Chapter title: The luxury of God

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‌Chapter title: The luxury of God‌

26 October 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1

WHAT IS THE NEED FOR SECRECY IN MASTERDISCIPLE RELATIONSHIPS

AND ALSO IN ORDINARY HUMAN RELATIONSHIPS?

THE BEING HAS TWO SIDES, the without and the within. The without can be public, but the within cannot be. If you make the within public, you will lose your soul, you will lose your original face. Then you will live as if you have no inner being. Life will become drab, futile. It happens tO people who lead a public life: politicians, film actors. They become public, they lose their inner being completely, they don't know who they are except what the public says about them. They depend on others' opinion, they don't have a sense of their being.

One of the most famous actresses, Marilyn Monroe, committed suicide, and psychoanalysts have been brooding on the reason why. She was one of the beautiful women ever, one of the most successful. Even the President of America Kennedy, was in love with here, and she had thousands of lovers. One cannot think of what more you can have. She had everything.

But she was public and she knew it. Even in her love chamber when President Kennedy would be there she used to address him as Mr. President -- as if one was making love not to man, but to an institution.

She was an institution. By and by she came aware that she had nothing private.

Once somebody asked here -- she had just posed for a nude calendar and somebody asked, "Did you have anything on while you posed for the nude calendar?"

She said, "Yes, I had something on. The radio."

Exposed, nude, no private self. My feeling is that she committed suicide because

that was the only thing left she could have done privately. Everything was public, that was the only thing left she could do on her own, alone, something absolutely intimate and secret. Public figures are always tempted towards suicide because only through suicide can they have a glimpse of who they are.

All that is beautiful is inner, and the inner means privacy. Have you watched women making love? They always close their eyes. They know something. A man goes on making love with open eyes, he remains a watcher also. He is not completely in the act, he is not totally in it. He remains a voyeur, as if somebody else is making love and he is watching, as if the love-making is going on a TV

screen or in a movie. But a woman knows better because she is more delicately tuned to the inner. She always closes her eyes. Then love has a totally different fragrance.

Do one thing one day: run the bath and then switch on and off the light. When there is darkness you will hear the water falling more clearly, the sound will be sharp. When the light is on, the sound will be not so sharp. What happens in darkness?

In darkness, everything else disappears because you cannot see. Only you and the sound are there. That's why, in all good restaurants, light is avoided; sharp light is avoided. They are candle-lit. Whenever a restaurant is candle-lit, taste is deeper: you eat well and you taste more. The fragrance surrounds you. If there is very bright light the taste is no longer there. The eyes make everything public.

In the very first sentence of his METAPHYSICS, Aristotle says that sight is the highest sense of man. It is not. In fact, sight has become too domineering. It has monopolized the whole self and it has destroyed all the other senses. His master

-- Aristotle's master, Plato -- says that there is a hierarchy in the senses: sight at the top, touch at the bottom. He is absolutely wrong. There is no hierarchy.

All senses are on the same level and there should not be any hierarchy. But you live through the eyes: eighty percent of your life is eye-oriented. This should not be so; a balance has to be restored. You should touch also, because touch has something which eyes cannot give. But try: try to touch the woman you love or the man you love in bright light and then touch in darkness. In darkness, the body reveals itself; in bright light, it hides.

Have you seen Renoir's paintings of feminine bodies? They have something miraculous in them. Many painters have painted the feminine body, but there is no comparison with Renoir. What is the difference? All other painters have painted the feminine body as it looks to the eyes. Renoir has painted it as it feels to the hands, so the painting has a warmth and a closeness, an aliveness.

When you touch, something happens very close. When you see, something is far away. In darkness, in secrecy, in privacy, something is revealed which cannot be revealed in openness, in the marketplace. Others are seeing and observing; something deep within you shrinks, it cannot flower. It is just as if you put seeds down on the open ground, for everybody to look at. They will never sprout.

They need to be thrown deep in the womb of the earth, in deep darkness where nobody can see them. There they start sprouting and a great tree is born.

Just like seeds need darkness and privacy in the earth, al} relationships which are deep and intimate remain inner. They need privacy, they need a place where only two exist. Then a moment comes when even the two dissolve and only one exists.

Two lovers deeply in tune with each other dissolve. Only one exists. They breathe together, they are together; a togetherness exists. This would not be possible if observers were there. They would never be able to let go if others were watching. The very eyes of others would become the barrier. So all that is beautiful, all that is deep, happens in darkness.

In ordinary human relationships, privacy is needed. And when you ask about the relationship of a Master and disciple, even more privacy is needed because it is a transmission of the highest energy possible to man. It is the highest peak of love, where one man pours himself into another and the other becomes a receptive womb. Even a slight disturbance -- somebody watching -- will be enough of a barrier.

Secrecy has its own reason to be there. Remember that, and always remember that you will behave very foolishly in life if you become completely public. It will be as if somebody has turned his pockets inside-out. That will be your shape

--

like pockets turned inside-out. Nothing is wrong in being outward but remember, that is only part of life. It should not become the whole.

I am not saying to move in darkness forever. Light has its own beauty and its own reason. If the seed remains in the dark forever and ever, and never comes up to receive the sun in the morning, it will be dead. It has to go into darkness to sprout, to gather strength, to become vital, to be reborn, and then it has to come out and face the world and the light and the storm and the rains. It has to accept the challenge of the outside.

But that challenge can only be accepted if you are deeply rooted within. I am not saying to become escapists, I am not saying to close your eyes, move within and never come out. I am simply saying: go in so that you can come out with energy, with love, with compassion. Go in so that when you come out you are not a beggar, but a king; go in so that when you come out you have something to share

-- the flowers, the leaves.

Go in so that your coming out becomes richer and is not impoverished. And always remember that whenever you feel exhausted, the source of energy is within. Close your eyes and go in.

Make outer relationships; make inner relationships also. Of course there are bound to be outer relationships -- you move in the world, business relationships will be there -- but they should not be all. They have their part to play, but there must be something absolutely secret and private, something that you can call your own.

That is what Marilyn Monroe lacked. She was a public woman -- successful, yet completely a failure. While she was at the top of her success and fame, she committed suicide. Why she committed suicide has remained an enigma. She had everything to live for; you cannot conceive of more fame, more success, more charisma, more beauty, more health. Everything was there, nothing could be improved upon, and still something was lacking. The inside, the within, was empty. Then, suicide is the only way.

You may not be daring enough to commit suicide like Marilyn Monroe. You may be very cowardly and you may commit suicide very slowly -- you may take seventy years to commit it. But still it will be a suicide. Unless you have something inside you which is not dependent on anything outside, which is just your own -- a world, a space of your own where you can close your eyes and move, and you can forget that anything else exists -- you will be committing

suicide.

Life arises from that inner source and spreads into the sky outside. There has to be a balance -- I am always for balance. So I will not say, like Mahatma Gandhi, that your life should be an open book -- no. A few chapters open, okay. And a few chapters completely closed, completely a mystery. If you are just an open book you will be a prostitute, you will just be standing in the marketplace naked, with just the radio on. No, that won't do.

If the whole book is open, you will just be the day with no night, just the summer with no winter. Then where will you rest and where will you center yourself and where will you take refuge? Where will you move when the world is too much with you? Where will you go to pray and meditate? No, half and half is perfect.

Let half of your book be open -- open to everybody, available to everybody --

and let the other half of your book be so secret that only rare guests are allowed there.

Only rarely is somebody allowed to move within your temple. That is how it should be. If the crowd is coming in and going out, then the temple is no longer a temple. It may be a waiting room in an airport, but it cannot be a temple. Only rarely, very rarely, do you allow somebody to enter your self. That is what love is.

Question 2

SOMETIMES I WONDER WHAT I AM DOING HERE, SITTING BEFORE YOU.

AND THEN SUDDENLY YOU ARE TOO MUCH FOR ME, TOO MUCH LIGHT

AND LOVE. YET I WANT TO LEAVE YOU. CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS TO ME?

Yes. The question is bound to happen to everybody some day or other.

What are you doing here? The question arises because my emphasis is not on

doing; I am teaching you non-doing. The question is relevant. If I was teaching you something to do, the question wouldn't arise because you would be occupied. If you go to somebody else -- there are a thousand and one ashrams in the world where they will teach you something to do. They will not leave you unoccupied at all because they think that an unoccupied mind is the devil's workshop.

My understanding is totally, diametrically, opposite. When you are absolutely empty, God fills you. When you are unoccupied, only then you are. While you are doing something, it is just on the periphery. All acts are on the periphery: good and bad, all. Be a sinner -- you are on the periphery; be a saint -- you are on the periphery. To do bad you have to come out of yourself; to do good you also have to come out of yourself.

Doing is outside, non-doing is inside. Non-doing is your private self, doing is your public self. I am not teaching you to become saints, otherwise it would have been very easy: don't do this, do that; just change the periphery, change your acts.

I am trying a totally different thing, a mutation -- not a change from one part of the periphery to another part of the periphery, but a transmutation from the periphery to the center. The center is empty, it is absolutely void. There, you ARE. There is being, not doing.

It is bound to happen to you sometimes: sitting before me you will wonder what you are doing here. Nothing -- you are not doing anything here. You are learning how to just be, not to do -- how not to do anything: no action, no movement... as if everything stops, time stops. And in that non-moving moment you are in tune with the present, you are in tune with God.

Actions become part of the past. Actions can be in the future, they can be in the past, but God is always in the present. God has no past and no future. And God has not done a thing: when you think that He has created the world, you are creating His image according to yourself. You cannot remain without doing anything -- you become too restless, it makes you too uneasy -- so you have conceived of God also as a creator.

Not only as a creator -- Christians say that for six days He created and on the seventh day, Sunday, He rested: a holiday. The Bible says God created man in

His own image. Just the reverse seems to be the case: man has created God in his own image. Because you cannot remain unoccupied, you think: what will God do if He is not creating the world? And because you get tired by doing, you think God must also have gotten tired after six days -- so on the seventh day He rested.

This is just anthropomorphic. You are thinking about God just as you would think about yourself. No, God has not created the world; the world comes out of His non-activity, the world comes out of His non-doing. The world is a flowering of God, just like a tree.

Do you think a tree is creating the flowers -- making much effort, doing exercises, planning, asking the experts? The tree is not doing anything at all. The tree is just there, absolutely unoccupied. In that unoccupied state, the flower flowers by itself. And remember, if some day trees become foolish -- as foolish as man is --

and they start trying to bring the flowers, then flowers will stop coming. They will not come because they always come effortlessly.

Just watch a flower: can you see anything of effort in it? The very being of a flower is so effortless, it simply opens. But we cannot conceive of it. The birds singing in the morning: do you think they go to Ravi Shankar to learn? Do you think they are doing something in the morning when they start singing? No, nothing of that sort. The sun arises, and out of their emptiness the song arises.

The greatest miracle in the world is that God has created without doing a thing. It is out of nothingness.

I was reading about the life of Wagner, a German composer and great musician.

Somebody asked Wagner, "Can you say anything about the secret of why you have created such beautiful music -- and how? "

Wagner said, "Because I was unhappy." He said, "If I had been happy, I would not have written down a single note." He said, "People who are unhappy have to fill their lives with imagination because their reality is lacking something." And he is right in many ways. People who have never loved write poetry about love.

It is a substitute. If love has really happened in life, who bothers to write poetry

about it? One would be a poem himself; there would be no need to write it.

Wagner said, "Poets write about love because they have missed love." And then he made a statement which is tremendously meaningful. He said, "And I think God created the world because He was unhappy." A great insight -- but the insight is relevant to man, not to God.

If you ask me, God created the world -- in the first place, He is not a creator but a creativity; but to use the old expression -- God created the world not because He was unhappy, but because He was so happy that He overflowed; He had so much.

The tree is flowering there in the garden not because it is unhappy. The flower comes only when the tree has too much to share and does not know what to do with it. The flower is an overflowing. When the tree is not well-fed, not well- watered, has not received the right quota of sunlight and care and love, it doesn't flower because flowering is a luxury. It happens only when you have too much, more than you need. Whenever you have too much, what will you do? It will become a heaviness, it will be a burden; it has to be released.;The tree bursts and blooms, it has come to its luxurious moment.

The world is the luxury of God: a flowering. He has so much -- what to do with it? He shares, He throws it out, He starts expanding, He starts creating.

But remember always, He is not a creator like a painter who paints. The painter is separate from the painting. If the painter dies, the painting will still live. God is a creator like a dancer: the dance and the dancer are one. If the dancer stops, the dance stops.

You cannot separate the dance from the dancer, you cannot say to the dancer,

"Give your dance to me, I will take it home. I am ready to purchase it." The dance cannot be purchased. It is one of the most spiritual things in the world because it cannot be purchased. You cannot carry it away, you cannot make a commodity out of it. When the dancer is dancing, it is there; when the dancer has stopped, it has disappeared as if it never existed.

God IS creativity. It is not that He created somewhere in the past and then stopped and rested. And since then what has He been doing? No, He is continuously creating. God is not an event, He is a process.

It is not that once He created and then stopped. Then the world would be dead.

He is continuously creating, just like birds are singing and trees are flowering and the clouds are moving in the sky. He is creating -- and He need not take any rest because creativity is not an act; you cannot be tired. It is out of His nothingness.

This is the meaning when we have said in the East that God is emptiness. Only nothingness can be infinite; somethingness is bound to be finite. Only out of nothingness is an infinite expanse of life, existence, possible -- not out of somethingness. God is not somebody: He is nobody or, more correctly, nobodiness. God is not something: He is nothing or, even more correctly, nothingness. He is a creative void -- what Buddha has called SUNYA. He is a creative void.

What am I teaching to you? I am teaching you the same: to become creative voids, non-doers, delighters in just being. That is why the question is bound to come to everybody's mind sometime or other. You ask: "Sometimes I wonder what I am doing here." You wonder rightly -- you are doing nothing here. Your mind may supply answers, but don't listen to them. Listen to my answer. You are not doing anything here; I am not teaching you to do something. Your mind may say that you are learning meditation: you are doing meditation, yoga, this, that or you are trying to achieve enlightenment, satori, SAMADHI -- all nonsense.

This is your mind supplying because the mind is an achiever, the mind cannot remain without activity. The mind goes on creating some activity or other. Earn money; if you are finished with that, then earn meditation -- but earn. Achieve something, do something.

You become afraid when you are not doing anything, because then suddenly you are face to face with the creative void. That is the face of God. You are in a chaos, you are falling in an infinite abyss and you cannot see the bottom. There is none.

Sitting before me, what are you doing? Just sitting. That is the meaning of ZAZEN. In Zen they call meditation 'zazen'. Zazen means just sitting, doing nothing. If you can just sit near me that is enough, more than enough; nothing else is needed. If you can just sit without doing anything -- not even doing thinking or dreaming -- if you can just sit near me, that will do everything.

"Suddenly you are too.much for me," you say. Yes, if you just sit I will be too much -- because if you just sit, suddenly I will be flowing within you. If you just sit, you will immediately become aware of light and love, and then you will say,

"I want to leave you," because you are afraid of love and light.

You have become a denizen of darkness. You have lived in darkness so long that your eyes are afraid. No matter what you say -- that you would like to live in the light -- your deep-rooted habits shrink and say, "Where are you going? " You have a great investment in darkness.

All your knowledge is related to darkness. In light you will be absolutely ignorant. All your wisdom and experience is out of darkness; in light you will be naked, nude. All that you know belongs to darkness; in the light you will find yourself just like an innocent babe, a small child, not knowing anything.

You have lived in bondage and now you are afraid to be free. You go on talking about freedom and MOKSHA -- absolute freedom -- but if you watch yourself you will know that whenever freedom comes your way, you escape. You become afraid. Maybe you talk about freedom just to deceive yourself; maybe it is a substitute, the substitute Wagner is talking about.

You are in bondage; you have never known freedom. You talk about freedom, you sing songs of freedom and through those songs you have a vicarious satisfaction -- as if you have become free. It is an as-if freedom. But with me it is not going to be as-if, it is going to be a reality. You become afraid of the reality.

You go on asking for love, but when it comes you escape because love is dangerous. One of the greatest dangers in life J is love. The mind can become settled with marriage, but not

with love. t The mind always wants law, not love. The mind always loves order, not the chaos that love is. The mind wants to remain in security, and love is the greatest insecurity you

can come across. Whenever love comes you become afraid to the very roots, you shake and tremble, because that love, if allowed to enter in you, will destroy your mind. The mind

says: "Escape! Escape immediately! " The mind is trying to save itself.

You have lived too deeply in contact with the mind and you have become too attached. You think that whatever the mind says is right; you are confident that whatever is security for mind is security for you. There is the whole misunderstanding. The death of the mind will be life for you, and the life of the mind is nothing but death for you.

The identity has to be broken. You have to become aware that you are not the mind. Only then can you be near me, only then will the effort to leave and escape dissolve. Otherwise you can find reasons to leave, but those reasons will all be phoney. The real reason will be this: that you were not able to let light come in, you were not able to let love come in and destroy your mind and destroy your ego and give you a rebirth.

Question 3

YOUR TEACHING SEEMS TO BE: TO BE ABSOLUTELY ONESELF. THIS IS

BEYOND ME. HOW CAN ONE BE ONESELF IF ONE IS NOT ONESELF?

Let me ask you another question: how can you not be yourself? You can believe it, but you cannot be anything other than yourself. You can think that you are somebody else, you can imagine that you are somebody else, but all the time you are just yourself, nothing else.

So whether you believe you are yourself or not is irrelevant. You remain, all the time, yourself. You can go on running and chasing shadows, but one day or the other you will have to realize that you have just been doing an absurd thing.

How can you be other than yourself7 How? You ask me how one can be oneself.

I ask you how one can be other than oneself -- and in my questioning is the answer. Nobody has even been other than himself; nobody can ever be other than himself. To be oneself is the only way to be, nothing can be done about it.

You can believe.… It is just like you sleep at night in Poona and you dream that you are in Philadelphia. That doesn't make any change in reality. You remain in Poona -- here, somewhere in Mobo's. You remain in Poona; Philadelphia remains just a dream. In the morning you will not wake up in Philadelphia, remember.

You will wake up in Mobo's, in Poona. Howsoever miserable, but it is the case! Nothing can be done about it; at the most you can again dream of Philadelphia.

You are gods. That is your reality. You can believe... you have believed in many things. Sometimes you believed you were a tree -- many trees are still believing that. Sometimes you believed you were an animal: a tiger, a lion. There are a few people who belong to Lion Clubs -- Lion Bhabhutmal Sanghvi. They are not satisfied in being men -- lions! Sometimes you believed that you were a lion, and then you WERE a lion: a dream. Sometimes you believed that you were a rock and you WERE a rock: a dream. You have been changing your dreams.

Now the time has arrived. Wake up! I'm not giving you another dream, remember. You hanker for it, you would like me to give you another dream, but I am not going to give you another dream. That's why to be with me is difficult and arduous -- because I am insisting that you wake up. Enough is enough. You have dreamed a lot; since eternity you have been dreaming. You have just been changing dreams. When you get fed up with one dream, you start changing it; you dream another dream. My whole effort is to shake you, to shock you -- to wake you.

It is not a question of achieving any new thing. It is already your being. Just opening the eyes, just dropping the dreams, just dropping the clouds and the vision. It is a question of clarity and understanding, that's all. Between you and Jesus, between you and me, between you and Buddha, there is no difference of being -- nothing. You are exactly the same. The difference, at the most, is that you are asleep and Jesus is not asleep, that's all.

So don't ask me how to be oneself; you cannot be otherwise. Just ask me how to be awake. You are yourself ALL THE TIME! Just become a little more alert, just bring a new quality of waking consciousness -- just watch. Don't try to be anything because that will again be a dream. Just watch: whosoever you are, wheresoever you are, just watch and be... and allow it. Then the happening, the sudden happening, can come any moment. The heavens can open and the spirit of God, like a dove, can enter in you.

In fact, this is just a way of saying something that cannot be said. It can be said in just the opposite terms also. Let me say it: that when John the Baptist initiated, baptized, Jesus -- Jesus opened and the spirit of God, like a dove, was

released from him and flew into the infinite sky. That is also exactly the same truth. It is just a way of saying it from two polarities.

You are gods and you have never been anything else. That's why I am not worried if you want to sleep a little longer. Nothing is wrong; the choice is up to you. You can have a little more sleep -- turn over and have a little more sleep; snore a little longer -- nothing is wrong. But don't try to improve, don't try to achieve anything. Don't try to become anything because you are already that which you can become! The being is your only becoming, you carry your destiny within yourself. Relax... and be.

Question 4

ARE YOU STILL LEARNING TOO?

Yes, because if learning stops, you are dead. Learning is life. You can ask me, "Are you still alive? " -- that will be the same question.

The ego is a perfectionist and the ego thinks that when you have attained, when you have become enlightened, then there is no learning; then you know all. But if you know all, that 'all' will be finite. Just by being known it has become finite.

You cannot know the infinite. The infinite simply means that you can go on learning and learning and learning and the end never comes, it is an eternal journey. It begins, but it never ends.

But then the ego thinks: then what is the difference when we are also learning?

The difference is that you are learning while fast asleep, unconscious, and a man who is enlightened learns consciously. Your learning is not knowing; your learning is knowledge, dead information. A man who is awakened -- his learning is not like knowledge; his learning is simply knowing.

He is like a mirror. The mirror goes on mirroring. A bird flies before a mirror and the mirror mirrors it. Is there a point where you can say, "Now the mirror is perfect. It mirrors nothing"? When the mirror is perfect it will mirror perfectly, that's all.

When you are awakened, you learn perfectly. Not that you stop learning, not that

you have become perfect and now there is nothing more to know -- just the contrary. The more you know, the more there is to know; the more you open your eyes, the more the infinite surrounds you. It is an infinite journey.

I am still learning. And I am happy, I would not like it to be otherwise. I would not like to come to a point where I could say, "I have known all," because that would be death. Then what? -- then the river is frozen, then it no longer flows.

No, a perfect river goes on flowing; it is never frozen. I will go on learning, Buddha and Jesus are still learning. It has to be so.

Mahavir is still learning, notwithstanding what Jains say. They say that he has known all, he has become all-knowing, because their ego is involved. Their Master: how can he still be learning? That means he is still not perfect. So Jains say Mahavir has known all, he has become a SARVAGYA -- all-knowing, omniscient. This is their ego, not Mahavir.

If you say to Christians that Jesus is still learning, they will be very angry. The son of God, the only begotten son of God -- how can he be still learning? He knows all! But I tell you, he is still learning because he is still alive, alive with the infinity -- learning infinitely, but of course learning perfectly.

This is very difficult to understand because your ego always seeks goals and if learning continues forever and ever, then there is no goal. But I tell you, that's how life is. Life has no goal, it is an ever-flowing river: always reaching, but never reaching; always arriving -- but every arrival becomes a new departure.

Go to the Himalayas. You trek, you move, you go high to the peak. All the time you were trekking up, there was no peak beyond it. Then you reach the peak and many more peaks are revealed. You go on and on and on; it is an ongoing Process.

God is the process. Even God is learning. It has to be so, otherwise He will be stupid. He is not stupid, He is learning. He is evolving -- and that's beautiful.

Nothing is static, everything is dynamic. That's what I mean when I say: don't say 'God is', always say 'God is happening'. Don't use a static term; don't use a noun for Him -- use a verb. Say, "He is happening"; say, "He is learning"; say, "He is evolving"; say, "He is a process, He is a river," and you will have struck truth.

Yes, I am continuously learning. Every moment life is so tremendously beautiful and so tremendously vast, so tremendously infinite and so tremendously mysterious. To say that one has known all will be sacrilegious.

Question 5

WHY DID JESUS CONSTANTLY TALK IN OBSCURE PARABLES WHICH

BAFFLED EVEN HIS DISCIPLES MOST OF THE TIME? WAS THIS A DELIBERATE TECHNIQUE? WHY COULDN'T HE BE MORE

STRAIGHTFORWARD LIKE YOU?

Whoever told you that I am straightforward? While listening to me you may get that impression. Think and meditate on it later on: you will find me more baffling than Jesus. At least he is consistent!

And never ask such questions because these questions show that you are sitting as a judge. Why did Jesus do this or that? If you cannot leave even Jesus out of your judgement, how will you be able to leave out anybody else? Why can't you accept things as they are? " Why is this flower white and not red?" -- is it not a foolish question? This flower is red, that flower is white -- why?

A small child was walking with D. H. Lawrence in a garden and the child asked, "Why are the trees green?"

D. H. Lawrence looked at the child and said, "They are green because they are green!"

Jesus is Jesus, I am me. Jesus is not there to follow me, nor am I there to follow him. And it is good that everybody is unique, otherwise life would be a boredom, a monotony. But people are foolish -- they go on co *ming to me and asking me: "Why did Buddha say this, why did Mahavir never say this?" But Mahavir is Mahavir, Buddha is Buddha. The Ganges flows towards the east and the Narmada goes on flowing towards the west -- what to do? If all the rivers were flowing towards the east, do you think the world would be better? Just think of a world with four thousand million Buddhas -- can you think of anything m ore boring? They would start committing suicide: wherever you went you would meet your replica, wherever you would look it would be as if

you were always looking in the mirror -- only people exactly alike.

No, it is good that everybody is unique. Why do you hanker after such things?

Jesus is-beautiful in his parables; without parables he would not be beautiful, without parables something would be missing. He is one of the most beautiful storytellers.

And of course the beauty of a parable is that it baffles the reason. But you are childish: you think that a story is perfect when the story gives you the conclusion, the motto. You are just like schoolchildren who can't be satisfied unless the story comes to a conclusion, and unless there is an exact mathematical conclusion to it. Then they are satisfied, but then the story is dead. A perfectly concluded story is dead.

A parable tries to show something, not to say it. It indicates very indirectly; the conclusion has to be supplied by you. It leaves a gap, it gives you some space to find out the conclusion. A parable is creative. When a story is totally complete (like two plus two equals four) then it gives no scope for your imagination, no scope for your meditation. Then it is simply mathematical. It is no longer poetic, it is dead.

You would like for somebody to say absolutely, exactly, what he means, but that which is the ultimate meaning cannot be shown to you. The ultimate meaning is always going to be indirect, indicated -- said and yet not said. You feel a vague something, but it is never concrete. If it becomes concrete, it is of this world. If it remains vague, and you follow it and you try to find out the clue, in the very effort to find the clue you rise above it -- you have already entered into another world.

A parable is not an ordinary story: it is symbolic, it is creative. If you listen to it, if you try to understand it, your understanding will become greater than it was before you heard it. An ordinary story remains below your understanding; you can understand it perfectly because it has nothing beyond it. Parables are of the beyond: one step within your mind, one step without -- another step beyond. It is a persuasion.

Jesus constantly talks in parables. He really wants to baffle you because he is talking about something which is ineffable, elusive -- mysterium. He is talking about the mysterious. Gaps have to be left for you to fill. Parables should be like

puzzles which challenge you, and through the challenge, you grow.

And never compare: Why is Jesus like this? The trees are green because they are green. Jesus is just Jesus-like, and he is not like anybody else.

That is what I have been continuously insisting for you to be also: just be yourself, never be anybody else. Never be a Christian, never be a Hindu, never be a Jain, because then you are following a pattern and you will miss your soul.

The soul is yours -- individual, unique -- and the pattern is public, collective, social. Never try to be somebody else. Just try to find out who you are and allow it, accept it, welcome it, delight in it, relish it, so that it is nourished, so that it grows. Through you, God is trying to become somebody He has never tried before.

God is not repetitive; His creativity is infinite. He never drives the same model again -- He is not a Henry Ford. He is absolutely inventive; every day He goes on trying the new, the fresh. He never bothers to repeat a model again, He always goes on improving. He is a great innovator. That's what creativity is. So don't try to become a Jesus -- because then God won't receive you.

One Hassid was dying. His name was Josiah. Somebody asked him, "Have you prayed to God, have you made your peace with God? Are you certain that Moses will be a witness to you? "

Josiah looked at the questioner and said, "I am not worried about Moses because when I am facing God I know perfectly well that He will not ask me, 'Josiah, why were you not a Moses?' He will ask me. 'Josiah, why were you not a Josiah?' So I am worried about myself. Stop talking nonsense! Moses -- what am I to do with Moses? My whole life has been wasted in it. Now I am dying and I am facing the real question that He will ask me: 'Were you a Josiah or not? I made you to be somebody special, somebody unique. Did you achieve that peak or not? Have you missed the opportunity?'"

God will certainly ask you. "Were you able to become yourself?" No other question can be asked.

Don't ask such questions: "Why did Jesus constantly talk in obscure parables?" He loves it that way! And a parable has to be obscure, dim, candle-lit. Too bright

a light kills a parable; too much analysis kills. It is poetry.

"Was this a deliberate technique?" You can never go beyond the technique, you are too obsessed with the technique. Everything becomes a technique to you.

This is the way Jesus is, it is not a question of technique. He is not following a certain technique -- he is not a follower of Dale Carnegie, he has never read the book HOW TO WIN FRIENDS AND INFLUENCE PEOPLE. He is not

following a technique, he was not an American.

In America, everything has become a technique. Even if you want to make love you go and learn the technique. Can you imagine a more unfortunate day for humanity? Even animals don't ask. They know perfectly well how to make love, they don't go to a school to learn the technique. But in America, everything has become a technique. How to be friendly -- even that has to be learned. Is man so completely lost that even friendship has to be learned?

People come to me and I go on saying to them, "Laugh!" They ask me how to laugh. How to laugh? -- learn from Swami Sardar Gurudayal, he is a perfect master! But I have come across the rumor that people don't allow him to laugh.

They say, "Our meditation is disturbed." Because of laughter your meditation is disturbed? Then it is not worth anything.

You have to learn everything. I think sooner or later you will have to learn how to breathe. It is possible because you follow many other things in the same way.

You have to ask how to sleep, how to relax. They were natural one day, just like breathing. Go and ask a primitive: he will simply laugh if you ask, "How do you go so deeply into sleep?"

He will say, "What a foolish question! I simply put my head down and go to sleep. There is no HOW to it."

But you will say, "Still, there must be a trick because I try hard and nothing happens. You must be knowing a secret which you are hiding."

He is not hiding anything; that's how it happens. He simply puts down his head and goes to sleep. There is no gap between these two states.

One day or another, man is going to ask how to breathe and then, if you say,

'You just breathe; there is no HOW to it," he will not believe you. How to love, how to live, how to laugh, how to be happy -- these are all simple things, no HOW is needed. These are natural things, they are not techniques.

This is how Jesus is. He loves the way he says his parables. He loves it! He knows he has an intrinsic knack of telling parables.

A parable is not arithmetic. It should not be too clear, otherwise the point is lost.

It should be a persuasion, it should not be an advertisement. It should not argue because then the point is lost -- then why not argue, why say a parable? It should not give proofs, it should only supply hints; and that, too, not completely. Just a few hints so that your being is challenged, you become alert.

I have heard about Chuang Tzu that he was talking to his disciples and many of them were fast asleep, as disciples are. It must have been late at night and they were tired, and Chuang Tzu was saying difficult things that were beyond them.

When something is beyond you, it seems better to rest and sleep than to bother with it.

Suddenly Chuang Tzu became aware that many of the disciples were fast asleep and it was useless. They were even snoring and disturbing him. So he told a parable. He said: "Once it happened that a man had a donkey and he was travelling on a pilgrimage towards some holy place. But he was very poor, and it came to pass that he was hungry. No money was left, so he sold the donkey, on which he was riding, to another traveller who was rich. But the next afternoon, when the sun was very hot, the first owner rested in the shadow by the side of the donkey.

"The second owner said, 'This is not good. You have sold the donkey.' "The first owner said, 'I have sold the donkey, but not the shadow.' "

Everybody became alert -- nobody was asleep, nobody was snoring. When you talk about donkeys, donkeys hear it immediately! Chuang Tzu said, "I am finished with the story. Now I come to my point."

But they all said, "Wait! Please finish the story."

Chuang Tzu said, "It was a parable, not a story. You are more interested in donkeys than you are in me".

Now everybody was throbbing with excitement: "What happened? Then what happened?" -- but Chuang Tzu left it there, he never completed it. It was not meant to be completed, it was just an indication that the human mind is more interested in stupidities than in higher values and higher things, more interested in foolish things.

But I loved it. It was beautiful of him. He brought all the stupid minds to a certain point -- to an indication, to a hint.

Jesus talks in parables for many reasons. But those reasons are not techniques.

You can think about them, but they are not techniques. It simply happened naturally to him, he was a good storyteller.

But you can think about the reasons he talked in parables. The first: great things can be said if you create a drama around them. If you say them without the drama they fall flat. That's why stories have a tendency to live, to live forever and ever. The Vedas may disappear, but RAMAYANA, the story of Ram, will not disappear. It is a story; it will be preserved. The Upanishads may disappear, but the parables of Jesus will remain. They hang around you, they become a climate.

You never forget a beautiful story. It is just like -- if you sing a beautiful song, you will remember it better than if it was prose. If it is poetry, it is remembered well. Somehow it fits with the deepest quality of your mind. If it is a parable, if there is a drama in it, it has a tendency to cling to you. It will come again and again and again; it will become an inner climate.

Bare principles are soon forgotten. And in the days of jesus, books were not written. All that Jesus was saying was recorded many, many years afterwards.

For those many, many years it was just in the memory of the people who had heard him.

A parable can be remembered well. You will forget what I say, but you will

never forget the parables, the anecdotes, the jokes. You may forget Mahavir and Moses, but you will not forget Mulla Nasrudin. Mahavir is too far away; Mulla is your neighbor. Mahavir may be somewhere in MOKSHA, Mulla is just within you. He is you; you can recognize yourself in him.

So there may be reasons, but don't be bothered about them. It is Jesus' way, and it is good that he never tried anybody else's way.

In Judaism there were Prophets, great prophets: Jeremiah, Ezekiel.… They had their own way. Even John the Baptist never used any parable.

This has to be understood. Prophets are something special to Judaism. They don't exist anywhere else. Mystics are everywhere: Buddha is a mystic, not a prophet; Mahavir is a mystic, not a prophet. A mystic is one who has attained to God; a prophet is one to whom God has come. It exists only in Judaism -- the concept of prophets -- because only in Judaism does God seek man. In all other religions, man seeks God.

When man seeks God and finds Him, he is a mystic. When God seeks man and finds him, he is a prophet. When man comes to God he is a mystic; when God comes to man he is a prophet. When the drop drops into the ocean he is a mystic.

When the ocean drops into the drop then he is a prophet.

A prophet is a very mad and fiery man. Of course, he has to be: the ocean has come to him. Jeremiah, Ezekiel, John the Baptist -- they are prophets, mad people, mad people of God. They speak fire, they don't talk in parables. Their sentences are acidic; they will burn you.

They cannot soothe you. Buddha is very soothing, Krishna is just like a lullaby that surrounds you, soothes you, consoles you, heals you. A prophet simply burns you with an unknown desire, makes you mad.

Jesus is both a prophet and a mystic, one who has come to God and one to whom God has also come. Sometimes he talks like John the Baptist and sometimes he talks like Krishna. Sometimes he soothes and sometimes he wounds. He is a very deep balancing phenomenon: a prophet and a mystic both. That's why you will find in him a synthesis. You will find in him all that is in Judaism -- all that is beautiful and great -- and you will find in him all that is beautiful in Krishna, Buddha, Mahavir; Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism.

Jesus is a culmination point, as if all the religions of the world meet in him and reach to a crescendo. He talks sometimes as a prophet: he invokes, provokes -- he calls you. But that is not his only quality. He soothes; he says parables; he consoles; he gives you a lullaby. He wakes you, and he helps you to sleep. But that is the way he is. All explanations are explanations after the fact, remember.

The basic thing is that this is the way he is, and no other way is possible for him.

Socrates was poisoned. The court decided that he should be murdered, but the people loved him very much -- even in the court almost half of them were in favor of him. So they gave him an opportunity. They told him, "If you stop talking about the truth, if you keep quiet, you can be pardoned and your death can be avoided."

Socrates said, "That will be impossible. That will be more deathly than death, because to talk about truth is the only way I know to be. It will be worse than death. So please kill me, because if you leave me and you say I have to keep quiet, it will be impossible. That's not the way I am.

"To talk about truth is the only business I know -- the ONLY business I know. It is the only way I am. I cannot promise that I will stop talking truth because even if I stop, even in my silence only truth will be spoken. So I cannot promise that.

You better kill me" -- and he was killed.

This is very meaningful. A Socrates is a Socrates. A Socrates is a Socrates, and there is no other way. All explanations are explanations AFTER. But don't be bothered about them. Love if you can -- and if you cannot love Jesus, forget about him and find somebody else you can love. Don't be bothered about explanations and reasonings and proofs.

Only love will help you to understand, nothing else. When you love a person --

whosoever he is: Jesus or Krishna -- when you love a person, you immediately understand that that's the way he is. Then you don't want him to be otherwise.

Love never wants to change anybody. Love accepts, understands. Question 6

IS THERE ANY MYSTERY BEHIND YOUR ANSWER WHEN YOU ALSO TELL

THE NAME OF THE QUESTIONER? PLEASE EXPLAIN IT -- BUT PLEASE DON'T TELL MY NAME BECAUSE SOMETIMES IT IS TOO HEAVY.

This is from a sannyasin.… I will not tell you the name, because deep down she wants her name to be told. This is not the first time she has asked the question; I have been avoiding this question many times.

Deep down she wants her name to be told so that it becomes a part of history, part of the record. This is her last effort now. She is trying to play a trick by saying, "Please don't tell my name," so that I can be provoked.

But you cannot provoke me.… Come Follow To You, Vol 1 Chapter #7

Chapter title: I am not come to call the righteous 27 October 1975 am in Buddha Hall

MATTHEW 9

9 AND AS JESUS PASSED FORTH FROM THENCE, HE SAW A MAN, NAMED

MATTHEW, SITTING AT RECEIPT OF CUSTOM: AND HE SAITH UNTO HIM, FOLLOW ME. AND HE AROSE, AND FOLLOWED HIM.

.10 AND IT CAME TO PASS, AS JESUS SAT AT MEAT IN THE HOUSE, BEHOLD, MANY PUBLICANS AND SINNERS CAME AND SAT DOWN WITH

HIM AND HIS DISCIPLES.

11 AND WHEN THE PHARISEES SAW IT, THEY SAID UNTO HIS DISCIPLES, WHY EATETH YOUR MASTER WITH PUBLICANS AND

SlNNERS?

12 BUT WHEN JESUS HEARD THAT, HE SAID UNTO THEM, THEY THAT BE

WHOLE NEED NOT A PHYSICIAN, BUT THEY THAT ARE SICK.

13 BUT GO YE AND LEARN WHAT THAT MEANETH, I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE: FOR I AM NOT COME TO CALL THE RIGHTEOUS, BUT SINNERS TO REPENTANCE.

LUKE 9

23 AND HE SAID TO THEM ALL, IF ANY MAN WILL COME AFTER ME, LET

HIM DENY HIMSELF, AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS DAILY, AND FOLLOW ME.

24 FOR WHOSOEVER WILL SAVE HIS LIFE SHALL LOSE IT: BUT

WHOSOEVER WILL LOSE HIS LIFE FOR MY SAKE, THE SAME SHALL SAVE

IT.

25 FOR WHAT IS A MAN ADVANTAGED, IF HE GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD, AND LOSE HIMSELF, OR BE CAST AWAY?

RELIGION IS BASICALLY, essentially, a rebellion. It is not conformity, it is not belonging to any organization, society, church, because all belonging comes out of fear -- and religion is freedom. There is fear in being alone. One likes to belong

-- to a nation, tb a church, to a society, because when you belong to the crowd you forget your loneliness. It does not disappear, but you become oblivious to it.

You deceive yourself, you create a dream around you, as if you are not alone. You remain alone all the same; this is just an intoxicant.

Religion is not an intoxicant. It does not give you unconsciousness, it gives you awareness. And awareness is rebellious. When you become aware, you cannot belong to any society, to any nation, to any church, because when you become aware you become aware of the austere beauty of aloneness. You become aware of the music that is continuously happening within your soul... but you have never allowed yourself to be alone to hear it, to be in rapport with it, to be one with it.

Religion is not conformity because all conformity is mechanical. You do certain things because you are expected to do them. You do them because you have to live with people and you have to follow their rules; you do them because you have been conditioned to do them. You go to church, you go to temple, you pray, you follow rituals, but everything is empty. Unless your heart is in it, everything is dead and mechanical. You may do everything exactly as it is prescribed, with no error -- it may be perfect -- but then, too, it is dead.

I have heard that President Kennedy had to sign so many letters, autographs and personalized pictures that a small mechanism was invented for him. The machine used to sign for him, and the signature was so perfect that no expert was able to say which was mechanical and which was true -- not even President Kennedy himself was able to say which was false and which was true. Malcolm Muggeridge reports that when Kennedy was killed they forgot to turn the machine off, so it continued. The President continued to sign personalized letters even when he was dead. A mechanism is a mechanism.

You become a Christian: then you become a mechanism. You go on behaving as if you really loved Christ, but that 'as if' has to be remembered. You become a Buddhist: you go on behaving as if you follow Buddha, but that 'as if' should not be forgotten. Your signature may be perfect, but it is coming out of a dead mechanism.

Religion is not conformity. Conformity is between the individual and the past, and religion is something between the individual and the present -- poetry is something between the individual and the future. Conformity means to conform with those people who are no more, the dead -- to conform with Moses, with Mahavir. Now to conform with jesus is a dead thing; you are conforming with the past. If you relate to the present, it is totally different. It revolutionizes you; it gives you a rebirth.

Conformity is between the individual and the society. Religion is something between the individual and existence itself. Society is our creation: God created Adam -- not humanity; God created Eve -- not humanity. God creates individuals; humanity is our fiction.

But the fiction can take possession of you and you can forget the real and cling to the fiction. I know persons who want to love humanity and they cannot love another human being. Where is humanity and how are you going to love humanity? You can only make empty gestures in the air.

Humanity is nowhere. Wherever you come across it, you will come across real, concrete human beings. Humanity is an abstraction, a mere word. It has no reality in it -- a soapbubble, nothing more. You can only come across real human beings. To love a real human being is very difficult, but to love humanity is very easy. It is almost as if you love nobody. To love humanity is equal to loving nobody. Then there is no problem, no difficulty.

Religion is something that happens between you and the concrete existence. It is not concerned with fictions. And religion is not tradition. Tradition belongs to time; religion belongs to eternity. To move into religion you have to move in the eternal now. Religion has no history. In this, the West has to learn something from the East.

In the East we have never bothered about history. The reason... the reason is simple. All history is about time, that which happens in time is recorded in history. History is a dead book. We have never bothered about history because religion belongs to eternity: you cannot record it as an event; it is an eternal process. You can only record the essential fact of it, the essential truth of it, not the ripples that are made in the river of time.

That's why if you go to a Jain temple and see the twenty-four TEERTHANKARAS you will be confused about who is who. They all look alike.

You will not be able to make any sense out of it -- why do these twenty-four TEERTHANKARAS of the Jains all look alike? They cannot be alike -- they existed in different ages, they were different individuals -- but we have not bothered about events in time. 'Body' is an event in time. The difference in bodies is past history, but the innermost being, which is in eternity, is the same

within me, within you, within everybody. The form differs, but the innermost center is the same. Those twenty-four TEERTHANKARAS in the Jain temples say something about the innermost being. That's why they have been sculptured to be similar. Look at Buddha. He also looks like Mahavir: there is no difference.

They are not facts, they are truths.

Religion is not concerned with facts, it is concerned with truth. The facts can be learned from books -- truth, never. If you become too involved with the facts, your eyes will be clouded and confused, and you will not be able to know the truth. Beware of facts! -- they can lead you astray. Sort out the truth. Always try to find the truth; don't be bothered too much about facts. Facts are irrelevant.

That which changes is the fact and that which remains always the same is the truth. Your body is a fact: one day you were a child, now you are a young man or an old man; one day you were born, one day you will die -- the body changes.

But the YOU who abides in the body, who has made it a temporary abode -- that

'you' is eternal, that is the truth. It is formless, it has no qualities. It is immortal; it is eternity.

Religion is not a tradition, so you cannot borrow religion. You will have to risk yourself; you will have to earn it. You will have to stake your life for it; that is the only way there is. You cannot get it cheap. If you want to get it cheap, you will get a counterfeit.

Religion is not consolation. It is, on the contrary, a challenge: God challenges man, God haunts man, God goes on crying, "Return! Enthrone me!" He will not leave you at rest. He will go on knocking at your doors; He will go on creating storms in your being, in your spirit; He will go on stirring you. He will not allow you to settle for anything less. Unless you attain to the ultimate you will not be allowed to rest. Religion is a challenge, it is a great storm. It is like death; it is not a consolation.

The so-called religions, the organized religions, are consolations. They console you, they hide your wounds. They don't stir you, they don't call and invoke you.

They don't ask you to be adventurous, they don't ask you to be daring, they don't attract you to move in a dangerous life. They are like lubricants.

In a society with so many people you need lubricants around you so that there is not so much conflict. You can move easily, movement is not very difficult, and you don't rub against your neighbor. No conflict arises -- the lubricant goes on flowing around you.

You go to church as a lubricant. It helps, it helps in a social way; it is a formality.

If you fulfill it, you become respectable. It is just like becoming a member of the Rotary Club -- it is respectable, it helps. You become a member of a church and that too helps. You become a member of a religion and that too helps. People think you are religious.

When people believe you are religious, then you can deceive them more easily.

When you have a garb around you of religiousness, you have a potential weapon with you. Your religion is a consolation to yourself and a respectability. In fact it is politics, a diplomacy -- part of your struggle to survive, part of your ambition, part of the whole politics of the ego. It is power politics.

These things have tc be remembered when you try to understand Jesus. Religion is not morality either. Morality, again, is just the rules of the game. Those who want to play the game of society have to follow the rules of it -- just like when you play cards you have to follow certain rules. Not that those rules have any ultimacy about them, not that they come from God. You create the game; you create the rules, you follow the rules. But if you want to play, you have to follow the rules.

Morality has nothing ultimate in it. That's why every society has its own morality, every culture has its own morality. One thing can be moral in India and immoral in America; another thing can be moral in America and may be immoral in India. If morality was really real, then it could not differ.

In India, to divorce a woman or a man is immoral. It is not thought to be good.

Once you are married you have to live with your partner. But in America, if you live with a woman you don't love, it will be thought immoral. If you don't love, then it is immoral to sleep with that woman. Only love, only a deep love, allows you to be with the woman. Otherwise, leave her. Don't deceive her; don't waste her life.

Morality is a game; it changes. From society to society, age to age, period to period, it goes on changing. It depends, it has nothing ultimate about it.

But religion is ultimate. It has nothing to do with America or India. It has something to do with a new consciousness within the individual. It is a sunrise in the individual, it is a new being arising and expanding in the individual. You have a new look, you have new eyes through it. You can see the old problems, but they disappear. Not that they are solved -- they simply disappear, they dissolve. With a new eye, they cannot be there. You have a new vision, a new dimension.

These things have to be remembered because when a Jesus -- a man like Jesus -- comes, these things become the problem.

I have heard an Arabian proverb: it says -- "Show a man too many camels' bones, or show them to him too often, and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one."

"Show a man camels' bones too many times, or too often, and" -- the Arabian saying says -- "that man will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one." This happens when a Jesus comes to the world. You have seen so many phoney priests, you have seen so many hocus-pocus preachers, you have seen so many scholars, not knowing anything but creating much fuss about it, that when a Jesus comes you cannot recognize him. Whenever a Jesus or a Buddha comes, it becomes almost impossible to recognize him. For the majority, it is almost impossible. Only a few rare beings who have some potentiality or who are a little alert -- only they can have a few glimpses: To recognize a Jesus is a great achievement because that means you have a certain consciousness which can relate to Jesus. You have a certain quality which can relate to Jesus: you are already on the way to becoming a Jesus yourself. You can only recognize that which you already have within you -- opening, flowering. It may be just a bud, but you can recognize a little bit; your eyes are not completely closed.

There are priests who are Pretenders. To them, religion is a trade. It is a livelihood, not their life. To Jesus, religion is life; to the rabbis, to the priests, it is a livelihood. Then there are scholars who go on talking about nothing -- and they can talk so much, they are so articulate, that you will never be able to

recognize the fact that, deep within, they are empty.

I have heard about one international competition. A competition was arranged and essays were invited from many countries. The subject of the competition was

'The Elephant'. The Englishman immediately went to South Africa with cameras and a group of followers, and he investigated the whole thing. He came back after six months and wrote a book -- wellprinted, illustrated. The title of the book was HUNTING THE ELEPHANT IN SOUTH AFRICA.

The Frenchman never went anywhere. He simply went, every day, to visit the elephant house in the zoo in Paris. After two or three weeks he started to write a book -- a very carelessly printed book, not even hard-cover, just a paperback. The title of the book was THE LOVE LIFE OF THE ELEPHANT.

The Indian, who had been appointed by the Indian Government, was a man who had never seen an elephant because he had always remained in the Himalayas.

He was a great yogi and poet and Sanskrit scholar. He never even went to the zoo. He wrote a big book, a great treatise. The title was THE DIVINE

ELEPHANT. It was written in the form of poetry and he quoted great Sanskrit books, from the Vedas to Shree Aurobindo. Anybody who read the book had the impression that this man had never seen an elephant. He was a poet, he may have seen one in his dreams. He talked about the elephant which was seen by Buddha's mother before he was conceived -- mythology, a white elephant.

And last of all, the Germans. They appointed six professors of philosophy to write the book. They went all over the world, to all the museums and libraries, to study everything that is written about the elephant. They never went to see any elephant or any zoo -- just museums and libraries. They searched all over, they took almost six years, and they wrote a book -- twelve volumes, almost an Encyclopaedia Britannica. The title of the book was A SHORT INTRODUCTION

TO THE STUDY OF THE ELEPHANT! Professors of philosophy -- what do they have to do with elephants? And that, too, a short introduction -- a prolegomena.

It was not even about the elephant. It was just an INTRODUCTION to the study of the elephant.

When a Jesus comes, you are already too much in the know. You have read the books, you have listened to the scholars, you have listened to the priests. You are too full of ideas and when Jesus, or a man like Jesus, comes, you simply cannot recognize him. The live animal is there and you have become too addicted to the dead bones. To recognize Jesus means you will have to put aside all that you know already.

Jesus was not murdered by bad men, he was not murdered by criminals; he was murdered by very respectable rabbis. In fact, religious people killed him.

Religion is never in danger from irreligious people because they don't bother about it. Religion is always in danger from the so-called religious, because their whole life is at stake. If Jesus is right, then all the rabbis are wrong. If Jesus is right, then the whole tradition is wrong. If Jesus is right, then the whole Church is wrong.

Everybody stands against Jesus. Jesus is always alone, very alone. You cannot understand his aloneness. Whatsoever you know about aloneness is a physical aloneness. Sometimes no one is in the house, the house is dark, and you are alone. The electricity has also gone so you cannot put on the light, you cannot put on the radio or the TV. You are suddenly thrown into aloneness. But this is a physical sense of aloneness; you don't know what Jesus feels.

He is spiritually alone, amidst strangers, where it is so difficult to find a friend who will recognize you. He goes on looking into each and everybody he meets on the path, penetrating, gazing deep in the eyes. Nobody recognizes him, nobody understands him. Rather, people misunderstand him. They are ready to jump into misunderstanding, but nobody is ready in any way to understand him.

Whenever there is a religious being, the so-called religious are all against him.

They would like to kill him immediately so the danger is avoided and their security again becomes certain.

Remember, he was killed by very good people! You go... it is still the same. Go around Poona and ask the so-called good people: you will always find them against me. They have to be. Their whole way of life is in danger. They are

afraid to even listen to me, because who knows? -- a truth may strike home. They won't come near me, they won't read my books; they cannot take that much risk. They always have opinions of their own.

One day it happened: I witnessed a beautiful scene. A man was talking to Mulla Nasrudin. The man said, "Why are you so miserly and so stingy towards your wife?"

Mulla said, "You must have heard something wrong about me because, as far as I know, I am generally a very generous man."

The man became angry, because whenever you challenge anybody's opinion he becomes angry. He became angry and he said, "Stop defending yourself.

Everybody in the whole town knows that you are too hard on your wife. Even for day-today expenses she has to beg you like a beggar. And stop defending yourself. Everybody knows it!"

Nasrudin said, "Okay, if you are so angry, I will not defend myself. But can I say one thing, just one thing?"

The man said loudly, "What?" Nasrudin said, "That I am not married."

Since that day that man is against Nasrudin. Once I met him and I told him that since Mulla Nasrudin is not married, the whole thing is baseless. "Your whole argument is baseless. Why are you angry?"

He said, "It makes no difference, it is only a question of time. Wait, sooner or later he will be married and then I will be right! I am still telling the truth. It is only a question of time. Wait, my opinion cannot be wrong."

People cling to their opinions. They are baseless but still they cling. The more baseless the opinion, the more people cling to it. If it is based on right grounds there is no need to cling; it is true in itself. When it is baseless your clinging is needed because only your clinging can become the base. Remember always, if you know something is true, you never get angry if somebody contradicts it. You get angry in the same proportion as you know it is not true. Anger shows that you have just a mere opinion, no knowledge.

People were very much against Jesus because he was ruining all their edifices.

They were thinking their houses were built on rocks and just his presence showed them that their houses were built on sand, they were already falling.

They jumped on him, they killed him. He was not killed by the political powers, he was killed by the pseudo-religious powers, by the priests.

This is my understanding: that if religion has disappeared in the world today, it is not because of science -- no. It is not because of atheists -- no. It is not because of rationalists -- no. It is because of pseudo-religion. There is too much pseudoreligion and it is so bogus, phoney, that only people who are phoney can be interested in religion. People who have even an iota of reality will go against it, they will rebel.

Real people have always been rebellious, because reality wants to assert its being, to express its freedom. Real people are not slaves. Remember this, then we will enter into the sutras.

AND AS JESUS PASSED FORTH FROM THENCE, HE SAW A MAN, NAMED

MATTHEW, SITTING AT THE RECEIPT OF CUSTOM: AND HE SAITH UNTO

HIM, FOLLOW ME. AND HE AROSE, AND FOLLOWED HIM.

The whole thing seems to be a little unreal. The world has changed so much. It looks more like drama than real life. Jesus comes and says to a man who is sitting in the customs, working there -- maybe a clerk or somebody -- he simply looks at him and says, "Follow me." AND HE AROSE, AND FOLLOWED HIM. It looks like a drama, not reality; because the reality that we know today is absolutely different. The world has changed, the human mind has changed.

The human mind has been trained for three centuries to doubt. Before Jesus, for centuries continuously, the human mind lived on trust, lived on the simplicity of the heart. People's eyes were clear. This Matthew, an ordinary man, must have looked into Jesus' eyes, the way he walked, the presence that he brought with himself, the penetrating look that stirred the heart. It touched something deep.

It rarely happens today. I come across so many people, but rarely do I see a person so open that whatsoever I say simply reaches to the heart and becomes a seed immediately, with no time wasted. Otherwise, people are protecting.

They come to me and they say they would like to surrender, they would like to follow me, but I see a great armor around them -- very subtle, but from everywhere they are protecting. They won't allow any space for me to enter in them. If I try too hard, then they become too protective. They go on saying that they would like to relax and let go: their mouths say something, their bodies show something else. Their thoughts are one thing; their reality is just the opposite.

People were simple in Jesus' time. They must have just looked, and when Jesus said, "Follow me," they simply followed. It was natural. When these gospels were written, those who were writing these gospels were not aware that some day these things would look fictitious. It was so natural in those days that the gospel writers could not imagine that some day the thing would look false, would not sound rea].

It is happening now all over the world. Move with Buddha -- a different quality of humanity surrounds him.

Prasanjit, a king, came to see Buddha. He was Buddha's father's friend -- both were kings -- and when he heard that his friend's son had renounced the world, he was very worried. When Buddha came to his capital town, he went to see him and to persuade him. He said to Buddha, "What have you done? If you are not happy with your father, come and be in my palace. Get married to my daughter -

- I have only one daughter -- and this kingdom will be yours. But don't move like a beggar; it hurts. You are the only son of your father -- what are you doing?

Both these kingdoms will be yours. Come to my home."

Buddha looked into Prasanjit's eyes and said, "Just one question. Have you attained to any happiness through your kingdom? Just say YES or NO. If you say YES, I follow you. If you say NO, then you have to follow me."

Prasanjit fell to Buddha's feet and said, "No. I renounce; initiate me. I leave all this" -- a very different quality of immediacy.

The same thing happened to me, the same. One of my father's friends was a lawyer, a very cunning lawyer. When I came back home from the university, of course my parents were worried. They wanted me to get married and settle, but they didn't want to say it directly to me. They knew that to say it directly would be like interfering in my life, and they are very non-aggressive -- silent, simple.

So they thought about their friend and they asked the friend to come.

He came with all his arguments ready -- he was a lawyer! He said, "If I convince you that marriage is a must, will you get married? "

I said, "Of course. But if you cannot, then are you ready tc leave your wife and children?"

The man had not thought of that! He said, "Then I will have to think."

He never came back. The quality of the mind has changed -- otherwise there was an opportunity for him, an opening of the sky. I waited and waited, but he never came. He became afraid because everybody knows that life, as you have lived it, has not given you anything. But one needs courage to say that, because just in saying that, a deep renunciation happens. You have already moved on another path once you realize the fact that life, as you have lived it, has been futile, fruitless, irrelevant.

Saith Jesus unto him: FOLLOW ME. AND HE AROSE, AND FOLLOWED HIM.

What a beautiful world, what a beautiful consciousness! You can have that consciousness, and through it everything becomes possible, even the impossible becomes possible.

Try. Drop the doubts, because whenever you doubt you are destructive. Doubt is destructive; trust is creative. Doubt kills, doubt is poison. Trust gives you life, life abundant, infinite life, because when you trust you relax.

In trust there is no fear, in trust there is no

ht the whole opportunity is lost in who struggle. You let go, you flow with the river. You don't even swim, the river takes you to the ocean. It is already going to the ocean. You fight unnecessarily and, through fight, you destroy your energy.

Through fight you get frustrated and through fight the whole opportunity is lost in which you could have danced, in which you could have celebrated. The same energy becomes a struggle. The same energy can become surrender.

AND IT CAME TO PASS, AS JESUS SAT AT MEAT IN THE HOUSE, BEHOLD, MANY PUBLICANS AND SINNERS CAME AND SAT DOWN WITH HIM

AND HIS DISCIPLES.

This has to be understood. It is a very delicate point: that whenever a man like Jesus is on the earth, sinners recognize him before your so-called righteous people -- because sinners have nothing to lose except their sins. Sinners don't have opinionated minds; they don't have theologies and scriptures. Sinners have a sense that their lives have been futile, sinners have an urgency to repent and return.

But the so-called respectable people -- trustees of temples and churches, mayors, politicians, leaders, pundits, scholars -- have much to lose and no urgency of being, no intensity to transform themselves -- no desire in fact. They are dull and dead. Sinners are more alive than your so-called saints, and sinners are more courageous than your so-called saints. To come near, to come close to Jesus, needs courage.

Have you watched that your so-called saints are not really religious, but simply people who are afraid? Afraid of hell, afraid of God's punishment... or greedy, greedy and ambitious to achieve heaven: the awards and blessings of God. But they are not truly religious. When you are truly religious you don't bother about hell and heaven, you don't bother about anything. This very moment you are so deeply in heaven -- who bothers about the heaven which comes after death?

Sinners are more courageous, they risk. And, BEHOLD, many PUBLICANS AND SINNERS CAME AND SAT DOWN WITH HIM AND HIS DISCIPLES.

AND WHEN THE PHARISEES SAW IT -- the respectable people, the righteous

--

THEY SAID UNTO HIS DISCIPLES, WHY EATETH YOUR MASTER WITH

PUBLICANS AND SINNERS?

Their mind is always concerned with such foolish things: with whom you are eating, with whom you are sitting. They don't look directly into Jesus; they are more interested in whom he is sitting with. He is sitting with sinners -- that is their problem now. Jesus does not create any ripple in their being, but the sinners create anxiety. How can they come and sit with this Master?

Sinners are there. The condemned people for whom they have invented hell are sitting there. Your so-called saints won't allow those sinners to be so close --

never. They would not like to be in their company at all. Why? Why are your saints so afraid of sinners?

They are afraid of their own inner fear, afraid that if they are with sinners it is more possible that the sinners WILL CONVERT THEM than the possibility of the sinners being converted by the saints. They are afraid. They are afraid of the sinner inside them. That's why there is the fear of the sinner outside. Always remember that whatsoever you say ultimately refers to you, not to anything else.

If you are afraid to go to a place where drunkards gather together, it shows simply that you have a certain tendency towards alcohol, intoxicants, and you are afraid. Otherwise why fear? -- you can be at ease there. Nobody can corrupt you except yourself.

THEY SAID UNTO HIS DISCIPLES.… This too has to be remembered: they didn't say it to him. I know those Pharisees who are around. They will say it to you, they will not come to say it to me. They say it to the disciples -- because even to come to Jesus to say it is dangerous. The man may hypnotize you, it is risky -- just talk to the disciples. Such impotent people have become important; they hold all the key posts in the world, they hold all power, and they are absolutely impotent. They are not even ready to come and face Jesus.

WHY EATETH YOUR MASTER WITH PUBLICANS AND SINNERS? -- as

if sinners are not human beings. And as if they themselves are not sinners. Who is there who can say, "I am not a sinner"? To be here in this world is to be somehow or other involved in sin. Nobody can claim otherwise.

When the whole humanity is involved in sin, how can you be out of it? You are part. If sin is happening somewhere, I am part of it because I am part of

humanity. I create the climate -- maybe a very tiny part of it, but I also create the climate. A Vietnam happens: I am part of it; I am the sinner. How can I think of myself as out of it? Whatsoever any human being is doing anywhere, he is part of me and I am part of him. We are members of each other.

A real saint always feels humble because he knows that he is also a sinner. Only a false saint feels proud and thinks that he is above. Nobody is above. If there is any God, He must be part of your sin also. And He knows it, because He is involved in you. He beats in your heart, He breathes in you, and if you commit sin, He is a part of it. Only so-called saints -- dummies, not real -- can think otherwise and be proud.

BUT WHEN JESUS HEARD THAT, HE SAID UNTO THEM, THEY THAT BE

WHOLE NEED NOT A PHYSICIAN, BUT THEY THAT ARE SICK.

He simply said, "Those who are sick need the physician. I am the physician, so the sick people have come to me." It should be the criterion: around a saint, sinners will gather together. This should be the criterion. If you see a saint and only respectable people are around him, he is no saint at all. The physician is false, because whenever a great physician comes into the world, people who are ill are bound to rush to him. They are bound to crowd the man because their need is there. They want to be whole and healed, and the physician has come.

THEY THAT BE WHOLE NEED NOT A PHYSICIAN, BUT THEY THAT ARE

SICK. But the reverse is not true, remember. A sinner needs a saint, but if you think that you don't need a saint, it does not mean that you are not a sinner. A sick man seeks a physician and there is no need for a healthy man to seek a physician, but, just by not seeking a physician, don't deceive yourself that you are healthy. Remember that the reverse is not true. That's why in the next sutra Jesus says:

BUT GO YE AND LEARN WHAT THAT MEANETH...

He said, "This is the truth: sinners are bound to seek me and sick people are bound to come to me. I am a physician of their soul. Those who are healthy, I am not for them; they need not come. BUT GO YE AND LEARN WHAT THAT

MEANETH; it is not simple. Go and meditate over it. You may be ill yourself and you need me, but you have just been thinking that you are not ill."

The greatest illness that can happen to a man is when he is ill and thinks that he is not ill. Then nobody can cure him, then no medicine will help him. Then the physician may be next door, but the man will die uncured. This is the greatest misfortune that can befall a man: to be sick and to think himself healthy.

BUT GO YE AND LEARN WHAT THAT MEANETH, I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE:

This is one of the most significant sayings that Jesus has ever uttered. This is his whole secret: I WILL HAVE MERCY, AND NOT SACRIFICE. Mahavir is not so merciful, Mohammed not so merciful, even the compassionate Buddha is not so merciful as Jesus; because they all say that you will have to sacrifice, you will have to change your ways and you will have to account for your past karmas.

In India we have talked about compassion long enough, but we have continuously been talking about karma. One has to keep all accounts and whatever bad deeds you have done, you will have to cancel them by good deeds.

You will have to come to a balance; only then can the accounts be closed. This is what Jesus means by sacrifice.

He says: I WILL HAVE MERCY. This is his key secret. What does he mean when he says: I will have mercy? He means that it is almost impossible for you to cancel all the bad karmas that you have committed because the whole thing is tremendous, vast. Millions of lives you have been doing things and all that you have done has been wrong, has to be wrong, because you have been unconscious. How can you do anything good while unconscious? You have done millions of things, but all are wrong.

While one is asleep one cannot do anything that is good. Virtue is impossible in unconsciousness, only sin is possible. Unconsciousness is the source of sin. You have done so many sins that it seems almost impossible. How will you get out of this? -- the very effort doesn't seem probable, the very effort seems hopeless.

Jesus says, "Mercy will do it. Just surrender to me," Jesus says, "and I will have mercy." What does he mean? He simply means that "If you can trust me, and

trust that you have been forgiven, you are forgiven" -- because all those karmas have been committed in an unconscious sleep. You are not responsible for them.

This is the key message of Jesus: that man is not responsible unless he is alert. It is as if a child has committed a sin. No court will punish the child because they will say the child does not know, he has done it unaware. He had no intention of doing it, it has simply happened. He is not responsible. Or a madman has committed a crime, murdered somebody. Once it is proved that the man is mad, the court has to forgive because a madman cannot be responsible. Or a drunkard has done something and it is proved that he was drunk, absolutely drunk. You can, at the most, punish him for his drinking. You cannot punish him for the act.

Jesus says, "I have come. I will have mercy." It does not mean that it is up to Jesus to forgive you, remember. That has been a mistake. Christians have been thinking that since Jesus is the only begotten son of God, and he is merciful, there is no need to do anything. Just Fay to him, confess your sin. He is merciful, he will forgive you.

In fact, Jesus is just an excuse. He is saying this: that if you become alert, and become aware that whatsoever you have been doing up to now, hitherto, you were unconscious -- the very awareness that you were unconscious, the very realization, forgives, becomes the forgiveness. Not that Jesus is doing anything.

It is just like when I promise you that if you surrender to me, I will transform you. There is no promise and I am not going to do anything. You surrender, that's all -- and the transformation happens. But it will be difficult for you to surrender if there is nobody to surrender to. Then you will say, "To whom do I surrender?" It will be almost impossible, absurd. Just surrendering, without anybody there to surrender to? You will feel yourself absurd: what are you doing? -- somebody is needed to surrender to. That somebody is just an excuse to surrender.

When I say, "I promise I will transform you," I am not going to do anything, because nobody can transform you. But if you surrender, in the very effort.…

When you surrender, the ego is surrendered and transformation happens --

because the ego is the only barrier. It is because of the ego that you are not changing; it is because of the ego that your heart is burdened by rock and you are not throbbing well. Once the rock has been removed.…

You have become so addicted to the rock that you say, "Unless I find some golden lotus feet, I am not going to surrender this rock."

So I say, "Okay, let my feet be the excuse." You have become so addicted to the rock that you think that unless you find lotus feet, golden feet, unless you find a god, you are not going to surrender, because the rock is very valuable. It is because of your foolishness that I have to play god. So I say, "Okay, let me be the god. But please, surrender your rock so your heart starts throbbing well; you start feeling, loving, being."

When Jesus says, "I will have mercy," he is saying the same thing. He is saying, "I am here to forgive you. You just surrender. Come follow me, and I WILL HAVE

MERCY AND NOT SACRIFICE: FOR L AM NOT COME TO CALL THE

RIGHTEOUS, BUT SINNERS TO REPENTANCE." This is tremendously beautiful. Every time a Jesus, a Buddha or a Krishna happens, this is what they come for.

I AM NOT COME TO CALL THE RIGHTEOUS.… In the first place, they never listen to the call. The righteous are dead people; they are deaf, they are too full of their own noise. And they are so certain about their virtues. They don't have any earth to stand on, but in their beliefs, in their imagination, they think that they are standing on a well-founded ground. They have no foundation -- their edifice is just as if a child has made a house of playing cards: a little breeze and the house will be gone. But they believe in it. The house exists only in their imagination.

In the first place, they will not listen to the call. In the second place, if you insist too much, they will get angry. In the third place, if you are stubborn, as Jesus was, they will kill you. And in the fourth place, when you are dead, they will worship you. This is how things go.

FOR I AM NOT COME TO CALL THE RIGHTEOUS, BUT SINNERS TO

REPENTANCE. In fact, to realize that you are a sinner is already a transformation. The moment you recognize that you are a sinner, you have repented. There is no other repentance.

Look at it this way. In the night you are fast asleep and dreaming. If you realize that you are dreaming, what does it mean? It means that you are no longer asleep now. Once you become aware that you are dreaming, you are aware.

Once you become aware that you are asleep, you are no longer asleep -- finished. The sleep has already left you.

To remain a sinner one needs to continuously think to himself that he is not a sinner, he is a virtuous man. To hide the sin, one needs the confidence that one is righteous, not a sinner. Sometimes the people who call themselves righteous think that even if they sin sometimes, it is just to protect their virtue, to protect their righteousness.

It happened: India and Pakistan were at war and everybody was in a war mood.

Even Jain saints were in a war mood. At least THEY shouldn't have been -- they have been preaching non-violence for centuries. But I came across the news that Acharya Tulsi, one of the greatest Jain MUNIS, had given his blessings to the war. What did he say?

He said it was to protect 'the country of non-violence'. "Even if violence has to be done, it has to be done -- to protect the country of Buddha, Mahavir, Gandhi." Do you see the trick? Non-violence has to be protected by violence. One has to go to war so that peace reigns. I have to kill you because I love you; I am doing it for your sake.

A man who thinks he is a sinner has already surrendered. He realizes, "I am a sinner and I have done nothing else except sin and sin. It is not that sometimes I have committed a sin. Rather, on the contrary, I am a sinner. It is not a question of actions; it is a continuity of unconsciousness. I am a sinner and whether I have done something wrong or not is irrelevant. Sometimes I don't do anything wrong, but still I am a sinner."

To be a sinner is a quality of unconsciousness. It has nothing to do with actions.

For twenty-four hours you may not have done anything wrong -- you may have remained in the house, fasting, sitting silently, meditating; you have not done anything wrong -- but still you remain a sinner. If you are unconscious, you are a sinner.

Your being a sinner is not the result of the sins you have committed. Your being a sinner is simply the state of unconsciousness. You are not a sinner because you do sins. YOU DO SINS BECAUSE YOU ARE A SINNER. It is a continuity of unconsciousness -- a continuum, without any gap. Once you realize this, the very realization is an awakening. The morning has come, it has knocked on the door: you are aware. Fragile is the awareness as yet, very delicate -- you can fall asleep again, yes, that is a possibility -- but still you are aware. You can use this moment and come out of bed.

... FOR I AM NOT COME COME TO CALL THE RIGHTEOUS BUT SINNERS

TO REPENTANCE.

AND HE SAID TO THEM ALL, IF ANY MAN WILL COME AFTER ME, LET

HIM DENY HIMSELF, AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS DAILY, AND FOLLOW ME.

IF ANY MAN WILL COME AFTER ME.… If you have decided to come after me, then this is what you have to do. This is the discipline, the only discipline Jesus ever gave: LET HIM DENY HIMSELF.

When you come to a man like Jesus, you have to drop your own ideas and your ego. You have to drop completely your own decisions because only if you drop your ideas, decisions, ego, can Jesus penetrate you. Soon you will not need Jesus

-- once you have dropped your ego, things will start happening to you on your own -- but as a first step: LET HIM DENY HIMSELF.

Look... you can come to me and surrender. But it is possible that the surrender may be your idea. Then it is no longer a surrender. The surrender is surrender when it is my idea, not yours. If it is your idea, then it is not surrender -- you are following your idea.

It happens every day. Somebody comes and I ask him, "Would you like to move into sannyas?"

He says, "Wait, I have to think about it."

I say to him, "If you think about it, then it will be your sannyas, not mine."

Then you think and you come to a conclusion, but it is your ego thinking and coming to a conclusion. Then you take sannyas, but you have missed the opportunity. When I asked you, the opportunity was there to take a jump. Had you taken it, without any consideration on your part, that would have been a repentance, a turning, a conversion. If you think that it is okay, but it is simply okay and nothing more, then you have come in, but it is your idea you are following. There is no surrender in it.

Deny yourself. And the second thing: AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS DAILY. A life with Jesus is a moment-to-moment life. It is not a planning for the future. It has no plan; it is spontaneous. One has to live moment to moment AND TAKE UP

HIS CROSS DAILY.

And why a cross? -- because surrender is death. And why a cross? -- because surrender is pain. Why a cross? -- because surrender is suffering. Your whole ego will suffer and burn. Your ideas, your past, your personality, will be on fire continuously. Hence, the cross. The cross is a symbol of death... and until you die, nothing is possible; until you die, the resurrection is not possible.

LET HIM DENY HIMSELF, AND TAKE UP HIS CROSS DAILY. This has to

be done daily, every morning. You cannot think that "Yes, I have surrendered once.

It is finished." It is not so easy. You will have to surrender a million times. You will have to surrender every moment because the mind is very cunning. It will try to reclaim you. If you think that you have surrendered once and it is finished, the mind will recapture you. It has to be done every moment -- until you are completely dead and a new entity has arisen, until a new man is born within you, until you are no more continuous with the past: a breakthrough has happened.

You will know it because you will not recognize yourself. Who are you? You will not be able to see how you were connected with the past. You will recognize only one thing -- that there has been a sudden gap. The line has been broken, the past has disappeared, and something new has entered within you which has nothing to do with the past, which is not connected with it at all. The religious man is not a modified man, the religious man is not a newly decorated man. The

religious man has nothing to do with the past. He is absolutely new.

FOR WHOSOEVER WILL SAVE HIS LIFE SHALL LOSE IT -- DON'T CLING TO

THE EGO.

FOR WHOSOEVER WILL SAVE HIS LIFE SHALL LOSE IT: BUT WHOSOEVER

WILL LOSE HIS LIFE FOR MY SAKE, THE SAME SHALL SAVE IT.

Lose it and you will have it; cling to it and you will lose it. Looks paradoxical, but it is a simple truth. The seed dies in the soil and becomes a great tree. But the seed can cling to its own self, go on protecting itself and defending itself, because for the seed it looks like death. The seed will never be able to see the plant, so it is a death.

You will never be able to see the man I am talking about, so it is a perfect death.

You cannot even imagine that man because if you can imagine him, it will be your continuity. You cannot hope about that man because if it is your hope, then your hope will be the bridge. No, you are completely in the dark about that new man -- that's why trust is needed.

I cannot prove it to you, I cannot argue about it, because the more I argue about it and prove it to you, the more it will become impossible for you. If you become convinced then the barrier is perfect because your conviction will be your conviction -- and the new will come only when 'you' have gone totally. All your convictions, ideologies, arguments, proofs, have gone -- wholesale -- and only absence is left. And in that absence, the heavens open and the spirit of God descends like a dove and lights on you.

BUT WHOSOEVER WILL LOSE HIS LIFE FOR MY SAKE, THE SAME SHALL

SAVE IT.

Why does Jesus insist: FOR MY SAKE? Look at the problem: if you are going to die completely and a new man is going to come only when you are no more,

then who will be the bridge between you and the new? Who will be the bridge? You cannot be the bridge otherwise the new will not be new; it will just be a modified old.

The Master becomes the bridge. He says, "Die silently. I am there to look after you. Move into death; I will take care so that the new can come in. Don't be worried, you relax... FOR MY SAKE."

That's why religion will never become a philosophy, it will never become a theology. It will never be based on arguments; it cannot be. The very nature of it forbids it. It will remain a trust. If you trust me, you can die easily without fear.

You know that I am there. You love me and you know that I love you, so why fear?

It happened: a young man, recently married, was going on his honeymoon. He was a samurai, a Japanese warrior. They were going on a boat to an island when suddenly a storm came. The boat was small and the storm was tremendously terrible, so there was every possibility that they would be drowned.

The wife became very much afraid. She started trembling. She looked at the samurai, her husband, but he was sitting silently. It was as if nothing was happening. And they were in the throes of death! At any moment the boat would go under water.

The woman said, "What are you doing? Why are you sitting like a statue?"

The samurai pulled his sword out of its sheath -- the wife could not believe it: what was he doing? -- and he put his naked sword right near the throat of the wife. She started laughing, and he said, "Why are you laughing? The sword is so near your throat -- just a little move and your head will go."

The wife said, "But it is in your hands, so there is no problem. The sword is dangerous, but it is in your hands."

The samurai put his sword back and said, "The storm is in my God's hands. The storm is dangerous, but it is in the hands of somebody whom I love and who loves me. That's why I am unafraid."

When the sword is in your Master's hand and he is going to kill you, if you trust

him, only then will you die peacefully, lovingly, gracefully. And out of that grace... and out of that peace... and out of that love... you will create the possibility where the new can arrive. If you die afraid, the new will not arrive.

You will simply die. That's why Jesus says: FOR MY SAKE -- let me be the bridge.

FOR WHAT IS A MAN ADVANTAGED, IF HE GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD, AND LOSE HIMSELF, OR BE CAST AWAY?

And remember, you can gain the whole world and lose yourself -- as people are doing all over the world, throughout time: gaining the world and losing themselves. Then one day they suddenly find that all they have gained is not theirs. Empty-handed they come; empty-handed they go. Nothing belongs to them. Then, anguish takes over.

FOR WHAT IS A MAN ADVANTAGED, IF HE GAIN THE WHOLE WORLD, AND LOSE HIMSELF, OR BE CAST AWAY? The only way to be

really intelligent in the world is first to gain yourself. Even if the whole world is to be lost, it is worth it. If you gain your own being, your own soul, your own innermost core, and the whole world is lost, it is worth it.

To gain that innermost core you will not only have to lose the world. You will have to lose the idea of yourself -- because that is the innermost barrier: the ego.

The ego is a false identity. Not knowing who you are, you go on thinking that you are somebody. That somebody -- the false identity -- is the ego. And unless the false goes, the true cannot enter.

Let the false go and the true is ready. Repent, return, answer; the kingdom of God is at hand.

Come Follow To You, Vol 1 Chapter #8

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