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‌CHAPTER 7

1984 in Lao Tzu House, Rajneeshpuram, USA

Devageet, when you sometimes say “Okay” to Ashu, I misunderstand: I think it is okay to me. That’s why she laughs. But still I say, deep within me there is nothing but laughter. You can anesthetize my body, everything, but not me. That is beyond you.

That is the case with you too. Your innermost core is beyond all chemicals and chemistry. Now I can hear Devageet giggling. It is good to hear a man giggle. Men almost never giggle. Giggling has become the sole domain of women. Men either laugh or not, but they don’t giggle. Giggling is just in the middle. It is the Golden Mean. It is Tao. Laughter can be violent. Not to laugh is stupid, but giggling is good.

See how I can say something significant even about giggling: “Giggling is good.” Don’t worry even if I say something correct, it is just an old habit. I can even talk in my sleep, so it is no trouble to talk like this.

Gudia knows I talk in my sleep but she does not know to whom. Only I know that. Poor Gudia! I am talking to her and she thinks and worries about why I am talking, and to whom. Alas that she is not aware that I am talking to her just like this. Sleep is a natural anesthetic. Life is so hard that one has to go under every night for a few hours at least. And she wonders whether I really sleep or not. I can understand her wondering.

For more than a quarter of a century I have not slept. Devaraj, don’t be worried. Ordinary sleep.… I sleep more than anybody else in the whole world: three hours during the day, and seven, eight, nine hours at night – as much as anybody can afford. In all, in toto, I sleep twelve hours per day, but underneath I am awake. I see myself while asleep, and sometimes it is so lonely during the night that I start talking to Gudia. But her difficulties are many. First, when I talk in my sleep I talk in Hindi. I cannot talk in English while asleep.

I never will, although I could if I wanted to. Sometimes I have tried and succeeded, but the joy was missing.

You must be aware that every day I listen to a song of Noorjahan, the famous Urdu singer. Every day before I come in I listen to her again and again. It could even drive you crazy. What do you know of drilling? I know what drilling means. I drill that song into Gudia every day. She has to hear it, there is no way to avoid it. After my work is over I again play the same song. I love my own language... not that it is my language, but it is so beautiful that even if it were not mine I would have learned it.

The song that she hears every day, and will have to hear again and again, says: “Whether you remember or not, once there was a trust between us. Once you used to tell me, ‘You are the most beautiful woman in the world.’ Now, I don’t know whether you would recognize me or not. Perhaps you do not remember, but I still remember. I cannot forget the trust, and the words that you uttered to me. You used to say that your love was impeccable. Do you still remember? Perhaps not, but I remember – not in its totality, of course. Time has done much harm.

“I am a dilapidated palace, but if you look, look minutely, I am still the same. I still remember the trust and your words. That trust that once existed between us, is it still in your memory or not? I don’t know about you but I still remember.”

Why do I go on playing the song of Noorjahan? It is a kind of drilling. Not drilling of your teeth, although if you continue drilling long enough it will get to your teeth too, but drilling into her the beauty of a language. I know it will be difficult for her to understand or appreciate it.

In my sleep when I speak to Gudia, I again speak in Hindi because I know her unconscious is still not English. She was only in England for a few years. Before that she was in India, and now she is again in India. I have been trying to efface all that lies between these two. Of this later, when the time comes.…

Today I was going to say something about Jainism. Look at the madness of this man! Yes, I can jump from one peak to another without any bridge between. But you have to tolerate a madman. You have fallen in love. It is your responsibility, I am not responsible for it.

Jainism is the most ascetic religion in the world, or in other words the most masochistic and sadistic. Jaina monks torture themselves so much that one wonders if they are insane. They are not. They are businessmen, and the followers of the Jaina monks are all businessmen. It is strange, the whole Jaina community consists only of businessmen – but not really strange because the religion itself is basically motivated for profit in the other world. The Jaina tortures himself in order to gain something in the other world which he knows he cannot attain in this.

I must have been about four or five years old when I saw the first naked Jaina monk being invited into my grandmother’s house. I could not resist laughing. My grandfather told me, “Keep quiet! I know you are a nuisance. I can forgive you when you are a pain in the neck to the neighbors, but I cannot forgive you if you try to be mischievous with my guru. He is my master; he initiated me into the inner secrets of religion.”

I said, “I am not concerned about the inner secrets. I am concerned about the outer secrets that he is showing so clearly. Why is he naked? Can’t he at least wear short pants?”

Even my grandfather laughed. He said, “You don’t understand.”

I said, “Okay, I will ask him myself.” I then asked my grandmother, “Can I ask a few questions to this utterly insane man who comes naked in front of ladies and gentlemen?”

My grandmother laughed and said, “Go ahead, and don’t take any notice of what your grandfather says. I allow you. If he says anything just indicate towards me and I will put him right.”

She was really a beautiful woman, courageous, ready to give freedom without any limits. She did not even ask me what I was going to ask. She simply said, “Go ahead”

All the villagers had assembled for the darshana of the Jaina monk. In the middle of the so-called sermon I stood up. That was forty or so years ago, and since then I have been fighting these idiots continuously. That day a war began which is only going to end when I am no more. Perhaps it may not end even then; my people may continue it.

I asked simple questions that he could not answer. I was puzzled. My grandfather was ashamed. My grandmother patted me on the back and said, “Great! You did it! I knew you were able to.”

What had I asked? – just simple questions. I had asked, “Why don’t you want to be born again?” That’s a very simple question in Jainism, because Jainism is nothing but an effort not to be born again. It is the whole science of preventing rebirth. So I asked him the basic question, “Don’t you ever want to be born again?”

He said, “No, never.”

Then I asked, “Why don’t you commit suicide? Why are you still breathing? Why eat? Why drink water? Just disappear, commit suicide. Why make so much fuss over a simple thing?” He was not more than forty years of ageI said to him, “If you continue in this way, you may have to continue

for another forty years or even more.”

It is a scientific fact that people who eat less live longer. Devaraj will certainly agree with me. It has been proven again and again, that if you feed any species more than they need, they become fat, and comfortable of course, beautiful of course, but they soon die. If you feed them only half what they need, it is strange: they don’t look beautiful, they are not comfortable, but they live to almost double the average age. Half the food and double the age – double the food, and half the age.

So I said to the monk – I did not know these facts then – “If you don’t want to be born again, why are you living? Just to die? Then why not commit suicide?” I don’t think anybody had ever asked him such a question. In polite society nobody ever asks a real question, and the question of suicide is the most real of all.

Marcel says, “Suicide is the only real philosophical question.” I had no idea of Marcel then. Perhaps at that time there was no Marcel, and his book had not been written yet. But this is what I said to the Jaina monk: “If you don’t want to be born again, which you say is your desire, then why do you live? For what? Commit suicide! I can show you a way. Although I don’t know much about the ways of the world, as far as suicide is concerned I can give you some advice. You can jump off the hill at the side of the village, or you can jump into the river.”

The river was three miles away from the village, and so deep and so vast that to swim across it was such a joy for me. Many times while swimming across the river I would think it was the end, and I would not be able to reach the other shore. It was so wide, particularly in the rainy season, miles wide. It looked almost like an ocean. In the rainy season one could not even see the other shore. When it was in full flood, that was when I would jump in, either to die or to reach the other shore. The greater probability was that I would never reach the other shore.

I told the Jaina monk, “In the rainy season you can jump into the river with me. We can keep company for a little while, then you can die, and I will reach the other shore. I can swim well enough.”

He looked at me so fiercely, so full of anger, that I had to tell him, “Remember, you will have to be born again because you are still full of anger. This is not the way to get rid of the world of worries. Why are you looking at me so angrily? Answer my question in a peaceful and silent way. Answer joyously! If you cannot answer, simply say, ‘I don’t know.’ But don’t be angry.”

The man said, “Suicide is a sin. I cannot commit suicide, but I want never to be born again. I will achieve that state by slowly renouncing everything that I possess.”

I said, “Please show me something that you possess, because, as far as I can see, you are naked and you don’t possess anything. What possessions do you have?”

My grandfather tried to stop me. I pointed towards my grandmother and then said to him, “Remember, I asked permission of Nani, and now nobody can prevent me, not even you. I spoke to her about you because I was worried that if I interrupted your guru and his rubbishy, so-called sermon, you would be angry with me. She said to ‘Just point towards me, that’s all. Don’t be worried: just a look from me and he will become silent.’ And strange... it was true!” He became silent, even without a look from my Nani.

Later on my Nani and I both laughed. I said to her, “He did not even look at you.”

She said, “He could not, because he must have been afraid that I would say ‘Shut up! Don’t interfere with the child,’ so he avoided me. The only way to avoid me was to not interfere with you.”

In fact he closed his eyes as if he was meditating. I said to him, “Nana, great! – you are angry, boiling. There is fire within you yet you sit with closed eyes as if you are meditating. Your guru is angry because my questions are annoying him. You are angry because your guru is not capable of answering. But I say, this man who is sermonizing here is just an imbecile.” And I was not more than four or five years old.

From that time on that has remained my language. I immediately recognize the idiot wherever he is, whoever he is. Nobody can escape my X-ray eyes. I can immediately see any retardedness, or anything else whatsoever.

The other day I had given one of my sannyasins the fountain pen that I wrote his new name with, just for him to remember that this was the pen I had used at the beginning of his new life, his sannyas. But his wife was there. I had even invited his wife to become a sannyasin. She was willing, and not willing – you know the way the women are: this way and that way; you never know exactly. Even

when they show their right hand out of a car, you never know if they will really turn right. They may be feeling the wind, or nobody knows – they can be doing anything. That woman was willy-nilly, wishy- washy... a perfect woman in a way. She wanted to say yes and yet could not say it. She wanted to say no and yet could not say it-that kind of woman. And remember that is ninety-nine point nine percent of all women on the earth; only point one percent is left out. Otherwise that woman is very representative.

Still I tried to seduce her – into sannyas, I mean! I played my game a little bit, and she was coming very close to saying yes when I stopped. I am also not so simple as it may seem from the outside. I don’t mean that I am complex, I mean that I can see things so clearly that sometimes I have to withdraw my simplicity and its invitation.

When she was just about to say yes, she clutched her husband’s hand, who was now a sannyasin. I looked at him and could see that he wanted to get rid of this woman. She had tortured him enough. In fact he was hoping that by becoming a sannyasin this woman would have mercy, and leave him of her own accord. I could see his puzzlement when I was trying to persuade his wife to become a sannyasin. In his heart he was saying, “My God. If she becomes a sannyasin then even in Poona I can’t be at ease.”

He wants to become part of this ashram. He is a rich man and owns a multi-million-dollar business and wants to donate all of it to the ashram. He was afraid.I could see through and through this

sannyasin and his wife.

There was no bridge between them, and there never had been. They were just an English couple, you know.… God knows why they married – and God does not exist. I repeat it again and again because I always feel you may think that God really knows! God does not know because He exists not.

God is a word like “jesus.” It does not mean anything, it is just an exclamation. That’s how the story goes, telling how Jesus got his name.…

Joseph and Mary are taking their child back home from Bethlehem. Mary is sitting on the donkey with the child. Joseph is walking ahead holding the rope, leading the donkey. Suddenly he stumbles, hitting his toe on a rock. “Jesus!” he shouts. And you know the ways of women.…

Mary says, “Joseph! I was thinking what name to give to our new child, and just now you uttered the right name – Jesus!”

That’s how the poor child got his name. It is not a coincidence that when you hit your hand with a hammer by mistake, you exclaim, “Jesus!” Don’t think you are remembering Jesus; just remember poor Joseph hitting his toe on the rock.

When I have stopped breathing Devaraj will know what to do. Although he is a partial Jewbut still

he is a man you can trust. I know he does not believe he is partly a Jew. He thinks a part of his family may have been Jewish, but he is not! That’s the way of all Jews, even part Jews. He seems to be perfect. A Jew is always a perfect Jew, to tell you the truth. Just a single drop of Jewishness in you is enough to make you a perfect Jew.

But I love Jews and I trust Jews. Just look in this Noah’s Ark: there are two and a half Jews. I am a perfect Jew without any hesitation. Devageet is not a perfect Jew, just a Jew. Devaraj is partially a Jew and making every effort to hide it – but that only makes it more Jewish. You cannot hide your Jewishness. Where will you hide your nose? That’s the only thing that remains unhidden in the whole body. You can hide everything except your nose, because you have to breathe.

I was saying that Jesus, even Jesus, is not a name but only an exclamation made when Joseph hit his toe on a rock. So is God. When one says, “My God!” he does not mean that he believes in God. He is simply saying that he is complaining, if there is anyone in the sky to listen. When he says “God!” he simply means what is written on many government documents – “To Whom It May Concern.” “My God!” simply means “To whom it may concern,” or if there is nobody, then “Sorry, it concerns nobody. It is just an exclamation and I couldn’t resist it.”

What is the time?... because I am half an hour late and I don’t want you to be late too. Once in a while I too can be nice. Just to remind you, this is the best you have been up to now. Very good. Even when it is very good I know how to say “enough”.…

This is tremendously beautiful, So beautiful,

Stop.

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