Did it hurt? Tell me, yes or no?”

”A yes or no I can’t give you,” said Kaplan. ”But I can give you a fr’instance. Every Sunday I go rowing in Prospect Park.”

”So?” said Goldstein.

”So,” said Kaplan, ”our dentist finished with me in December. Now it’s June and it’s Sunday, and as usual I’m in my rowboat on the Prospect Park lake. Suddenly, one of the oars slips away. When I reach over to grab it, my balls get caught in the oarlock. Would you believe it, Mr. Goldstein, it was the first time in six months that my teeth didn’t hurt!”

That’s what the theory of relativity is.

CHAPTER 9

Beyond the Shadow

19 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

NOT ONE KNOWS HOW FAR IT IS

FROM NOTHINGNESS TO GOD.

AS LONG AS YOU CLING TO YOUR SELF

YOU WILL WANDER RIGHT AND LEFT,

DAY AND NIGHT, FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS;

AND WHEN, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT,

YOU FINALLY OPEN YOUR EYES,

YOU WILL SEE YOUR SELF, THROUGH INHERENT DEFECTS,

WANDERING AROUND ITSELF LIKE THE OX IN A MILL;

BUT, IF, ONCE FREED FROM YOUR SELF,

YOU FINALLY GET DOWN TO WORK,

THIS DOOR WILL OPEN TO YOU WITHIN TWO MINUTES.

GOD WILL NOT BE YOURS,

AS LONG AS YOU CLING TO SOUL AND LIFE:

YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH THIS AND THAT.

BRUISE YOUR SELF FOR MONTHS AND YEARS ON END;

LEAVE IF FOR DEAD, AND WHEN YOU HAVE DONE WITH IT,

YOU WILL HAVE REACHED ETERNAL LIFE.

REMAIN UNMOVED BY HOPE AND FEAR.

TO NONEXISTENCE MOSQUE AND CHURCH ARE ONE;

TO A SHADOW, HEAVEN AND HELL LIKEWISE.

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE GUIDE IS LOVE,

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF ARE EQUALLY A VEIL,

CONCEALING THE DOORWAY OF THE FRIEND;

HIS VERY BEING IS A VEIL

WHICH HIDES GOD’S ESSENCE.

UNTIL YOU THROW YOUR SWORD AWAY,

YOU’LL NOT BECOME A SHIELD

UNTIL YOU LAY YOUR CROWN ASIDE,

YOU’LL NOT BE FIT TO LEAD.

THE DEATH OF SOUL

IS THE DESTRUCTION OF LIFE;

BUT DEATH OF LIFE

IS THE SOU’S SALVATION.

NEVER STAND STILL ON THE PATH:

BECOME NONEXISTENT; NONEXISTENT

EVEN TO THE NOTION OF BECOMING NONEXISTENT.

AND WHEN YOU HAVE ABANDONED BOTH

INDIVIDUALITY AND UNDERSTANDING,

THIS WORLD WILL BECOME THAT.

WHEN THE EYE IS PURE

IT SEES PURITY.

UNSELF YOURSELF...

UNTIL YOU SEE YOUR SELF AS A SPECK OF DUST

YOU CANNOT POSSIBLY REACH THAT PLACE;

SELF COULD NEVER BREATHE THAT AIR,

SO WEND YOUR WAY THERE WITHOUT SELF.

Once a great enlightened master was using a fan when a philosophic monk came up to him and said,

”The wind-nature – that is, wind-in-itself or the noumenal reality of wind – is permanently ubiquitous so that there is in the whole world no place which is not pervaded by it. If so, why are you using the fan?”

”What you know is only the theory that the wind is diffused throughout the world,” said the master.

The monk said, ”What is, then, the real meaning of the wind being diffused throughout the world?”

The master just went on fanning himself.

The monk made a reverential bow.

Religion is not anything abstract, religion is something very down-to-earth.

Religion is not a

philosophy but an experience. So those who go on thinking about God go on missing him. Thinking is not the way to him but the barrier, not the bridge but the wall. It is thinking that is keeping you separate.

Burn your thinking in intense thirst. When a man is lost in a desert and is thirsty, a moment comes when thirst is no more a thought in him, when he does not think about thirst, when he is simply thirst

– his whole being involved in it, his every cell and fiber aflame with it. He is simply fire, he is thirst.

In that intensity, religion becomes real – in that kind of passionate intensity.

So remember that the greatest problem to be faced is speculation, philosophy, theorizing. Once can go on and on theorizing; there is no end to it, it is a process ad infinitum. One thought leads to another thought, and so on, so forth. You will never come to the end of the process – there is no end. It is a vicious circle. You will be moving in a circle like an ox in the mill. Movement will be there, but there is not going to be any arrival. And it is arrival that fulfills.

Religion has nothing to do with thinking, but it has everything to do with a tremendous thirst for truth.

One day, a master took his seat in the lecture hall and said, ”Over the lump of your reddish flesh there is a True Man without any rank. He is constantly going in and coming out through the gates of your face – that is, through your sense organs. If you have not yet encountered him, catch him, catch him here and now!”

At that moment, a monk came out and asked, ”What kind of a fellow is t his True Man without any rank?”

The master suddenly came down from the platform, grabbed at the monk, and urged him, ”Speak, you speak!” The monk hesitated for an instant. The master on the spot thrust him away, saying, ”Ah, what a useless dirt-scraper this True-Man-without-any-rank of yours is!” And immediately he retired to his private quarters.

The monk hesitated for an instant, that is to say, he reflected a moment in order to give an adequate response to the violent urging of the master. This was the moment when discursive thinking became activated. Note that at that very moment the True-Man-without-any-rank turned into a useless dirt-scraper.

The difference between the truth and the untruth is not great. The distance is almost none, I say –

almost that of a kind of nothingness, as if just a small hair divides them. Just a moment’s thinking, a single thought’s coming into being, a small cloud of thought moving into your clear sky, just a little layer of dust on the mirror, and you have lost, and you have fallen from truth into untruth, from awakening into deep profound sleep.

Beware of thinking.

The moment religion becomes involved in thinking, it falls into an ugly sleep called theology. It starts dreaming of God, heaven and hell, angels and devils, and it goes on creating a thousand and one things, but they are all dream stuff. Truth has nothing to do with all those thoughts.

And you can be very clever and you can be really very argumentative about your thoughts. You may even convince others, and finally yourself, but all thinking is just absurd.

Truth IS. You are not to think about it – you have to see it, you have to be it.

The last sutras of Hakim Sanai.

NO ONE KNOWS HOW FAR IT IS

FROM NOTHINGNESS TO GOD.

No one can ever know, because it all depends on the seeker, on his passionate and intense search.

It depends on your intensity. If you are just lukewarm in your search, then God is very very far away from your nothingness. If you are total in your thirst, nothing is being held back, you have taken a jump into it, you have not left anything behind, no part of you is missing, you have jumped as a whole organic unity – your anger, your love, your hate, your greed, all together – you have staked whatsoever you have, whatsoever nature has given you, then the distance is almost nil.

It depends on your intensity. The proportion of your intensity will decide the proportion of the distance between God and your ungodly sleep.

NO ONE KNOWS HOW FAR IT IS

FROM NOTHINGNESS TO GOD.

AS LONG AS YOU CLING TO YOUR SELF

YOU WILL WANDER RIGHT AND LEFT,

DAY AND NIGHT, FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS;

AND WHEN, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT,

YOU FINALLY OPEN YOUR EYES,

YOU WILL SEE YOUR SELF, THROUGH INHERENT DEFECTS,

WANDERING AROUND ITSELF LIKE THE OX IN A MILL;

BUT, IF, ONCE FREED FROM YOUR SELF,

YOU FINALLY GET DOWN TO THE WORK,

THIS DOOR WILL OPEN TO YOU WITHIN TWO MINUTES.

Have you watched it, that whenever you are intense in anything the self disappears? You are in love with someone: in the very intensity of your love, the self disappears. You are no more, there is only love. Or you are in anger: in the intensity and totality of anger, the self disappears. You are no more there, only the anger is.

You can watch it in your own life. Whenever something is there, possessing you, all in all, the self is not found. That is a great clue: the self is there only when you are half-hearted in something. That which you keep back becomes the self.

If you are totally involved in painting, in doing some work, singing a song or dancing or playing guitar, if you are totally in it, you will immediately see you are not there. Something of the beyond has taken possession of you. The self is not there, unself is.

And to be in the state of unself is to be in God. To be in the state of self is to be far away from God – the self is the distance. And this mechanism has to be understood. Once this mechanism is understood well, there is no problem: then God is so obvious.

And you have come to this point many times, unawares of course. Seeing a beautiful sunset, you were so lost in the beauty of it that for a moment there was no idea of the self. You were not there.

There was a totally different quality: you were not there. Something was there, but you cannot call it

‘I’, you cannot call it any frozen state of the ego. You were fluid, flowing.

This is what Krishnamurti calls the moment when the observer becomes the observed.

The sunset was there and the sunset was too much. It possessed you. The observer disappeared into the observed. The sunset was all; you were not separate, you were not standing aloof and watching, you were not a spectator. You were in it, you were part of it, you started feeling a kind of melting, merging.

Hence the liberating experience of beauty, hence the liberating experience of love, hence the liberating experience of music, great music. These moments you have known – they come naturally, and they go. But you have never been able to reduce them to a scientific approach. You have not meditated over them, you have not looked into the keys that are hidden in them.

The key is that whenever you are not, God is.

This can be done consciously. then there is no need to wait for a sunset, because that will be, after all, a kind of dependence. Then there is no need to wait for love – again, that will be a kind of dependence; it may liberate for a moment, but then it will become a bondage.

If you fall in love with a woman or a man, it is liberating. That’s why people fall in love. But sooner or later they find that the liberating experience has disappeared, evaporated, and instead of that liberating experience they suddenly wake up in bondage – chained, imprisoned.

What happened to the love that was so liberating? How did it become an imprisonment? You became dependent on it, you became addicted to it; it was so beautiful, it became a drug to you.

And once anything becomes a drug, once you are addicted to anything, whatsoever it is, you are in bondage. Then it does not liberate, it cannot liberate. It becomes ugly; everything goes sour, bitter, poisonous.

No, one cannot be liberated by these small experiences of beauty, love, music. True, they give you glimpses, but those glimpses cannot become your state of being. You have to learn the secret of unselfing yourself.

Each experience that has given you some kind of freedom was basically an experience of unselfing.

So now, rather than depending on something, start unselfing yourself. Sitting silently, disappear: don’t be. Working, disappear: don’t be. Whenever you can find time, disappear. And then, slowly slowly, the knack arises. Then twenty-four hours you can go on working, living your ordinary life, and yet you are not there. There remains a kind of pure, silent space within you.

That silent space is God.

And this can happen instantly, because not for a single moment is God far away from you. You may be far away, but God is never far away from you. You may have fallen into a deep slumber, but any moment you can wake up. The capacity to wake up remains always yours.

... AND WHEN, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT...

Of going right and left, doing this and that – yoga methods, prayer, meditations; there are a thousand and one methods. Doing this, doing that, one day suddenly you wake up. You simply open your eyes and great laughter arises in you at the whole ridiculousness of your effort – because you were trying to get that which you have already got. Hence the absurdity.

It is said that Hotei, when he became enlightened, started laughing. He lived for years but the laughter continued. Whenever people would say to him, ”Say something to us. What is your message?” he would start laughing, a belly laugh, he would start rolling on the floor.

Why was Hotei doing such absurd things? From his standpoint, the very idea of searching for God is ridiculous, because God is already the case. You need not go anywhere, you have just to open your eyes. You have never missed him.

He is your life. He is the beat of your heart, you breathe him in and out, he circulates in your blood.

He is your consciousness, and he is your sleep too. Just open your eyes.

... AND WHEN, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT,

YOU FINALLY OPEN YOUR EYES,

YOU WILL SEE YOUR SELF, THROUGH INHERENT DEFECTS,

WANDERING AROUND ITSELF LIKE THE OX IN A MILL...

What is the inherent defect of the self? The inherent defect is that the self is a false entity – and the false cannot meet the true.Darkness cannot meet light; if you bring light in, darkness disappears. If you want darkness to be in, you will have to take light out; they never meet.

There is an inherent defect in darkness. What is that inherent defect? It is nonexistential; it is a shadow. The shadow follows you, and it follows so constantly, so consistently, that you can start thinking of it as if it is something real. Wherever you go, it is with you; it never leaves you. But still, it does not exist.

Ohrenstein, his hands in his pockets, was walking through a fashionable park, deep in thought, when a police sergeant came running up to him.

”You’ll have to put that dog on a leash,” the police sergeant shouted, pointing to a huge yellow dog who was frolicking at Ohrenstein’s feet.

Ohrenstein, his hands in his pockets, walked away without so much as looking at the policeman.

The police sergeant came after him. ”What’s the matter with you?” the policeman said. ”There are signs everywhere that no dogs are allowed in this park unless they’re on a leash!”

Ohrenstein, his hands in his pockets, walked away without saying a word. ”Well, we can’t have that,”

said the police sergeant, bewildered. ”I’m going to have to give you a fine.”

”A fine?” asked Ohrenstein. ”Whatever for? That’s not my dog!”

”That’s not your dog?” said the police sergeant. ”Then why the hell is he running after you?”

”And you?” asked Ohrenstein, taking his hands out of his pockets. ”Aren’t you also running after me? Well? And you’re not my dog either!”

The shadow that is constantly running after you may give you the feeling that it is something real, that it belongs to you. You may get identified with it.

The ego is just a shadow, the shadow of the self. It is not the self, it is not your authentic being, it is just a shadow. To know it as a shadow is to be free of it; nothing more is needed. You are not to fight with it, you are not to go and do something to get rid of it – because if you try to get rid of it, that will simply prove that you still think it is real.

It happens, many times people come to me and they ask, ”How to get rid of the ego?” The very question is meaningless. And there are people, so-called religious saints, who will give you methods, practices, to get rid of the ego. In the first place, the question is absurd. And the answers that are provided are even more stupid.

You are not to get rid of the ego, because you cannot get rid of something which is not. In the very effort to get rid of it, you have accepted its reality – and that is where the basic defect is. Know that the ego is just a shadow, and you are free of it. Let it follow you, it doesn’t matter. It is NOT: it can’t affect you, it can’t do a thing to you.

Even when one becomes enlightened, one has to use the word ‘I’. Krishna uses it, Christ uses it, Buddha uses it; they still use the word ‘I’. You also use the word ‘I’ but the meaning that you give to it is not given by Buddhas. Buddhas use it only as a linguistic device, you use it as if it is something real. Buddhas use it only as a utility, as something arbitrary but linguistically meaningful. But there is no ego corresponding to the ‘I’, there is no reality that conforms to it.

When you use the ‘I’ you think there is somebody inside you who conforms to the idea of ‘I’. That’s the only difference. You think the shadow is real, and then you want to get rid of it, or you want to make it more and more strong, bigger and bigger – both are the same. There are people who would like to make their egos very big and great, and there are people who would like their egos to disappear completely. And both are in the same boat.

The real man of understanding, of awareness, simply laughs at the whole thing.

Never as a wrong question, otherwise there are people who will supply you with wrong answers.

And as far as the ego is concerned, all questions are wrong.

Mr. and Mrs. Gotbaum celebrated thirty years of marriage by going to a fancy restaurant. Awed by the elegant ambience, they nevertheless enjoyed selecting and tasting the strange-sounding dishes.

At the end of the meal, however, the waiter brought over two finger bowls and left them at the table.

Mrs. Gotbaum looked at Mr. Gotbaum, and Mr. Gotbaum looked back at Mrs. Gotbaum. Neither of them knew what to do.

”Ask the waiter,” suggested Mr. Gotbaum.

”Are you kidding?” exclaimed her husband. ”Show our ignorance? How embarrassing!”

”Yes,” she said. ”But it would be more embarrassing not to use them at all.”

”True,” said the man. So he called over the waiter and said, ”Pardon me, but could you tell me the purpose of these dishes of... of liquid?”

The waiter was polite. ”Sir, those are finger bowls. You dip your fingers into the perfumed waters and then dry them on your napkin.”

Mr. Gotbaum waited until the waiter left. Then he turned to his wife, and said, ”See, Molly? You ask a foolish question, and you get a foolish answer!”

Remember, there are a few things about which all questions are foolish and all answers are foolish.

The ego is one of those things. Don’t ask a question about the ego – rather, watch it. Look into its workings, observe its subtle ways, without condemnation, without evaluating, just with simple observation, to know what it is, just to be acquainted with it, whatsoever it is. Don’t say it is good, don’t say it is bad, don’t try to enlarge it, and don’t try to make it disappear. Just watch. It is something that is always with you, and follows you: what is it?

And don’t ask anybody else, there is no need. You have it: you can watch it.

And in that very watching, non-judgmental watching, you will be surprised: one day you will see that the ego does not really exist. And the moment you have seen that it doesn’t exist, your eyes open to that which is beyond the ego, to that which is beyond the shadow. The infinite light for the first time penetrates you.

Don’t become obsessed with the ego. The egoist is obsessed with it, and the so-called humble person is also obsessed with it. In fact the humble person is trying to create a more sophisticated ego, more subtle, more decorated, more precious – that’s all. He carries the idea that ”I am humble; nobody is more humble than me.”

When Thomas Mann was visiting America for the first time, one of Hollywood’s literati abased himself before the novelist, emphasizing that he was nothing, a mere hack, his work not to be mentioned in the same breath with that of the master. Mann listened with infinite patience and courtesy, but when the party was over, he turned to his host, an old friend, and said, ”That man has no right to make himself so small. He is not that big.”

Humbleness also makes people big. Humbleness is the most subtle way of the ego, the subtlest –

very refined, cultured, sophisticated. The egoist is a little gross, the humble person is not gross, but the game is the same. See the game, watch the game. And don’t go to watch with already accepted ideas. This is the problem, this is why people cannot go beyond the ego: they have already decided what it is.

Western psychologists say it is a very good thing; it has to be strengthened, the ego has to be made stronger. You have to be aggressive, only then can you act and function in the world. And you need a strong ego to survive, because life is a constant conflict; if you have a weak ego, anybody will crush you.

So the whole Western culture depends on strengthening the ego, making it more and more strong, and more and more crystallized. And the East has taken the polar opposite: become humble, just think of yourself as if you are nothing. But that ”as if” is just a make-belive: debase, abase yourself, be humble, let the ego disappear completely.

These two standpoints seem to be very very opposite, diametrically opposite. But deep down they are not really opposite but complementary. The Eastern man has been creating a very subtle kind of ego – a religious kind, but it is the same game. The West is a little gross, and the reason is that the West is a new phenomenon.

The real Western mind is just the by-product of three hundred years of scientific upbringing. The East has lived for at least ten thousand years; it has learned better ways of egoing. It has become very very clever and cunning.

The West is a little childish, the East is old and has all the cunningness of an old man. But whether you strengthen the ego or you weaken the ego, one thing is absolutely certain, that you both have accepted its existence, its reality.

And that is where the defect lies: it is unreal. You need not strengthen it, you need not weaken it. All that is needed is a penetrating insight into its functioning, and that very insight dissolves it.

It remains then, but just like a shadow – a linguistic device, arbitrary, with no existential truth in it.

Then you can use it but you are not used by it.

... AND WHEN, AFTER ALL THAT EFFORT,

YOU FINALLY OPEN YOUR EYES,

YOU WILL SEE YOUR SELF, THROUGH INHERENT DEFECTS,

WANDERING AROUND ITSELF LIKE THE OX IN A MILL;

BUT, IF, ONCE FREED FROM YOUR SELF,

YOU FINALLY GET DOWN TO WORK,

THIS DOOR WILL OPEN TO YOU WITHIN TWO MINUTES.

Yes, it opens within two minutes. Why two minutes? Why not one minute? it is a metaphor, a Sufi metaphor: one minute for you, one minute for God. One minute for you to open up, and one minute for him to enter in you. In fact those two minutes are not two, but two sides of the same coin. Here you disappear, there he immediately appears.

GOD WILL NOT BE YOURS,

AS LONG AS YOU CLING TO SOUL AND LIFE:

YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH THIS AND THAT.

BRUISE YOUR SELF FOR MONTHS AND YEARS ON END;

LEAVE IT FOR DEAD, AND WHEN YOU HAVE DONE WITH IT,

YOU WILL HAVE REACHED ETERNAL LIFE.

God will not be yours, as long as you cling to the soul and life. As long as you cling to the idea of separation, that ”I am separate from existence,” God will not be yours, because God is in the union with existence: UNIO MYSTICA. God is in fact the union. God is not a person but the union.

When the river meets the ocean, that meeting-point is God. When two lovers dissolve into each other, that dissolution is God. When the painter is lost in his painting, that moment is God. God is a space – a space where dualities dissolve, disappear, and oneness arises.

A famous Taoist story says a great emperor asked the greatest painter of his land to paint the wall of his bedroom with Himalayan mountain peaks. ”Paint the Himalayas” – he was a lover of the Himalayas. The painter worked for two or three years, and when the painting was completed he asked the king to come and see.

The curtain that was covering the wall was removed. The emperor was simply transported to another world. He had been to the Himalayas many times, he was a lover of the mountains, but the painting even surpassed the real. He looked and looked and looked. He was so mystified that he could not utter a single word for many minutes.

Then he suddenly said, ”But I have been to these parts. I have never seen this path that goes round and round the mountains. Where did you get the idea of this path?”

And the story says the painter said, ”I don’t know, really. Let me go and see.” And he went onto the path and disappeared behind the mountain – in the painting! – and never came back again.

A strange story, unbelievable. How can you go into the painting and never come back again? But it is of tremendous significance. It is not a historical event but a mythological, poetic event, which says much.

It says that the painter can disappear into his painting: only then is he a painter. The poet can disappear in his poetry: only then is he a poet. If he cannot disappear in his poetry then his poetry is just rubbish. If he cannot disappear in his painting, then he may know all the techniques of painting but he is not a great artist. He may be a technician, he may know about colors and canvasses and he may know how to paint, but he has no real genius in him. His painting is something separate from him; he has not yet found the union with his painting.

And whenever the union is found, God is found.

That’s why I say there are as many doors to God as there are people. All that is needed is, whatsoever you are doing, get lost in it; be so totally one with it that nothing is left behind. In that very moment, God is. God is UNIO MYSTICA: the mystic union.

GOD WILL NOT BE YOURS,

AS LONG AS YOU CLING TO SOUL AND LIFE...

If you are clinging to your separate existence, if you are clinging to your separate life, God will not be yours – because God is the union.

... YOU CANNOT HAVE BOTH THIS AND THAT.

You cannot have both separation and union; that is impossible. That is not possible because of the very nature of things. Either you can be united or you can remain separate.

BRUISE YOUR SELF FOR MONTHS AND YEARS ON END;

LEAVE IT FOR DEAD, AND WHEN YOU HAVE DONE WITH IT,

YOU WILL HAVE REACHED ETERNAL LIFE.

And the paradox is, when you are no longer interested in your separate life, in your separate being, you will have infinite being and you will have eternal life. You may disappear as a small flame of a candle, but you will become the sun of all the suns. You may disappear as a drop, but you will become the ocean.

REMAIN UNMOVED BY HOPE AND FEAR.

TO NONEXISTENCE MOSQUE AND CHURCH ARE ONE;

TO A SHADOW, HEAVEN AND HELL LIKEWISE.

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE GUIDE IS LOVE.

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF ARE EQUALLY A VEIL,

CONCEALING THE DOORWAY OF THE FRIEND;

HIS VERY BEING IS A VEIL

WHICH HIDES GOD’S ESSENCE.

Remain unmoved by hope and fear. How to enter into that mystic union? What keeps you separate?

What divides you? Everybody wants to get rid of fear, but nobody wants to get rid of hope – and fear is part of hope, the other side of hope. So if you want to save hope, fear comes from the back door.

Everybody wants to drop all pain, but nobody wants to drop pleasure – and pain is part of pleasure.

You want to be happy, you don’t want to be unhappy, but unhappiness is part of happiness.

See this duality. Love and hate are together, birth and death are together. Go and watch it in your life: everything you will find is part of its opposite. And the problem, the dilemma, is that we want to drop half and we want to keep the other half. This is not possible: you cannot drop one side of a coin and keep the other side. You either have to keep both or you have to drop both; you cannot choose one. Either choose the whole coin or drop the whole coin.

You want love but you don’t want hate – this is not possible.

Now this ancient truth has become part of modern psychotherapies too. Modern psychology has also agreed with the truth that love and hate are not two things. In fact to use two words separately with ‘and’ dividing them is not right; it may be grammatically right, but existentially it is not right.

So those who are more alert to the phenomenon have started using a single word: ‘lovehate’.

‘Love and hate’ is wrong; then a few psychologists started using ‘love-hate’ with a hyphen; now the more insightful have even dropped the hyphen, because not even a hyphen exists between the two.

Lovehate is simply one word. Hopefear is one word, painpleasure is one word, birthdeath is one word.

Once you remember that these dualities are not dualities, then something of tremendous importance has been understood. Now if you want to, you can keep both – but who wants to keep hate, and who wants to keep death, and who wants to keep misery? Then drop both.

And in that disappearance, the barrier between you and reality disappears – because when all dualities are dropped, you start falling into oneness with existence.

God is one, you are dual – that is the problem. When you drop dualities, you also become one.

REMAIN UNMOVED BY HOPE AND FEAR.

TO NONEXISTENCE MOSQUE AND CHURCH ARE ONE...

And watch – we have created dualities everywhere: the mosque and the church, the Koran and the Bible, the Hindu and the Christian. We have crated so many dualities. There are natural dualities like lovehate, and there are unnatural dualities like the Catholic and the communist, the Kremlin and the Kaaba. We have crated many – there are natural dualities and there are man-made dualities; we are surrounded by dualities. And existence is non-dual.

The moment you drop choosing between these duals, the moment you become a non-chooser, the moment you remain in a choiceless awareness, suddenly a great illumination happens. Then it doesn’t matter whether you live or die, because all is one. It does not matter what happens to you, because your deepest core always remains beyond all happenings. You are neither a sinner nor a saint then.

Taoists, Sufis, Zen people, they never call their masters saints – never; they call them sages. And they make a great distinction between the saint and the sage. The saint is against the sinner, the saint is part of the dual world. The sage is one who has dropped all duality; he is not against the sinner, he knows nothing of the sinner and the saint, he is neither.

Hence it is very difficult to understand a sage. It is very simple to understand a saint; the saint is within your understanding, because he lives in the same world of duality that you live in. You can understand the sinner and the saint both. But to understand the sage, you will have to go beyond your duality.

The sinner is easy to understand, the saint is easy to understand. One has chosen the dark side of life, and another has chosen the light side of life, but both are choosers. And the moment you choose, you are in bondage.

Freedom is choicelessness. The sage does not choose: he lives moment to moment, without any choice. He allows life to flow through him. He allows God to do whatsoever is his will; he has no will of his own.

The saint has his own will, sometimes far stronger than the sinner’s. That’s why it is said of sinners that they are weak people, that they have many weaknesses, that they are victims of human weaknesses. And the saint is a strong person, a man of willpower. If this is so, then the sinner is closer to God than the saint, because less willpower means less ego.

And this is my experience too. I have watched both, observed both saints and sinners. Sinners are more innocent than the saints. Saints are very cunning, very clever, cultivated hypocrites. The sinner is simple, innocent, animal-like.

The sage is one who has dropped both being a sinner and a saint, who simply lives spontaneously, naturally. He has no idea of how to live his life. He is neither worried about sins, nor is he practising virtues. He is innocent like a child.

My sannyasins have to keep it always in their consciousness that I am not creating saints here, not at all. The world is burdened too much but the saints, they have been making too much fuss in the world. They have destroyed man’s naturalness, they have made man phoney.

I am for sages, not for saints. And sage-consciousness is where dualities have been dropped, choice has been dropped. One has surrendered to God – one flows with the river, one no longer has any private goals. One simply feels part of the whole. ”Wherever the whole is going, I am also going. If it si not going anywhere, I am not going anywhere. I am utterly in tune with the whole.” That is the state of a sage.

REMAIN UNMOVED BY HOPE AND FEAR.

And you will become a sage.

TO NONEXISTENCE MOSQUE AND CHURCH ARE ONE...

The sage is nonexistential; he does not exist as a separate entity. Hence the sage makes no distinction between the mosque and the temple, the church and the GURUDWARA. It is all the same for him; all houses are God’s houses, even ordinary houses are temples.

TO NONEXISTENCE MOSQUE AND CHURCH ARE ONE;

TO A SHADOW, HEAVEN AND HELL LIKEWISE.

Only egos think of hell and heaven. Those who have dropped their egos, or have understood that there are no egos but just shadows, for them there is no hell, no heaven. Again, remember, hell and heaven are not two words; we should use one word, heavenhell.

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE GUIDE IS LOVE...

And in this state of choicelessness, love becomes your guide. In choicelessness, love starts overflowing.

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE GUIDE IS LOVE,

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF ARE EQUALLY A VEIL...

The sage does not believe, does not disbelieve. He simply lives a very ordinary life. Utterly ordinary he is: hungry, he eats; sleepy, he sleeps. He has nothing imposed upon himself, he has no ideals.

He does not believe, he does not disbelieve; he is silent about that.

And what are your beliefs? Just repressed doubts. Look into each of your beliefs, and deep down at the bottom you will find just the opposite of it: a great doubt. The greater the doubt, the greater the energy you have to pour into your belief.

When somebody says, ”I strongly believe...” that simply shows he strongly doubts. Fanatics are the greatest doubters. They HAVE to become fanatics, otherwise they will not be able to repress their doubts. And this creates hypocrisy.

I have heard about a Christian Scientist, a faith healer.

There was a faith healer of Deal

Who said, ”Although pain isn’t real,

If I sit on a pin

And it punctures my skin

I dislike what I fancy I feel.”

This is going to be so. You can impose beliefs upon yourself, but you cannot dispose of reality so easily. You will become a hypocrite.

FOR SOMEONE WHOSE GUIDE IS LOVE,

BELIEF AND DISBELIEF ARE EQUALLY A VEIL...

Because love opens the doors of the heart, and belief and disbelief are only intellectual. Somebody believes God is: that is preventing him from knowing God, because without knowing God he already believes God is. His belief is insincere, his belief is untrue, because he has not known yet. See the insincerity of so-called believers.

And the man who says, ”I don’t believe in God” is also insincere, because if you have not known yet, how can you disbelieve?

The sincere person will be an agnostic. He will not choose; he will not say yes, he will not say no.

He will remain untethered, free. He will say, ”I will search. I will go into myself as deeply as I can, as totally as I can. I will melt myself into existence, I will drop this separation and see what happens, whether union is possible or not. If it happens, I will know; if it doesn’t happen, I will know.”

But remember, when you don’t know, belief is irrelevant. When you know, then too, belief is irrelevant. When one knows, one knows; there is no question of believing.

... BELIEF AND DISBELIEF ARE EQUALLY A VEIL,

CONCEALING THE DOORWAY OF THE FRIEND...

Sanai’s statement is of tremendous significance. Both belief and disbelief, both the atheist and the theist, go astray: they go on moving away from God.

God’s door is open only to a heart who does not believe, who does not disbelieve, who is simply open. A believing or disbelieving mind is a closed mind; he has already gathered a prejudice. And once you are prejudiced you are polluted, poisoned by others. Beware of it.

Your parents have been poisoning you, your politicians, your priests, your teachers, all have been poisoning you. They are giving their beliefs to you. Everybody likes to give his belief to other people

– why? Because once somebody has started believing the way you believe, he becomes a slave to you. You feel good: your dominion has become bigger, your domination has expanded, one more person has become part of your domination.

Parents jump upon their children when they are very young. Priests are continuously anxious to get hold of children as young as possible, so that they can force their beliefs into the purity of the child’s consciousness. And the child is so helpless, he cannot even say no; he does not know how to say no. He cannot resist, he cannot fight against them. This is very undemocratic; this whole religious nonsense that goes on and on is very undemocratic.

If democracy is really to happen in the world, priests and parents should be prevented from giving their beliefs to their children. Children should be left alone; only after they have become mature should they start enquiring on their own.

Yes, give them a thirst for truth, but don’t give them a belief. Give them a passionate desire to enquire, but don’t give them a concept. Give them a kind of meditativeness: tell them how to be silent, tell them how to sit without doing anything, how to remain unoccupied. Tell them all these things, because these are not beliefs; but don’t tell them what to believe in and what not to believe in. Don’t make them Christians and Hindus and Mohammedans. Make them meditative, that’s all.

Help them to become more intelligent, sharpen their intelligence, so that when they stand on their own, when they are mature enough, they will be able to find their way. They will be able to find the way to God.

And it will be very easy. Millions of people can reach God, it is our birthright. But we are not reaching him, because before we reach God we have already been burdened with so many beliefs. And all those beliefs are insincere – they have destroyed our enquiry, they have destroyed our openness, we have become closed.

The doorway of the friend is closed because of our beliefs and disbeliefs.

... HIS VERY BEING IS A VEIL

WHICH HIDES GOD’S ESSENCE.

The very idea that ”I am” hides God’s essence.

And beliefs and disbeliefs are of immense

importance for the ego, they are props for the ego. Just think: if you are neither a Hindu nor a Mohammedan nor a Christian, a part, a great chunk, of your ego has already disappeared. If you don’t believe in the Bible and you don’t believe in the Koran and you don’t believe in DAS KAPITAL, another chunk has disappeared. These are nourishments for the ego.

Just think for a moment: if you don’t have any belief or any disbelief, a kind of space arises in you, pure. In the beginning it may be frightening, because you have not known it for so long, you have completely forgotten that once it was your space.

When you were born, you were born TABULA RASA – clean, pure, just a space. You were born an empty sky. And then clouds gathered, clouds and clouds, and all the purity and all the openness and all the space was lost.

Sannyas means to create that space again.

Just the other day, a woman wrote a letter to me. She is a Catholic, and because she missed church last Sunday, because she could not go to church, she has been feeling very guilty, very frightened.

Now she wants to become a sannyasins, and is afraid what will happen to her Catholic upbringing and the church and the priests.

I can understand her fear, it is natural. But nobody is born as a Catholic or as a Protestant; we have been taught these things.

And remember, God cannot be taught. Religion cannot be taught; it has to be caught, it cannot be taught. To be a Catholic is just to be foolish. If you can find Christ somewhere, be with him by all means; be totally with him, don’t miss the opportunity – because religion can be caught from him.

But no Catholic priest can teach it to you, no church can give it to you.

You have to be in communion with a living master. If you can find Christ, be with him. If you cannot find Christ, be with Buddha; if you cannot find Buddha, be with Mohammed – but find somebody alive. And you will be surprised: whether you are with Buddha or Christ of Mohammed or Sanai, it doesn’t matter. It is the same religion that you will catch, it is the same God. If you are here, you can catch it – rather than thinking of going to a church where a priest is simply telling you things which he has been told by others, where he is only functioning as a mechanism. He has no insight of his own; he is a believer, he will give you his belief. But belief is not religion. You will have to catch religion: it can be imbibed.

Fortunate were those few people who lived with Jesus, but all those who go to the churches are just unfortunate. Fortunate were those few people who lived with Buddha, but those who call themselves Buddhists because they have been taught to be Buddhists are just unfortunate – because of their so-called belief, they cannot search for a living Buddha again.

I would like to tell this woman: Being a sannyasin will bring you closer to Christ than anything else can. The form may differ, but the essence is the same. My language is different from Jesus’, my form is different from Jesus’ my ways of working are different from Jesus’. But the essence is the same, the flowering is the same.

You are with Jesus when you are here. By becoming a sannyasin, you have really entered into the world of Christ-consciousness. It is not a church; churches arise only when masters are gone, a church is a dead religion.

And catch God when he is alive somewhere, living in the body just like you. Those moments are few; very few fortunate people are capable of doing that, because their beliefs hinder them. Somebody is a Catholic, he cannot come here; somebody is a Protestant, he cannot come here; somebody is a Hindu, he cannot come here – their beliefs prevent them. Somebody is a communist, he cannot come here.

And that was the case when Jesus was there: because somebody was a Jew, he could not go to him. That was the case when Mohammed was there: somebody was a Christian, and somebody was a Jew, so they could not go to him. That’s how people go on missing.

Religion has to be imbibed from a living source.

UNTIL YOU THROW YOUR SWORD AWAY,

YOU’LL NO BECOME A SHIELD;

UNTIL YOU LAY YOUR CROWN ASIDE,

YOU’LL NOT BE FIT TO LEAD.

A very potential, pregnant statement.

UNTIL YOU THROW YOUR SWORD AWAY...

The sword represents your search for security, your defensiveness. Everybody is searching for security, to be secure, to be safe. And it is because of his stupid search for security and safety that you are missing God and you are missing aliveness, because security is possible only if you are almost dead. The more dead you are, the more secure you are.

If you want to live, there is danger: life means danger. There is only one way to live. Friedrich Nietzsche said, ”Live dangerously.” That is the only way to live: you have to live in insecurity.

And the beauty of insecurity is that once you have become courageous enough to live in insecurity, all insecurity disappears from life. Alan Watts called it ”the security of insecurity.”

There is something like the insecurity of security. Whatsoever you think is secure is not; deep down, there is an undercurrent of insecurity. You have money in the bank, but the bank can go bankrupt

– what kind of security is there? You have a strong body, but even the strongest body can become ill: you can have a heart attack, sooner or later death is going to overtake you. You have a beautiful body, it can become ugly any moment – a car accident or anything. You have a beautiful woman who loves you, but tomorrow she may fall in love with somebody else; if she could fall in love with you, why can she not fall in love with somebody else?

You are in love with somebody today – who knows about tomorrow? All is insecure. You only pretend that things are secure. Your security is just a camouflage: behind it all is insecurity. Your friends can become enemies, your brothers can betray you; nothing is secure.

So first see that all our security is superficial, a facade; behind it is insecurity. And vice versa – if you start living in insecurity you will be surprised: insecurity will be only on the surface, and deep down you will be secure.

How does it happen? When you drop the fear of insecurity, insecurity disappears; it exists in the fear of it. Rather than being afraid of it, you start enjoying its thrill – because insecurity is adventurous, it brings new surprises to you, it is a constant venture into the unknown. It has a great thrill: it takes you from the known to the unknown every moment, there are always surprises, and each moment of your life becomes unpredictable.

Sanai says:

UNTIL YOU THROW YOUR SWORD AWAY...

The sword represents security.

... YOU’LL NOT BECOME A SHIELD...

If you carry the sword in your hand, afraid, protecting yourself, you will remain unprotected, you will not become a shield. Throw away the sword! and immediately you become the shield. Throw away the fear of insecurity, throw away the desire to be secure, and you are secure.

All security is in God, with God, with the whole. If you exist separately as a self, you are insecure. If you forget about yourself, if you merge into the whole, you are secure. In that union is security: you become a shield.

... UNTIL YOU LAY YOUR CROWN ASIDE,

YOU’LL NOT BE FIT TO LEAD.

And this is the basic evil, to search for security. The selling or trading of aliveness for survival is really evil. The mind state is interested only in survival. The ego is continuously hankering to survive, the mind wants to remain secure in every possible way, and because of its obsession with security it cripples you, paralyzes you. And to trade aliveness for survival is the fundamental evil.

Drop this fear of insecurity. Love insecurity, because insecurity is life. Don’t live out of fear, because one who lives out of fear does not really live, he only vegetates. Those who live out of fear live constantly focussed on death. And those who are focussed on death go on missing life, because how can you enjoy life if you are constantly thinking of death?

If a man is afraid of adventures, then he will remain closed. He will live almost in a grave. Then he will find that fear is everywhere: all kinds of fears will torment him, he will become paranoid. He will not be able to live at all; he will at the most survive. He only survives, he does not live.

You have to drop this fear – because this fear perpetuates itself; it becomes bigger and bigger and it drowns you in its mud.

THE DEATH OF SOUL

IS THE DESTRUCTION OF LIFE;

BUT DEATH OF LIFE

IS THE SOUL’S SALVATION.

Don’t be afraid to die as an ego – because the moment you die as an ego, you are reborn. Let the ego be crucified, and you will have resurrection. The death of the self is the salvation of the soul.

That’s what Jesus means when he says, ”Those who save themselves, lose. And those who are ready to lose themselves, save.”

NEVER STAND STILL ON THE PATH:

BECOME NONEXISTENT; NONEXISTENT EVEN

TO THE NOTION OF BECOMING NONEXISTENT.

Remember, the ego has not to hide behind you humbleness. Become so nonexistent that even the idea that ”I am nonexistent” disappears, because that is again an ego game.

A disciple reached his master and said, ”Master, now I have understood you. It took years of effort and meditations, but now it has happened: I have attained to nothingness. I have come to thank you.”

The master threw him out of the room and said, ”Go out, and first throw away this nothingness too.

Don’t bring nothingness here!”

Because if you have become nothing, there is nobody to claim that ”I have become nothing.” If you still have the claim, you are there – the ego has learned a new trick.

AND WHEN YOU HAVE ABANDONED BOTH

INDIVIDUALITY AND UNDERSTANDING,

THIS WORLD WILL BECOME THAT.

When you have disappeared as an individual, when you no longer think in terms of separation, then who is there to understand or not understand? You become innocent.

And in that very innocence, this world disappears and that world appears. There are not two worlds, there is only one world. Seen through the idea of separation, it is SANSAR: it is THIS

world – mundane, futile, fruitless. Seen with the vision of unity, non-separation, the same world is transformed: it is THAT world – nirvana, enlightenment, moksha, God.

WHEN THE EYE IS PURE

IT SEES PURITY.

And the ego is the impurity. Drop all beliefs, disbeliefs, drop this idea of separation.

Remember, a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. A focus upon object A involves a neglect of object B. ”Purity of the eye” means you have no attitudes, no prejudices. A way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. So if you are a Hindu you have a way of seeing, if you are a Jain you have another way of seeing. But a way of seeing is also a way of not seeing. When you become focussed on object A you necessarily neglect object B.

And the truth is indivisible. So drop all ways of seeing, all attitudes, beliefs, disbeliefs, notions, concepts, philosophies. Just see. Be a mirror, so that whatsoever is, is reflected in you.

That is God, that is truth. It is not a question of your choice. It reflects only when you are in a choiceless state of awareness.

UNSELF YOURSELF...

This is the secret of Sufism, the whole philosophy condensed into two words.

UNSELF YOURSELF...

UNTIL YOU SEE YOURSELF AS A SPECK OF DUST

YOU CANNOT POSSIBLE REACH THAT PLACE;

SELF COULD NEVER BREATHE THAT AIR,

SO WEND YOUR WAY THERE WITHOUT SELF.

You cannot enter into God as a self. You can enter into God only as a no-self – what Buddha calla ANATTA, no-self.

If you really want God, you have to disappear. This is the problem: people want God, but they don’t want to disappear. They want to possess God as they possess other properties. Hence they can go on searching for thousands of lives but they will not find God, because they will not fulfill the basic requirement.

This is the basic requirement:

UNSELF YOURSELF...

And immediately God starts showering on you, INSTANTLY. The whole world becomes luminous; immediately all is celebration. Remember this key of Hakim Sanai. This is a master key: this can open the doors of all the mysteries.

UNSELF YOURSELF.

CHAPTER 10

We Shall Meet Again

20 December 1978 am in Buddha Hall

The first question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 1

JESUS TAUGHT HIS FOLLOWERS TO LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF. COULD YOU GIVE

US YOUR VIEWS ON CARING, COMPASSION AND SERVICE TO THE COMMUNITY?

Ann, Jesus’ statement is tremendously significant but has been totally missed by his followers. Let me repeat it: Jesus says, ”Love thy neighbor as THYSELF.” The fundamental question is whether you love yourself or not. You can love the neighbor only if you love yourself.

Christianity has been teaching you to love the neighbor, and the fundamental has been completely forgotten – not only forgotten, but just the opposite has been done. People are taught to condemn themselves: how can they love themselves? They are taught that they are sinners: how can you love yourself if you feel you are a sinner?

Christianity creates guilt in people, tremendous guilt. And if you are guilty you cannot love yourself; you will hate yourself, you would like to destroy yourself. That’s what the so-called Christian saints have been doing down the ages – destroying themselves. Out of guilt, only destruction can arise; out of guilt, only suicide. And they go on teaching, ”Love thy neighbor as thyself.” You have never loved yourself: it is impossible to love thy neighbor.

Hence I don’t say love thy neighbor as thyself. My teaching is simple: Love thyself. And my experience is this, that if you become capable of loving yourself, love for the neighbor will come of its own accord; it does not have to be brought, it does not have to be practised. All practised love creates hypocrisy.

So I completely drop the second part of the statement. Forget about the neighbor, simply love thyself. And you will be surprised: they day you bloom, you flower, the fragrance is BOUND to reach the neighbor. Where else will it go? When you are full of love for yourself, love starts overflowing. It reaches the neighbor, it reaches the farthest star.

And that happens of its own accord. You need not think about it, you need not create it, it is none of your concern. Just love yourself, be friendly to yourself, and you will be surprised: the man who loves himself cannot hate anybody.

It is reported of a great woman mystic, Rabiya al-Adabiya, that when she was reading the Koran she came across a statement that said, ”Hate Satan.” She immediately crossed it out.

Another Sufi mystic, Hassan, was present, he saw it being done. He could not believe his eyes: is Rabiya correcting the Koran? Dropping a statement from the Koran? This is sacrilegious! He said,

”What are you doing, Rabiya? Have you really gone mad? This cannot be done; the Koran cannot be corrected.”

Rabiya said, ”But what can I do? Love has happened to me: now, even if Satan stands before me, I can do nothing but love. No hate is left in me, there is no darkness in any corner of my being. Even if I WANT to hate I cannot; I am utterly helpless. I have to cut this line, this statement. It is no longer relevant to me; it cannot exist, at least in MY copy of the Koran.”

When you are in love with yourself you bloom. Love nourishes you, you respect yourself. You feel the grace of God, you feel grateful that you have been created, you feel uniquely benefitted, you feel blessed. And then the overflowing: then the fragrance starts spreading to the winds.

I don’t teach you to love your neighbor, because for two thousand years Christians have been teaching that, and nothing has happened. On the contrary, Christians have killed their neighbors more than anybody else. And the basic thing that has been missed is love for thyself.

Jesus is perfectly right. He takes it for granted that you love yourself. He has not taken note of the priests who are going to follow him, who will interpret what he says; he had no idea of the Vatican and the pope. He has taken it for granted that you love yourself – and that is not so. It would have been so if there had not been any pollution, the pollution that the priest has created, down the ages.

Man loves himself no more.

You can watch yourself. Do you have any respect for yourself? How can you respect yourself if you are a sinner? If you are condemned, how can you respect yourself? You feel unworthy.

The whole strategy of the so-called religions consists of making you feel unworthy. Once you are unworthy, shaken, you lose confidence, you lose power in yourself, you become weak. And when you are weak you surrender, you submit to the priest, the priesthood. And all kinds of exploiters are around you.

In fear you start clinging to the churches, to the mosques, to the temples; in fear you start praying.

But a prayer that comes out of fear is false. Prayer is true only when it is a fragrance of love.

Ann, JESUS TAUGHT HIS FOLLOWERS TO LOVE THY NEIGHBOR AS THYSELF.

But the first thing cannot be taken for granted. The first thing is missing: the seed is missing. So you can go on waiting for the flowers to come, but they will never come. No tree is going to be born.

First the seed is needed, and then what else? You put the seed in the soil, you water it, and it grows

– you need not pull it up. One day the spring has come and the tree has blossomed: just like that it happens. But the seed has to be a love for yourself.

I teach you self-love. And because I teach you self-love, you have to be very alert: self-love does not mean selfishness. Self-love is possible only if you drop the idea of the self – that is the paradox

– if you unself yourself.

The person who loves himself cannot carry the ugly burden of the ego. How can he carry such mountains, such ugly mountains? He drops the ego, he becomes pure space. He loves himself so much that he cannot carry this poison inside him. He becomes full of light, empty space. And in that empty space blooms the lotus of love.

Self-love is not selfishness, self-love is unselfishness. In self-love the self disappears, only love remains. And then you have created the context. Now many many miracles are going to happen to you; now nothing is impossible for you, because love is the magic.

You ask: COULD YOU GIVE US YOUR VIEWS ON CARING, COMPASSION AND SERVICE TO

THE COMMUNITY?

I have no views about caring, compassion and service to the community. My whole effort is to transform the individual: I am utterly focussed on the individual. And if the individual becomes luminous, then these things come naturally – compassion, caring, service.

If you are taught service, compassion and caring, you will learn it and you will do it, but it is going to remain superficial. And it will not only be superficial, it will be harmful to you and to others too.

When a person forces himself to serve others he becomes egoistic. He thinks in terms of being holier-than-thou, he becomes a very pious egoist, and he feels that he is obliging you, and he is obliging the whole world.

You can see it written all over your so-called public servants. Public servants have proved the most mischievious people in the world. They are the sources of mischief, but they make mischief behind such beautiful curtains that you cannot catch them. They serve you, they oblige you, and then they become your masters. They have served you so much that if they start exploiting you, you have to accept it gratefully. They have served you so much, they have invested so much in you, that now their exploitation has to be tolerated.

I don’t teach service – enough of it! I only teach meditation. And out of meditation, when you have arrived, there will be service. But that will be just a natural outcome, a by-product. Service is not the goal, but a consequence; so is compassion.

Buddha has said that when a man has reached the climax of meditation, compassion showers from him. Just as when you light a candle light starts spreading all around and darkness disappears, when the light of meditation is inside you compassion radiates.

And then compassion has a beauty, because it is unselfconscious. You are not obliging anybody; in fact if somebody accepts your service YOU are obliged. He might have rejected: he has not rejected, he has obliged you. You serve him and you feel obliged. You serve him but you don’t start asking for anything in return. It is unconditional. In fact you are happy that somebody has accepted your service.

My focus is on the individual, not on the community. The real revolution has to happen in the individual, not in the society. All social revolutions have failed, utterly failed. They were bound to fail, they were destined to fail. Only the individual can be transformed, because only the individual has the soul, consciousness, awareness.

The community, the society, has no soul. It does not really exist anywhere – have you ever come across society? Whenever you come across it, you come across individuals. You will meet A, you will meet B, you may meet C, but you never come across society.

You come across human beings, but you never come across humanity. The word;humanity; is empty, so is the word ’society’, but these words have become so powerful because down the ages we have been hypnotized by words.’Society, community, country, motherland, fatherland, humanity’

– all bogus words. The reality is only one: the individual.

Only if the individual becomes luminous will the world be benefitted. It is time that we forgot about social revolution and social service; it is time enough. We should become a little more mature and think of reality as it is. The individual exists, hence individuals can be transformed.

I am not a social revolutionary, and I am not a social servant either. And my sannyasins are not to become social revolutionaries and social servants – no, not at all. The only thing that you have to do is: create great love for yourself, and enjoy, rejoice and celebrate. And out of that celebration, something miraculous starts happening: people are served, compassion radiates, caring is born.

The second question:

Question 2

I HAVE CONTROLLED AND DISCIPLINED MY SEX LIFE FOR YEARS, BUT I AM STILL MUCH

TOO INTERESTED IN IT. WHY?

That’s why. It is so simple, so obvious. You have remained obsessed with it – otherwise why control it? Why repress it? What is control except repression?

You became too attached to it; it was an attachment. And as time has passed, the attachment has deepened. Of course your attachment is negative, hence the question. Because you have been against it, you thin, ”Why am I still interested?”

In fact if you are negatively attached to something, your attachment will go on deepening as time passes; it will never end. If you are positively attached, there is a possibility of its ending, because experience liberates. I you had known sex, by now you would have been finished with it, because it is childish; it does not have the power that negative attachment creates.

Sex in itself is not that powerful. It appears very powerful, because we have been taught to be against it: our antagonism gives it power. And the more you ar against it, the less experienced you are about it, the more the desire arises to experience it.

In fact, monks remain interested in sex to the very end: they die thinking of sex and nothing else – it is a simple psychological truth. But the question arises because we only think of positive attachment as attachment.

Attachment has two forms, positive and negative. And the negative is far deeper than the positive, because there is no way to end the negative attachment. The positive attachment will wear, wither.

You have known sex and its experience: slowly slowly, you start understanding that there is nothing in it, that it is a biological urge, that it gives you nothing much. Slowly slowly, it dawns upon your consciousness that it is a futile repetition.

And I am not saying to think that it is a futile repetition. If you think without understanding, that thinking will be repression; that will be negative attachment. I am not saying to judge it; the judgment arises on its own.

But when you are negatively attached to something, you go on escaping from it. When will you experience it? And the more you escape, the more the urge remains fresh, young. And the more you repress it, the deeper it goes into your unconscious and grips you at the roots. From the leaves it moves to the roots. From the leaves there was a possibility of evaporating, because the leaf was exposed to the sun, to experience, to life. Once it has reached your roots underground, now there is no way for it to evaporate.

Attachment is the sine wave of ’submission – resistance’. When you submit to something or resist something, or hate something, or identify with something, you are attached to it. Remember, saying yes is an attachment: submission. Saying no is an attachment: resistance. And the second attachment is far deeper.

That’s why friendships are not as great as enmities. Friendships are so-so, lukewarm. Enmities are very passionate, very hot. Enmities live long, for years; there seems to be no way to end an enmity.

Friendship withers.

You are asking, ”Why am I still interested?” You will remain interested to the very end.

Drop your resistance, drop the negative attachment, go into the experience of sex. Don’t be afraid, there is nothing to be afraid of. It is not so important that you need to be afraid of it; by becoming afraid, you are making it something big. It is not such a big deal, it is a small biological phenomenon.

Priests have magnified it very much. The whole responsibility goes to the priests: they have made the whole of humanity sexual, utterly sexual. Without the priest there would be no pornography in the world, without the priest there would be no prostitutes in the world, without priests there would be no obscenity in the world. They are the root causes.

But it is very difficult to see he point, because they are against all these things – if you listen to their words, they are against them. Naturally you think if people are against something, how can they be the source of it? But they are the source. By being against, they are creating great interest, great attraction.

Just let priests disappear and you will be surprised: sexuality will disappear. Sex will be there, but sex is a small thing; sexuality is a magnified obsession.

The late Dr. Kinsey was questioning a group of men about the number of times they had sex relations with members of the opposite sex.

In response to his question, a group of men raised their hands to indicate that they had sex every night. Then some said they had relations ten times a month. A small group said they only did it about four times a month.

Finally, every man in the room had been accounted for except one man who was sitting in the corner.

Dr. Kinsey moved closer to him. ”All right. How many of you have sex relations only once a year?”

”Me! Me!” the man piped up, waving his hand wildly and wearing an ear-to-ear smile.

”Fine,” said Dr. Kinsey. ”But why are you so happy about it?”

”Because tonight’s the night!” the man explained with glee. ”Tonight’s the night!”

Now, if you repress for one year, this is natural. How many years have you been controlling your sex? Even an ear-to-ear smile won’t do – your smile will spread from your toes to your head.

Please don’t control, because all control means control by the ego. I teach you uncontrol: remain natural. Control makes you unnatural, artificial, arbitrary. Remain natural. Control makes you unnatural, artificial, arbitrary. Remain natural, relax. Whatsoever God has given to you – sex, love, whatsoever – accept it as a gift. And go into it, go into it meditatively, go into it very consciously, so that you can see what it is, so that you can learn something from it.

And one day sex disappears. And that day is of great importance, because that day you are biologically free. That freedom is not attained through control; that freedom is attained through understanding, awareness, witnessing.

The third question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 3

ARE YOU AGAINST ALL OTHER GURUS?

Then who has been speaking on Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu, Bahaudin, Rabiya, Sanai, Bodhidharma, Rinzai, Bokuju, Milarepa, Marpa, Tilopa, Saraha, Kabir, Nanak, Meera, Jesus, Moses, Buddha, Mahavira? Who has been speaking about all these gurus, if I am against all gurus?

There has never before been a man who has spoken about so many masters, and I don’t think there is going to be another again.

But certainly I am against a few gurus – not because hey are gurus, but because they are NOT

gurus: they are pretenders. And I have not only spoken about ancient masters, I have spoken on Ramakrishna, Raman, Gurdjieff, Krishnamurti – I have spoken on contemporary masters too.

I am certainly against those who are just pretending, those who don’t know a thing. But in that sense Jesus was also against many rabbis, and Buddha was against many brahmins, and so was Kabir.

In that sense very master has always been against the false, the pseudo; this is not anything new.

But maybe you had some attachment to people like Satya Sai Baba and Baba Muktananda, and you may have felt hurt. That is YOUR understanding. Satya Sai Baba and Baba Muktananda are not gurus in my vision. In fact I am very much surprised: when I see that even a man like Muktananda can get disciples, I cannot believe how far humanity has fallen. This is an indication of great stupidity.

If Muktananda can get disciples, then anybody can get disciples in this world. That simply shows that people have completely forgotten what it means to be a disciple and what it means to be a master. People seem to be in such desperate need that whatsoever they can get, whosoever hey can get, they are ready to follow. People are in such a neurotic state that idiots can pretend and become masters.

To be a master means a flowering of intelligence. Have you ever seen any intelligence in people like Muktananda? But this is happening – and the reason is not that Muktananda has some power, the reason is that people are in desperate need. They don’t know where to go, so whatsoever comes close by, they fall a victim to it.

I am not against gurus, but it may have appeared so to you. Language is a very inadequate means of expressing things, but there is no other means. One has to use language, and one has to accept all possibilities of being misunderstood.

A lorry carrying penguins gets stuck on the highway. The driver stops a private car and says, ”I’ll give you fifty dollars to take these penguins to the zoo.”

When he finally arrives in town he sees the other guy with the penguins in front of a cinema. He stops and asks, ”What the hell are you doing here?”

The other replies, ”I took them to the zoo and had money left, so now I’m taking them to a film.”

Or:

The Frenchman and the Italian were in the woods hunting together when suddenly a voluptuous blonde girl raced across their path, totally nude.

”Would I love to eat that! Oui, oui!” the Frenchman said, smacking his lips.

So the Italian shot her.

Or:

This Chinese laundryman complained to the doctor that he was very constipated. The doctor gave him a prescription for a good physic. ”Come to my office in a few days,” said the doctor, ”and let me know how it works.”

A few days later, the Chinaman visited the doctor.

”Have you moved yet?” asked the doctor.

”No sir, me no moovee, me no moovee.”

The doctor scratched his head and then gave the man a prescription for twice as much. Three days later, when the man reported to the doctor again, he said that he still hadn’t moved. The doctor gave him a triple dose, and he said, ”Come back to see me in two days and let me know just what is happening.”

Two days later, the man came back.

”Well,” said the doctor, ”have you moved yet?”

”No sir, me no moovee yet. Me moovee tomorrow, though. House full of shit.”

The fourth question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 4

YOU SAY, ”ACCEPT YOURSELF AS YOU ARE,” AND ”UNLESS YOU ARE REBORN YOU CANNOT

ENTER THE KINGDOM OF GOD.”

PLEASE COMMENT ON THIS APPARENT CONTRADICTION.

Divakar, all contradictions are apparent. If you meditate a little bit, you will see that there is no contradiction. I say, ”Accept yourself as you are.” And I also say, ”Unless you are reborn you cannot enter the kingdom of God.”

Now, you are creating the contradiction by not meditating on it.

The way to be reborn is to accept yourself as you are: this is how one is reborn. You live in a kind of rejection, you don’t accept yourself as you are. It is very rare to find a person who accepts himself –

because the moment he accepts himself, he is reborn, he is enlightened.

You don’t accept yourself, you go on rejecting yourself. You are constantly in search of ways of improving your image. You want to become more beautiful, healthier, stronger, famous, creative, this and that. You are not contented the way you are.

It seems so impossible to be contented the way we are, because the mind can always imagine better things. You can have a little longer nose, or a little shorter. You can have a little more intelligence, a little more physical beauty, a little more charisma, a little more psychological integrity, a little more powerful personality. You can always imagine, and your imagination makes you discontented with yourself as you are.

If roses were to think, they would be discontented too, because they would see: ”Look in the pond, the lotus flower is so big, and we are so small.” They would feel very very inferior, they would start suffering from an inferiority complex, and they would start searching for some psychoanalyst. Then small bushes would feel very much depressed, because ”Big trees, cedars of Lebanon, are reaching to the stars, and we are so small. Why has God been so unjust to us?” Then the whole existence would be in a tremendous discontent.

But only man is in discontent. Bushes are happy being bushes, and roses are happy being roses, and grass flowers are happy being grass flowers. Birds are happy being birds – nobody wants to be anybody else.

This contentment is all around if you just look. If you open your eyes you will see contentment showering from every tree, from every star, from every rock. Just remove man from the world, and discontentment is removed.

Why is man discontented? Because he compares. And all comparison s false, because you are absolutely alone. Like you there is nobody else, so all comparison is false. You can compare one Fiat car with another Fiat car, but you cannot compare a Fiat car with a dog – or can you? Each human being is so unique, it is impossible to compare him. But you go on comparing.

You have been taught to compare, Your whole education depends on comparison, and it depends on comparison because it wants to create a competitive fever in you. The society has not yet known any other way to make you do something, the only way it knows is to create a competitive fever: create a neurosis, create a longing, an ill longing, to be the first. The society has not yet discovered any better way to make you creative. ”Compete, compare, defeat – reach first place.” It teaches you conflict, violence.

And to be in that conflict, naturally it teaches you discontentment with yourself – otherwise how will you improve? It gives you great ideals: ”You have to be like this.” And then suddenly you look so short, so small, so tiny, so trivial. The ideal is so big, so great, and you are so small. You shrink: a great rejection arises in you, you start hating yourself. This is the whole misery that people are passing through.

I teach you acceptance. There is no need to compete, there is no need to compare, there is no need to be ambitious. Then you become afraid: ”if there is no ambition and no competition and no comparison, then how am I going to grow?”

Growth has nothing to do with these things. Growth has something to do with energy; growth is an energy phenomenon. When you don’t compare, when you don’t compete, when you are not ambitious, when you don’t want to be anybody other than who you are, you accumulate much energy

– because all that energy that was being wasted in competition and conflict, is no longer wasted.

You become a reservoir.

Out of that energy comes creativity. Creativity has nothing to do with competition, it has something to do with overflowing energy. William Blake is right, he says, ”Energy is delight.”

When you are overflowing with energy, aglow with energy, aflame with energy, it itself becomes creativity. You start growing, but now the growth has a totally different connotation. It has no goal –

it has a source but no goal. Now you are not thinking what to be; you are not following a particular goal, a particular plan. You are such a big river that through your rushing energy you will reach the ocean. No river is searching for the ocean, but rivers reach the ocean; and no river is competing with any other river, but all rivers reach the ocean. The river reaches the ocean through overflowing water. That very energy is enough to take it to the ocean.

You can become an ocean of creativity if you are contented. Then creativity arises in you, grows in you – not for any ideal, but just because you have too much: you have to share it. You have to sing a song, because the heart is so full and overflowing. You have to pour it into songs. You cannot contain the energy, hence the overflow happens. And that overflow is creativity.

When a tree is overflowing with energy it blossoms in thousands of flowers. Those flowers are just a simple statement from the tree: ”Now I cannot contain any more. The colors are too many in me, and the fragrances are so much that I have to burst forth.” The tree is not fulfilling any ideal; it has no goal.

To have a goal is to be miserable, not to have a goal is to be blissful. The person who accepts himself in totality – with not even a slight grudge against himself, not even a slight rejection, not even a shadow of rejection – that man becomes enlightened immediately. Enlightenment has not to be achieved somewhere in the future. If you accept yourself, if you relax into your being, it can happen just this very moment, now, here.

So I say: Accept yourself as you are, because this is the way to be reborn. And I also say: Unless you are reborn, you cannot enter the kingdom of God.

Please remember, the second statement is not for you to create a goal: ”I have to be reborn, I have to enter into the kingdom of God.” If it becomes a goal, you have misunderstood me. It is not a goal, it is a consequence. A consequence of what? a consequence of total acceptance: TATHATA, suchness. ”I am this, and I am utterly happy with this.” In that utter happiness and contentment is the miracle, the transformation. You are reborn.

And remember again, I am not saying to use ”accept yourself” as a method so that you can be reborn, I am not saying that either, otherwise you have created a goal again. You say, ”Okay, if this is the way to become enlightened, if this is the way to enter into the kingdom of God, then I am ready to accept myself.” this is not acceptance. You are still thinking of the kingdom of God, you are still thinking of becoming enlightened. You are still competing with the Buddhas. You are still thinking,

”How did this man Gautam Buddha become enlightened, and I have not yet? How dare this man Jesus become Christ, and I am here and I have not yet become Christ?”

Friedrich Nietzsche has said exactly that. He has said, ”I cannot accept God, because if there is a God then what am I doing here? And how can anybody else become a God before me? Hence I reject the idea: there is no God.” Because if there has to be a God, then Friedrich Nietzsche has to be first. It is better to reject the whole idea: ”There is no kingdom of God, there is no enlightenment.”

Otherwise it creates a feeling of great inferiority: ”Others have reached, and I have not reached yet.

Am I lagging so far behind?”

So please don’t make it a goal. My statement about being reborn is just a consequence. The source is acceptance, and the consequence is entry into the kingdom of God.

But the mind is very cunning – beware of it. The mind can say deep down in you, ”So okay, if this is the key then I will use it, but I have to enter into the kingdom of God.” And you have missed in that very cunningness.

Things are very simple. What I am saying is so simple, it has no complexity in it. But you can create complexity. Your mind can create such a confusion, such a chaos! And the basic trick, the basic strategy of the mind is to make consequences goals.

Never make any goal, there is none. We are already at the source, we need not be anywhere else.

In deep acceptance you fall back into the source. That very falling back into the source is a rebirth, a resurrection. You disappear as a separate entity and you appear as the mystic union: UNIO

MYSTICA.

The fifth question:

Question 5

IT IS SAID AGAIN AND AGAIN THAT BEING AWARE IS ENOUGH FOR TRANSFORMATION.

HOW DOES IT WORK?

It is a significant question, because if you are aware of your cancer, the cancer will not be cured by just being aware of it – that is true. But as far as psychological transformations are concerned, the moment you are aware of them they disappear – because they do not exist as realities, they exist only as illusions.

You have seen a ghost standing in the dark: now you bring light, and you say there is nobody. Just the shape of the tree was giving you the false impression that somebody was standing there. The ghost has disappeared, because in the first place the ghost was not there.

Awareness helps, brings transformation, because the illusions that you are suffering from are not realities. If you become aware of a rock, the rock is not going to disappear. But if you become aware of the ego, the ego is going to disappear, because the ego is not a reality.

If you become aware, fear is going to disappear, because fear is not a reality. If you become aware, death is going to disappear, because death is a lie, it is not a reality.

Awareness functions in two ways. One: if something is real and you become aware of it, it becomes tremendously beautiful, it becomes psychedelic, it becomes very colorful. If it is unreal, it disappears.

If it is real, it becomes MORE real; if it is unreal, it becomes absolutely unreal.

Awareness is a light. If you bring light into the dark room, darkness will disappear, but the paintings on the wall will appear. When the room was dark, the paintings were not there; although they were there, you could not have seen them – for you they were not there and darkness was there. When you bring light, darkness is there no more and the paintings have appeared.

Something disappears when you become aware, and something appears. Death disappears, deathlessness appears. The ego disappears, egolessness appears. You disappear as a separate entity: God appears. God means, ”I am no longer separate.”

”Was you ever in love, Dusty?” asked Walker Long of old Dusty Rhodes one day as they were picking up and putting them down on a railroad right-of-way.

”Yeah, once when I was a young squirt, I was in love,” answered old Dusty.

”Well, you never did get married, did you?” pursued Walker Long.

”Nope, I never did marry,” vouchsafed old Dusty.

”How did that happen?”

”Well, it was like this. The gal I was in love with wouldn’t marry me when I was drunk, and I wouldn’t marry her when I was sober.”

Awareness has its own ways. If you are aware, you will not be able to do many things you have been doing up till now, and you will be able to do many things you have never thought of doing before. If you are aware, you cannot be angry, because anger can exist only in a state of unawareness: that is a prerequisite for anger to exist.

If you are aware, anger is impossible and compassion becomes a natural outcome: the same energy that was becoming anger becomes compassion. If you are aware, sex disappears and love arises: the same energy that was becoming sexuality through unawareness takes on a new manifestation of love through awareness.

As far as psychological transformation is concerned, awareness is enough, analysis is not needed.

That is the difference between Eastern and Western psychology: Western psychology is too concerned with analysis. In the East, for five thousand years psychology has existed; it is the most ancient science in the East. But its concern is totally different; it is not at all interested in analyzing, the whole thing seems to be unnecessary.

And now Western psychology is also becoming aware of the fact that analysis leads nowhere. Have you ever come across a person who is totally analyzed? Even Sigmund Freud was not. Nobody can be totally analyzed. You can analyze one dream, but another day another dream arises. You can go on analyzing – people go to the analyst for years, but dreams don’t disappear, they go on coming; analysis does not make them disappear.

But in the East we know the art of making the disappear. So who bothers? It is as if you see a ghost in the dark – there is no ghost, just the form of the tree – and you start analyzing. You never come close to the tree, you never bring light; you start analyzing the form from far away. You can go on analyzing: nothing is going to happen out of that analysis.

Eastern psychology says: Light a candle, bring the candle to the place, and first see whether the ghost exists at all. If the ghost does not exist, then why bother? Why long long years of analysis?

The analyzed goes on pouring out rubbish, and the analyst goes on dissecting, analyzing, labeling and categorizing the rubbish. Much work goes on, and all futile, much ado about nothing.

Western psychology is based on analysis, Eastern psychology is based on awareness.

Just watch. There is no need to analyze. Become more and more intensely alert. And if you are aware of a problem, half the problem is already solved just by becoming aware of it. Just a slight awareness of the problem, and half the problem is already solved, because you have taken some energy out of it: that energy has become awareness. Become more aware, and the problem becomes dissolved.

Chunk by chunk, the problem disappears as you become aware, because you are pulling back energy which you had been pouring into the problem – that was CREATING the problem. You are taking your energy back, you are not cooperating any more. You were the creator of the problem: you have taken your energy back.

When all energy has been taken back, a moment comes when the problem flops. First become aware of a problem and then become more and more alert. Nothing else is needed; you need not go to any psychoanalyst.

It is one thing to have a problem, but it is another not even to be aware that you have a problem. That is like the eighty-year-old I heard about in Miami. He was vacationing with another octogenarian in Florida. During their stay they both made the acquaintance of some ladies younger than themselves.

They both fell in love and decided to get married in Florida in a double ceremony. Following the wedding night, they are both in their rocking chairs after breakfast.

The one says, ”You know, I better see a doctor.”

The other says, ”Why?”

”Well,” the first said, ”I couldn’t consummate the marriage.”

”Oh,” said the second. ”I better see a psychiatrist.”

”Why?” said the first.

”I didn’t even give it a thought.”

First become aware of your problem, and then go on becoming more and more aware of it. Don’t judge; judgment is an obstacle in becoming aware. Don’t call it any names, don’t evaluate. Don’t say it is good, don’t say it is bad, don’t label, don’t categorize. Just be alert: whatsoever it is, simply mirror it.

If you take a stand and you say, ”This is bad,” then you have already blocked your awareness. You have concluded – now you are no longer impartial, you have already made a decision. And the moment you say something is bad, you cannot look at it eye to eye. When you say some man is bad, you can’t face him, you can’t encounter him; you avoid him. When you say something is good, you become positively attached; when you say something is bad, you become negatively attached.

Observation means no attachment at all, this way or that, neither negative nor positive. You are simply an impartial mirrorlike reflection, you simply reflect whatsoever is. In that awareness, problems melt. In that awareness, lies, falsities and fallacies disappear. And in that awareness, when falsities and appearances have disappeared, reality comes with radiant colors.

You need not take LSD or marijuana or psylocybin. Take a dose of awareness – and life is so beautiful, it is so utterly glorious, it is such an incredible splendor, that no LSD, no marijuana, can add anything to it. All that you need is awareness, and life becomes such a beautiful experience that you cannot imagine that there could be anything better. Ordinary life becomes so luminous.

The ordinary tree that you have passed your whole life – coming home, going to the office, you have always been passing the tree – for the first time you see the greenery of it. For the first time you see the luminous presence of the tree, the utter beauty of it.

Life is such a gift, and we go on missing it. And the reason is, between us and life there are so many lies crowding. Your awareness will destroy those lies: they will disappear, and reality will be nakedly encountered.

And to know reality in its utter nakedness is to know God.

The sixth question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 6

ISN’T THERE A LIMIT TO PATIENCE? I HAVE SUFFERED ENOUGH IN MY LIFE: SHOULD I REVOLT AGAINST IT OR NOT?

There is a limit to everything – there is a limit to patience too. And one should not go on submitting to unnecessary tortures. One should not go on bowing down to slaveries, one should not go on compromising. If you feel that you have suffered enough, revolt.

Why have you waited so long? There was no need to wait. One should be in a constant rebellion.

Why should one exist even for a single moment in compromise? Because to compromise means you are not respectful to yourself, you don’t love yourself. And if you compromise more – because once people see that you can be exploited, they will go on exploiting you more.

Don’t help exploiters, whatsoever kind they may be.

But it seems you would still like to continue, hence the question. Otherwise there is no need to ask.

If you have suffered enough, then enough is enough!

Charlie was visiting an old friend and his wife for dinner. When the time came to leave, his car wouldn’t start, and it was too late to call the local service station.

The husband urged Charlie to stay over. There was no spare bed in the house; there wasn’t even a sofa. So Charlie would have to sleep with the husband and wife.

No sooner had the husband fallen asleep when the wife tapped Charlie on the shoulder and motioned for him to come over to her.

”I couldn’t do that,” he whispered. ”Your husband is my best friend!”

”Listen, sugar,” she whispered back, ”there ain’t nothing in the whole wide world could wake him up now.”

”I can’t believe that,” Charlie said. ”Certainly if I make love to you, he will wake up, won’t he?”

”Sugar, he certainly won’t. If you don’t believe me, pluck a hair out of his beard and see if that wakes him.”

Charlie did just that. He was amazed when the husband remained asleep. So he climbed over to the wife’s side of the bed and made love to her. When he finished he climbed back to his own side.

It wasn’t long before she tapped him on the shoulder and beckoned him over again. Again he pulled a hair to determine if his old friend was asleep. This went on eight times during the night. Each time Charlie made love to the woman, he first pulled out one of the husband’s beard hairs.

The ninth time he pulled a hair, the husband awoke and muttered, ”Listen, Charlie, old pal, I don’t mind what you are doing to my wife, but for Pete’s sake stop using my beard for a scoreboard!”

Enough is enough! There is a limit to everything. Enough hairs have been ken out of your beard –

now assert yourself. Don’t go on bowing down, don’t go on suffering.

But my feeling is, people want to suffer. My observation is this: that they go on complaining about suffering, but they want to suffer. They go on clinging to their suffering. Even suffering is better than nothing: at least there is something to complain about, something to cling to, something to brag about.

Just listen to people. Everybody talks about his suffering. Why don’t you revolt against it? If you are really fed up, then do something. Get out of it! Who can prevent you? But people are not doing anything. Suffering has become their life-style. If suffering disappears, what will they do? They feel that nothing will be left; there will be nothing to complain about.

Meditate over your suffering, and see that somewhere deep down you must be helping it –

unconsciously maybe, but your support is needed. Otherwise suffering cannot exist without your support. Just withdraw your support, and suffering disappears. You are a willing partner to it. You may find so many rationalizations; rationalizations can be found, but they are all rationalizations. If you want to deceive yourself they are very good; but if you want to wake up, drop all rationalizations.

Simply see the fact that you are suffering, and that life is not MEANT to be suffering, it is meant to be a celebration. And at any moment things can be changed.

But something drastic will be needed. You have suffered so long, you have become so accustomed to it, that unless you do something drastic, a quantum leap, you will not be able to get out of it.

Become a sannyasin: that will be something drastic. Take a jump into something new, try something new that you have never done before.

And remember, the ego is always attached to suffering. why is the ego always attached to suffering?

Because the ego feeds on suffering; you feel like a great martyr. The ego disappears when you are happy, really happy. Enjoy, and the ego is not found.

That’s why if you have chosen an egoistic life-style you will never be able to get out of suffering. You may change your sufferings, but you will create new sufferings again. You may divorce one woman, and you will get married very soon to the same type of woman again. You may drop your husband, but it will not be long before you will get another person of exactly the same type, because your ego will start feeling starved.

The ego exists as the center of suffering. When you are in a joyous state, have you ever looked in?

there is no ego found. In fact joy and egolessness are the same phenomenon, they are not different.

So if you really want to get out of suffering, you will have to be ready to sacrifice the ego and all the gratification that it gives to you.

Unself yourself – listen to Sanai – and in that unselfing, you will be able to get out of all suffering.

And don’t go on blaming others; there is no point in blaming others. Take the whole responsibility –

that is manly, that is courage. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders. This is an old trick, to go on throwing the responsibility on somebody else: ”What can I do? The family is such, the people are such, the society is such, what can I do? I have to suffer.”

You WANT to suffer, that’s why you throw the responsibility on others. Otherwise, any moment that you decide to get out of it, nobody can prevent you, nothing can ever obstruct you.

Take the responsibility totally as your own. If you WANT to suffer, then suffer. But then don’t complain – then enjoy it! This is your choice. Then get deeper and deeper into your own mud, but don’t talk about suffering any more – this is your choice. If you call it suffering, then watch the whole mechanism of suffering. If you want to protect yourself as an ego, then you have to suffer. If you want to throw the responsibility on others, then you have to suffer.

The only revolution possible is through taking the whole responsibility on yourself. ”I am the cause of my suffering. Hence I can be the cause of my bliss.”

This declaration is what sannyas is all about, or Sufism is all about, or Zen is all about. The essential religion is taking the whole responsibility for whatsoever you are. And immediately an insight arises:

”If I am responsible for my suffering, then it is simple, I can drop it. It is my choice. I will not choose it any more.”

A Sufi mystic who had always remained happy was asked... For seventy years people had watched him, he had never been found sad. One day they asked him, ”What is the secret of your happiness?”

He said, ”There is no secret. Every morning when I wake up, I meditate for five minutes and I say to myself, ”Listen, now there are two possibilities: you can be miserable, or you can be blissful.

Choose.” And I always choose to be blissful.”

All alternatives are open. Choose to be blissful. And then there are people who can be blissful even when they are imprisoned, and there are people who remain miserable even when they are living in marble palaces. It all depends on you.

When Alexander came to India, on the way, he met Diogenes. Alexander was interested in Diogenes

– opposites are always interested in each other. He stopped his armies and said, ”For one day, have a rest. I would like to go and see Diogenes. I have always wanted to see him, we are so close, just a few miles away, and I would like to have a visit.”

He went. It was early morning, must have been a morning like this – winter, cold – and Diogenes was lying naked on the bank of the river, taking a sunbath; a naked fakir, he had nothing with him.

And Alexander the Great, who had everything with him, was standing by his side. For the first time, Alexander felt very poor. Diogenes was so rich in his nakedness. His face was so graceful, so beautiful; his whole body was radiating joy.

Alexander said to Diogenes, ”I am very happy to see you. I would like to give you a present.”

Diogenes said, ”What can you give to me? Because I don’t see that you have anything! You look so poor that in fact I would like to give something to you. I would like to give God to you, because that is all that I have. You are a great emperor, that is true, but all that you can give to me is not my need, is not my desire; it will be an unnecessary burden to me. But if you are really interested in giving me something, then please just move yourself from that side to the other side of me, because you are preventing the sun – and I will be thankful my whole life.”

It was a shock to Alexander the Great that Diogenes needed nothing, he was so fulfilled, so contented. Departing, he said to Diogenes, ”When I have conquered the world I would also like to live like you.”

Diogenes said, ”But why make this condition of conquering the world first? Look: I have not conquered the world, and yet I am so happy. You can also be happy. And this place is big enough, you can also be here. The bank is so big: throw off your clothes and have a good rest, and see the beauty of the sun and the morning. Rest NOW!”

Alexander said, ”Yes, I would like to rest, but not now. When I have conquered the world.”

Diogenes said, ”Nobody has ever been able to rest THEN, rest is possible only NOW. Tomorrow never comes. And who has ever been able to conquer the world? By the time you are a conqueror, life has gone by. You will die halfway; you will never be able to rest.”

And that’s how it happened. Alexander never go back home. Going back from India after his great conquest, he died on the way.

And then there is another story. By coincidence, Alexander and Diogenes died on the same day and they met on the way towards the other world, while crossing the river that separates this world from that. Alexander was ahead, because he had died a few minutes earlier, and Diogenes was just following him. When they were crossing the river, Alexander became aware that somebody was coming behind him. He looked back – it was Diogenes. He was shocked very much, because now this man would say, ”Look: I told you that your journey would remain incomplete.”

Just to save face, he started laughing. Diogenes asked, ”Why are you laughing? Your laughter is shallow, but still, why are you laughing?”

Alexander said, ”I am laughing to see that we have met again. Strange is this meeting – the meeting of an emperor and a beggar.” Diogenes was a beggar.

But Diogenes laughed even louder than Alexander. I don’t think anybody else would have laughed like Diogenes did, crossing the river that separates this world from that. Alexander said, ”Why are YOU laughing?”

He said, ”I am laughing because you are right, the meeting is strange – the meeting of an emperor with a beggar. But you don’t understand who is the emperor and who is the beggar. I am the emperor and you are the beggar: that is the really strange thing. That’s why I am laughing.”

And it is said, Alexander bowed down his head in sadness. It was such an absolute truth, how could he deny it? Empty-handed he had entered into the world, empty-handed he was coming back. He had never known a moment of joy. And this man, Diogenes, he lived in joy, he lived a blissful life, he lived the life of being.

Let me remind you again, there are three possibilities: being, doing, having. Having is the lowest possibility, people who live through having: have this, have that. A little better is the world of doing, but just a little better: do this, do that.

The highest is the world of being. There is no desire to do, no desire to have anything: one simply is. And it is not that one is inactive; great creativity flows but it is no longer a doing. One is not a doer: God is the doer. One is in the state that Sufis call FANA: one is no more, one is just a hollow bamboo, and God starts singing his song and the hollow bamboo becomes a flute.

When you are just a being, you become a flute. And then life is a song and a dance and a bliss and a benediction.

The last question:

BELOVED MASTER,

Question 7

THANK YOU FOR GIVING US A KEY TO THE GARDEN. THERE IS A MYSTERIOUSLY FAMILIAR

AIR TO HAKIM SANAI, NOT THAT I REMEMBER EVEN HAVING HEARD THIS – BUT IT FEELS

LIKE HOME.

Pradeepa, you may not know – how can you know it? But I have told you before too that you are basically a Sufi. Hence you feel at home with Hakim Sanai. In your past lives you have been with Sufis. And all Sufis are alike: if you have seen one Sufi you have seen all, the taste is the same.

There is a dervish song, a Sufi song. Meditate over it.

It may be said: ”They came in vain.”

Let it not be that they came in vain.

We leave this, the bequest, to you;

We finished what we could, we left the rest to you.

Remember, this is work entrusted –

Remember, beloved, we shall meet again.

Life is an eternal pilgrimage: we go on meeting again and again.

Pradeepa, that’s why it feels to you: THERE IS A MYSTERIOUSLY FAMILIAR AIR TO HAKIM

SANAI, NOT THAT I REMEMBER EVER HAVING HEARD THIS – BUT IT FEELS LIKE HOME.

You have lived with Sufis before, you are again living with a Sufi.

It may be said: ”They came in vain.”

Let it not be that they came in vain.

We leave this, the bequest, to you;

We finished what we could, we left the rest to you.

Remember, this is work entrusted –

Table of Contents

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10