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1 November 1975 am in Buddha Hall

Question 1 "ROSES ARE RED

VIOLETS ARE BLUISH IF IT WASN'T FOR JESUS WE'D ALL BE JEWISH." PLEASE COMMENT.

WE STILL ARE. Jesus could not succeed. To be Jewish has nothing to do with any race; it is an attitude. To be Jewish means to be calculating, to be under the world of law and not love. To be Jewish means not to be poetic, but to be arithmetical. To be Jewish means not to be in awe of the wonder that surrounds you.

It is not just accidental that this whole century has been dominated by three Jews

-- Marx, Freud and Einstein -- because the world is materialistic. It has never been so materialistic as it is now. One Jew, Marx, invented the idea that life is nothing but economics. That's what I mean: the calculation. Even religion is economics, even poetry is economics. Marx says that even consciousness depends on economical situations; it is a by-product. Consciousness is a by- product of economic situations, the structure of the society. Marx is the perfect Jew. You cannot find a better specimen.

Then there is Freud who tried to invent the idea that the whole of life moves according to unconscious laws, instincts. There is no conscious event in human life; everything is dominated by the unconscious. He was a fatalist; fatalism is another idea that the world is run by dead rules.

To Marx, it is economics which rules everything. To Freud, it is unconscious instinct which rules everything. Then there is Einstein who tried to invent the

idea that the whole of life is nothing but a combination of atoms. All three are calculators.

To be a Jew has nothing to do with the Jewish race. There are Jews who are Hindus, there are Jews who are Jains, there are Jews who are Buddhists. To be a Jew is an attitude.

Christ has not succeeded: Christians are Jews! Christ can succeed only when law is defeated by love, when matter is defeated by spirit, when language is defeated by silence, when prose is defeated by poetry. When life is not ruled by economic, instinctive, historical laws, but life is ruled by grace -- then Jesus succeeds.

So don't think that you are not Jews. Out of a hundred people, ninety-nine percent are Jews. Only sometimes one person is not Jewish. That person lives a life of love. He has no pattern to force his life into: he lives moment to moment; he flows from one moment to another moment with no idea of where he is going, with no goal. Then freedom happens.

Only in freedom is there consciousness, only in freedom is there God. God is total freedom. If you live moment to moment, not knowing where you are going, not knowing from where you are coming -- if the past is irrelevant and the future also, if only the present has any relevance, any reality -- you go beyond being Jewish.

Everybody is born a Jew. Rarely, very rarely, does somebody die not a Jew. That is a rare blessing. Just by calling yourselves Christians nothing is changed. Only labels change. The container changes, but the content remains the same.

Jesus has failed -- but not because his revolution was not worth succeeding. Jesus has failed because his revolution was too much for you, it was beyond you. Just to look that far away, that high, is impossible. Your eyes are fixed on the earth; you have completely forgotten the sky. And because you have forgotten the sky, you have forgotten that you have wings. Looking down, groping in the darkness of the earth, you have become creepers -- like a snake. You are no longer birds, birds of heaven.

Jesus failed because you are so deep in unconsciousness. And Jesus will go on failing; his very effort is such that success is almost impossible. As far as society is concerned, he may never succeed. Only with individuals is success possible.

Hence, all those who have known Ask the awakened: Buddha, Jesus, Krishna,

Zarathustra. You will always find their insistence is on the individual. They know well that at the most you can expect a few individuals to rise high. The greater part of humanity will do everything it can to hold onto its bondage, to remain secure in the imprisonment, to remain comfortable -- and live somehow, dragging life as a burden; and die somehow. The greater masses will not listen, will not understand, will not try to transform themselves. Religion is individual.

And religion has no name. Whenever somebody becomes religious, immediately he is no longer a Hindu, a Mohammedan, a Christian. He's simply religious. It is an understanding; it is a different kind of knowing, a different way of seeing.

And when you see differently, you see a different reality. The reality depends on your eyes. If your eyes change, the reality changes.

If you are calculating you will never be able to know more than matter, because calculation has its limitation. If you are too arithmetical, you will never be able to know that which is beauty, that which is good, that which is true. You will never be able to know, because calculation cannot lead to that.

How can you know a beautiful flower by being arithmetical? You can count the petals, but you will miss the beauty. You can count the parts, but you will miss the whole. And you are certain to miss the beauty which surrounds the flower, which exists like a climate around the flower, but cannot be caught hold of by counting the petals. You have to forget counting, you have to forget the mind that counts.

Mind is Jewish. Once you go beyond mind you enter a different world: the world which cannot be accounted for, which cannot be explained; which is a mystery and which remains a mystery. The deeper you go in it, the greater the mystery; the more you know, the less you know. And there comes a moment -- when you really know it, you know only one thing: that you don't know.

Question 2

OH, OSHO, TODAY I WANTED TO DANCE AS YOU WERE SPEAKING. AND

YOU EVEN MENTIONED KAZANTZAKIS WHOM I LOVE. BUT I FEEL

INHIBITED TO DANCE, THOUGH I WAS SITTING IN THE BACK. THE

ASHRAM FEELS CONSERVATIVE TO ME, BUT PROBABLY I DIDN'T DANCE

BECAUSE OF MY OWN CONSERVATISM. IS THIS A QUESTION?

Not at all. It is a confession.

The ashram is not conservative. But you all are conservative, and you make the ashram. The ashram is not mine, it is yours. If it was mine it wouldn't be conservative, but I am alone and I cannot make the ashram. I am a stranger here.

It consists of you, and you are conservative so the ashram becomes conservative.

It cannot go beyond you because you are the constituent parts. It is the total of your conservatisms.

But who bothers about it? If you are really in a state of dance, who bothers? Then you can dance even on the road. Maybe the police will come and take you to prison, but that's okay. What can you do? If you could stop the dance then it was not worth doing. It must have been a mind game, it must have been just an idea, an idea in the mind that you would like to dance.

But you did not really want to dance. When dance happens, it is not an idea in the mind; not at all. It is a tremendous energy in the body. It has its own force.

You are possessed, you cannot do anything about it, You forget the ashram, you forget the society, you forget the world. You are helpless; you are possessed by dance. Then something from the beyond enters.

It must have been just an idea in the mind. That's why you stopped it. Ideas can be stopped, but when you are possessed you cannot do anything about it. It happens; it is not done. And when it happens, it is divine. When you do it, it is human and ordinary.

It is not a question. It is a confession.

And you say that you love Kazantzakis. That, too, may be just an idea in the mind. People love things which they lack in their life. Reading ZORBA THE

GREEK you may love Zorba, but if you met Zorba you might not like him. He is such a totally different, altogether different, being than you. Even Kazantzakis was never at ease with Zorba. They were friends, Zorba was a real person, he is not just a fictional character. Even Kazantzakis was very uneasy with him, because he was a totally different type of man. He was an absolute hedonist, absolutely in the moment. Nothing else but happiness mattered.

Of course it looks very selfish. Only sad people look unselfish, happy people always look selfish. And happy people are always condemned. Because the whole society is unhappy, how dare you be happy? When everybody is so unhappy you must be very selfish to be happy. Don't smile when everybody is weeping and crying. And don't laugh. Life is very miserable, and it looks unmannerly.

A man like Zorba will never be accepted in any home. You would not allow him to stay with you because his very presence would be a disturbance. He does not believe in any morality. He knows only one morality: of happiness.

And I say to you, that is the only morality there is. All else is rubbish. Only a happy person can be moral. Only a happy person is not interested in making other persons unhappy; only a happy person creates an atmosphere around him where others can also be happy. But those others will not like the idea of your being happy when they are miserable.

You may love Zorba, but you wouldn't allow Zorba to become a guest in your home. He is unreliable. Such happy persons are dangerous! With sad, dead people you can rely. They will not escape with your wife! Zorba can escape with her. He lives in the moment. He has no future, no past; no heaven, no hell. He is true to the real moment.

But you may have loved him. This happens. This has to be understood.

You always love the opposite, the opposite attracts you. But only in fantasy. In reality it will be troublesome. People who have never loved go on reading poetry about love. Sometimes they even try to write poetry about love. I have come across many poets. This has been my observation: they have missed love in life, so they go on writing poetry about it. That's a substitute. A very pale substitute, useless, but a little satisfying still. At least something is here. Plastic flowers... but they look like flowers. Love is dangerous. To write poetry about love has no

danger in it.

Watch! If somebody is reciting a poem on love you may welcome him, but if the man really moves into love then the society will condemn him. You can read the story of Laila and Majanu, or Shiri and Farahad, and you will love it. But the people who were alive in the days of Majanu hated the man. Who loves a lover?

Try to be a lover and you will be condemned by the society. Write poetry about it and maybe the president will give you an award, you may get the Nobel Prize.

No lover ever gets a Nobel Prize -- people who write poetry about love get Nobel Prizes.

Man has become afraid of the real, but about the phony -- there is no danger in it.

Have you watched this? Sometimes you are sitting in your room or in your house, waiting or doing something, and somebody knocks at the door. You feel very bad: somebody has come to disturb you. You don't even want to answer, you would like to avoid it. You send the servant to the door, you don't go yourself. Or you send your child to tell the visitor that "Daddy is not at home."

But if somebody gives you a call on the phone then you are not disturbed. Then you immediately pick up the phone, because the reality is so far away.

Once it happened that a thief entered somebody's house and was caught --

caught because of an old habit. The phone was ringing. He could not resist, he had to answer it. A phone has to be answered! So he picked up the phone and he was caught. When he was asked, "Why did you bother?" he said, "I completely forgot that I was a thief in the house. When the phone rings, one has to answer."

One man was doing some research work on this phenomenon. He called twenty public phones and somebody or the other answered. Then he inquired of the man: "Why did you answer? It was not for you."

The man said, "I was just passing." "Then why did you answer?"

He said, "But the phone was ringing!"

It has a certain power. When the phone rings you have to answer. It has a certain quality about it, something hypnotic. You are not concerned with the phone, it is certain that it is not ringing for you. It is a public phone; you pass by it while you are going to your office. It is certain that it is not ringing for you. Why do you answer it?

When the reality is far away, it is very easy to answer. When the reality comes nearer, it becomes more and more difficult. The greatest difficulties of life are concerned with the people who are very real to you and very near to you: your wife, your children, your husband. They are very close, they are real. There is the trouble.

You may have liked Zorba. Even Kazantzakis liked the man -- when he was not with him! But when they lived together it was really difficult. Sometimes he would come home drunk, and he would start dancing and would dance the whole night. And he was a powerful man -- very strong. When you live with such a man it will be very difficult, unless you yourself are such a man.

Don't create substitutes. That's a trick of the mind to deceive you. Love the real, don't love the phony. It is better to love than to write poetry about love. Love will transform you, love will give you insight. Love will give you insight into the human heart -- into your own and into the other's. Through love there will be many unhappy moments, anguish, but there will be peaks of joy also. And that's how one grows: through the night of anguish, then through the day of joy. One moves through the duality: it is a dialectical process.

Just reading poetry about love is so convenient, but don't think that you really love. Reading poetry about love is very easy because nothing is at stake.

Leo Tolstoy has written in his memoirs that when he was a small child his mother used to go to the theater. They were very rich people; they belonged to the royal family. In Moscow the snow would be falling -- a winter night -- and the mother and the child would be in the theater.

Tolstoy remembers that whenever there was a tragedy playing, his mother would weep and cry and sob, and tears would flow down. Tolstoy used to think:

"What deep compassion she has!" But by and by, later on, he became aware that

she had no compassion at all. This was a substitute.

When they would come out of the theater the driver, sitting with the buggy and waiting for them, would be dead -- frozen to death. He could not leave the buggy, he had to be there -- any moment they might come. Frozen stiff, he would be dead. And Tolstoy's mother wouldn't pay even a little attention to him. The man would be thrown out, thrown away, another driver would be called and they would move. The mother would not weep or cry. Tolstoy says, "Then I became aware that her compassion was phony. It was a trick."

It is very easy to cry in the theater because nothing is involved. It is very easy to cry while looking at a movie. Everybody cries at the movies. But to cry in life will be difficult because then something is involved. If you cry for this man who is dead, your driver, then next time you will have to change your style of life. Then, if it is snowing too much, you will not go to the theater. Or you will make arrangements for the driver to sit somewhere, or you will make arrangements for him to have warmer clothing. But that will affect your style of life.

Who bothers for the real man? People cry when they read novels, when they see a movie, when they go to the theater. But in real life their eyes are simply vacant, empty -- no tears come.

Remember this: if you really love Zorba, you will become a Zorba; if you love Jesus, you will become Jesus. This is one of the fundamental laws of life: that if you love somebody, if you love something, by and by the object of your love transforms you and you become alike.

Have you observed? Sometimes you come across a couple, a wife and husband, who look alike. They talk in the same way, they walk in the same way, they smile in the same way. There is a deep affinity. What has happened? They are not brother and sister, so why are they so alike?

They love each other and they love deeply. When you love somebody you are vulnerable. The other changes you, and you go on changing the other. By the time life comes to an end, if wives and husbands really love each other, they will be almost alike. It has to be so. Love transforms.

But the theater and movies and novels and poetry -- they will not transform you much. In fact, they are ways to avoid the transformation. They are ways not to look at life, but to live in fantasy.

This is not a question; this is a confession. If you really wanted to dance, who could prevent you? And when that type of dance happens, who would WANT to prevent you? When you are possessed and it is not a mind thing.…

Next time you are possessed, don't be worried about the ashram. Let them do whatsoever they want to do. It is not your business to be worried about it. Dance!

But remember, this should not be a mind thing. Otherwise you will simply create a disturbance. Be possessed. When you are possessed, the dance is holy.

Question 3

YOU SAID, "IF THERE WERE NO REFORMERS, THEN THE WORLD WOULD

BE A MORE NATURAL AND BEAUTIFUL PLACE. "THEN WHY IS YOUR ASHRAM SO FULL OF REFORMERS?

To reform the reformers. The world is full of reformers -- what to do? They have to be reformed. I am training people who can reform the reformers.

The question is not signed. The person who has asked this must be afraid. You should not be afraid. You should sign your question so that I know exactly in whose mind this question is arising. Because I don't answer the question, I answer the questioner. The question is useless if you are so afraid that you cannot even sign it. If you don't want to reveal your identity, your whole heart is not in the question.

Why do you try to deceive? Even if the question is foolish you have to show your identity. Here you are not to hide yourself, here you are to expose yourself -

-

expose yourself to me so that I can change you. If you go on hiding then how can I change you? If you are foolish, it's okay. Be foolish, but let it be exposed. If you are in darkness, don't be afraid. Open the doors, otherwise from where will the light enter?

There is not going to be any argument or discussion here; I am not interested in

any discussion or any argument. If I say something to you I do not say it as an argument, I do not say it for the sake of any argument. I am not trying to defend any dogma, any religion, any scripture. I have none: no dogma, no scripture, no religion to defend. I am trying to create a communion between you and me. But if you are hiding, you will miss.

Always reveal your identity. And don't try to polish your question because that, too, I feel. You write the question, you polish it, you try to write it in such a way that it looks very sophisticated, very cultured. The more you polish it, the further away it is from your reality. Let it be raw so that it is close to your heart.

If your question itself has gone very far away from your heart, then how can my answer be close to you? My answer will hit the question and you will be very far away from it. Let it be raw like a wound so I can hit it directly.

It will hurt. That's why you try to push it away *om you. But if you are so afraid of being hurt, then the surgery that I am trying to do will not be possible.

It is a surgery. You have a very ill mind, a cancerous growth in the mind. It has to be operated upon. It will hurt, certainly it will hurt, but that hurt is beneficial, because once it hurts and the cancerous growth is removed, you will be healthy and whole. So don't try to hide. Be true.

Remember, you can move to the other extreme: you can try to look very raw. That won't help. Just be yourself.

Question 4

WHILE AT ONE PLACE CHRIST ASKS HIS DISCIPLES TO CARRY THEIR CROSS EVERY DAY, AT ANOTHER HE BIDS THEM TO CELEBRATE HIS

PRESENCE AS THAT OF A BRIDEGROOM. WHY THIS CONTRADICTION?

There is none. It only appears to be a contradiction.

Every moment one has to remember death, because any moment it is possible.

That is the meaning of'to carry the cross every day' -- that you should not forget death. Once you forget death you relapse into unconsciousness. If you remember death you remain alert, awake.

But when we say'remember death', we don't mean that you should become oppressed by the idea, obsessed by the idea. We don't mean that you should create a deep fear about death and tremble continuously. That will be morbidity, that will be perversion.

In relationship to death, there are two types of perverted people. One: those who have completely forgotten, or try to forget, that death is. They try to avoid it.

They would not even like to talk about death. If you start talking with them about death they will think that you are uncivilized. unmannerly. They will avoid the very topic. They will not go to the cemetery. That's why cemeteries are built outside of the town. Nobody comes across them accidentally. Only when one has to come to the cemetery does one come. Otherwise it can be avoided.

Death is a taboo subject, more tabooed than sex. Nobody talks about it... and everybody knows it is coming. Humanity lives in a great deception. This is one morbidity.

Then there is another morbidity. You can move to the other extreme and you can become obsessed with death. You can constantly tremble and you can lie awake at night, because who knows? -- you may not get up in the morning. You cannot eat well, because how can you eat when death is coming? You cannot love, because how can you love anybody when everybody is going to die? That, too, is morbid; that, too, is perversion.

Jesus says, "Carry your cross every day." He says to remember death... and still let every moment be a celebration of life. Death is coming: that is all the more deep a reason to celebrate. Because who knows? -- this may be the last moment.

This moment of life is not to be destroyed by the fear of death, but AGAINST

death, in contrast to death, this moment has to be celebrated. It has to be celebrated even more deeply, because who knows? -- the next moment we may not be here. While the bridegroom is here, celebrate it.

The parable of the bridegroom can have a very inner meaning. Within you, your

body is the body of death and your consciousness is life, the source of life. You are both. Your body is going to die: it belongs to the earth -- dust unto dust. It will have to go, it will return to its source.

You belong to the sky, you belong to God -- your consciousness is separate from your body. This is the meaning of Jesus on the cross. Everybody is on the cross because consciousness lives in the body and the body is death.

If you understand, you know that everybody is on the cross. But that should not become a pessimism. On the contrary, that should be all the more reason to celebrate. The bridegroom is within you and the body is the chamber of the bridegroom. Celebrate it!

Jesus is not contradictory; Jesus is absolutely simple. The contradiction is in life itself: that life exists through death and death exists through life. Life itself is the paradox. But that is the beauty also. All beauty exists in contrast and all of life exists as a tension between opposites. It is a bridge built on two banks: death and life.

Celebrate every moment because this may be the last moment. But while celebrating, don't forget that death is coming. Remember it.

Remembering should not become an obsession; remembrance should become a celebration. Carry the cross but carry it dancing; carry the cross but carry it singing; carry the cross but carry it with a deep celebration within. Then you live both: you live life, you live death. And you live both of them deeply and intensely. When you can live both intensely, they become one. Then you know that life and death are two aspects of the same thing, of the same energy. Life is expression, manifestation. Death is a returning.

Question 5

WOULD YOU DEFINE AND DISCUSS THE NATURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS?

HOW DOES CONSCIOUSNESS RELATE TO EGO? IS CONSCIOUSNESS THE

CREATIVE PRINCIPLE? (THAT IS, COULD YOU SAY EQUALLY, "IN THE

BEGINNING WAS CONSCIOUSNESS" INSTEAD OF "IN THE BEGINNING

WAS THE WORD OR THE LOGOS"?) HOW DOES CONSCIOUSNESS RELATE

TO GOD?

In the BEGINNING WAS THE WORD, or the logos. The same cannot be said about consciousness, because in the beginning unconsciousness was also there.

Consciousness is just a part of your reality, the reality of the within.

Unconsciousness is also there. So just consciousness was not there in the beginning. Unconsciousness was also there, as much as consciousness. Or you can say that something was there in the beginning in which both consciousness and unconsciousness were involved.

That is the meaning of'God'. God is not only consciousness: God is consciousness PLUS unconsciousness. God is both the dark night and the bright day, both summer and winter, both life and death. God is the beginning and the end, both.

God is beyond duality and the duality is intrinsic in him. He is both matter and mind; the manifest and the unmanifest.

Consciousness is just a part of the great oceanic unconsciousness. Consciousness is just on the surface; deeply hidden are layers and layers of unconsciousness.

One has to transcend both to know that which was in the beginning -- which is God.

"Would you define and discuss the nature of consciousness? How does consciousness relate to ego? " One part of you is conscious, one-tenth. Nine- tenths of you is unconscious. If the conscious part thinks itself to be the whole, it becomes the ego. Then it forgets about the unconscious; then the part imagines itself to be the whole. Then it is the ego.

If the conscious becomes aware of the unconscious also.… That is the whole effort of religion, that is the whole effort of meditation. If the conscious turns back, looks back, and becomes aware of the unconscious also -- the dark night

within --

then the conscious knows that "I am conscious, I am unconscious also. My consciousness is just a wave on the ocean. The unconscious is vast." Then the ego disappears. Ego is the part, thinking itself to be the whole. Non-ego is the part, becoming aware of the whole. Then the ego disappears.

How to define the nature of consciousness? It has never been defined, it never will be defined. Who will define it? To define it you have to be away from it. To define anything you have to stand out of it, you need a distance. Perspective will not be possible if the distance is not there.

You are consciousness, you ARE unconsciousness. There is nobody who can stand outside and define it. You can know it, but you cannot define it. That's why all religion is mysterious, mystical, vague, cloudy -- because no term which is very basic to religion can be defined.

The subject cannot be made an object. I cannot put myself in front of me, so I cannot define. Neither has Buddha defined, nor Jesus. Definition as such is debarred by the very nature of the phenomenon.

Everything else can be defined because consciousness is the definer. Everything else is before consciousness. The consciousness can know -- it can go around, watch, observe, experiment, define, dissect -- but who will define consciousness?

You cannot go away from it: you ARE it. You can know it, but you cannot define it. Knowledge is not possible, only knowing.

I can help you to create a meditative state where you can know what it is, I can give you the method, but I cannot give you the definition. That's why religion always looks a little suspicious. "Why don't you define your terms? Just do as science does. Define! If you cannot define your terms that simply shows you don't know what you are talking about."

A great linguist and positivist philosopher, A.J. Aiyer, says that if we take two terms -- 'God' and'dog' -- the second is true and the first is false. Nobody can define'God', the word is meaningless.'God' cannot be defined.'Dog' can be defined -- 'dog' is more meaningful than'God'.

If you insist on definitions, then only things can be defined; persons cannot be defined. Laws can be defined, love cannot be defined. Gravitation can be defined, but grace -- grace cannot be defined. That which is without is definable; that which is within is elusive. One has to understand it... and move into meditation.

Buddha says, "Buddhas can only show you the way. YOU have to move. One day you come upon the goal. Nobody can give you the goal beforehand."

Not even a definition is possible. And it is good that a definition is not possible.

Otherwise you will settle for the definition, you will settle for the information, and you will never travel, you will never journey to the goal. And sometimes it happens that the very map you were thinking to use for the journey becomes the barrier. You become satisfied with the map itself.

I was reading a very rare autobiography by a man who belonged to a very primitive race in the Amazon. He was the son of the chief. His father was a great lover of the Amazon River, and he had moved to the very source of the river.

The boy, the son of the chief, went to America -- some missionaries helped him to go there to study. He studied there, graduated, and was on his way back home.

Thinking that "My father loves the Amazon so much. He would be very happy if I brought him a map, a detailed map, of the Amazon," he purchased the best map available and brought it to his father.

He thought that his father would be very happy, but the father looked at the map and was very sad. He threw the map away. The son was very hurt. "I have brought a gift, a present, and my father has thrown it away. Why?"

He asked his father. The father said, "This is absolutely bogus because I don't see the Amazon anywhere. How can the Amazon exist on paper? You are a fool, and you are deceiving me. I have moved on the Amazon, I know what it is. "Don't be deceived by this map. Only lines are there."

Definitions of God are maps: lines on paper. Definitions of consciousness are maps. And sometimes people get too obsessed with maps.

The best way to be lost is to have a map. You cannot fail: if you have a really

detailed map, you will get lost in it. And the mind will think, "Now I know everything." The living Amazon is beautiful, dangerous, terrible. At any moment life may be at stake. With a map -- conveniently sitting in your easy chair -- you can study it, and you can think that you know all about the Amazon.

In the world outside you, maps have a little relevance, but in the inside world they are absolutely irrelevant. If you have any maps, throw them away. All the religions have given you maps. Throw them away! Enough of the maps. Now let there be a real journey!

When you will attain to consciousness, you will laugh at the stupidity of the mapmakers. Then you will know that they have never been to the innermost source of life. They have been copying other mapmakers. For centuries they have been copying, and they go on adding their own fantasy and their own ideas.

They go on changing and decorating. All maps are false, because the innermost remains indefinable.

But there is no need to define. Consciousness is there within you. Return, and the kingdom of God is at hand. Why be bothered by the definition? When the real thing is so close, why not taste it?

When the river is flowing, you ask me about the definition of water. I know you are thirsty, and I know that a definition cannot quench the thirst. But you say,

"Unless water is defined, how can I drink the water? I can't see the point."

If people had waited for the definition -- only then would they quench their thirst

-- humanity would have disappeared long ago, because water is still indefinable.

Don't be befooled by what scientists say. They may say that water is H20 -- -two parts hydrogen to one part oxygen -- but when a scientist is thirsty, if you give him oxygen and hydrogen to drink, he will say, "What are you doing? Have you gone mad? Water quenches thirst, not two parts of hydrogen and one part of oxygen."

Mulla Nasruddin's son came back from the university. He was studying logic there and he had become a great philosopher -- as everybody is prone to become in youth. Youth is foolish, and to become a philosopher is easy.

The son was very interested in showing off his knowledge. Fresh from the university, everybody is. They were sitting at the dining table and the mother brought in two apples. Seeing an opportunity, Mulla Nasruddin's son said,

"Mummy, I will show you something which I have learned. What do you see on this plate?"

The mother said, "Two apples."

He said, "No, logic says something else. There are three apples, not two."

The poor mother looked again, but there were two apples. She said, "What do you mean?"

He said, "Look. Watch. This apple is one, this apple is two. How many are one plus two?"

The mother said, "Of course, one plus two is three." The son was very happy.

Mulla Nasruddin was watching. He said, "Good, very good. I will eat the first and your mother will eat the second. You eat the third!"

You cannot eat logic, you cannot eat science, you cannot eat philosophy. Religion is concerned with how to quench your thirst, religion is concerned with your hunger -- not definitions, maps.

Question 6

YOU SAID, "WE ARE NOT DOING ANYTHING HERE," BUT THOSE OF US

WHO LIVE AND WORK HERE IN THE ASHRAM ARE CONTINUOUSLY OCCUPIED WITH'DOING'. IN FACT THE MORE WE DO, THE MORE WE ARE PRAISED; AND ANYONE WHO DOES NOT, OR DOES LESS, IS SCOLDED. PLEASE EXPLAIN.

When I said, "We are not doing anything here," I meant I am not doing anything here. Because I love you. When you love, the doing is not a doing at all.

If you love me, then you will also not think that you are doing very much. In fact you will not think that you are doing anything. Love is not a duty. In love, work becomes worship.

You work in the ashram. The whole quality of the work, and your attitude, will be different if you love me. If you don't love me, of course it is work. Then your mind will hanker for praise. Then in many ways you will try to avoid the work --

as many of you are doing! You go on finding ways and means: how to avoid it, how not to do it.

I never avoid, because I love you. The more I can do. the better I feel. But you avoid -- as if work is something that you are dragging: a burden. If work is a burden, only then it looks like work.

If work comes out of love, it becomes worship. Then there is no need for any other meditation. It is enough. The work itself becomes the meditation. You are so deeply in it that the mind stops.

Energy needs work otherwise the energy will become restlessness. Energy needs expression, energy needs to be creative. Otherwise the same energy, coiled up within you, will become diseased, an illness. You have energy. The energy has to be creative. There is no happiness except in creativity.

But creativity is work, with love. A painter paints. He is not working; he is loving. He is completely absorbed in it -- the doer is not there. A singer sings or a dancer dances. If the dancer is just a professional then it is work. Then he will be tired. But if a dancer really loves dancing, then the more he moves into it, the more energy he gets to move further on.

It is said about Nijinsky -- one of the greatest dancers that has ever walked on earth -- that even scientists were surprised: they couldn't believe his jumping.

When he would dance he would take jumps that were so big they were against gravitation. They were not possible: one cannot jump that much. And the way he would jump -- so gracefully! And when he would be coming down he would come like a dove -- so slowly, as if gravitation was not functioning. Many times Nijinsky was asked, "What is the secret?"

He said, "I don't know. Except that I love dancing." And once he said, "When

you love dancing, then you don't function under the law of gravitation. You function under the law of grace."

That is the difference between Moses and Jesus. Moses brings the law of gravitation into the world -- all those Ten Commandments are laws, just like gravitation -- and Jesus brings the law of grace, which is not a law at all.

When you love deeply, you function in a totally different dimension. If you loved me, this question would not have arisen. You would not think of it as work.

Watch a mother -- how much she does for the child. But if you ask her, she will say, "I have not been doing anything. In fact many more things were needed to be done and I have not done them. I always feel that my child has not received as much care as was needed." Then go to the secretary of a club or an institute and ask him. He will give you a long list of everything that he has been doing there.

Even things which he has not done will be included in the list! He is a doer; a mother is a lover.

I was reading the biography of a Hindu sannyasin who lived in South Africa. He came to the Himalayas on a pilgrimage. He was going uphill and it was hot. He was perspiring and gasping for breath; the journey was hard.

Just in front of him was a girl, not more than ten years of age, carrying a very heavy, fat child on her shoulders. She was perspiring. The sannyasin spoke to the girl and said, "My daughter, the child seems to be very heavy."

The girl looked at the sannyasin and said, "Swamiji, he is not a burden. He is my brother. He is not a burden at all, he has no weight -- he is my brother." When you love, weight disappears; when you love, you function in a different world.

Question 7

IS THIS IT? AM I EXPERIENCING YOU? HAS THE FINAL JOURNEY BEGUN?

This is from Dharmateerth Bodhisattva. Yes.…

Come Follow To You, Vol 2

Chapter #3

Chapter title: Your Names Are Written In Heaven. 2 November 1975 am in Buddha Hall

LUKE 10

1 AFTER THESE THINGS THE LORD APPOINTED OTHER SEVENTY ALSO, AND SENT THEM TWO AND TWO BEFORE HIS FACE INTO EVERY CITY

AND PLACE, WHITHER HE HIMSELF WOULD COME.

2 THEREFORE SAID HE UNTO THEM, THE HARVEST TRULY IS GREAT, BUT THE LABORERS ARE FEW: PRAY YE THEREFORE THE LORD OF THE

HARVEST, THAT HE WOULD SEND FORTH LABORERS INTO HIS HARVEST.

3 GO YOUR WAYS: BEHOLD, I SEND YOU FORTH AS LAMBS AMONG WOLVES.

4 CARRY NEITHER PURSE, NOR SCRIP, NOR SHOES: AND SALUTE NO MAN BY THE WAY.

5 AND INTO WHATSOEVER HOUSE YE ENTER, FIRST SAY, PEACE BE TO

THIS HOUSE.

6 AND IF THE SON OF PEACE BE THERE, YOUR PEACE SHALL REST UPON

IT: IF NOT, IT SHALL TURN TO YOU AGAIN.

16 HE THAT HEARETH YOU HEARETH ME; AND HE THAT DESPISETH

YOU DESPISETH ME; AND HE THAT DESPISETH ME DESPISETH HIM THAT

SENT ME.

17 AND THE SEVENTY RETURNED AGAIN WITH JOY, SAYING, LORD, EVEN THE DEVILS ARE SUBJECT UNTO US THROUGH THY NAME.

18 AND HE SAID UNTO THEM...

20 NOTWITHSTANDING IN THIS REJOICE NOT, THAT THE SPIRITS ARE

SUBJECT UNTO YOU; BUT RATHER REJOICE, BECAUSE YOUR NAMES ARE

WRITTEN IN HEAVEN.

21 IN THAT HOUR JESUS REJOICED IN SPIRIT, AND SAID, I THANK THEE, O FATHER, LORD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, THAT THOU HAST HID

THESE THINGS FROM THE WISE AND PRUDENT, AND HAST REVEALED

THEM UNTO BABES: EVEN SO, FATHER; FOR SO IT SEEMED GOOD IN THY

SIGHT.

22 ALL THINGS ARE DELIVERED TO ME OF MY FATHER: AND NO MAN

KNOWETH WHO THE SON IS, BUT THE FATHER; AND WHO THE FATHER

IS, BUT THE SON, AND HE TO WHOM THE SON WILL REVEAL HIM.

ONCE UPON A TIME, two explorers came to a clearing in the jungle. It was a beautiful place -- thousands and thousands of flowers were blossoming. One of

the explorers said, "There must be a gardener tending these flowers, looking after this plot." He was a believer.

The other disagreed and said, "I don't see any gardener here. I don't even see anybody's footprints. And there seems to be no point in making such a beautiful garden in such a dense and deep forest. Who will come to look? Who will enjoy these flowers? Nobody ever passes by. No, there is no gardener. The whole garden is just an accident."

They argued. The second was a nonbeliever, a skeptic. But there was no way to decide who was right, so they pitched their tent and waited for seven days. No gardener ever appeared.

The skeptic was very happy. He said, "Look, there is no gardener. It has been proven now."

But the believer said, "The gardener is invisible. He comes, but we cannot see him; he comes, but we cannot hear his footsteps. This garden is impossible without a gardener."

So they set a barbed wire fence up around the garden. They electrified the wires, they brought bloodhounds, and they patrolled day and night. But nobody ever entered. No shriek was ever heard from the shock of the electricity flowing in the wires. The bloodhounds never gave a cry.

After seven days, the skeptic said. "Finished! Now it is proven beyond doubt that there is no gardener -- visible or invisible."

But the believer waS not convinced. He said, "The gardener is not only invisible, he is intangible. He has no scent. He is eternally elusive: you cannot catch him by electrified wires, you cannot catch him by bloodhounds, and our eyes cannot see him. But he is -- for certain he is."

Now the skeptical friend, in great despair, said, "What happened to your original statement? What is the difference between an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive God, or gardener, and one which is just imaginary, or one which does not exist at all? What is the difference between the two?"

I was reading this parable. I liked it, because this is how the argument has been going on, on earth. Believers go on talking about an invisible God, skeptical

minds go on disproving any possibility of it, and they both seem to be right. Or, they both are wrong. The argument never comes to a conclusion.

From the very beginning, the whole line of inquiry has taken the wrong route.

Once you separate the gardener from the garden -- God from the creation -- the problem arises. Then it can never be settled.

The garden is enough proof of the gardener. But the gardener is not separate. He does not come to tend the garden: He is in the garden; He IS the garden. He does not look after the flowers: He is IN the flowers; He IS the flowers. Not that HE is invisible -- He is visible, but visible as flowers.

If you have an idea of God, you will never find Him. The very idea will become the barrier. Only those who have no idea of God come upon Him, or allow God to come upon themselves. If you have a certain idea, the very idea is going to be the wall, the brick wall, between you and the truth.

The believer was not wrong, but he took a wrong line of argument: he divided the gardener from the garden. The gardener cannot be proved because the gardener doesn't exist. A gardener separate from the garden is nonexistential.

That's why the skeptical friend could argue. And his argument is valid -- valid not against God or the gardener; valid against the believer. The believer has taken the wrong argument.

To me, God is herenow. All that you see is God. God is not something beyond; God is something within. Or, if you like paradoxes, you can call God the within beyond or the beyond within. But God is intrinsic, God is the innermost core of existence.

Unless you start in the right direction, you will go on missing. Never believe in a God who is separate from His creatures and the creation. He is not, He cannot be.

He is one with it: He is in it, He is it. Once this is understood, you start flowing; your whole life becomes a prayer.

That is the basic message of Jesus. That's why he goes on saying that "God is my father." It is a way of saying what I am saying to you.

Between the father and the son, or between the mother and the child, there is a continuity. The father goes on living in the son; the mother continues in the child.

The son is nothing but an extension of the existence of the father -- an extended hand: as if the old body has become incapable of existing and is going to disappear, and the father has created a new body to live within.

When Jesus says, "God is my father," he simply means that "I am continuous with Him; there has never been a separation. He is flowing in me: in my every cell He is flowing. Nowhere has there been a discontinuity." That is the whole meaning of it, but he uses the word'father' because he is talking to very simple, unsophisticated people. He is talking to real people, not to plastic people; he is not talking in a university. He is talking to real people -- people who are alive.

He uses the word'father'. And it is beautiful in a way, because unless religion becomes personal, it remains a philosophy. When religion becomes personal, it becomes life. Religion is something to be lived, not something to brood about. It is something that should become a milieu around you; it is something that should become a continuous breathing, continuous beating of the heart.

Religion is a way of life, a way of being. It has nothing to do with thinking. When Jesus says, "God is father," he means this existence is not alien, this existence is a home. You can rest in it, you can rely on it; you need not be afraid.

This is one of the most significant things to be understood, because modern man is so much afraid. Never before has that been so. Never before in the history of humankind has man been as afraid as he is now.

Every day I go on talking to people about their problems, and almost always, deeply hidden somewhere, is fear. Whenever they come deeper to their being, other problems finally disappear. Only one problem remains: fear. Why is modern man so afraid? It has never been so before.

Something has happened, something that is like a catastrophe. Once God is not there in your consciousness, you will be afraid -- because without God, existence becomes alien. Then you are not at home, then it is as if everybody is against you.

If God is not there, then existence becomes inimical. Not that it really becomes

inimical, but it looks that way to you. It appears to you that it is inimical. Life looks just like a competition, a struggle to survive. Great jealousy surrounds you.

Love disappears if there is no God; at-homeness disappears if there is no God.

'God' is just a symbolic word. It simply denotes an attitude: an attitude that "I am at home." If God is the father, then the whole existence is your home. You can be at ease, there is nothing to fear -- everything is in the hands of your father.

Religion is personal. The whole effort is to look at life as if it is a family. The tree, howsoever far away, is related to you; it is a relative. And the rock also... and the oceans also... and the moon and the stars also. Everything is related to everything else; you exist in a related family.

You are a part of it -- as if existence is trying to reach somewhere through you, reach to a higher peak of consciousness. Through you, God is trying to reach to a new existence, to a new peak of ecstasy, to a new peak of awareness, to a new way. It is as if God is trying to achieve a breakthrough, through you. Suddenly, you are accepted.

Not only accepted: God is trying to do something through you. History is being created through you, existence is being created through you. You are significant; you have a tremendous significance. Without you, God will lack something.

Just think: without the son, the father will no longer be a father. Without the son, not only will the father lack something -- he will no longer be a father. He will be barren, a desert. The son is a fulfillment.

YOU are the fulfillment. But once you forget God, or you drop the idea of God -

-

as modern man has done -- suddenly you are alien. Suddenly you are never at ease. Wherever you move, you move like a stranger -- amongst enemies, not amongst friends.

One friend of mine stayed with me. He was a vice-chancellor in a university -- a very atheistic man. I always liked trees, and I always liked trees to be so close to the house that they almost touch it and cover it. People don't like that because there is a danger that the tree may destroy the wall, may destroy the foundation.

But to me it is worth it. Even if the building disappears, it is beautiful.

In the morning the friend looked around and he said, "What have you done? You are creating a jungle. Don't you know that trees are enemies of man? "

He is right in a way, because trees have been constantly fighting with man, and man has been constantly fighting with trees. All the cities that you know were once forests. Man has destroyed the trees, cleared the ground, claimed it. But now if you don't do anything about the trees for even twenty years, they will spread and take over the land again. They will destroy the buildings and the roads and everything.

So he said, "What are you doing? Trees are enemies."

For the first time, I heard the idea. It is historically true, but existentially false; scientifically true, but religiously false.

Scientifically, all of life is a struggle. Everybody else is fighting you, and you are fighting everybody else.'Survival of the fittest' -- it is murderous competition, c.ut-throat competition. Nobody is friendly. Even those who you think are friends are not friends, cannot be -- scientifically.

A new child is born. Now he is a new competitor in the world; one more enemy will be there. He will breathe, and he will destroy much oxygen which you could have used. Now he will be using it. He will need space, he will need food; he will need water and this and that. Now there is one more enemy.

Whenever a man dies, one enemy is dead. You can celebrate the fact. Now that much oxygen is free, that much food will be available -- one competitor is gone.

It is scientifically true. Ask Malthus.

Yes, it is true. But religiously... religiously the world is a unity. Existence is a family; we exist together. Life is togetherness, and that togetherness is God. If you cannot feel that togetherness, you will feel alien and you will always be afraid. To a religious man, fearlessness happens spontaneously. To a nonreligious man, fear is the only way to be. 'God, the father' can be translated. It means: existence is one; it is a togetherness. It is a harmony, not a conflict.

We are members of each other. Whenever somebody dies, something in me also

dies. Whenever a new child is born, something is born into me also. Whenever a new child is there, life becomes more alive through him -- life smiles. Whenever somebody dies, there are tears.

It has to be so, because I come out of life; I go back into life. Life was trying to do something through me.

Everybody is a messenger; everybody is a messiah; everybody has a destiny to fulfill. And until you fulfill that destiny, you will never feel fulfilled. You can have much money, but fulfillment will not come through it. You can have much sex; fulfillment will not come through it. You can have much power; fulfillment will not come through it.

Fulfillment comes only when you have fulfilled a certain destiny that you were carrying, that was coded within you, that was deep in your blueprint. Unless you have become that for which you were made -- unless you have attained to being

-

- you will never be fulfilled.

Fulfillment is peace, fulfillment is bliss, fulfillment is contentment. And only a fulfilled heart can pray, because only a fulfilled heart can be grateful and can feel the grace descending: the spirit of God, like a dove.

Now the sutras:

AFTER THESE THINGS THE LORD APPOINTED OTHER SEVENTY ALSO, AND SENT THEM TWO AND TWO BEFORE HIS FACE INTO EVERY CITY

AND PLACE, WHITHER HE HIMSELF WOULD COME.

The gospels are telegraphic because they were meant to be remembered, memorized. Not even a single word is used which is superfluous; they are very economic. So whatsoever is said has to be understood with deep trust and reverence, because that is the only way to understand things like these. A deep reverence is a basic climate and a basic requirement. Only in that deep reverence something enters in you and hits the heart, stirs your soul.

If you just listen with a skeptical mind -- closed, doubting -- you will miss,

because these are not principles, these are poetries. They indicate, and the indication is very subtle. They intimate... and only in deep intimacy can these things be understood.

AFTER THESE THINGS THE LORD APPOINTED OTHER SEVENTY ALSO, AND SENT THEM TWO AND TWO BEFORE HIS FACE INTO EVERY CITY

AND PLACE, WHITHER HE HIMSELF WOULD COME.

Why TWO AND TWO? Why not three? Why not one? Why TWO AND TWO?

Jesus shows a deep understanding of the human mind. More than two is a crowd, and a crowd is never united. It falls apart with more than two. There is every possibility they will start arguing within themselves, there is every possibility there will be a conflict of leadership.

More than two is a crowd. Less than two, one is lonely. In loneliness, doubts arise. In loneliness one loses confidence, in loneliness one becomes afraid, suspicious. Jesus says two and two. It should not be a crowd, and one should not be alone. "Go two together."

Two persons -- intimate, close to each other -- bring out in each other whatsoever is great. That's why love is so meaningful, because only in love you touch the optimum. Alone, you exist at the minimum. In love, you touch the maximum.

Have you watched it? Have you seen a single person when he falls in love? Have you observed the change that comes to him? Suddenly he walks in a different way. He walks less and dances more. His movement suddenly takes on a new grace. The eyes sparkle, the face becomes more beautiful. Something deep inside relaxes and rejoices. He is more vibrant, radiant. You can see that the energy is flowing. Just a few days before, he was low, shrunken. Now, in love, he has opened, bloomed. He is overflowing. What has happened?

The other has given a deep call. That call has touched his soul, it has awakened him. His energies, which were lying dormant, have become dynamic. Now he has meaning in his life, a purpose. Now his life is no longer like a desert. It starts blooming. It gains tremendously. And the beauty is this: that the other is not losing; the other is also gaining the same. Two persons in love both gain tremendously and nobody loses.,Both come to their peaks because each stirs the

depth of the other and each brings out the most beautiful in the other. Each provokes the divine in the other.

Lovers become gods to each other. And when somebody believes that you are a god, you have to fulfill it. What can you do? When somebody believes that you are a god, unknowingly you start fulfilling it. Unknowingly you attain to your destiny -- you become a god.

If nobody has ever believed in you, you will miss much. If nobody has ever loved you, you will remain barren. If nobody has ever loved you so deeply that at least for him you have become divine, then the divine in you will go on Lying dormant; it will not become dynamic.

When Jesus says TWO AND TWO, he says: "Go not alone" -- alone you will be at your minimum -- "and not more than two" -- because otherwise conflict will arise. Go two and two: in deep friendship, in deep love, in deep trust, so that you can help each other and provoke each other to the greatest height it is possible to obtain. Potentially, whatsoever the one can attain he will attain through the other. "Go two and two".

THEREFORE SAID HE UNTO THEM, THE HARVEST TRULY IS GREAT...

He speaks in the language of the farmers, the fishers, the carpenters.

THE HARVEST TRULY IS GREAT, BUT THE LABORERS ARE FEW: PRAY YE

THEREFORE THE LORD OF THE HARVEST, THAT HE WOULD SEND FORTH LABORERS INTO HIS HARVEST.

It has always been so. When a Buddha is there, it is so. When a Zarathustra is there, it is so. When a Mahavir is there, it is so. The harvest is truly great, but there are not enough laborers. The treasure is vast, but there are not enough sharers. A tremendous energy is released, but nobody is open to receive it. The flower has opened but nobody passes by to be filled by its scent. The fragrance is wasted. It could have been used and people would have attained to their highest peak. But the fragrance goes on spreading into the emptiness of the sky. Yes: THE HARVEST TRULY IS GREAT, BUT THE LABORERS ARE FEW.

PRAY YE THEREFORE, JESUS SAYS TO HIS DISCIPLES,PRAY TO THE LORD

OF THE HARVEST, THAT HE WOULD SEND FORTH LABORERS INTO HIS

HARVEST.

The crop is ready to be cut, and if it is not cut in time it will be wasted. There is a time to sow and there is a time to reap. Jesus is ready, the crop is ready -- there is nobody to share it.

Why does it happen? Why are people so blind? Why do people want to remain in their unhappiness and when the door opens to be happy they don't look at it?

They have certain investments in their unhappiness; they have become attuned to their unhappiness. This is my experience also. You come to me and you say to me that you would like to be happy. But at that very moment I can see that somewhere within you a part, a greater part of you, is against it. That part doesn't want to be happy because that part has invested much in being unhappy.

Now the whole investment will be gone.

You want to be happy, but you don't want to lose the investment that you have made in unhappiness. In many, many lives you have tried to use unhappiness for certain ends. For example, people talk too much about their miseries. They exaggerate. Why do they exaggerate about their miseries? What is the point in telling everybody about your misery?

A certain happiness is attained through this. Whenever you talk about your misery, people show sympathy. This is a way to gain sympathy. Of course you must have missed love, otherwise who bothers about sympathy? Sympathy is a poor substitute for love; it is a counterfeit. If you have ever been loved by somebody, and if you have ever loved somebody, you will not ask for sympathy, no. Sympathy is an insult; love is totally different. But sympathy looks like love.

It is a counterfeit. It appears like love; it is not.

When somebody loves you, you are the end; when somebody sympathizes with you, you are not the end. When somebody loves you, you are the emperor; when

somebody sympathizes with you, you are the beggar. Sympathy is given to you because you are in such a misery; love is given to you because you are so happy.

When you are happy, people love you. When you are unhappy, people sympathize with you.

But sympathy gives a false appearance of love, and you have invested much in sympathy. Now how can you drop your unhappiness? You cannot. Whenever somebody like Jesus comes and opens the doors of paradise, you don't listen to him. You say, "There must be some deception. Paradise? -- it is not possible. We are not fools; we have also been struggling. Paradise is not possible. Only unhappiness is possible."

In the last years of his life, Sigmund Freud became very pessimistic. For fifty years he had been working with the human mind. Nobody had worked so hard, so persistently, so scientifically. He had watched thousands and thousands of human minds: their functioning, their mechanism. In the last years he started feeling that man, as he is, cannot be happy. "There seems to be no possibility that man can be happy. Something seems to be basically wrong."

Nothing is basically wrong. It is only because man has invested too much in unhappiness.

A child is born. Whenever the child is happy, nobody cares about him. But when he is ill, everybody sympathizes, cares, loves. The child learns the trick. If you want sympathy, if you want attention, be ill. Don't be happy because when you are happy you create jealousy in others. Jealousy means enmity. When you are unhappy you create compassion in others. Compassion means friendship.

That's why you cannot respect Jesus. He is so happy; he is a bridegroom. He is always feasting, never fasting.

You go to saints who are fasting, unhappy, because they don't create jealousy in you. They are so unhappy that they create sympathy in you. And when you sympathize with them you make their unhappiness even more valuable than it was before.

This is a vicious circle. In India it is happening all over. Go and see your saints: the more unhappy they are -- the more they fast, the more they commit suicide, the more they poison their being and body, the more pale and dying they are, the

more they look unhealthy -- the more they are respected, the more a crowd gathers around them. People say they are great ascetics. Their unhappiness creates sympathy.

How can Jesus get that sympathy? It is impossible. When you go to see him, he is sitting at the dining table with his friends. He enjoys eating and drinking. He must have enjoyed singing and dancing -- I cannot conceive otherwise. He is a man who enjoys eating and makes eating a sacrament. He says that it is holy, that it is a way of prayer. It is God who is hungry within you, and when God is satisfied, you have prayed.

Not only that. Jesus even drinks and allows his disciples to drink because he says, "Life should be lived in its abundance." Not only needs should be fulfilled because if only needs are fulfilled life is just okay; it is not ecstatic. The wine is simply a symbol for ecstasy: that life should not only be lived for the fulfillment of needs. It should be overflowing, it should be a dance. Wine is not a need, nobody needs it. It is a celebration. Bread is a need, everybody needs it, but wine is not a need, it is a celebration.

If you see Jesus, he will not create sympathy in you. Rather, he will create jealousy. That's why he was crucified. He created so much jealousy around him.

Everybody became somehow inimical to him: "This is not the way to be a saint." You always like pessimists, dead people, people who are almost in the grave.

Why? And there is little wonder that you also become like them by and by -- because whomsoever you respect, you will become like.

Respect people who are happy, don't respect people who live in misery and create their misery. They are ill, morbid. Don't bow down to anybody who is in any way masochistic, creating his own suffering. In that way you will be helping him also.

Just think: if nobody goes to your masochistic saints, do you think they will remain there? They will escape from their temples. They will come to the marketplace, they will say, "What is the point? We go on fasting and nobody comes. No procession is arranged, nobody respects us -- what is the point? We go on fasting, dying, and nobody respects us." Then the whole point is lost.

It will be a great help to them also; it will be real compassion towards them. If you don't come to them, they will come back to life. But you go on respecting them, you go on fulfilling their egos. Now unhappiness becomes a great investment.

That's also how you are working in your own life. People cling to their miseries because that is all they have. That's why it happens: THE HARVEST TRULY IS

GREAT, BUT THE LABORERS ARE FEW.

Only people who are really understanding, and who are really aware that life exists to be celebrated, will be able to enter from the door Jesus has opened for them. The others will not come. Not only will they not come -- they will deny that the door exists. If they accept that the door exists, then it will be a constant uneasiness in their hearts, a restlessness, that the door exists and they have not gone there. No, they will simply deny that the door exists. Not only that, they will say that this Jesus is a deceiver, he is not a true prophet. "True prophets are always miserable, they live in unhappiness" -- and you can understand their language, because you live in unhappiness also.

The language of happiness is absolutely foreign to you; you cannot understand it. You can understand pain and suffering, but ecstasy? "The man must have gone mad!" -- ecstasy looks mad. Pain you can understand, but pleasure? That you cannot understand.

This is the trouble. I also say to you: THE HARVEST TRULY IS GREAT, BUT THE LABORERS ARE FEW: PRAY YE THEREFORE THE LORD OF THE HARVEST, THAT HE WOULD SEND FORTH LABORERS INTO HIS HARVEST.

GO YOUR WAYS: BEHOLD I SEND YOU FORTH AS LAMBS AMONG THE

WOLVES.

It is very dangerous to send ecstatic people amongst miserable people -- very dangerous. If you dance on the street, sooner or later you will find yourself in the

police station. If you are miserable and crying and weeping, even the constable will sympathize with you; but if you are laughing and dancing, something seems to have gone wrong. It doesn't happen. Ecstasy? -- "The man is mad! " You cannot be allowed to move in the world. You are dangerous.

Look at the absurdity. A happy person seems dangerous, an unhappy person seems to be okay. The unhappy fits with you; the happy does not fit.

GO YOUR WAYS: BEHOLD, I SEND YOU FORTH AS LAMBS AMONG THE

WOLVES. Jesus knows that he is sending his disciples into a dangerous world.

First, people will not understand what they say. People will misunderstand. But even in their misunderstanding there will be a doubt lurking in the minds of the people: "These people may be right."

That creates more danger. Whenever you feel that something may be right, an uneasiness arises. Either you have to cope with it or destroy it -- so the proof is destroyed.

Jesus was crucified just so that the proof was destroyed that a man can be so happy and so ecstatic. A man can really be a son of God -- the proof has to be destroyed. You go on asking about proofs: what Proof is there of God? And whenever there is proof, you destroy it.

Jesus was the proof. If you could have understood him, you could have understood that God exists. There is no other way to know about God: you can know the tree only by the fruits. Jesus is the fruit, the crop, the harvest. He was a living proof. But he had to be destroyed because if God exists. how can you go on living in your miserable holes? You will have to come out into the light.

It is better to deny God than to come out of your darkness, because you have lived in that darkness so long. You are attuned to it. Yes, it is miserable, but it is your own misery. Yes, it is miserable, but you have lived with it so long that a sort of attachment has arisen. You are attached to it.

Doctors fear that whenever somebody has lived with an illness for long, he clings to it and deep down does not wish to be well again. Then no medicine can help because he is struggling against the medicine. He WANTS the illness to

continue.

I know one person: I have watched him; he has been in bed for almost seven years. He was a politician until he fell ill.

I have been watching him all these years. He fell ill because he was defeated in one election. His illness was psychological: he could not accept the fact that he could be defeated. His ego was shattered; he fell ill. The body was simply reflecting something deep that was happening in the ego.

Then it continued. One illness would disappear; another would come. Another would go; then something else would happen. It continued. After one year, everybody in the family became aware that he was not going to be well again.

Lying down on his bed, for the first time he became relaxed. You can understand the whole misery of a politician's life: the conflict, the tension, the anxiety. For one year he rested. Now, somewhere in the unconscious, a deep desire arose that this is better. Now he knows that if he gets up again he will again be the same way. That is the only way he knows how to be in the world; he cannot do anything other than be a politician. That is his profession, the only business he knows. Now he is afraid.

Seven years have passed and things are going well. When he was working and was in the world, his son was not at all worried about the family affairs. Now the son is doing well. His wife has taken many things in her own hands. Even his old father has started to go to the shop again. Everything is going well, perfectly well

-- better than ever. So why bother to get up? Now illness is an excuse.

I went to see him and I talked to him. I told him the truth. He became very angry.

He said, "What do you mean? Do you mean that I am prolonging my illness? I hoped that at least you would understand. You don't understand me. Why should I be Lying down here? "

But at the very same time I knew he had understood. I said, "You be true -- there is nobody here. I will keep it between us and I will not tell anybody."

He relaxed and he said, "Maybe. I will think about it."

The next day I went again and he confessed. He said, "You are right. I thought about it again and again; the whole night I couldn't sleep. It seems to be the case.

But I don't want to get well. Life has never been so good. And now, to go back into politics after seven years will be almost impossible."

Once you are out of politics even for seven days, you are finished. Seven years --

people have completely forgotten about him. Just seven days is enough. A politician has to be constantly in the eyes of the public. He has to go on doing something or other, some mischief or other -- some strike or hunger strike or anything. Whatsoever it is, he has to be in the public eyes, in the newspapers. If he is not in the newspapers for even seven days, he is finished. The public's memory is very short -- who bothers to remember? People will not even recognize now that once he was a great leader. And now there are other great leaders who have replaced him. They won't allow him to re-enter.

So he said, "It is going to be very difficult. It was difficult in the very beginning; now it is going to be almost impossible. And everything is going good."

This is the situation. Then even unhappiness becomes an attachment, even illness becomes an attachment. Illness can become an excuse for many things.

Remember this, otherwise you will never be able to be happy. Don't play games with yourself.

Jesus says, I SEND YOU FORTH AS LAMBS AMONG THE WOLVES. Why?

Why lambs among the wolves? Because he knows that truth is going to be attacked; he knows that love is going to be attacked; he knows that ecstasy is going to be attacked.

CARRY NEITHER PURSE, NOR SCRIP, NOR SHOES; AND SALUTE NO MAN

BY THE WAY.

Why does Jesus say this? CARRY NEITHER PURSE, NOR SCRIP, NOR SHOES; AND SALUTE NO MAN BY THE WAY. He is saying that now you are so happy and ecstatic, you are so blissful, you have tasted something of the

divine -- that is enough to create trouble for you. "Now don't carry a purse -- go like beggars, so that at least they can sympathize with you. You are emperors, but go like beggars. Don't even wear shoes, so you look like a beggar. Only the poorest beggar has no shoes. Go barefoot so that they can at least sympathize with you."

That seems to be the reason why Buddha called his sannyasins BHIKKUS, beggars; why Mahavir insisted that you move like beggars. "Because you have the quality of an emperor, that is enough to create trouble for you. Now if your appearance is also like an emperor, you will be immediately attacked. At least let your appearance be that of a beggar. There is no guarantee that you will be saved because you will still be like lambs among wolves. Sooner or later they are going to find that you are an emperor. Your appearance is just a protection." This Jesus says to protect his disciples.

CARRY NEITHER PURSE, NOR SCRIP, NOR SHOES. Why does he say NOR

SCRIP? He means: "Don't go as knowers."

These are the two riches: the riches of the outside and the riches of the inside.

Don't go as rich people and don't go as rich in knowledge. Let them think that you don't know anything. They will sympathize. Don't carry scriptures with you, otherwise you will be unnecessarily attacked. They will argue and you will be dragged into arguments.

That, too, has to be remembered. Don't carry scriptures, don't carry knowledge.

Go like innocent children. That will be a protection. Talk out of your experience, but don't bring the scriptures in. People are very clever about scriptures. Once you bring the scriptures in, you will be defeated. They can argue better than you can.

This is something to be remembered. A man of experience always hesitates because he knows that whatsoever he has experienced cannot be expressed. He hesitates. But a man who has not known anything except the scripture is absolutely certain. Only fools are certain. Wise people are always hesitant.

So don't go with scriptures, otherwise you will be caught in the net of the pundits, the rabbis, and you will be unnecessarily distracted. Then the whole

point will be lost.

Jesus says: I SEND YOU LIKE LAMBS -- pure beings with no corruption; not corrupted by knowledge, not corrupted by outward things. "I send you like virgins -- uncorrupted. It is dangerous, but that is the only way you can carry my message," he says.

... AND SALUTE NO MAN BY THE WAY. Why does he say this: SALUTE NO

MAN BY THE WAY? He's saying that on the way there are a thousand and one distractions -- "so keep the goal where I am sending you. Just keep in mind the goal where I'm sending you. Even an ordinary salute to a person, a stranger on the road, can become a distraction."

I will tell you one story. It happened in Tibet. A lama who, was working in a faraway valley wrote a letter to the chief monastery, to his master, to send one more lama: "We need him here."

The chief of the monastery called all his disciples, read the letter, and then said, "I would like to send five of you."

One lama asked, "But only one has been asked for. Why five? "

The old chief said, "You will know later. I will send five and then, too, it is not certain that one will reach because the way is long, and distractions a thousand and one."

They laughed. They said, "The old man has gone out of his mind. Why send five when one is needed?" But the old man was insistent, so five started on the journey.

The next morning when they were passing a village, a messenger came running to them from the chief of the village. "Our priest has died and we need a priest.

The salary is good." The village looked rich, prosperous, so one of the five said, "I would like to stay because that, too, is Buddha's work. Why go to the valley?

There, too, I am going to do the same work. You four will be enough -- only one is needed -- so I will stay here." One dropped.

The next day they were passing by the outskirts of a town. The king of the town passed by them on his horse. He looked at them. One young monk was very beautiful and healthy and radiant. The king said, "Wait. I am looking for a young man because my daughter is ready to be married. I have been watching and looking, but you seem to be exactly right. Are you ready? I have only one daughter. My whole kingdom will be yours."

Of course, the young man said to his friends: "Goodbye!" He left; the second disappeared.

Now the other three became aware that the old man was not mad. The way was really long and distractions a thousand and one!

Now the three decided, "But we will not do such a thing" -- although deep down they were feeling jealous that one man had become a king and another had become a great priest. And who knows about what is going to happen in that valley?

The third night they lost the way. From far away on a hilltop only one lamp was seen, only one house. Somehow they reached there. There was only one young woman there and she said, "It is good that you have come. You are a godsend because my mother and my father were to come back this evening and they have not come back. I was very afraid to be alone in this house so far away from the town. It is good that you are here. You are a godsend, you are sent by Buddha himself. Please stay with me and don't leave me until my parents come."

The next morning they had to leave. But one of them -- who, deep down, had fallen in love with the woman -- said, "I cannot go until her parents are back.

That would not be compassion." Compassion was not the thing, PASSION was the thing! But when there is passion, people talk about compassion.

The other two said, "This is not good. We have to reach and you are dropping out. And we had decided that now we would not do that."

The man said, "I have been taught my whole life to be compassionate. The woman is alone, the parents have not returned. To leave won't be good, it won't be virtuous. Buddha will never forgive me. You can go" -- in fact, he wanted them to go -- "but I will stay here." The third dropped.

In a village the next morning they were surrounded by a crowd, because the village was atheistic; they didn't believe in Buddha. The two were challenged:

"You have to prove that what Buddha says is true." They had a great atheistic scholar in the village and the scholar challenged them.

One of the two accepted the challenge. The second said, "What are you doing? Who knows how long it will go on?"

He said, "Even if my whole life is wasted.… I am devoted to Buddha, and this man has challenged Buddha and his philosophy." It was not a challenge to Buddha; it was a challenge to his ego. "I cannot leave this village, I will convert this village. You can go. In fact, only one is needed."

And that's how it happened. The man remained there to argue and only one reached!

Jesus says: AND SALUTE NO MAN BY THE WAY. This is just a way of saying,

"Please, remember the goal."

AND INTO WHATSOEVER HOUSE YE ENTER, FIRST SAY, PEACE BE TO THIS HOUSE.

This is a mantra, a blessing. It changes the whole atmosphere. Jesus says, "Before you enter a house, say: PEACE BE TO THIS HOUSE. It is not only a saying. Feel it, be it. Be peace. Bring peace to the house because only in that peaceful milieu can my message be delivered. Create a spiritual vibration of peace, spread the feeling of peace."

And if you are really feeling it, it will spread. You try it. When somebody comes to see you or meet you, just settle within yourself. Become silent. When the man enters, deep down feel peace for him. Feel: "Peace be to this man." Don't just say it, feel it. Suddenly you will see a change in the man, as if something unknown has entered into his being. He will be totally different.

Try it. It is experimental. It is absolutely scientific -- no need to believe in it.

There is a thought transference continuously happening.

Sometimes you destroy yourself by your own thoughts. Somebody comes and you become suspicious: this man seems to be dangerous. You are giving this thought to the man. Now he MAY be dangerous! If he is dangerous you will say,

"I was right! " but in fact YOU created the vibe; in fact YOU started it.

A husband coming home starts thinking in his mind that his wife is going to be nasty and he starts planning how to answer her, how to find an excuse for why he is late. He may be creating doubts in the wife's mind. Women are very intuitive. You may not be able to transfer a thought to a man, but with a woman it is almost impossible NOT to transfer it. They are more intuitive. They are less in their heads and more in their hearts. Now the wife is getting ready to be angry. And the husband is preparing her. Then when she becomes nasty he thinks, "I was right." The next time he will be more afraid, and his fear will create the circumstance.

Try just the opposite. While coming back home, think that your wife is going to be perfectly beautiful. Feel it! Just saying it, and feeling the opposite, won't help.

Feel it, and one day, suddenly, you will see that it works.

We are joined together by our hearts; we exist as parts of one feeling heart. That heart is God. He beats in our hearts: the beat is His. He lives: the life is His.

If you can create a great, strong thought or feeling around you, the ripples go and spread. You live in the world you create and you get the world you deserve.

AND INTO WHATSOEVER HOUSE YOU ENTER, FIRST SAY, PEACE BE TO

THIS HOUSE.

AND IF THE SON OF PEACE BE THERE, YOUR PEACE SHALL REST UPON

IT: IF NOT, IT SHALL TURN TO YOU AGAIN.

If whatsoever you give is accepted, it will be good, because in that deep peace

you will be welcomed. If it is not accepted, if the people (or the person) are hard, very closed, not open at all, and your message, your deep love and peace, is rejected, don't be worried. That peace will fall upon you, you will be showered by it. It will still be good, nothing will be lost.

HE THAT HEARETH YOU, HEARETH ME; AND HE THAT DESPISETH YOU

DESPISETH ME; AND HE THAT DESPISETH ME DESPISETH HIM THAT SENT ME.

Jesus says, "If people love you" -- his disciples -- "they love me, because I am coming to them through you. And if they love me, they love He who has sent me because He has come through me. If they hate you, they hate me. If they hate me, they hate the source of all life."

Remember: whatsoever you do, finally you do it to God. Meanwhile you may be doing it to somebody else, but finally it turns out that you have done it to God. If you hate a man, ultimately you hate God; if you love, ultimately you love God.

All others are just mediums. Whatsoever you do to them is not to them. It is finally to the source, to the very seed.

AND THE SEVENTY RETURNED AGAIN WITH JOY, SAYING, LORD, EVEN

THE DEVILS ARE SUBJECT UNTO US THROUGH THY NAME. AND HE SAID UNTO THEM...

NOTWITHSTANDING IN THIS REJOICE NOT, THAT THE SPIRITS ARE

SUBJECT UNTO YOU; BUT RATHER REJOICE, BECAUSE YOUR NAMES ARE

WRITTEN IN HEAVEN.

The disciples are disciples; they are not yet awakened. They have come in deep contact with an awakened man. That awakened man has become infectious to

them, they are impressed deeply, the impact has gone to their roots, but they are still disciples; they are not awakened themselves.

When they came back were very happy. They had completely forgotten God in their happiness. Wherever they went, people listened to them with tremendous attention; wherever they went, they were received with love. They could not believe what had happened. They came back rejoicing and saying, LORD, EVEN

THE DEVILS ARE SUBJECT UNTO US THROUGH THY NAME.

Their reach is only up to Jesus. They have not yet seen God through him. Jesus is not yet transparent to them; they cannot see God. At the most they see God reflected, at the most they feel something of the unknown, but it has not become a settled, centered feeling in them.

They have completely forgotten God. They say: EVEN THE DEVILS ARE

SUBJECT UNTO US. Now their egos are inflated. But they remember one thing: THROUGH THY NAME. "It is your name that has done miracles. Even devils are in our power."

Jesus immediately says: "NOTWITHSTANDING IN THIS REJOICE NOT. Don't rejoice that the spirits are subject unto you. If you really want to rejoice, rejoice about something else that you are not aware of: BUT RATHER REJOICE, BECAUSE YOUR NAMES ARE WRITTEN IN HEAVEN. Rather

rejoice that God has heard your prayers. Don't think about yourself and don't think about my name. Rather feel happy that God has heard you and helped you. YOUR

NAMES ARE WRITTEN IN HEAVEN."

IN THAT HOUR JESUS REJOICED IN SPIRIT, AND SAID, I THANK THEE, O

FATHER...

The disciples were aware that they had done miracles. They had become very important. They remember Jesus. But Jesus REJOICED IN SPIRIT, AND SAID, I THANK THEE, O FATHER -- he remembers God. Jesus' name is of no use. If

his name is so powerful it is because of God. He is just a medium, a flute on which God has decided, in his mercy, to play a tune or sing a song.

I THANK THEE, O FATHER, LORD OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, THAT THOU

HAST HID THESE THINGS FROM THE WISE AND PRUDENT, AND HAST

REVEALED THEM UNTO BABES:

These disciples are just babes. They are neither wise nor prudent. They don't know the scriptures, they don't know the tradition. They are not priests or scholars, they are just babes: simple, innocent THAT THOU HAST HID

THESE THINGS FROM THE WISE AND PRUDENT, AND HAST REVEALED

THEM UNTO BABES: EVEN SO, FATHER; FOR SO IT SEEMED GOOD IN THY

SIGHT.

ALL THINGS ARE DELIVERED TO ME OF MY FATHER; AND NO MAN

KNOWETH WHO THE SON IS, BUT THE FATHER; AND WHO THE FATHER

IS, BUT THE SON, AND HE TO WHOM THE SON WILL REVEAL HIM. ALL THINGS ARE DELIVERED TO ME OF MY FATHER.… He simply says

that

"I am no more than a medium. If you pay respect to me, don't pay respect to me.

At the most you can pay the respect THROUGH me, but the respect should go to God." ALL THINGS ARE DELIVERED TO ME OF MY FATHER.…

... AND NO MAN KNOWETH WHO THE SON IS, because once you know who the son is, you have already known the father. If you recognize Jesus, you

have recognized God; if you crucify Jesus, you have crucified God -- because whatsoever you do with Jesus, you do with God.

Not only Jesus was crucified on Golgotha; God was crucified that day. You could not believe in God who was expressing himself through Jesus; you could not recognize the son. You could not see from where the song was coming, you destroyed the flute. But in destroying the flute, the song also disappeared.

ALL THINGS ARE DELIVERED TO ME OF MY FATHER; AND NO MAN KNOWETH WHO THE SON IS, BUT THE FATHER -- "Only he knows me,"

Jesus says -- AND WHO THE FATHER IS, BUT THE SON -- "and only I know who he is," because that revelation is possible only when you become part of God and God becomes part of you. When you are so deeply related to the whole existence that you are no longer separate, then you know who God is.

... AND WHO THE FATHER IS, BUT THE SON, AND HE TO WHOM THE SON

WILL REVEAL HIM. And for ordinary humanity there is no other way than to look through the son, to accept the revelation, to see God through him who has become one with Him. Once you see it, you have already become a son. Then others can see through you, and the thing can go on spreading.

Every person who has recognized Jesus has become a Jesus immediately. Every person who has recognized Buddha has become a Buddha immediately. In your recognition you have attained. Then anybody who recognizes you is linked, is bridged, with God. One man can transform the whole world: it becomes a chain of openings.

If you recognize me, you have become me. Then somebody recognizes you; he has become you. And this can go on and on. Just a small pebble thrown in the sea, and ripples arise and go on spreading.

Jesus is just the pebble. You can become Jesus if you recognize him. That is the real meaning of being a Christian: that you recognize Jesus as the son of God and you say, "My eyes are not yet able to look at the sun, the light is too much. I look at the lamp... but I recognize that the light is the same."

To look at God directly will be blinding. To look at Jesus will be beautiful -- he's not blinding. But through him you can recognize, and by and by your eyes can become attuned. Once you have become attuned to Jesus, you can look directly at God. By and by, Jesus will disappear -- will become transparent, transparent, and will be gone -- and only God will be left there. That's why Jesus goes on saying again and again that "I and my father are one."

Recognition is one of the turning points in life. The search for a master is the search for a man in whom you can recognize that God is, in whom you can recognize that now there is no need for any proof, in whom you can recognize --

not intellectually, but existentially -- that yes, God is. That man becomes your master. he becomes the door. That's why jesus goes on saying: "I am the door, I am the opening through whom you can come."

Otherwise you can go on arguing. Your arguments are all futile. Whether you prove that God is, or you prove that God is not, does not matter much. They are all intellectual gymnastics; nothing is proven. No atheist ever becomes capable of converting a theist and no theist is ever capable of converting an atheist. For centuries the argument has continued. Nobody seems to win, the whole thing seems to be futile and meaningless. You cannot convince anybody about anything unless he opens his eyes and recognizes something which is of the beyond.

Once it happened: Mulla Nasruddin woke up one morning and started crying and weeping. His wife was worried. She said, "What has happened? Have you had a nightmare?"

He said, "No, it is not a nightmare. I have died. I am dead."

Now, how to convince him that he is not dead? The wife tried, the neighbors tried, but there was no way to prove it to him. He insisted that he was dead.

He was taken to a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst watched him, talked to him

-- a very rational man, argumentative, and he argues that he is dead! And says, "Give me some proof that I am alive"!

The psychoanalyst thought it over and said, "Yes" -- an idea struck him. He said,

"Come with me."

He took Nasruddin to the hospital, to the post-mortem department, and told the situation to the doctors. The dead bodies were cut and the psychoanalyst said,

"Look, is there any blood flowing?"

No blood was flowing. The psychoanalyst had the idea that if Nasruddin could be convinced that dead bodies don't bleed then something might be possible. At least if he could prove that dead bodies don't bleed and live bodies bleed.…

For seven days he took Mulla to see the autopsies. He was intellectually convinced. "Are you convinced? " the psychoanalyst asked.

Mulla Nasruddin said, "Now there is no need to continue. I am convinced that dead bodies don't bleed. But that makes no change in my attitude."

The psychoanalyst said, "Wait." He took Mulla's hand, took a sharp knife and made a small cut on the finger. Blood started flowing. The psychoanalyst was thinking that this would be absolute proof that he was not dead.

But Mulla Nasruddin looked at the blood and said, "My God! So dead men bleed after all!"

No proof can be a proof. If you are convinced that God is not, all proofs will prove that He is not. If you are convinced He is, then all proofs will prove that He is. No conviction can be changed, so whether you believe in God or you don't believe in God, both are bogus, both are headtrips. Unless you recognize.… It is not a question of argument. Unless you open your eyes and see something which suddenly fills you, your total being, and a certainty arises in you which is not intellectual but existential.…

To seek a master is to seek somebody in whom you can recognize, somebody who becomes the proof -- in whose being you can taste something of the divine; in whose eyes you can glimpse and see something of the divine; in whose love you can feel something being showered; in whose song you can feel, you can know beyond doubt, that the infinite is flowing. The master is nothing but a reed, a flute -- an empty flute, an emptiness. God flows through him. If you can recognize it, already you yourself have become one with it. Now others can recognize it in you and it can spread.

One man, attaining to God, can become a total transformation of the whole humanity. It has not happened because people insist on being miserable, they insist on being blind, they insist on being howsoever they are. They protect their hell, they defend their misery: they are armored against God.

That is why it has not happened. Otherwise one Buddha would have been enough; one Jesus would have been enough. But thousands of Buddhas and Jesuses and Mahavirs have been, and you go on living in your darkness. It is simply unbelievable, but it has been so.

Don't wait for the whole humanity. Nobody can say when the whole humanity will listen. But if you can listen, if you can recognize. you also become a door.

Come Follow To You, Vol 2

Chapter #4

Chapter title: Are You The Greatest Master? 3 November 1975 am in Buddha Hall Question 1

I RECOIL FROM THE WHOLE IDEA OF THE CRUCIFIXION. THE MURDER

OF JESUS AT THIRTY-THREE, EVEN MORE THAN THE MURDER OF JOHN

THE BAPTIST OR THE MURDER OF SOCRATES, SEEMS SUPREMELY UNNECESSARY. COULD NOT HE, THE PRINCE OF COMPASSION, HAVE MANAGED TO SYMPATHIZE WITH THE HIGH PRIESTS, SEEING THE

IMPOSSIBILITY OF THEIR SITUATION? AFTER ALL, THEY WERE BISHOPS, NOT THE GESTAPO; BENIGHTED NO DOUBT, BUT NOT MURDEROUS. OR

WORSE STILL, DID HE DELIBERATELY PUSH THEN TO THE ULTIMATE

IMPOSSIBILITY -- WHERE THEY WERE BOUND TO KILL HIM AND SET THEM UP AS THE VILLAINS?

ONE VERY FOUNDATIONAL THING will have to be understood, and that is that the people you call bad are never so bad as the people you call good. The bad people are bad, but they have no excuse about being bad. They know they are bad, and they have nowhere to hide themselves. But the people who are thought to be good -- respectable, honored, respected, religious -- they are the real dangerous people because their badness can hide in their goodness. They can murder and will not feel that they are murderous. They can kill and can go on feeling that they are doing that killing for the good of those who are being killed.

The ordinarily bad, the criminal, is exposed. He knows that he is not good And that is the possibility of transformation: he can understand and can co me out of it. But the so-called good hides under his personality. He may not be able to understand w hat he is doing, for what reasons he is doing it. He can always manage to rationalize.

That's how it happened. And not only in the case of Jesus; it has been happening always. The priests w ho were murderous never thought that they were doing anything bad. They thought that they were saving their religion; they thought that they were saving the m orality. They thought: "This m an is dangerous. He is corrupting the youth."

That was the charge against Jesus -- that he was corrupting people, he was destroying the old morality, he was creating a chaos. And that was the charge against Socrates, and that is the charge against me. It has always been so.

The priests: whether they are Hindus or Greeks or Jews, it makes no difference.

The priests are the protectors of the old. The temple is of the past; they are the protectors, the guardians of tradition. Of course Jesus looked dangerous to them.

He could destroy the whole structure.

It is not that they were deceiving themselves. They may have thought, without a single suspicion, that they were perfectly right. "This man is dangerous. To destroy this man is to save the society." And of course whenever there is such an

alternative -- that you can save the whole society by killing one man -- the murder is worth it. The priests killed him because of their goodness, because of their virtue, because of their m orality. They killed him in the name of God; they killed him very innocently.

This situation has been arising again and again in history. There seems to be no possibility to change it. The only possibility is that Jesus should be so moderate that he doesn't hurt anybody. But then he is useless. He could have managed --

you ask me rightly. He could have managed, he could have been very moderate and liberal. He could have talked like a politician who talks much but never says anything, who says many things but is always vague. He never clearly asserts anything; you can never pinpoint what he has said.

The crime of Jesus was that he was clear, certain: that whatsoever he was saying, he was not saying like a politician. He was opening his heart. He was not diplomatic. If he had diluted his teaching there would have been no trouble. But then there would have been no Christ also. And that would have been a greater murder. Then the Christ would have committed suicide.

As I see it, as things are, this is the only way it could have been. Jesus had to be as hard as he was, had to be as rebellious as he was. He could not dilute his message and he could not compromise.

The priests would have been happy if he himself had become a rabbi, a priest.

Then there would have been no trouble. If he had just kept himself within the imprisonment of the tradition, if he had not tried to open new dimensions to humanity, there would have been no trouble. Then they would have worshipped him, loved him, sanctified him as a saint. They would have remembered him.

But he tried to open up new dimensions. That was moving in danger. But that danger was worth taking. If Jesus was crucified it is nothing to be worried about.

That was the only way. He pushed humanity to a higher level of being and consciousness.

It is not that he tried to manage in any way to be murdered. There was no need. Priests are enough; you need not provoke them. They will be provoked

automatically, they move in a mechanical way. There was no need to provoke them -- the very being of Jesus was enough.

You recoil from the whole idea of crucifixion because you cannot understand. It is not an ordinary murder. It is meaningful, it is significant. It has done much: it has created something new that never existed before. Through that crucifixion, Jesus changed almost half of humanity, forced them to move on a different path than they had ever moved on.

When you think about crucifixion you become afraid, as if you are being crucified. You don't know that Jesus cannot be crucified. Only his body' not him.

When you think about crucifixion, you think of yourself being completely crucified and killed. You do not yet understand about life and death.

That is the meaning of the story of the resurrection: that after the third day Jesus was again alive, resurrected. It simply means that you can crucify the body of a Jesus, but you can never crucify his spirit. After three days he will again be moving on the earth. He is deathless. Crucifixion became a situation in which he could assert his deathlessness.

So it is perfectly okay as it is. It is nothing to be worried about. And this will continue to be so. The only possibility there is for a Jesus to exist and not be crucified is if people have become so indifferent to religion that they don't bother. And that is not a good possibility, that would be very sad. Jesus comes and walks on the earth -- and nobody is hurt, and no priest bothers about him?

Rather, people enjoy it; they gather around him. Jesus looks amusing, he looks like a fool or a buffoon -- he seems to be talking nonsense.

That's what the modern philosophers say: that to talk about God is to talk nonsense. It makes no sense, it is meaningless. You are using words which are only containers, and there is no content in them. God, moksha, nirvana -- what do you mean?

If Jesus comes someday and nobody is bothered, that will be the most sad possibility. Jesus hurts because people are concerned. Jesus hurts because religion is meaningful; Jesus provokes antagonism because, with religion, life is at stake. The most unfortunate moment in human history will be when Jesus comes and nobody bothers to stone him, nobody bothers to crucify him. He

moves around the earth and people laugh, they are amused. He looks like a buffoon.

No, the crucifixion of Jesus simply means that religion is so meaningful that when a man like Jesus comes he creates a rift between humanity. The whole humanity is divided between those who love him and those who hate him. He is significant.

Many times I think about it -- that it has never happened in India. Buddha was not crucified, Mahavir was not crucified, Krishna was not crucified. Why? This country is too sophisticated about religion and when you become too sophisticated, you become indifferent.

This country could tolerate Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna. Ordinarily people think that it is because this country is so religious. That's not my opinion. This country is so sophisticated that people have become indifferent. Nobody bothered about what Buddha was saying. In fact everybody already knew what he was saying.

Everybody knows all that can be known -- who bothers?

It is like Jesus walking in Cambridge or Oxford University, where philosophers think that God is meaningless. If Jesus comes to Oxford and stands on the crossroads and cries, "I and my Father are one," those philosophers will gather together and they will laugh.

"About whom are you talking? Which father? Where is he? What do you mean by'father'? Then who is your mother? " They will ask irrelevant questions and they will laugh. Jesus will simply feel embarrassed.

This is my understanding: that the Jews of Jesus' days were very simple people, not sophisticated. Religion was very meaningful, not just a philosophy. Their whole life was at stake. And this man was destroying it: this man was uprooting all that they had been protecting for centuries; this man was trying to create a revolution, a chaos. They had deep love for the tradition, for the values that they had always cherished. They were not indifferent, they COULD not be indifferent.

Either they had to follow Jesus or they had to kill him. There was no other alternative.

India is more philosophical -- too much in the head. Jews were not that much in the head.

To me, the crucifixion of Jesus simply shows one thing: that they took Jesus seriously. Buddha was never taken that seriously. We could tolerate him. "lt's okay, let him do his thing. Nothing much is going to happen out of it. Why kill him unnecessarily? By killing him, there may even be more danger because the death will create a stir."

Jesus, if he was in India, would have become one of the AVATARS. But nothing much. Nothing much -- we would have included him in the tradition.

Even Buddha has been included. Buddha denied all that is basic to Hinduism, but Hindus are very sophisticated people. They said, "Yes, this too is a message from God." He was contradicting all that is meaningful to Hindus, but they were not bothered. They said, "He is also an incarnation of God."

Hindus have written a story about Buddha that shows how sophisticated minds function. When Buddha died.… Of course, he was a very important man, one of the most important ever born in India, one of the most influential. How to cope with him when he has denied Hinduism? Hindus have created a story about it.

They say that God created the world, heaven and hell. Centuries and centuries passed. People would die and immediately they would go to heaven. Nobody would go to hell because nobody was a sinner. So the people who were managing hell -- the devil and his disciples -- went to God and said, "Why have you created hell? Nobody ever comes. Our whole existence is futile. We go on sitting and sitting and waiting, and nobody knocks at the door. Either cancel it --

or send people!"

God said. "Wait. Soon I am going to a womb to be born as Gautam Buddha. I will destroy people's minds, I will poison their minds, and then they will be coming to hell."

That's why Buddha was born. An incarnation of God: to spoil people's minds.

And since then, hell is overflowing. This is a sophisticated way to tackle with a man like Buddha.

Jews were simple. They simply could not tolerate this man. They killed him. That means they paid great respect to him. They realized the significance of the man, the dangerousness of the man. Either he lives or their tradition lives. Both cannot live together.

Try to meditate on the crucifixion of Jesus and you will not be so much puzzled, confused. And you will not recoil so much from it.

Question 2

ALTHOUGH YOU HAVE MADE ME ALIVE TOWARDS CHRIST, BUDDHA, MAHAVIR, KRISHNA, LAO TZU AND ALL THOSE KNOWN AS

ENLIGHTENED ONES, AND IT IS REALLY DIFFICULT FOR ME TO CONCEIVE OF YOU AS SEPARATE, YET WHEN SOMEONE STARTS

TALKING HIGH OF ANYONE, IT AUTOMATICALLY COMES OUT OF MY

MOUTH, THAT THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A GREATER MASTER THAN

SHREE RAJNEESH AND MAYBE THERE WILL BE NONE IN THE FUTURE

ALSO. IS THIS DUE TO MY LOVE TOWARDS YOU, DUE TO MY EGO, OR IS

IT REALITY? OR AM I BIASED? PLEASE ENLIGHTEN.

The disciples of jesus thought in the same way. The disciples of Buddha also thought in the same way. It is part of love, not of reality.

It is part of love. You fall in love with a woman and you think, "Never has there been such a woman before; never shall there be such a woman again." What do you mean? Is it reality? In a sense it is; it is the reality for you. It is not an objective reality, it is a subjective reality. This is your feeling. And feelings are as real as stones; they exist.

But this is not a comparison. You are not saying that there has really never been such a beautiful woman before. How can you know? Millions and millions of women have been on the earth -- how can you know, how can you compare?

You don't even know all the women that are on the earth right now. Who knows?

-- there may be somebody who is more beautiful than your beloved.

But that is irrelevant, that is not the point. You are not making a comparative statement; it is not that you have studied all the statistics. You are simply making a statement of love. It has nothing to do with any other woman, it is not comparative. In the moment of love a truth arises, a subjective truth. It is your feeling. For you this is the woman and all other women have become irrelevant.

The same happens when you love a master. It happens even more extremely because the love is even deeper. You love a woman physically; at the most, psychologically. A master you love spiritually. You touch the deepest core, he touches the deepest core in you. In that ecstasy, a subjective truth arises.

This is not new. This is nothing new with you, this has always been happening.

Ask Jesus' disciples and they say, "He is he only begotten son of God." They cannot conceive that Jesus can be compared in any way with anybody else. He is incomparable, unique -- the only begotten son. It is impossible for them to conceive that there is another son of God. Ask the followers of Buddha and they say, "He has attained. And only he has attained the unattainable. Never before was it attained." Ask the followers of Mahavir. They say, "He is the only one: all-knowing, omniscient. There is nobody else."

What is happening? A simple phenomenon of subjective love. It is impossible for the lover to conceive that there can be anybody else. In a moment of love you are in such deep ecstasy, so intoxicated. Love is an intoxicant. In that intoxication, whatsoever you say is poetic, is not scientific.

And there is no contradiction in it. That's why when I speak on Jesus I forget all about Buddha, Mahavir, Krishna. They grow pale. They disappear, they fade.

Then, out of the whole history, Jesus arises as the only one. That is the only way to understand him. You have to be deeply in love.

When I talk about Buddha I forget about Jesus, because even to remember jesus

will be a disturbance. When I talk about Lao Tzu I forget about everybody else.

He is enough, more than enough. He himself is such a vast sky that you can go on and on and on, and there is no end to it. They all are vast skies.

But the standpoint of the disciple is the standpoint of a lover. He is making a poetic statement. It is not reality and yet it is reality. It is not reality in the objective sense of the word. It is reality as a subjective feeling.

But I would like you to get out of it. I would like you to attain to a greater love which is less like intoxication and more like awareness.

There are two stages with a master. First is falling in love with him. Absolutely necessary; without it you will never be in contact with him. But that is only the beginning, that should not become the end. In that state of ecstasy you will be poetic. Be poetic! Don't be worried, there is nothing to worry about it. Declare your love. Go on the housetops and declare your love because the more you declare it, the more it grows.

But that is just the beginning. That is necessary to come close to the master. But come still closer and there comes a moment when the two flames of the disciple and master become one. There is a jump, a leap, and the two flames become one.

Then you become aware. Then you will laugh at your own statements.

Now you know that enlightened people are not different at all. Only names differ. Buddha is a name, Jesus is a name, Krishna is a name, but the enlightenment that has happened to them is the same. The closer you come to Buddha, the closer you will come to Christ also.

It is as if you are moving from the periphery of a circle towards the center. On the periphery one point is Buddha, another point is Jesus, another point is Ramakrishna. The closer you come to the center, the more those lines are not so separate, so different, so distant. Ramakrishna approaches Christ, Christ approaches Buddha, Buddha approaches Krishna. They are coming closer. As you move more and more to the center, they are meeting and merging into each other. When you reach the exact center, suddenly they have all disappeared.

Only enlightenment is, only light is. All have disappeared. Those were just the personalities.

Whatsoever you see in me is a personality. It is not the quality of the light; it is the mode of the lamp. It is the body of the lamp, not the quality of the light.

The quality of the light is the same. Lamps differ. Some lamp may be just an earthen lamp, some other may be a golden lamp -- vast is the difference. But that difference makes no difference in the quality of light. In an earthen lamp or in a golden lamp: the same light.

It is the same. Buddha is reported to have said, "Go to the sea and taste the sea water. Anywhere you go the sea water tastes the same." The same is the quality of Buddhas. You can taste from me, you can taste from Ramakrishna, you can taste from Krishnamurti, you can taste from Jesus -- the difference is only from where you taste it The ghat may be different, the bank, but the ocean is the same.

Wherever you taste it, it will taste the same. The same saltiness. The same flame.

So nothing is wrong about it. Don't feel guilty in any way. When you are in love, you have to be mad. In love and reasonable? -- nobody has ever heard about it. If your love is reasonable it will not be much of a love. When you are in love, you are mad.

When Majanu says anything about Laila it is not a scientific statement. But still it has a truth: the truth of Majanu's heart. It does not say anything about Laila; it says something about Majanu's love. But that love is also true.

So don't feel guilty in any way about it, because this love is the only way you will proceed on. But don't cling to it. Move. Go on and on. A greater consciousness is awaiting you. Where love becomes aware, where love becomes consciousness, where love flares up and becomes light -- there you will understand that all are one and the same. In enlightenment the personality disappears, the personality of a Buddha or Jesus, and only the ocean remains, with the same taste.

It is your love. Good -- be happy about it. But don't be content with it, don't think that it is enough. Good, but more is possible.

Always look ahead and always try to transcend the state you are in. There comes a moment when nothing remains to be transcended. That is realization.

Question 3

DO ALL ENLIGHTENED MASTERS SOUND AS EGOISTIC AS YOU DO?

It is bound to be so. They sound egoistic because they cannot be humble in the sense you understand humility. Try to understand. It is a delicate point.

Whatsoever you call humbleness is a function of the ego. It is a modified ego.

The enlightened person has no ego so he cannot have a modified ego. He cannot be humble. In the sense you can understand it, he cannot be humble.

Otherwise Krishna would not be able to say to Arjuna: "Leave all, and come to my feet. I am the God who created the whole existence. SARVA DHARMAN

PARITYAJYA MAMEKAM SHARANAM VRAJA. Come to my feet." What

egoism! Jesus would not be able to say: "I am the door, I am the way, I am the truth." "I and my Father in heaven are one." "Those who follow me will be saved... only those who follow me will be saved." And when Buddha attained to Buddhahood, he declared to the skies, to the heavens: "I have attained the unattainable!"

They sound very egoistic. First, they cannot be humble in the sense you understand humbleness. Your humbleness is a modified, polished, cultured ego.

But then why do they sound egoistic?

They are not humble and you know only two qualities, two ways of being: humble or egoistic. They are not humble -- then they must be egoistic. You have only tWo categories. And egoism is easy for you to understand, it is your language.

When you say'I', you mean one thing; when I say'I', I mean something else. But when I say'I', you will understand it in your way, not in my way. When Krishna said to Arjuna, "Come to my feet!" what did he mean? Of course you would understand your meaning if you said to somebody, "Come to my feet!" The same must be Krishna's meaning. No, that is not his meaning. He has no'I' left, he has no'my' left.

But he has to use your language. And you understand it in your own way. So all enlightened masters sound egoistic because you are egoistic. You will understand their humbleness only when your ego disappears. Otherwise it won't

allow you. The only way to understand those who have awakened is to become awake.

Continuously I go on observing: I say something; you understand something else. But that's natural. How can you understand my meaning? When I say something, the word goes to you not my meaning. My meaning remains in my heart. Then the word goes within you and you color it, you give it a meaning.

That meaning is yours.

They sound egoistic, but they are not. Because if they are, then the enlightenment has not happened yet. The enlightenment happens only when the ego has disappeared. The ego is the darkness of the soul, the ego is the imprisonment of the soul, the'I' is the barrier to the ultimate.

A Buddha is an emptiness and when he says, "I have attained to the unattainable," he is simply saying that the emptiness has realized its emptiness, nothing else. But how to translate it into your terms? He is simply saying that the emptiness has realized its emptiness, but he has to say, "I have attained to the unattainable."

When Krishna says, "Come to my feet! " he is saying, "Here, look! The emptiness is standing before you. Dissolve into it! " But that won't be direct. He has to use Arjuna's language. He says, "Come to my feet." If Arjuna is ready and willing to surrender, if he trusts and surrenders, when he touches the feet of Krishna he will touch emptiness. Only then will there be a realization of what Krishna was saying. There are no feet, no Krishna -- just a tremendous quality of emptiness.

The temple of God is emptiness. Touching Krishna's feet he will bow down to emptiness and the emptiness will pour down into him. But that will be possible only when he trusts.

Yes, many times I must be sounding very egoistic to you. But don't be deceived, because if you cling to the idea that I am egoistic, you will never be able to let go, to surrender, and then your ego will go on. Then there is no need to be here with me because then the whole point is lost. You are wasting your time.

There is only one way to be here with me: if you want to surrender. Otherwise go away, find somebody somewhere else to whom you find it easy to surrender,

because unless you surrender you will not come to know who you are. And without knowing yourself, you will not be able to know what has happened to a man whom we called enlightened. Only through your own experience will things become clear to you.

Yes, it sounds egoistic. Now there are two ways. If you think that it not only sounds egoistic, it is -- then go away from me. The sooner you go the better, because all the time that you are here will be wasted. Or, if you think it simply sounds egoistic but it is not so, then surrender. Then don't wait because sometimes waiting too long can become habitual, you can get addicted to it.

Then you can go on waiting and waiting and waiting.

And I will not be waiting here for long. A little while more and I will be gone.

Then you will repent, then you will suffer, then you will be sad, but then it will be of no use.

It will be easy for you to touch my feet when I am gone because then there is no surrender. You can go and touch the feet of a statue: the statue is dead; there is no surrender. When you touch the feet of an alive man -- alive just like you, in the body just like you -- then the problem comes. The ego resists.

So either believe in your ego or believe in me. These are the only two alternatives. Up to now you have believed in your ego. What have you attained?

I open another alternative for you. Try it.… Question 4

WHO ARE YOU?

Whomsoever you think, because it depends on you. If you look at me with total emptiness, I will be different. If you look at me with ideas, those ideas will color me; if you come to me with a prejudice, then I will be different. I am just a mirror. Your own face will be reflected. There is a saying that if a monkey looks into the mirror he will not find an apostle looking at him through the mirror.

Only a monkey will be looking through the mirror.

So it depends on the way you look at me. I have disappeared completely so I cannot impose on you who I am. I have nothing to impose. There is just a nothingness, a mirror. Now you have complete freedom.

If you really want to know who I am, you have to be as absolutely empty as I am.

Then two mirrors will be facing each other, and only emptiness will be mirrored.

Infinite emptiness will be mirrored: two mirrors facing each other. But if you have some idea, then you will see your own idea in me.

Question 5

DURING THE LECTURES I FIND MY EYES FIXED ON YOUR FACE. EVERY

ONCE IN A WHILE THERE IS A SUDDEN SHIFT AND FOR A FEW

MOMENTS YOUR FACE APPEARS SATANIC. I KNOW THIS IS A PROJECTION. WHAT IS INSIDE OF ME?

Is there any need for me to tell you!?

You have both sides within you: the divine and the devil. Sometimes, when you are flowing through your divine side. you will see the divine in me. Then things shift: you are flowing through the devilish side. Then the devil will be seen in me. But always remember that it is you. I am just a mirror, a situation to reveal yourself to yourself, that's all. So whatsoever you see -- meditate on it, because that must be some quality within you.

It is very easy for the mind to project and forget that it is a projection. There are people who believe that I am really a devil and there are people who believe that I am really divine. Both are taking their projections as real. I am just'I am'. I am just a mirror; I show your face to you. That's the function of a master: to show your face to you.

So whatsoever you see, meditate upon it. If you see the devil then try to find out the devil within yourself and try to drop it. Don't get the idea that the devil is within me because then you wi]l never be able to get rid of your devil. If it is

within me, then what can you do? Then you are helpless. But if it is within you, something can be done. You can drop it.

Question 6

WHY ARE THE ASHRAMITE SANNYASINS NOT ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN ALL THE MEDITATIONS? WHY ARE THEY TOLD TO PARTICIPATE IN ONLY ONE MEDITATION EVERY DAY?

It is because of you, ladies and gentlemen. It is because of your laziness.

I go on talking about non-doing and my text becomes your pretext. Non-doing has nothing to do with laziness. In fact, a lazy person can never move into non- doing. A lazy person is almost suicidal. He is closed; his energy is not flowing. A non-doer is a flowing person: alive.

A non-doer does not mean that he does not do anything. He does many things, many more than ordinary doers, but he is still not a doer. All that he does is a happening. He is instrumental: as if the divine possesses him and functions through him. He never thinks, "I am doing it." At the most he thinks, "I am allowing it,"

A non-doer will do many things and will not be tired because there will be no tension. A non-doer will do many things and will not accumulate any ego because he is not the doer. Things are just happening. A non-doer loves his work, and the work becomes worship.

People who are in the ashram -- they are allowed to be in the ashram only for a certain work. That certain work i.s: they have to transform their work into worship. But they would like to be lazy. And particularly in India, sannyas is thought to be a type of laziness. People who don't want to do anything become sannyasins.

I am not a shelter for them; I am not a shelter for escapists. I am here to teach you life and more life and still more life, because only when your energy is flowing will you be able to love; only when your energy is flowing will you be able to know; only when your energy is flowing will you someday be able to transcend death -- otherwise not.

But very few in the ashram work as a worship. Many go on avoiding. Not that they want to meditate, because if they want to meditate then the thing will be totally different: they can meditate with their work. But they would like to d3 all the meditations just to avoid the work.

A few are absolutely lazy and they think that they can rationalize it. For example, let me tell you about one day in one sannyasin's life. From six to seven in the morning he will meditate, Then comes breakfast. Then eight to nine-thirty or ten is the lecture. Then of course by ten o'clock he has already done too much: meditated, listened to such a long lecture So a little gossiping -- it is obviously

needed. Then by eleven, eleven-thirty, he is ready for lunch. By twelve, of course, he has already done too much -- meditating, listening, even eating -- so by twelve o'clock he goes to sleep. Up till three o'clock, rest is needed. Three to three-thirty: tea or coffee time. Three-thirty to four-thirty: Nadabrahma, an individual meditation. Four-thirty to five-thirty he goes for a walk of course. One needs a little physical exercise. Five-thirty to six-thirty: Kundalini meditation. Then dinner time. And then, of course, the girlfriend comes, so the day is complete.

Still more meditations you need?

I talk every day for ninety minutes. That means, at the most, thirty pages. In the ashram we have twenty persons who are doing editing. Every day they have to edit, transcribe, proofread, thirty pages. Twenty persons -- that means one and a half pages per sannyasin. Still the work goes on piling up. And they are always carrying long faces, as if they are doing too much work. It looks ridiculous: one person speaks; twenty persons edit. It simply looks ridiculous. And then, too, the work is never done. It goes on piling up.

They are told not to meditate too much because listening to me is meditation.

Can you do a better meditation than listening to me? If you love the work, if you love me, that is meditation. Your whole life should be meditation. People who come for a few days from the outside have to learn meditation, but those who are living in the ashram -- their whole life should be meditation. Their walking, their sitting, even their sleep; everything should become meditative. Meditation should be a climate here. Not something that you do, but something that you are.

And don't carry faces that show you are doing very great work. Love it! Nobody

is helped by carrying a long face and a burden. And nobody is deceived by you because the whole thing seems to be ridiculous. You just have the idea of feeling burdened. That burden kills you. And if you go on thinking about it, it will become a burden. It will create ulcers, it will make your body feel ill, and you will become tense and nervous. Then you will try to show even more that you are burdened very much. You are moving in a vicious circle now.

Here you are to enjoy, to be, to delight. And there is so little work that, in fact, it can be done within minutes. Just one and a half pages of editing, transcribing and proofreading -- how long will it take? And this is just an example. The same is true with the other work.

But there ARE people who take it as worship. They are flowing and growing and flowering. There are people who work -- and work lovingly. That's why some work is done; otherwise it would be impossible.

But these questions come from the people who are lazy. I will not give the name of the person who has asked this question because it is the same sannyasin who wants her name to be told.

Question 7

ARE FEAR AND GUILT THE SAME THING? AND SURELY AS LIGHT

SHOWS UP DARKNESS, SO JESUS MUST HAVE MADE PEOPLE AWARE OF

THEIR GUILT.

Fear and guilt are not the same thing. Fear accepted becomes freedom; fear denied, rejected, condemned, becomes guilt. If you accept fear as part of the situation.…

It is part of the situation. Man is a part, a very small, tiny part, and the whole is vast: a drop, a very small drop, and the whole is the whole ocean. A trembling arises: "I may be lost in the whole; my identity may be lost." That is the fear of death. All fear is the fear of death. And the fear of death is the fear of annihilation.

It is natural that man is afraid, trembling. If you accept it, if you say that this is

how life is, if you accept it totally, trembling stops immediately and fear -- the same energy that was becoming fear -- uncoils and becomes freedom. Then you know that even if the drop disappears in the ocean, it will be there. In fact, it will become the whole ocean. Then death becomes nirvana, then you are not afraid to lose yourself. Then you understand the saying of Jesus: "If you save your life you will lose it and if you lose it you will save it."

The only way to go beyond death is to accept death. Then it disappears. The only way to be fearless is to accept fear. Then the energy is released and becomes freedom. But if you condemn it, if you suppress it, if you hide the fact that you are afraid -- if you armor yourself and protect yourself and are defensive -- then a guilt arises.

Anything repressed creates guilt; anything not allowed creates guilt; anything against nature creates guilt. Then you feel guilty that you have been Lying to others and Lying to yourself. That inauthenticity is guilt.

You ask: "Are fear and guilt the same thing? " No. Fear can be guilt, but it may not be. It depends what you do with fear. If you do something wrong with it, it becomes guilt. If you simply accept it and don't do anything about it -- there is nothing to do! -- then it becomes freedom, it becomes fearlessness.

"And surely as light shows up darkness, Jesus must have made people aware of their guilt." No, not at all. Jesus tried to help people not to feel guilty. That was his whole effort. The whole effort was to tell people to accept themselves and not feel guilty, not feel condemned. Don't say to yourself that you are ugly, wrong, a sinner. Don't condemn. Whatsoever you are, you are., Accept the fact, and the very acceptance becomes a transformation.

Jesus never created guilt in people. That was one of his crimes. He tried to cheer up guilty people -- that was his crime. He tried to tell them, "Don't be guilty, don't feel guilty. Even if there is something wrong, you are not wrong. Maybe you have acted wrongly, but your being is not wrong because of that." Some action may be wrong, but the being is always right.

He accepted people; sinners were at ease with him, at home with him. That became the trouble. The rabbis, the bishops, the priests, started saying: "Why?

Why do you allow sinners to be with you? Why do you eat with them, why do you sleep with them? Why are so many outcasts following you?"

Jesus said, "It is bound to be so. I come for those who are sick. The sick seek the physician; those who are already healthy, they need not. Go and think about it."

Jesus said: "I have come for the sick, for the ill. I have to support them and I have to make them strong. I have to bring light to them, I have to bring life to them again, so that their energy becomes dynamic and flowing."

No, Jesus is a light that does not show darkness. In fact, when the light is there, darkness disappears. Darkness is not shown by light; it disappears by light.

This is the difference. If a priest is there, he will show darkness. He is not a light; he cannot destroy darkness. He will make you feel guilty. He will create sinners -

- he will condemn and he will make you afraid of hell. He will create a greed and a desire for heaven and its awards. At the most he can create more fear and more greed in you. That's what heaven and hell are: projections of fear and greed.

But when a Jesus, a sage, appears, darkness is simply destroyed. When the light is there, darkness is not shown. Darkness simply is not, because darkness is nothing but the absence of light.

If there is darkness in the room and I give you a lamp and tell you, "Go. And take the lamp with you, because with the lamp it will be easy to see the darkness..." If you go in darkness, how will you be able to see the darkness? -- it looks logical.

But absurd! Darkness can be seen only when there is no light. If you take the light with you, you will never be able to see darkness, because once the light is there, darkness is no longer there.

Jesus simply destroys darkness, he destroys guilt. He creates hope, he creates confidence and trust. People who have been condemned for long, have lost all hope. They have accepted their sin, they have accepted their ugly life, and they know that nothing can be done now. They can only wait for hell. They have accepted that they are going to be thrown in hell and they have to suffer.

Jesus comes and helps people to come out of their closed darkness. He says,

"There is no hell." He says, "Come out. Except for your ignorance, there is no hell; except for your own closedness, there is no hell. Come out of it, flow again.

Unfreeze and melt, and live life again. Come in the sunlight. God is available."

That's why he says, "Return, the kingdom of God is at hand." He does not say that if you are a sinner then returning will take much time, and if you are a respectable religious man then returning will take less time, no.

Just think of the whole thing as if you have dreamed a long dream that you are a sinner. Somebody else in the same room is dreaming that he is a saint. Will it take a longer time for you to get out of your sleep than it will take for one who is dreaming that he is a saint? The saint and the sinner both have been dreaming.

They will take the same time to awaken from their sleep.

Paradoxically, sometimes it may take a little longer time for the saint, because he is having such a beautiful dream. He does not want to come out of it. The sinner is already in a nightmare. He would like to come out; he is crying, shrieking, that somehow he should come out of it. He is making every effort to come out. The dream is not beautiful, the dream is ugly. He is in hell. But the saint may not want to be disturbed. He would like to turn over to the other side and sleep a little more.

Remember, when you feel happy, returning is difficult; when you feel unhappy, returning is easy. That's the meaning of the saying: "There are blessings hidden in misfortunes, hidden in curses." When somebody is happy and everything is running smoothly, who bothers to transform oneself? When one is sad, in deep sorrow, in misery, in tears, then one would like to come out of it. Suffering is also good because it gives you an opportunity to awaken, to come out of your sleep.

Nothing is wrong if you can use it rightly. Even poisons can be used as medicines and they can become life-enhancing.

If you feel guilty, try to see why you are feeling guilty. Yes, man is helpless.

Right! And man is ignorant -- that is right, too. In his ignorance he has done many things which were not as they should be -- that, too, is right. Accept this helplessness, this ignorance, and pray. Let your tears come down, confess, repent, say to God, "I was helpless, I was ignorant, and I could not do better. And I still cannot do better, unless you help. As I am, I will again go wrong. As I am, I will again betray you. I cannot rely on myself. Help me. Only your grace

can save me."

That's what Jesus' whole teaching is: ask for God's grace, don't believe in yourself

-- because that very belief has been your whole undoing.

No, he never created guilt in anybody. He tried to free people from guilt. The last question but one:

Question 8 OSHO, HOW?

Now. And there is no 'how' to it. And the last question:

Question 9

OSHO! OSHO! OSHO!!!...???

That is the way. If you can cry, if you can pray, if you can call from your very innermost core, the divine is always available. The divine is always close; it is just that you have not called, that you have not knocked at his door. Jesus says,

"Knock, and the door shall be opened unto you. Ask, and it shall be given "

Come Follow To You, Vol 2 Chapter #5

Chapter titleAnd Who Are My Brethren?

4 November 1975 am in Buddha Hall

MATTHEW 12

46 WHILE HE YET TALKED TO THE PEOPLE, BEHOLD, HIS MOTHER AND

HIS BRETHREN STOOD WITHOUT, DESIRING TO SPEAK WITH HIM. 47 THEN ONE SAID UNTO HIM, BEHOLD, THY MOTHER AND THY BRETHREN STAND WITHOUT, DESIRING TO SPEAK WITH THEE.

48 BUT HE ANSWERED AND SAID UNTO HIM THAT TOLD HIM, WHO IS

MY MOTHER? AND WHO ARE MY BRETHREN?

49 AND HE STRETCHED FORTH HIS HAND TOWARD HIS DISCIPLES, AND

SAID, BEHOLD MY MOTHER AND MY BRETHREN!

50 FOR WHOMSOEVER SHALL DO THE WILL OF MY FATHER WHICH IS IN

HEAVEN, THE SAME IS MY BROTHER, AND SISTER, AND MOTHER. LUKE I4

25 AND THERE WENT GREAT MULTITUDES WITH HIM: AND HE TURNED, AND SAID UNTO THEM,

26 IF ANY MAN COME TO ME, AND HATE NOT His FATHER, AND

MOTHER, AND WIFE, AND CHILDREN, AND BRETHREN, AND SISTERS, YEA, AND HIS OWN LIFE ALSO, HE CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE.

27 AND WHOSOEVER DOTH NOT BEAR HIS CROSS, AND COME AFTER

ME, CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE

THOMAS CARLYLE ONCE SAID about one of his friends that he was born a man and died a grocer. Everybody is born great and dies very small. Everybody is born like a god and almost always dies like a dog. What happens in between?

Why is man crippled by life? One should hope that man grows to greater dimensions, grows to greater heights, grows to greater life -- what Jesus calls'life abundant' -- but that rarely happens. As it happens usually, man starts shrinking.

The moment man is born he starts shrinking, becoming smaller and smaller and smaller. This has to be understood.

When a child is born he has no identity. He simply is. That'is-ness' is vast, it has magnitude, it has no limitation. The child has no name yet, the name cripples; the child has no identity, the child does not know who he is. That is his greatness, that is his vastness. He is one with existence, he is not yet separated. He has no boundary, no finitude.

A child has no character. That is his beauty, Character kills. The more character you have, the smaller you have become. Character is an armor around you, it defines you. And every definition is a death. Let me repeat: every definition is a death; only the undefined is alive.

The child has a body, but he has no form. In his consciousness no form yet exists.

Even if you put a mirror before the child he will not recognize himself. He will look at the mirror, but he will not recognize that he is reflected there because he does not know yet who he is. That is his innocence. Then things start gathering around: the name, which becomes an imprisonment; the form, the identity. The religion, the society, the color, the nation -- they all become confinements. Now the child is shrinking, the vastness of the sky disappearing. Clouds are gathering and they go on suffocating your being. By the time you die, you were already dead long before.

That is the meaning of these sutras: that if one is to attain to one's real glory again, one has to become indefinable, one has to lose character.

It will be very difficult to understand me. I say that one has to lose character because character is what gives you limitations. Character is a fixity, a frozenness. Unless the character melts and you start flowing again, unless you become unknown to yourself and unpredictable.… Nobody, not even you yourself, knows what is going to happen in the next moment. You start living moment to moment. The calculation is gone. the planning disappears, you float like a white cloud in the sky: moving but without any motivation; moving but

not knowing where you are going; moving but remaining in the moment, so totally herenow that past and future make no sense, only present is meaningful.

Then what will be your identity? Who will be you? You cannot say anything about it; it is unutterable. That is what Buddha calls the inner emptiness: ANATTA, no self; that's what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. Something mysterious that you are. Not that you have to become -- you are already that.

It happened in the Second World War in a Japanese concentration camp. The guards of the concentration camp had come to know that the arrival of the American army was imminent. Any moment they could reach and Japan would be defeated. They became afraid for their own lives. They unlocked the doors and fled to the woods.

But those who were imprisoned in the camp never came to know that now the doors were not locked. They were still imprisoned. The guards had gone, the locks were unlocked, but the prisoners were still prisoners. They were already free, but they did not know about it. The next day when the liberators came they had only to announce to them that "You are already free. We have to do nothing."

This is what I say to you: that you are already free. The guards have never been there except in your imagination and the locks were never locked. You have seen a dream and you are imprisoned in it. This is the only good news that Jesus brings to you or I bring to you: that you are already free.

Not that you have to become free. All your imprisonment is just a mental attitude. You call yourself a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan. Not that you are a Christian. How can you be a Christian and how can you be a Mohammedan? How can just a mere ideology confine you, how can just words make prisons for you? To such a vital energy, to such a vital reality, how can just mere words -- Hinduism, Christianity -- become imprisonments? Impossible.

But you believe in them. Then the impossible becomes possible. You think of yourself that you are this or that. That very thinking makes you this or that. But you are not. In the innermost core of your being you remain total freedom, absolute freedom.

Now, try to enter these sutras. They are very delicate and there is every possibility of misunderstanding them. Jesus has been misunderstood on many

points. One of the points is covered by these sutras.

People have been finding fault with him because of these sutras. On the one hand he goes on talking about love -- he even says, "God is love" -- and on the other hand he goes on saying such contradictory things. How can a man of love say these things? But he has said them. So there is every possibility that they have not been understood rightly. Let us try.…

WHILE HE YET TALKED TO THE PEOPLE, BEHOLD, HIS MOTHER AND HIS

BRETHREN STOOD WITHOUT, DESIRING TO SPEAK WITH HIM. THEN ONE SAID UNTO HIM, BEHOLD, THY MOTHER AND THY BRETHREN STAND WITHOUT, DESIRING TO SPEAK WITH THEE.

BUT HE ANSWERED AND SAID UNTO HIM THAT TOLD HIM, WHO IS MY

MOTHER? AND WHO ARE MY BRETHREN?

AND HE STRETCHED FORTH HIS HAND TOWARD HIS DISCIPLES, AND

SAID, BEHOLD MY MOTHER AND MY BRETHREN! THIS IS MY MOTHER

AND THESE ARE MY BROTHERS.

Up to now, whatsoever he has said can be understood. The next sutra is really very dangerous. He says:

FOR WHOMSOEVER SHALL DO THE WILL OF MY FATHER WHICH IS IN

HEAVEN, THE SAME IS MY BROTHER, AND SISTER, AND MOTHER.

AND THERE WENT GREAT MULTITUDES WITH HIM: AND HE TURNED, AND SAID UNTO THEM,

IF ANY MAN COME TO ME, AND HATE NOT HIS FATHER, AND

MOTHER, AND WIFE, AND CHILDREN, AND BRETHREN. AND SISTERS, YEA, AND

HIS OWN LIFE ALSO, HE CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE.

AND WHOSOEVER DOTH NOT BEAR HIS CROSS, AND COME AFTER ME, CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE.

He says: "If any man come to me and hate not his father, mother, wife, children, brothers and sisters, he cannot be my disciple." A man who has always been talking about love -- why so suddenly does he talk about hate? The word'hate'

does not fit on the lips of Jesus. The man seems to be contradictory, paradoxical, but that is only an appearance. We have to go deep. If Jesus says'hate' he must mean something. And he means.…

First: man is born as part of the divine, as part of the totality, the whole. The child in the mother's womb is not in the mother's womb: the child is in the womb of the whole. Mother is nothing but part of the whole. Mother is the nearest part of the whole, but the child exists in the divine, in the totality. He does not know the mother; he simply exists. Then he is born, he is separated from the mother.

But even while separate from the mother, he has not yet got an identity. He cannot say'I am'. Still the purity of'am-ness' continues.

Then by and by, he will start loving the mother. The moment he starts loving the mother he will forget the wholeness of'am-ness', the totality. Love of the mother will become oblivion of the total. Then he starts loving the father -- he forgets the total completely. Then his brothers, sisters.… Then a family is created, a small family, and he has forgotten the great family of existence.

Unless his consciousness shifts again from the mother, from the father, from the brothers and sisters, and the whole gestalt changes -- again he looks at the whole and the whole becomes the family, again he lives with the stars and the trees are the rivers and the ocean and the sands -- he will not'be able to follow Jesus; you will not be able to follow me. Because what is the meaning of following Jesus?

The only meaning is to shift the focus of consciousness. If you have fallen in love with a family, you have to go beyond that love. Otherwise that very love, that very attachment, will not allow you to enter into the greater whole.

When he says'hate' he simply means: don't love. When he says'hate' he uses a very strong word: to emphasize. Because love has made you part of a small family, only hate can again make you a part of the whole. But by'hate' he does not mean'hatred'. By'hate' he simply means: annihilate the love, the attachment.

In India we have been using the word ASUKTI RAG: attachment, being colored by the attachment. Be nonattached, renounce. Renounce the small so that you can find the whole. And this is the beauty: that if you renounce the part, the small family, and attain to the great family, suddenly you will realize that the small family is there in the great. Because where will it go? In the small family, the great family is not there; but in the great family, the small family is there.

When the whole earth becomes your home, your home is included in it. But when your only home is your home, the whole earth is not included in it. When the whole sky becomes yours, the small sky that you used to think is yours is there.

The greater includes the smaller, the smaller cannot include the greater. Your father, your mother, your children, your wife, will be there -- not as your mother, as your father, as your wife, but as gods. In fact, you have not taken anything away from them. On the contrary, you have given something to them. Before they were ordinary human beings; now they will be divine. Your renunciation has not destroyed anything. On the contrary, it has revealed much. Lose the small so that you can gain the whole, and that small will be regained again, in greater glory.

But in the beginning it will seem that you are moving away from love, because that is the only love you know: the love of the family, the love of the country.

That is the only love you know. And it is a false love because unless the love includes the whole it can never be satisfactory. Love is vast and can only be fulfilled by the vast.

Unless you love God, you will love in vain. Your love will create frustrations, it will never give you a contentment. Love needs such a vast phenomenon to fill it that only God can do that. No father, no mother, no wife, no children, no brother, no sister, no friend can do that -- unless God comes to you as a father, or your father appears to you to be a god.

Unless the wife becomes the whole, or the whole become.s the wife, you will not

be fulfilled. That's why there is so much misery because of love. You love the part and you expect the whole. That's the misery. You love the small and you want the great. It cannot be fulfilled. Hence, frustration. Whenever you fall in love with a man, you expect something divine. Every lover expects it. And when it is not delivered you are hurt, and you feel you have been cheated. Then the misery of love arises.

Expectations are great and the reality is very tiny. You expect from the wrong sources: you want a small stream to become the ocean. It cannot, it is helpless.

When your eyes are open to the reality, and the dream disappears and the honeymoon is over... a small tiny stream. And you were thinking of the ocean!

Now you are crestfallen, frustrated, wounded deeply in the heart.

Love wounds because you expect the whole from the part. And this is the only love that you know. This love is not exactly love. It is attachment. There is a greater love which arises only when your eyes are open to the vast, to the infinite, to God.

When Jesus says'hate' he simply says: whatsoever your love is, is worth nothing.

Move to the opposite, move to the other extreme. Drop all this nonsense that you call love. It is not love. It may be fear -- fear of loneliness -- but it is not a sharing of being. It is a game of the ego, and love cannot be a game of the ego. You drop all this -- and by dropping all this, tremendous possibilities open.

First, if you drop all so-called love -- the love of the father, the mother, the brother, the sister, the family, the wife -- if you really drop it, suddenly your identity will be lost. Who will be then, who will be you then? If somebody asks you right now you say, "I am somebody's son, somebody's brother, somebody's husband, somebody's father. This is my religion. This is my country. This is the group I belong to." You have something to say about yourself.

Think: if you belong to no country, if you belong to no sect, no church, no denomination; if you have cut all bonds from your family -- father, mother, wife

-

- and you are absolutely alone, who are you then? How will you say who you are? By cutting the attachments you have killed your ego.

That is the meaning of Jesus. He says: through your attachments, your ego exists and gets nourishment. Cut all the attachments and suddenly the ego collapses. It has nowhere to stand, nothing to be supported by. Suddenly it collapses, and in that collapse you are born for the first time. For the first time you are YOU -- not somebody's son, not somebody's husband, not somebody's father. For the first time you are simply there, in your absolute nakedness, purity, innocence. You are undefined, all definitions gone. Suddenly you start throbbing with a new heart; you become part of the whole. That small family that was surrounding you and creating a boundary is no more there.

You became small because of the attachment to the family. You become vast once that attachment is transcended. That's why Jesus uses a very strong word. He says HATE because less than that won't do.

Listen:

WHILE HE YET TALKED TO THE PEOPLE, BEHOLD, HIS MOTHER AND HIS

BRETHREN STOOD WITHOUT, DESIRING TO SPEAK WITH HIM.

Many more things have to be understood. Jesus knows well that his mother and his brothers don't understand him. They think, really, that he has gone a little crazy. Their own brother and he thinks of himself as the son of God! Just think about your brother. If he starts thinking that he is the son of God and always talks about God who is in heaven, naturally you will think that he has gone out of his mind. You will seek the help of a psychiatrist; you will give him electric shocks to bring him back to earth.

Jesus' relatives thought that he was beside himself; he was a little eccentric, crazy, mad. When he went to his village, people would simply laugh, they would ridicule. At the most they were amused: "Look, this son of the carpenter Joseph -

-

and now suddenly he thinks that he is the son of God!" And they know well whose son he is. Just a few years before, he was working with his father in the workshop: carrying wood from the forest, helping his father. And now suddenly he has gone mad. "Poor Jesus!"

That was the idea of his family also. They felt pity for him. So when somebody

said, "Your brothers and your mother are waiting without, desiring to speak with you," he knows what they are going to speak to him about. He knows that their whole effort is somehow to bring him back home and make him normal.

This is one of the problems with humanity. People you call normal are not normal at all, but they are in the majority. A Buddha always looks abnormal. A Jesus looks abnormal. In a sense he is, because he doesn't behave like you, he doesn't follow the ordinary rules. He does not fit with the society, he is a misfit.

And to allow him, creates a suspicion in your mind: if he is right, then you are wrong. That creates a doubt and a trembling. He must be wrong, he must be proved wrong. He must have somehow gone wrong somewhere. Of course the ordinary is thought to be normal -- and the normal is thought to be the norm -- so the exceptional, the unique, looks abnormal.

Even psychoanalysts think that Jesus was neurotic. Many books have been written against Jesus, proving that he was neurotic, that he was not in his senses.

Look at what he was saying! Of course if suddenly someone amongst you declares that he is the son of God, you will start laughing. What does he mean?

Jesus knows well what they want to talk about. And they have not come to HIM.

They have come only to the son of Joseph, which he is no more. He was, but since John the Baptist initiated him into a different life -- changed and converted him to a new plane of consciousness, initiated him, led him into a new door to existence -- since then he is no longer the same.

When Buddha came back to his home after twelve years, his father could not believe that he had become enlightened. He said, "Drop all this nonsense! You can befool others, but you cannot befool me. I have given birth to you, I have known you from the very beginning. Drop this game and come back home. I am your father and because I love you my doors are yet open for you. Though you don't deserve! You are an escapist. In my old age you escaped. You are my only hope. Come back home!"

Of course the father cannot see what has happened. He is too full of his own ideas, too full of his memories, his remembrance of this boy who was born to him. And now suddenly he has become a Buddha, enlightened, attained to truth?

If he had been somebody else's son the father might have looked again, might have watched, observed, might have been more open; but this is his own son.

The eyes are full of tears, anger, attachment, memories. The eyes are clouded by the past; he cannot see the reality that is standing before him.

Buddha laughed and he said, "Just look at me. I'm not the same one who left your house. Somebody else comes to you. That man is dead! I'm totally new."

The father looked again and then said, "You cannot deceive me. You are the same. I know you well. I know you more than you can know yourself."

Jesus knows what they want to talk about. And they don't want to talk to him, the reality that he is now. They want to talk to someone who exists no more.

Jesus disappeared that day in the River Jordan when John the Baptist initiated him into a different life. The man who used to be there has disappeared. The house is old, but the resident has changed. The same person doesn't live in the same body. The body is the same, but a new consciousness has entered. A new consciousness abides there and they have come to talk to the old, who is no more.

THEN ONE SAID UNTO HIM, BEHOLD, THY MOTHER AND THY BRETHREN STAND WITHOUT, DESIRING TO SPEAK WITH THEE.

BUT HE ANSWERED AND SAID UNTO HIM THAT TOLD HIM, WHO IS MY

MOTHER? AND WHO ARE MY BRETHREN?

This new consciousness -- call it'Christ' -- this new consciousness says, WHO IS MY MOTHER? AND WHO ARE MY BRETHREN?

Unless you can see two personalities -- one of Jesus, which is no more; and one of Christ, which has come like a dove and has entered his soul -- you will not be able to understand these sentences. These sutras become very simple once you see that this man Jesus is no more the Jesus who used to be.

It happens many times to my sannyasins. When they want to go back to their homes they become a little apprehensive. They come to me and they say, "It is going to be difficult. My father won't understand me, my mother will not be able to see what has happened. When I go back they will not be able to see the fact: what has happened to me."

I tell them, "Don't be worried. You simply go and you remain new. Don't try in any way to behave like the old." That has to be remembered because the temptation will be there. I he mother is there, the father is there, the brothers are there, the whole milieu of the old, and the temptation will be that even if you have changed why create a disturbance for them? Just act like the old.

But if you act like the old, that will be a deep disturbance for you. That will be a deception, that won't be authenticity. And in that way you are not going to help your family. That way you will be untrue to them.

Be true. Even if they misunderstand in the beginning, accept that misunderstanding. It is natural. But you remain the one that you have become.

Don't act; remain true. Sooner or later they will understand, and once they understand, your reality will start transforming them also. Reality is a great force.

This happens many times. One sannyasin from England just wrote to me that "I was afraid, notwithstanding whatsoever you had said. I was afraid and as I came nearer to England my fear was tremendous. My father is very stubborn" -- as fathers are-"and I thought: he won't understand, he won't even listen. He will think that I am mad and he will try and force me to go to a psychoanalyst.'What has happened? Why are you wearing orange?' He is an old Christian, orthodox.

It will be almost a shock."

But he had to go back so he went. Now he has written: "They were shocked. They couldn't believe it. But as you had said, I tried not to be tempted to act. I remained true. And for the first time, after three or four days, they relaxed. Now for the first time something has transpired between me and my parents, something which I can call love -- which has never been there before. Fear was there, but not love. And they are asking me questions: what has happened to me?

And they have even tried to meditate! " -- which he thinks is a miracle. He thinks

that I must be doing something from here.

I'm not doing anything from here. Your truth, your authenticity, has a great power in it. Truth transforms not only you. Wherever you move, with whomsoever you relate, if you are true you become a great force.

Jesus knows that they have not come for him. They are not yet ready. They don't understand that a discontinuity has happened in the life of Jesus. The old is gone and the new has come, and they are not in any way related.

That is the problem: when the new comes, the new is absolutely new. It is not a modified form of the old. When the old goes, it goes totally. There comes a gap, a silence, an emptiness.

The old goes and the new comes -- the body remains the same. Nobody will be able to see what has happened, but everybody will FEEL something has happened. Even you yourself will become aware, by and by, that you are no longer the old.

Recognition takes time. Sometimes months, sometimes years. Recognition takes time, but by and by you become aware that "I am no longer the same person I used to be." When this realization surrounds you, you flower. A different grace becomes available to you. The old man lives under the law; the new man lives under love. The old man lives in the society; the new man becomes a peak of absolute aloneness. The old man lives in the past, in the future; the new man lives only in the present. The new man has a presence, a different quality of being. A magnetism, a charisma.

HE ANSWERED AND SAID UNTO HIM THAT TOLD HIM, WHO IS MY MOTHER? AND WHO ARE MY BRETHREN?

AND HE STRETCHED FORTH HIS HAND TOWARD HIS DISCIPLES, AND SAID, BEHOLD MY MOTHER AND MY BRETHREN!

He has created a new community.

Buddha called his community SANGHA. Buddha says to his disciples to seek three refuges. When anybody comes to surrender he has to surrender to three

things. He says: "I surrender to Buddha, I surrender to sangha, I surrender to DHAMMA." Buddha is the alive, the presence herenow. But he will not be there always. Sooner or later he will disappear, just as a lamp disappears and then you cannot find where the flame has gone. Buddha will disappear -- this body cannot contain him for long, because the body is mortal and he is immortal. The vehicle is weak, the vehicle cannot persist for long. Sooner or later the body will fall and the flame will disappear. Then to whom will you surrender? So Buddha says, "I am creating a community: the sangha."

Sangha is a community of those who live with the same attitude, who live a life in common, who commune with each other. It is a community, a community of seekers on the same path, a community of those who have been in love with the same Buddha, whose love joins them together.

The community is a group. When the buddha is there you can look at him -- he can be helpful, he can guide you, he can take you out of your misery and darkness -- but when he is gone, then there is only one possibility: you should join together to help each other. A few will be a little ahead, a few will not be so.

A few may be lagging behind, a few may be marching forcibly, a few may just be fast asleep; but if there is a community, then those who are lagging behind can also be helped. The community can take care of them: the community can think about them, can love them, can help them, can guide them. When a Buddha is alive there is no need, but when the Buddha is gone a community is the only refuge.

Jesus was creating a community. This community is not the church, remember; this community is not a sect, remember. This community is a family of fellow seekers, not of fellow believers. When you believe, the community becomes a sect. When you seek, then it is a community. A community is an alive phenomenon of those who are all seeking together and helping each other.

There is a parable in India that once it happened that a great fire broke out in a forest. Two men were helpless there in the forest, they couldn't get out of it, because one was blind and another was crippled in the legs. The crippled one could not run: he could see, but he could not run. The blind one could run fast, but he couldn't see. So they formed a community. They talked to each other and they said, "We can help each other." So the blind man took the crippled man on his shoulders. They became one man. The blind could walk, the crippled could

see. They helped each other. They came out of the fire; they were saved. Separate they would have died; together they found the way out.

A community is a community of blind people and crippled people. When a Buddha is there, there is no need. But when Buddha is gone, the master is gone, then the source of life disappears. The whole forest is on fire and everywhere there is darkness. Somebody is crippled and somebody is blind -- everybody lacks something. But everybody also has something. Then the community can arise.

That is the family of Jesus. He says:

AND HE STRETCHED FORTH HIS HAND TOWARD HIS DISCIPLES, AND SAID, BEHOLD MY MOTHER AND MY BRETHREN!

"And then," Buddha says, "a time comes when the community will also become dead. It will become a sect." The family of Christ will become Christianity; the family of Buddha, the sangha of Buddha, will become Buddhists. Dead: fellow believers, not fellow seekers. Nobody is going anywhere; they simply believe.

The community is not a community at all now. They talk, they discuss, but nobody is ready to risk anything, to search, to inquire.

Then, DHAMMA. Then you have to take refuge, you have to surrender and take refuge, only in the pure principle of dharma. The pure principle, the basic law: what Lao Tzu calls tao, what Buddha calls DHAMMA, what Jesus calls the kingdom of God. Then you have to surrender to the unknown.

It will be difficult because Buddha is visible; you can touch him. The community is also visible. Not so enlightened as Buddha, but some fragments of life, some fragments of light, are carried by the community. You can put them together, a certain light can be created. But when the community has become a sect, a dead religion, an organization and not a brotherhood.…

Remember, a brotherhood is not an organization. A brotherhood may be organized, but it is not an organization. It is fluid. A brotherhood is organized because of love: organization is a by-product, a consequence. But an organization is simply organization. It is forced, rigid. It exists not because of love but because of law.

Then one has to look to God, whom you cannot see anywhere, whose address is not known, whose whereabouts are absolutely unknown.

Jesus says:

BEHOLD MY MOTHER AND MY BRETHREN!

"This is my family, my community in which I am spreading my being, with whom I am sharing my new life, with whom I am sharing my new vision and my new eyes."

FOR WHOSOEVER SHALL DO THE WILL OF MY FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN, THE SAME IS MY BROTHER, AND SISTER, AND MOTHER.

"Whosoever is ready to follow the path of God -- he is my mother, he is my brother, he is my sister." Jesus is saying, "Only those who are related to God are related to me. Now, no other relationship is possible."

Even if Jesus' mother wants to be related to him again, she cannot be related just because of the old relationship. She will have to seek a new relationship, and that new relation ship is possible only if she becomes attuned to God. Only through God, via God, can you be related to Jesus.

There is no other way.

If you come to me and you are really a seeker of truth, you immediately become related to me. Otherwise there is no relationship. Only via God -- you cannot be related to me directly. All direct relationship is impossible now. Unless you seek that which I have found, there is no possibility. There is no possibility at all.

It happens: many times people ask me -- just a few days before, Vivek was asking me -- "Why do we never see any of your college friends, your school friends, coming to you? Why don't they come?"

In the first place, I never had many friends because from the very beginning only if somebody was a seeker was there a possibility of any friendship. There was no other way to relate to me. So -- very few friends. But even those are lost, because unless they now relate to my new reality there is no possibility. Either I have to come down to relate to them, which is not possible, or they have to come

up --

which is difficult.

By and by, they have disappeared. They continue to think about me as of old, but that man is no more there; that man is dead. They would like to relate to me as of old, but that man is dead. How can you relate to a dead man?

So it becomes embarrassing for them. If they come, it becomes embarrassing.

They don't know what to talk about, what to say. If they say something of the past and then they look at me, the whole thing looks absurd. It carries no meaning. At the most I can listen, but I cannot say a single word. Then they feel awkward.

They used to come; by and by they dropped. But my family has not dropped me.

They have tried hard to cope with me. And they have tried hard to feel my new reality. That's a rare phenomenon. Jesus was not so fortunate as I am.

FOR WHOSOEVER SHALL DO THE WILL OF MY FATHER WHICH IS IN HEAVEN, THE SAME IS MY BROTHER, AND SISTER, AND MOTHER.

AND THERE WENT GREAT MULTITUDES WITH HIM: AND HE TURNED, AND SAID UNTO THEM,

IF ANY MAN COME TO ME, AND HATE NOT HIS FATHER, AND MOTHER, AND WIFE, AND CHILDREN, AND BRETHREN, AND SISTERS, YEA, AND

HIS OWN LIFE ALSO, HE CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE.

Unless you deny your worldly family, you cannot be part of a spiritual family.

Unless you deny the ordinary ties of the body, you cannot move into the world of the spirit. You have to leave behind the world of matter, the world of the body, to move into the world of the spirit.

AND WHOSOEVER DOTH NOT BEAR HIS CROSS, AND COME AFTER

ME, CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE.

And until you die, you cannot follow. You have to die so that the new can be born in you. It can be born only when you are gone. It is not a question of transforming you, it is not a question of improving you, it is not a question of making something better of you. Howsoever better you are made, improved, modified, you will remain the same.

Your ego can be more polished. It can even be taught to be humble. You can be taught to be simple: you can live naked, with no clothes. You can be taught to be nonpossessive: you can leave the whole world. But if you remain the same, your non-possessiveness will not help much; your nakedness will not help much.

Your nakedness will become a new clothing for the ego.

Now the ego will be satisfied that "I have renounced all. I don't possess anything.

I have left my family" -- but the'I' will continue. And the'I' has to drop. Unless the'I' disappears, you will not be empty enough for the divine to enter. You will not have enough space for Him.

That is the meaning of Jesus when he says: AND WHOSOEVER DOTH NOT BEAR HIS CROSS, AND COME AFTER ME, CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE.

To be a disciple is to die in the master and to relive in the master. It is to drop

totally dead in the master so that his life flame can give you a new light and a new life.

Until you die, nothing is possible. And that is the great fear. You would like to be improved, you would like to become better. Then don't come to a man like Jesus.

He is not interested in bettering you, he is not interested in renovating the old house. He says, "We will demolish and we will make a new one," because if you renovate an old house it remains the old. It may deceive others, but it cannot deceive you. You know it is the old. The foundations remain the old, the structure remains the old. You polish it, you color it, you whitewash it -- a few patches here and there -- and then you think everything is new. It is not.

In life, never try to renovate, because something is fundamentally wrong. The

base is wrong, the whole foundation is wrong. And on that foundation, you will remain wrong.

So I'm not interested in you becoming more religious, no. I'm not interested in you becoming more moral, no. I am not interested in you attaining a beautiful character, not at all. I am interested in you dying, so that a newness rushes in you. Only on your death is resurrection possible. And that which will resurrect will be the divine. That will be the divine!

Once you are ready to die, moral/immoral, sinner or saint, are all irrelevant.

Once you are ready to die, you have become capable. You open the door. You say to God, "Come in! "

But remember, God comes from the same door from where death comes in. If you are afraid of death you will remain afraid of God. God and death are two names of one phenomenon. If you are afraid, you interpret God as death. If you accept, you interpret death as God. Death itself becomes the beloved.

You wait. You wait as you would wait for your beloved. And death comes dancing! There is nothing like it. No longer can you conceive of anything which can transcend the beauty of it. Death becomes the beloved. Then death's garb is no more there. God is revealed!

This has to be done every moment, because every moment death knocks at your door. Every moment when you exhale, death knocks. Exhalation is death, inhalation is life. The first thing a child has to do is to inhale and the last thing the old man dying will do will be to exhale. With exhalation, death; with inhalation, life.

And this is happening every moment. Whenever you inhale, you are becoming alive again; whenever you exhale, again death. Death, life, death, life: that's how you move. They are two wings or two legs, two aspects of you. If you really die with each exhalation -- you relax and you surrender -- then with each inhalation you will revive. And you will feel such freshness that even the dew in the morning will be jealous! You will feel freshness such as the stars in the night feel.

That is eternal life. One who has learned the secret of how to die moment to moment has learned the secret of how to live eternally. Now death is impossible.

Death is possible only if you resist it. It is in your resistance that death exists.

Resistance is ego, death exists because of the ego. If you surrender, death disappears. Surrender is the key.

Jesus says:

AND WHOSOEVER DOTH NOT BEAR HIS CROSS, AND COME AFTER ME, CANNOT BE MY DISCIPLE.

Not only does the father have to be denied, and the mother, and the sister and the brothers, but you have to deny your life also. Your life has to be denied so that God can live within you and through you. Both cannot live together within you, remember. Either you or God. You would like to also give Him a small room somewhere in your house, a small temple in a far corner of the house. You would like Him to live there, but that is not His way. He wants the whole house or nothing. This trick don't do.

I was staying with a friend. In the morning I saw him going to the garage. I asked him, "Where are you going?"

He said, "We have made a temple in the garage." They live in a palace and their God lives in the garage! Whom do you think you are befooling? And he was very happy. He thinks he is a very religious man.

The God lives in the garage, He's not even a welcomed guest. Even with a guest you behave well, even with a poor relative you behave well. Even a poor relative will feel offended if you put him in the garage. The God lives in the garage! He was very happy and he said, "We have made a very beautiful temple there. You come and see."

I said, "God cannot be there so I'm not coming. You go and do whatsoever you want to do, but this is not prayer."

God comes to you only when you completely give in, when you are completely empty and you say, "I am no more. Now you can come in." When you have vacated the throne, then only is He enthroned.

Come Follow To You, Vol 2

Chapter #6

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